Subject: JUICE Pioneers 7 - Orde Wingate
Date:    Wed, 13 May 1998 01:38:41 +0000
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From:          JUICE Administration <juice@virtual.co.il>
To:            pioneers@virtual.co.il
Subject:       JUICE Pioneers 7

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                  World Zionist Organization
                Jewish University in CyberspacE
          juice@wzo.org.il         birnbaum@wzo.org.il 
                     http://www.wzo.org.il 
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Course:   Pioneers of Israel
Lecture:  7/12
Lecturer: Doron Geller


Orde Wingate and the Development of the Special Night Squads

For over two centuries the British Imperial experiment produced a host of
fascinating and exciting characters.  One of the most noted to capture the
collective international imagination was Lawrence of Arabia, who in a much
embellished account described how he and his Bedouin soldiers freed the
Middle East from Ottoman tyranny.  Philby of Arabia was a British soldier
who converted to Islam, went to live in Saudi Arabia, and became a close
friend and confidante of the king in the first half of this century.  The
Middle East, India, and Africa held a special appeal to the ordinary
Englishman, and especially to the more intrepid and spirited explorer among
them.  The desert and the exotic ways of the Middle Eastern Bedouin
particularly exerted a powerful allure to many young English schoolboys in
the early years of this century, and among them was a young man who later
rose to great prominence in the British Army.  He came to be known as a
brilliant military thinker and strategist, an intrepid soldier, an
unconventional personality to the extreme, and perhaps the firmest friend
the Jewish settlers in Palestine ever had.  His name was Orde Wingate.  

Orde Wingate was born into a Protestant English family in 1903 which raised
him on the Bible, and particularly the Old Testament.  His parents were
strict disciplinarians, a trait which later came to characterize Orde
himself.  They made him memorize passages of the Bible by heart as well as
take long and exhausting walks across the countryside from a very early age.
He later was to instill this same sense of discipline into the soldiers
under his command.

There were many Christian English Zionists in the 19th and early 20th
centuries.  But little Orde was not one of them at first.  Inspired as he
was by his love for the Bible, it was the Bedouin and T.E. Lawrence's
romantic tales of life among them that sparked his imagination.  He seemed
to have transferred his fascination for the people of the Old Testament onto
the Arabs, who undoubtedly reminded one more of the Biblical patriarchs with
their clothing, staffs, and flocks of sheep than European Jews did.  At
about the age of 20 Orde Wingate had served in the British Army already as a
gunner, and while serving, enrolled in the School of Oriental Studies and
began to learn Arabic.  He had already developed a reputation as a somewhat
ornery character among both fellow officers and classmates.  He always
insisted on doing things his own way.  Characteristically, as a student, he
took a month's leave and lived among Arab seamen in the East End of London.
He learned their language and what perhaps he thought were the habits and
customs of Arabs but more likely were those of exhausted seamen; he did not
bathe or shave for the month of his absence from school.  His schoolmates
from the army took one look at him and scrubbed him clean upon his return.

In 1928 Wingate was appointed to the Sudan.  He passed through Egypt on the
way and was not impressed by the people, although he enjoyed visiting the
museums and managed to climb the Pyramids.  In the Sudan he developed his
system of cross-border campaigning, which he later used in Palestine and
elsewhere and made him world-famous.  Looking for adventure, he applied to -
and received from - the royal Geographical Society a grant to search for a
lost civilization in the Libyan Desert.  He found nothing, but the
experience alone in the desert moved him deeply.  He was still crystallizing
ideas for the future in his mind, conscious of how much he felt he had to
accomplish.  By his 30th year he still felt as if he had achieved very
little, but sensed that greatness was in store for him.

It was at this time, in the mid 1930's that Orde Wingate met and fell in
love with a sixteen year old girl whom he was to marry two years later.  She
accompanied him to Palestine when he was posted there as an intelligence
officer in September 1936.  At first he thought of it as a normal Middle
eastern posting, but on the trip over he began to read about the Zionist
enterprise.  Although he had been pro-Arab for years, his earlier love for
the Bible and the Jews blossomed in him anew as he approached the shores of
Palestine.  As he was to say; "Long before I reached Palestine I knew what
the Jews were seeking, understood what they needed, sympathized with their
aims, and knew they were right."  His first evening in the land of Israel
seemed to allow his blazing intensity to take hold of him, focus, and
envelop his very being.  That first evening, after settling in at Haifa, he
went up to Mount Carmel - with its beautiful view of the Haifa Bay area -
and met the Chief Intelligence Officer of the Underground Jewish Defense
Force, the Haganah.  His name was Emmanuel Wilenski.

Wilenski was unaware, at first, that Wingate knew who he was.  Wingate, as
was his wont, peered closely into his eyes, and asked Wilenski, ".do you
believe in a Zionist State, in an independent state of Israel?'
`I am not afraid of answering that.  Yes.  I do.'
Wingate clambered to his feet.  `Aha! You do? But do you know what it means?
Do you realize that you will have to fight for your independence?'
Wilenski replied. `I think, Captain Wingate, that we do.'
`But fight!  I mean fight!  A bloody struggle!'  shouted Wingate.  `There
will be no free Palestine for the Jews unless you fight and win.'  He went
up to Wilenski and prodded him in the chest.  By this time his eyes were
blazing.  `And you will not win, my friend, unless I teach you how to fight
and I lead you into battle.'"

The Jewish Intelligence Officer didn't know what to make of this man.  Here
was a British Intelligence Officer, in complete contradistinction to British
Imperial policy at the time, telling him that he would lead the Jews to an
independent state.  British policy, by 1936, was certainly against an
independent Jewish state, and in fact had consistently frustrated attempts
to expand Jewish immigration into Palestine.  This policy was to become more
pronounced with the passing years, and as World War loomed on the horizon,
the British limited Jewish immigration into Palestine to a mere trickle.  By
1936 (but actually since the inception of the Mandate) few British officers
were trusted by the Jews.  Most British soldiers were overtly pro-Arab.  Few
Jews in Palestine knew, in September 1936, what a treasure-trove they had in
the person of Orde Wingate, a faithful friend who would do anything to pave
the way to an independent Jewish state.

Merely by being in the land of Israel Orde Wingate was living a dream, a
feeling similar to that of  many Second aliyah pioneers.  He however, was
not one who romanticized labor and tended to avoid the notion that conflict
with the Arabs might be in the offing, as many Jewish laborers in Palestine
did.  He saw right from the beginning that Jews would need to fight, and not
merely defend themselves.  He knew what the Jews were fighting for, and he
understood their dreams because he shared them.  He loved the Land of
Israel.  "The Holy places were all within his reach.  He had only to look
around and see the hills and villages and wells upon which his mind had been
suckled, which were far more real to him than the places he knew in
England."  He climbed the Hermon in the Golan.  He went to Mount Tabor, near
modern-day Afula, where he talked with the monks inhabiting the monastery on
top.  He looked across the hills and valleys, all familiar to him and
bursting with history and spiritual meaning.  "For Orde Wingate it was a
dream of childhood come true.  His Biblical training made it feel much more
like a return to a home he had always known than an arrival in a strange
land.  To stand on the places where the Old Testament prophets had lived,
taught, fought and died was as sweet-smelling to him as the annointment oils
of a newly proclaimed king.  He tramped across the hills.  He sang aloud the
appropriate words from the Bible of the prophets who had marched this way
before him.  He was ravished by the revelation of the beauty and the
radiance of the Holy Land."  He loved to sit on Mount Tabor and sing Psalms
in his rapidly improving Hebrew.  As his love for the land and for the
Jewish people grew in his heart, he knew that he would fight to regain this
land for the Jews not only against the Arabs, but even, if necessary,
against the country he served.

The year 1936, when Wingate arrived, marked the beginning of the Arab
rebellion against both British rule and Jewish settlement in Palestine.  The
British responded by sending army units after the rebels, with some success.
Jewish communities were not always so lucky.  As we have seen, British
military officers were frequently biased towards the Arab side.  When
confrontations erupted into hostilities between the Arabs and the Jews, the
British frequently confiscated the arms and arrested the Jews - and more
often than not, the Arabs got off the hook.  Even if attacked and loss of
life was incurred, if Jews fought back their weapons were frequently taken
from them.  

Part of the problem was that the Jews had a static defense in their
settlements while the roaming Arab gangs were mobile, and the Arab
perpetrators of attacks frequently could not be found.  The Haganah, the
Jewish Defense Organization, had been founded in 1920, but it had done
little until the outbreak of the riots in 1936.  Even then, they were still
committed to a policy of  "havlaga" - self-restraint, which led many later
to leave and join the more radical Irgun or Stern Gang, both of whom
advocated a harsher response to Arab terror.

Wingate was no less disappointed with the British Army's response to Arab
rebellion and terror than with the Jewish concept of static defense.  The
Arabs roamed in from Syria or Jordan, hid in the hills and caves, and used
hit-and-run tactics in order to escape to safety.  The British Army by
contrast, used the roads to chase the perpetrators.  Even the British Air
Force, when called in, wasn't effective in seeking out the Arab gangs when
the Arabs already had a well-planned out escape route or hiding place.  The
Arabs knew the land well, and the night was theirs alone.  Jews set up many
stockade and watchtower settlements at night during the Arab riots and
afterwards, and they settled in to wait for the Arabs.  But they were in 
fear, and the Arabs were not. The Arabs, if they chose not to attack a 
British military convoy or a Jewish settlement, would be left alone.  The 
Jews could never say the same about themselves.  By 1936, neither could 
the British.  This is where Wingate came in.

Wingate was a man of exceptional direction-finding skills and an uncanny
ability to gauge distances, terrain, and the movements of others.  He had
already proven that in the Sudan.  He brought this experience to bear in
Palestine.  He continued to talk to the Jewish leaders, but they were slow
in completely trusting him.  He was, after all, a non-Jewish British
officer.  At this point, the usual British serviceman's semi-disguised
antipathy to the Jewish settlers was in some cases even being replaced by
open hostility.  The Jews were not in a particularly cheerful mood, seeing
the British unable to contain the security situation, and at the same time
focusing their resentment on the Jews.  The Haganah leadership was "not
particularly enamored of Wingate when he called them faint-hearted for their
doubts and urged them to take the offensive against the Arabs themselves."
He was still not completely trusted, even after Moshe Shertok (later
Sharrett, then Secretary of the Jewish Agency and Prime Minister from
1953-1955) had said he was completely trustworthy, as did the Commander-in
Chief of the Haganah.  But Jews in the northern settlements, where Wingate
spent much of his time, were still wary of him for a considerable period of
time after he arrived in Palestine.  It was difficult for them to get 
used to the idea that a British officer really was on their side and  
was prepared to dedicate all of his formidable talents and energies to 
their protection and their cause.  But Wingate was certainly for real, as 
the Jewish settlers were to find out soon enough.  Wingate was obsessed 
with Zionism; his biographer wrote that ever since his arrival in 
Palestine, he had "plunged into Zionism and Zionist intrigue with all the 
joy of a grown-up sinner at last brought to baptism."  He infuriated his 
fellow British officers with his pro-Zionist proclivities and 
inclinations.  Nothing ticked them off more than when he answered the
telephone with "'Shalom, Wingate here'" - as Robert Mosley writes -  "in
Jewish fashion."  

The irrepressible Wingate tried his luck with taking more offensive
operations against Arab infiltrators with General Wavell, Commander of
British Forces in Palestine.  Wingate's plan was tentatively approved, and
when he wasn't careening at a mad pace with his jeep around Palestine,
Wingate thought of how he would put it into action.  He first looked for
infiltrators crossing the Jordan, and found none.  Soon after, he tried to
convince members of Kibbutz Afikim, near the Jordan river, to come on
offensive operations against the Arabs with him.  As impressed as he was by
their guarding of the settlement, he was enraged by their failure to take
more initiative.  His exasperation is evident in this conversation with Zvi
Brenna, member of the Hanita settlement who became actively involved in
Jewish defense and Wingate's Night Squads.

"Somewhere in those hills are men who will one day come down and wipe you 
out.'  Brenna replied: 'They will not overrun us so easily.  We will 
be waiting for them when they come.'
Wingate turned angrily upon him.  `That is the trouble with the Jews.
Always so calm and patient.  Always waiting for disaster to come.  You are a
race of masochists crying: `Hurt me, hurt me!  I cannot raise my hand
against you until you have killed my brother and raped my sister and thrown
my father and mother into the ditch.'  The Jews of Palestine are in bad
condition.  So long as you all sit in your settlements and wait to fight and
die, you will die before you have a chance to fight.'
`What else can we do?'  asked Brenna.
`Why doesn't Hagana go out and fight?'
`I don't know,' replied Brenna."

Wingate went to the Haganah Commander whom he had met his first day in
Palestine, Wilenski, and requested men to accompany him on "investigative"
missions into Arab territory.  At first he was refused, but he persisted,
and soon after the Haganah granted him the men.

He first went to the settlement of Hanita, which had been the object of a
number of Arab attacks.  Moshe Dayan was stationed there by the Haganah at
the time, as was the above-mentioned Zvi Brenna.  They were ready to take
the offensive to the Arab villages themselves, across the border or not,
legal or not.  When some of the Jews protested that entering Arab villages
could lead to their arrest, Wingate told them to "leave these little
formalities to me."  He was, after all, a British officer, even if he
identified heart and soul with the Zionist endeavor.

The first expedition took place in early 1938.  The Haganah members hoped an
Arab informant would lead them to an Arab village they suspected of
harboring Arab attackers about 20 miles away, as they weren't sure they
could find their way back at night by themselves.

When Wingate was told about the plan he was astounded.  He had the Arab
brought before him and, after questioning him in Arabic, realized that he
was preparing to lead the unsuspecting Jews into a trap.

"This man is planning to lead you to your deaths,' he shouted, swinging
around on the watching Jews.  `Now let us stop all this nonsense.  It is
about time a soldier took charge of you.You wish to go on a raid against the
Arabs to-night.  All right.  You shall go.  But this wretch will not lead
you.  I will take you there."

They set out at dusk.  It was the first Jewish offensive.  They headed into
Lebanon, and then doubled back.  By three o'clock in the morning, after 30
miles of silently walking, Wingate brought them to the village.

He went ahead alone.  When they heard a shot, they moved into their
pre-arranged positions. There were more shots, and then a hail of 
gunfire, and the Arabs came out - straight into the trap Wingate had laid 
for them. Dayan and Brenna held their fire until the Arabs were 
completely surrounded. Those they didn't kill they took prisoner, and 
found out where they had hid their arms which they had used to sabotage 
British military installations and Jewish settlements.  The Jews and 
Wingate took the rifles and headed back, just as careful as when they had 
come.  The slightest sound could alarm unseen Arab patrols, and Wingate 
could be rather unforgiving to men who accidentally cracked a stick or 
unloosed a stone and sent it scattering down a hillside.  But that was 
nothing compared to the ruthlessness with which he would use to deal with 
Arabs who harbored information regarding terrorist weapons, hideouts, 
plans, or intentions.

The British weren't at all pleased when they heard about this raid.  Wingate
hadn't told them, he hadn't consulted them, and more than that, he had taken
Jews on an offensive raid - that was far more than just defending themselves
within their own settlements.  Wavell recalled him to Jerusalem.  Things
didn't look good.  "Hayedid (the friend) is in trouble with the British over
the raid." one secret Haganah message relayed.  "From that moment on, every
Jew in the (Jewish) Agency and the secret army was prepared to trust him
with their secrets and their lives."

As it happened, Wingate was let off with a mere rebuke.  But more than that,
he managed to convince Wavell that he could do much more to wipe out the
Arab gangs causing such damage to the pipeline bringing oil from Iraq to the
port of Haifa.  Wavell gave him the permission to continue operating in
northern Palestine - to the chagrin of many other British officers.  Wingate
was actually supposed to be an intelligence officer based in Nazareth - but
he rarely went there.  Conceivably, too, the British military thought he was
protecting the pipeline from sabotage.  He was actually leading reprisal and
deterrence raids of Jewish soldiers against Arab gangs.  

Wingate spent much of his time at Ein Harod - the site of the first kibbutz
established in 1923 and Gideon's burial place - a place where he felt at
home.  Gideon, it will be recalled from the Bible, was one of the great
commanders of the Jews in ancient times.  Like Gideon, Wingate was a stern
selector of his men.  But he provoked love and respect in his soldiers, and
indeed in all of the yishuv.  The best fighters of the Palestinian
settlements were sent to train with Wingate at Ein Harod.  Indeed, he had a
magnetic hold over the Jews.  Rarely in their lives had they ever seen such
complete devotion to their cause.

Wingate, meanwhile, had recruited, with General Wavell's approval, a number
of British soldiers to serve with him as well.  These he mixed in with the
Jews so that Jews and British were serving together under Wingate's command.  

As his techniques for outsmarting the Arabs developed, Wingate taught his
men to leap off of military jeeps while other soldiers continued driving -
watched silently by Arabs, of course - and then to hide in a ditch until the
convoy had passed.  Meanwhile, the Arabs would be plotting the course of
the convoy and would have no idea that their enemy was in the vicinity.  

Wingate was uncanny not only in his sense of direction and ability to gauge
distances, but he also knew just where to go after an Arab raid occurred.
He would go into a village, fire a shot, and if there was no response, move
on to the next one.  When there was a shot back he would immediately deploy
his men and tell them exactly where the Arabs would go and what they would
do.  In the words of Moshe Dayan, "He was never wrong."  Dayan continued, "I
never knew him to lose an engagement.  He was never worried about odds.  If
we were twenty, and the Arabs were two hundred, or if we were at the bottom
of a hill and they were at the top, he would say: `All right, there is a way
to beat them.  There is some way in which, with a decisive stroke, we can
turn the situation in our favour.'  There were many who served with him from
Ein Harod who later became officers in the Israeli Army which fought and
defeated the Arabs, but they were not the only ones who benefited from his
training.  In some sense, every leader of the Israeli Army even today (this
was written in 1955 - D.G.) is a disciple of Wingate.  He gave us our
technique, he was the inspiration of our tactics, he was our dynamic
(italicize)."  He was ruthless with Arab perpetrators but not brutal with
those uninvolved in raids and attacks.  Before he set out on one operation
he told his men; "We are not making war on the Arab nation but on the Arab
gangs, and towards the ordinary Arabs we will abstain from cruelty and
barbarity.  A course and savage man makes a bad soldier, and you will behave
with respect towards the bodies of the wives, children and innocent
individuals.  But you will not let a single culprit escape."

He was amazingly successful.  He became something of a legend among the Jews
of Palestine and the Arabs put a price on his head. Wavell gave Wingate the
approval - to the shock and disbelief of the British military men - for
Wingate to start a school for training "Jewish settlers in the art of making
guerrilla war."  This was based at Ein Harod, where Wingate, in the shadow
of Gideon, felt so at home.  There was jubilation all over Jewish Palestine.
Men appeared from the settlements all over the country to volunteer.  They
took part in continuous operations.  The biggest one fought by Wingate's
Special Night Squads was at Dakumiyah, on the slopes of Mount Tabor near the
Sea of Galilee where one of the most problematic gangs was located.  The
Arabs were well-entrenched in their positions and armed well.  The battle
started at 1 p.m., but Wingate called it off and waited for dusk.  By 3 a.m.
it was all over.  The Arab gangs were decisively defeated.  Wingate,
however, was wounded and nearly died from his wounds.  His Jewish comrades
brought him to the hospital.

Even the grudging British Police couldn't deny what a victory it was.  It
removed one of the most dangerous gangs of thieves from the area.  But while
he received a promotion for the operation, it was the beginning of the end
for Wingate in Palestine.  He had simply been too successful in his work.
The Jews were becoming a fighting force.  And Wingate showed his happiness
at this fact at every opportunity.  Turning Jews into formidable fighters
was not really in British interests.  Meanwhile General Wavell had been
replaced by General Haining, "a pharaoh who knew not Joseph."  At first
Haining thought the Night Squads was a good idea, but he soon changed his
mind, forbade Wingate to return to Ein Harod, and disbanded the Night Squads.  

Wingate was forlorn, aggrieved.  He tried to get Haining to change his mind,
or at least to have a meeting with him about the issue, but to no avail.
Wingate was mocked by the other pro-Arab British officers.  His gloom was
inconsolable.  He looked pale and sickly.  Still, he did what he could to
help the Zionists.  In 1939 the British issued the White Paper, which
seriously restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine and offered no hope for
an independent Jewish state.  Coming on the eve of World War II and the
Holocaust this was tragic from a Jewish point of view.  Millions of lives
could have been saved if not for the British policy embodied in this
document.  Wingate was furious.  He said it was time to declare war on the
British, and offered to lead the Jews in their offensive operations -
starting with the Haifa oil refinery.  None of the Palestinian Jews were
willing to listen to him at the time.  The Haganah was especially adamant
about not damaging fragile Jewish-British relations at a most sensitive
time.  Five years later, however, the Irgun did revolt against British rule
in Palestine, just as Wingate had advocated. 

It was late 1939.  Wingate was posted home, to England.  Before he left, he
returned to his beloved Mount Tabor, overlooking Ein Harod.  He told the
unit and Haganah leaders, in Hebrew, "I am sent away from you and the
country I love.  I suppose you know why.  I am transferred because we are
too great friends.  They want to hurt me and you.  But I promise you I shall
come back."  In the event he never set foot in Palestine again.  Orde
Wingate experienced both great triumphs and the depths of despair
thereafter.  He became famed as a warrior in East Africa and as a general in
Burma, often having his Jewish assistant, Akavia, accompany him as his
second-in-command.  He had dreams of leading a Jewish Army to independence
once World War II was over, but he never got the chance.  He was killed over
Burma in 1944.  

Orde Wingate was an exceptional man, and a gift to the Jewish people in his
time.  He was always champing at the bit, ready to move ahead with plans
which had not yet come to fruition in other men's minds.  He was ready to
take wild chances - something that scared his military superiors, and often
earned him rebuke or even encouraged others to view him as unprofessional.
But he was invariably successful.  In this respect he is like the American
General Douglas MacArthur or the Israeli General Ariel Sharon - both of whom
had more than their share of detractors in their respective countries for
their unorthodox methods and no-holds-barred style of battle.  Wingate,
MacArthur, and Sharon were highly successful military men, but were viewed
with suspicion for much of their careers.  But the military also needs men
like this, which is why, as close as they had sometimes seemed to losing any
hope for advancement in their respective military (and in Sharon's case,
political as well) careers, circumstances seemed to change for the better
and they were given another chance.

Orde Wingate initiated a transition period in the concept of Jewish
self-defense in Palestine.  We have seen how the Jewish worker was the ideal
of the Second and Third Aliyot.  Ha-Shomer, the Jewish Guardsmen
organization, had been established in 1907 and lasted until World War I as
an organization solely dedicated to Jewish self-defense.  Joseph
Trumpeldor's heroic stand at Tel-Hai in 1920 was the first full-scale battle
in the history of the yishuv between Jews and Arabs - and once again it was
a defensive battle.  Until Wingate arrived in Palestine, the Jewish attitude
towards Arab marauders and Arab terror was one of self-defense only.  The
establishment of the Special Night squads in 1936 marked a change in this
attitude from a purely defensive to a more offensive ethos.  After Wingate
the night, which had previously belonged to the Arabs alone, no longer did
so.  And even though he never came back to serve the people he loved and
help establish the state he so longed to see, his training and example left
an indelible imprint on the emerging standards of the fledgling Israeli
Army.  A major part of the reason why the state of Israel was able to
withstand its enemies in 1948, and thus see the renewal of Jewish
sovereignty in the land of Israel after more than 1800 years, was due to the
unparalleled and heroic efforts of Orde Wingate and his group of Jewish
fighters comprising the Night Squads.  

For Wingate, the pioneers represented the re-emergence of the Hebrew warrior
of old in modern guise, and he was their inspired Gideon.  As the
acknowledged military leader of the Jewish people in a crucial period in the
history of the yishuv, Wingate enabled the young pioneers-turned-fighters to
stand on their own two feet, as men, and turn the tide of history.  The
state of Israel owed no small thanks to the man universally known as
"Hayedid" - the Friend.  Indeed, The Jewish people could have asked for no
better friend than Orde Wingate, who appeared and disappeared like a
whirlwind in the lives of the Palestinian Jews, but forever left his mark on
the people he loved and on the development of the state he so longed to see.
              

        Bibliography

1). Yigal Allon, The Making of Israel's Army

2). Robert Mosley, Gideon Goes to War

3). Anita Shapira, Land and Power


Next week we will be learning about David Ben-Gurion           

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