1883 - 1971
First British attorney general in mandatory Palestine; legal scholar and author.
An English Jew, Norman de Mattos Bentwich was born in London and educated at St. Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied classics. After qualifying in law, he entered the Egyptian Ministry of Justice in 1912 as inspector of Native Courts. During World War I he served in the Camel Transport Corps of the British Army in Egypt. In 1918 he became senior judicial officer in the British military administration in Palestine and, after the establishment of a civil administration in 1920, legal secretary (later termed attorney general). A lifelong Zionist, Bentwich was close to the moderate wing of the movement. As the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine escalated, his presence in the mandatory government became an embarrassment to the British. In 1929 he was slightly wounded in an assassination attempt. In 1930 he went on leave to England and a year later his appointment was "terminated." In 1932 he became professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During the 1930s he played an active role in welfare efforts for German Jewish refugees. Bentwich was the author of more than thirty books on Judeo-Greek civilization, international law, and Israel.
Bibliography
Bentwich, Norman. My Seventy-seven Years: An Account of MyLife and Times, 1883 - 1960. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.
Bentwich, Norman, and Bentwich, Helen. Mandate Memories. London: Hogarth Press, 1965.
— BERNARD WASSERSTEIN
