TERROR IN PALESTINE

Gary Cartwright revisits the campaign of terror and murder in which British servicemen were the ‘target of choice’.

I loathe clichés. However the old one about one man’s terrorist being another man’s freedom fighter has a certain truth to it. Too often the freedom fighter’ is perceived that way as a result of romanticism or naiveté, such as in the case of the fool’s pin-up’ Che Guevara. Sometimes the passage of time blurs perception, particularly when for reasons of what we now call ~political correctness’ there is an unwillingness to accept and to address the facts. Into this latter category falls the campaign of terror organised by Abraham Stern, Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin, and others, in the British protectorate of Palestine.

The Jewish population in Palestine.

There is a common misconception that it was only after the Second World War that the Jewish population of Palestine surged, with the mass immigration of refugees from war torn Europe. And that this, coupled with attempts by the British to stem the tide, which lead to a campaign by Zionists for independence. This is not so, and to trace the roots of the Zionist campaign one has to look back to the early 20th century.

In 1918 there were some 50,000 Jews in Palestine, a figure that was steadily growing to the point that it had doubled by 1925. As early as 1921, the Palestinian Arabs lobbied Britain for a representative government in order to give them the power to veto any further immigration. Sensing growing unrest amongst the Arabs, and against a backdrop of street riots in 1921/22, British High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel ordered the Suspension, Of Jewish immigration although immediately tensions cooled, it was quietly resumed. Prior to this unrest, in 1920, the ‘Haganah’, an illegal Jewish Para-military body was formed in the protectorate.

Immigration surged in 1933 with the rise to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler. Between 1933-36 the Jewish population rose from 230.000 to 400,000. On April 15th 1936 the Arabs declared a general strike, which quickly became a full-blown rebellion. It took the British authorities until October10 restore order, by which time 138 Arabs, 80 Jews, and 33 British soldiers had been killed. British attempts to resolve the problem became increasingly desperate. In 1937 a Royal Commission announced a plan to divide the mandate into two states: Galilee and the Coastal plain were to be Jewish, whilst Gaza, Sameria, South Judea and the Negev desert were to be run by the Arabs. Ever protective of their political power and commercial interests, the British would retain control of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jaffa, and Lod. The Jews agreed to this plan, seeing for themselves a foothold. But the Arabs did not. They realised that any concession to the Zionist lobby would quickly be followed by further demands and intimidation. The plan was never implemented. It was also in 1937 that Vladimir ‘Zeev’ Jabotinsky, a Zionist and a communist, formed the irgun Zvai Leumi’ (National Military Organisation). Jabotinsky and the Irgun.

Jabotinsky. Born in Odessa in 1880, and a journalist and writer of some merit, had contrived to join the British Army in the closing months of the First World War, (to what end is uncertain,) and fought alongside General Allenby’s troops. With Avraham Tehorni, Jabotinsky formed the lrgun from militant members of Haganah. lrgun’s stated aims were to force the British out of Palestine, to defeat the Arabs politically, to bring in I million Jewish settlers a year, and to colonise both banks of the River Jordan.


The Stern Gang

Following the death of Jabotinsky in 1940, (he suffered a heart attack whilst fund-raising amongst the Jewish community in New York) leadership of the Irgun fell to a recently arrived Polish immigrant, Menachim Begin. At the same time, the movement split, with a particularly vicious element breaking away under Abraham Stern and becoming known as the notorious ~Stern Gang’. The Stern Gang believed that there must be no restriction placed on Zionist expansion whatsoever, and immediately set about trying to force a change of policy by assassinating British officers. Such was Abraham Stern’s hatred of the British that he regarded Britain a greater enemy than Hitler, and opposed Jews joining in the fight against Nazism. A bizarre sentiment, but one, which gives an interesting and informative insight into Stern’s ideology. Indeed, in September 1940, the Stern gang entered into negotiations with Mussolini, through an emissary, and in January 1941 Stern personally dispatched an agent to Vichy controlled Beirut to deliver a letter to Reich officials. It was also in the Stern Gang that future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir rose to prominence, when he took control of the terror group on Stern’s death. Stern’s political extremism, attempted links with the Nazis, a string of armed robberies had earned him the contempt of most decent Jews. The British intensified their hunt for him, and tracked him down to a hideaway in Tel Aviv on Feb 12th, 1942, where he was immediately shot. There is a Hebrew word — MEKHABBEL — which describes someone who fights the state with political violence. In other words, a terrorist. Stern, Shamir and their comrades wore this badge with great pride.

AIraflam Stern. Terrorist, murderer, armed robber.

It seems that the terrorists were not above murdering their own in order to further their aims. In November 1940, Haganah placed explosives in the hold of the 55 Patria in Haifa harbour. In the resulting catastrophe, 270 immigrants perished. In 1942, Zionists used explosives to sink the SS Struma in the Black sea. On the latter occasion 769 men, women. and children lost their lives. Both atrocities were blamed on British enforcement of immigration quotas.


The Terror begins in earnest.

The evolution of Zionist nationalism had now led to a point where the radicals where calling the shots. And so, the killing began. In November 1942, Stern gang murderers Eliyahu Hakim and EliyahLl Beit-Tzur travelled to Cairo and assassinated Lord Moyne, the British colonial Secretary of State for Palestine. (Both were caught and hanged by the British. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. A Stern Gang member himself, of course, had their remains returned to Israel in 1975 for ‘heroes’ burials. Subsequently, streets in Israel were named in ‘honour’ of these terrorists and murderers.)

As so often happens, as the campaign intensified it became the soldiers and policemen on the ground who became casualties more often than not. The following list is by no means exhaustive, but illustrates the nature of the campaign of terror and murder instigated in the name of Zionism.



14 Feb 1944. Two British policemen fatally wounded.

2 March 1944. British Police([search]) Constable shot.

23 March 1944. Chief clerk and two constables murdered at Tel Aviv district HQ. Threepolice constables murdered in the bombing of the police HQ at Haifa. One British policesuperintendent murdered in Jerusalem.

8 August 1944. During the attempted assassination of the British High Commissioner,Ten British policemen were murdered.

29 August 1944. Senior police official assassinated on his way to work.

29 Sept 1944. Assistant police superintendent murdered.

25 April 1946 Seven British soldiers murdered in their sleep in Tel Aviv.

22 July 1946 King David Hotel, housing the offices of the Secretariat of the PalestinianGovernment as well as British Army HQ was bombed, allegedly with the connivance ofDavid Ben-Gurion’s ‘Jewish Agency’. 91 Dead.

13 Nov 1946. Two British policemen murdered in bombing attacks.

18 Nov 1946. Five British soldiers murdered in bomb attacks.

21 Nov 1946. British government offices bombed. Nine casualties.

2 Dec 1946. Four British soldiers murdered in a mine blast.Christmas 1946. Police HQ bombed. Six dead.

26 Dec 1946. Four British citizens abducted and flogged.

29 Dec 1946. Three British soldiers abducted and flogged.

12 Jan. 1947. Two British policemen murdered in bomb attack.

I March 1947. Officers club in Jerusalem bombed, and other terrorist attacks resultingin 18 dead and 85 injured.

18 April 1947. British military hospital in Nathania attacked. One dead.

20 April 1947. A number of British soldiers injured in the bombing of a Red Crossdepot.

22 April 1947. Attack on a train bound for Haifa. Five Soldiers murdered, twenty-threeinjured.

26 April 1947. British policeman murdered in Haifa.

9 June 1947. Two British policemen abducted and flogged.

31 July 1947. British Sergeants Paice and Martin found hanged. Their bodies mutilatedand booby-trapped.

August 1947. Three British policemen murdered.

26 Sept 1947. Four British policemen murdered.

29 Sept 1947. Nine British policemen and four civilians murdered in Haifa.

Jan 1948. One soldier murdered and four injured.

Feb 1948. Twenty-seven British soldiers and airmen murdered, and thirty-fiveinjured in an attack on a train at Rehovath.

23 Feb 1948.Two British policemen shot in their sickbeds at Wallach hospital, andone policeman murdered in another attack in Jerusalem.

King David Hotel: 91 killed in terrorist outrage. [ Menachim Begin & his Irgun terror group admitted responsibility for the bombing.]


Official sanction.
That this terror campaign was at least sanctioned by the Jewish Agency, the official representative body of the Palestinian Jews, is beyond question. The collusion between the agency and the Stern Gang was confirmed in the British Colonial Office White Paper on Palestine (cmd.6873). The Chairman of the Jewish Agency at the time was David Ben- Gurion, who was later to become the first Prime Minister of Israel. Indeed, it has been alleged that Ben-Gurion himself approved the bombing of the King David Hotel. Shamir and Begin never attempted to hide their past as ‘freedom fighters’, basking in the glory of the campaign to rid Palestine of the hated British.

When the Union flag was lowered for the last time at Government House in Jerusalem on May l4”~. 1948, Ben-Gurion became Prime Minister.

Just week’s prior to this event, however, the lrgun and the Stern Gang turned their attention to new targets with a vengeance. On 10th April 1948 the people of Nasr el Din were massacred. On May 5t11, it was the turn of men, women, and children from the village of Khoury. The very day before the British mandate ended, the villagers of Beit Drass were slaughtered.

At the village of Deir Yassin, the Irgun murdered 250 Arabs in an unprecedented orgy of barbarity. Britain’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, speaking in the Commons on April 12th, 1948, stated, “This barbarous aggression was a proof of savagery. It was a crime that added to a long list of atrocities committed by the Zionists to this day, and for which we can find sufficient words of revulsion...

Towards the end of 1948, the Stern Gang assassinated the United Nations mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadette. His ‘crime’ being concern for the Palestinian Arabs.



Infamy and treachery.

It should be borne in mind that both the lrgun and Stern Gang included Britons amongst their numbers. Some, allegedly, had fought as part of the communist ‘International Brigade’ during the Spanish Civil War. Others, shamefully, were former British soldiers who were turning their weapons on their former comrades. It should also be remembered that many of these murderous acts against British servicemen were being carried out at the same time as the British army was liberating concentration camps in Hitler’s Europe.

Throughout this campaign of terror can be witnessed the hands of men who were to become senior Israeli figures, and indeed national heroes. Another figure who made his name as ‘The Butcher of Beirut’ long after the British withdrawal was Ariel Sharon, who also went on to become Israeli Prime Minister. It seems the lineage continues, a fact that does not bode well for today’s Palestinians, or for any chance of peace in a part of the world that has known too much suffering and bloodshed over the centuries.