Who was Orde Wingate?
Yemin Orde Wingate Youth Village honors the memory of Major General Orde Charles Wingate. Orde Wingate was a British army officer who was an ardent supporter of the Jewish cause in Palestine, although he himself was not Jewish. Wingate was a devout Christian believer who saw in the return of the Jews a realization of the biblical prophecies. Stationed in Palestine in 1936, he was known as “Ha-Yedid” (“The Friend”) because of the role he played in fighting the Arab terror campaign and for helping to train Haganah fighters. Wingate’s highly individualistic character, disregard for the conventional rules of military behavior and his promotion of Zionism finally resulted in 1939 in his being transferred from Palestine by the British army. During World War II, he helped to liberate Ethiopia from Italian occupation and then was stationed in Burma where he was killed in an air crash in 1944. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC. Wingate’s personality and military geni
