Irgun Quotes

To the Jews, Maccabees were heroes. That made me wonder if the Irgun or Stern Gang had been more than terrorists. 

From the anarchists of tsarist Russia to the IRA of 1916, from the Irgun and the Stern Gang to the EOKA in Cyprus, from the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, the CCC in Belgium, the Action Directe in France, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction again in Germany, the Rengo Sekigun in Japan, through to the Shining Path in Peru to the modern IRA in Ulster or the ETA in Spain, terrorism came from the minds of the comfortably raised, well-educated, middle-class theorists with a truly staggering personal vanity and a developed taste for self-indulgence.

What the glorious retellings of the history of Irgun and Lehi often omit is the Polish connection.

Of course, Menachem Begin, who headed the Irgun and later became prime minister, was one of the most prominent Jewish terrorists in the years before Israeli independence. When speaking of Begin, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol often referred to him simply as “the terrorist.”120 The Palestinians’ use of terrorism is morally reprehensible today, but so was the Zionists’ reliance on it in the past. Thus, one cannot justify American support for Israel on the grounds that its past or present conduct was morally superior.

Eritrea, on the east coast of Africa, near Ethiopia, had been used by the British during the war to imprison members of the Irgun. They had called it Devil’s Island.

At issue was the fate of the Altalena, a ship loaded with weapons that had arrived in Haifa the day before. Although the Altalena carried 5,000 rifles and 270 light machine guns that Israel desperately needed, the ship was under the Irgun’s command.

LIKE A SLOW, seemingly endless train wreck, the Nakba unfolded over a period of many months. Its first stage, from November 30, 1947, until the final withdrawal of British forces and the establishment of Israel on May 15, 1948, witnessed successive defeats by Zionist paramilitary groups, including the Haganah and the Irgun, of the poorly armed and organized Palestinians and the Arab volunteers who had come to help them. This first stage saw a bitterly fought campaign that culminated in a country-wide Zionist offensive dubbed Plan Dalet in the spring of 1948.33 Plan Dalet involved the conquest and depopulation in April and the first half of May of the two largest Arab urban centers, Jaffa and Haifa, and of the Arab neighborhoods of West Jerusalem, as well as of scores of Arab cities, towns, and villages, including Tiberias on April 18, Haifa on April 23, Safad on May 10, and Beisan on May 11. Thus, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began well before the state of Israel was proclaimed on May 15, 1948.

The Nakba refers to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, when, over a period of several months, Jewish militia groups known as the Irgun and Haganah conducted raids, massacres, and depopulation campaigns across Palestine—all under orders from Zionist leadership, which aimed to drive Palestinians out en masse.

On 22 July 1946, the Irgun, disguised as Arabs and hotel staff in Nubian costumes, stowed milkchurns filled with 500 pounds of explosives in the basement.23

in 1918–21 by Jews against Russians as simply redressing the balance after centuries of Tsarist oppression. One might compare it to the violence in 1947–48 of the Stern gang and Irgun in Israel against Arab inhabitants and British rulers, an explosion of self-assertion after a far worse persecution. The motivation of those Jews who worked for the Cheka was not Zionist or ethnic. The war between the Cheka and the Russian bourgeoisie was not even purely a war of classes or political factions.

The hanging of the twenty-three-year-old Schlomo Yousef on 29 June led to outrage because he was the first Jew to be executed by the British in Palestine, and because, until that point, the British had condoned Jewish efforts to defend themselves using their defence organisation, the Haganah.2 The execution triggered a wave of revenge attacks by the Irgun Zvai Leumi,3 a right-wing faction of the Haganah, of which Yousef had been a member.

recent Polish immigrant named Menachem Begin, the new leader of the right-wing dissident Irgun militia, decided to take decisive action

now the Jewish dissident groups had had enough of the British. A recent Polish immigrant named Menachem Begin, the new leader of the right-wing dissident Irgun militia, decided to take decisive action. Slight of stature and bespectacled, Begin was hardly an imposing figure. British intelligence described him as a “hump-backed, hawk-nosed former law student with thick horn-rimmed glasses and bad teeth.” But Begin saw himself as a great military leader, the heir to Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Revisionist legacy. Begin called for a revolt against the British, declaring, “War to the end!” and “There will be no retreat. Freedom—or death!”9 The Haganah had attacked British installations but had tried to avoid causing casualties. Begin felt obligated to no such restrictions. He ordered attacks against British personnel, with devastating consequences.

On a hot July morning in 1946, seven Irgun members disguised as Arab porters smuggled milk crates filled with 250 kilos of explosives into the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The hotel housed the Mandate’s headquarters. It was the very symbol of British rule in Palestine, the target Begin wished most to attack. At 12:37 p.m. a tremendous explosion shook West Jerusalem. The southwest wing of the King David Hotel bulged outward, and then all six floors collapsed. An Englishman relaxing in the bar’s hotel recalled: “There was the most appalling roar . . . Everything went completely black and there was the noise of smashing glass and wrenching furniture and through the blackness one could feel the atmosphere was full of smoke and dust . . . from above came the most terrifying sound I have ever heard: the sound of falling masonry, and we could only assume we were about to be crushed.”10 The massive blast killed ninety-one people, including British, Arabs, and Jews. The British government was outraged by the attack, but it had the effect that the Irgun had hoped it would: the British began to reevaluate their position in Palestine.

Around the same time Abdul Khader’s men were mourning their leader, another assault was being planned on a nearby Arab village. About 150 men of the rightist dissident militia groups, the Irgun and Stern Gang, joined together on the morning of April 9 to attack the last Arab village not yet under Jewish control. The men began the assault with high hopes; it was the first time they had ever participated in a formal military operation. Their target was an important one, for if the village of Deir Yassin were taken, the heights above the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem Highway would firmly be in Jewish hands, securing the Holy City.

The Irgun dynamited fifteen houses in this manner. The militiamen threw grenades into the houses when they ran out of dynamite, effectively stifling any armed opposition. When the operation was over, the survivors were taken to West Jerusalem, paraded in the streets, and then dumped in Arab East Jerusalem.

The attack immediately bogged down, however. Almost every male citizen of Deir Yassin had a firearm and knew how to use it. In contrast, the men of the Irgun and Stern Gang were not trained for coordinated military operations—their only experience had been throwing bombs into unarmed groups of civilians. They were taking more losses then they expected. With the attack stalled, they decided to change tactics. They began dynamiting any building offering armed resistance. This would eliminate the threat coming from within. But the same houses also held civilians, who were killed in the blasts.

A short time later, Haganah officers came to take the village from the Irgun. One officer remarked, “All of the killed, with very few exceptions, were old men, women, or children.” He noted, “The dead we found were all unjust victims and none of them had died with a weapon in their hands.” Another Haganah commander sneered, “You are swine,” and ordered his men to surround the militiamen. A tense standoff ensued as the Haganah commanders debated about forcibly disarming the dissidents and shooting them if they refused. At last, the Haganah commander ordered the Irgun to clean the village and bury the dead. They carried the bodies to a rock quarry and set them ablaze. “It was a lovely spring day,” the Haganah commander recorded. “The almond trees were in bloom, the flowers were out, and everywhere there was the stench of the dead, the thick smell of blood, and the terrible odor of the corpses burning in the quarry.”8 The

A short time later, Haganah officers came to take the village from the Irgun. One officer remarked, “All of the killed, with very few exceptions, were old men, women, or children.” He noted, “The dead we found were all unjust victims and none of them had died with a weapon in their hands.” Another Haganah commander sneered, “You are swine,” and ordered his men to surround the militiamen. A tense standoff ensued as the Haganah commanders debated about forcibly disarming the dissidents and shooting them if they refused. At last, the Haganah commander ordered the Irgun to clean the village and bury the dead. They carried the bodies to a rock quarry and set them ablaze. “It was a lovely spring day,” the Haganah commander recorded. “The almond trees were in bloom, the flowers were out, and everywhere there was the stench of the dead, the thick smell of blood, and the terrible odor of the corpses burning in the quarry.”8 The next day, the Haganah commander issued a communiqué: “For a full day Etzel [Irgun] and Lechi [Stern] soldiers stood and slaughtered men, women, and children—not in the course of the operation, but in a premeditated act which had as its intention slaughter and murder only. They also took spoils, and when they finished their work, they fled.” Irgun and Stern leaders denied that any deliberate killings of civilians occurred at Deir Yassin. Menachem Begin noted that they had set up a loudspeaker at the entrance of the village, warning civilians to leave: “By giving this humane warning, our fighters threw away the element of complete surprise, and thus increased their own risk in the ensuing battle. A substantial number of the inhabitants obeyed the warning and they were unhurt. A few did not leave their stone houses—perhaps because of the confusion. The fire of the enemy was murderous—to which the number of our casualties bears elegant testimony. Our men were compelled to fight for every house; to overcome the enemy they used large numbers of hand grenades. And the civilians who had disregarded our warnings suffered inevitable casualties.”9 The Jewish Agency did not accept Begin’s explanation and immediately condemned the killings. Regardless of which view was correct, the events at Deir Yassin would have a more far-reaching impact than anyone could have imagined.

It was only years after the war that the Irgun position was somewhat vindicated. In fact, for all the noble talk, the British had been doing almost nothing on behalf of Europe’s doomed Jews. Even as the various factions were arguing the point in Palestine, Jewish leaders, increasingly aware of the horrifying facts, were strenuously urging that the RAF begin bombing the rail lines leading to Auschwitz. It was an eminently achievable task, since English planes were already bombing Warsaw, two hundred miles farther from their base. The English leadership refused without explanation. It does not take much of a cynic to guess that they saw an advantage in cutting down the possible number of postwar Jewish refugees to Palestine.

Así pues, la búsqueda entre mis archivos después de ocurrir la matanza de Hebrón fue una experiencia de lo más inquietante. El 9 de abril de 1948, el grupo armado Irgun —«terroristas» a todos los efectos—, que cometió la matanza de Deir Yassin, fue descrito por la Associated Press como un grupo «radical y clandestino de combatientes judíos». En octubre de 1956, soldados israelíes masacraron a 43 civiles palestinos en la ciudad israelí de Kafr Kashem por romper el toque de queda sin saberlo. Luego vino el derramamiento de sangre de Sabra y Chatila. Curiosamente, éste no aparece en la lista de la Associated Press de los mayores «ataques entre israelíes y palestinos» desde 1948.

By February 1947 the Labour government in London had effectively given up an increasingly unpopular burden that was costing the lives of British troops and police in a ‘senseless, squalid war’, as Winston Churchill, now in opposition, put it.5 It decided to submit the Palestine question to the UN and in May the fledgling world body established a Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). During their visit to the country the committee’s members witnessed the so-called ‘Exodus affair’, when 4,500 Holocaust survivors on board an old American passenger ship were detained as illegal immigrants and deported back to Europe. The favourable publicity that ensued for the Jewish cause went some way to offsetting revulsion at Jewish terrorism. That peaked the day the Exodus arrived in France, when two abducted British sergeants were hanged in retaliation for the execution of Irgun fighters. In a grisly sequel, their booby-trapped corpses were blown apart as they were being cut down in an orange grove near Netanya. The Arabs boycotted UNSCOP – their ‘cold malevolence’, as a Jewish official put it, in sharp contrast to the ‘warm reception by the Yishuv’.

On the eve of war the Jews were far better prepared, militarily and politically, than the Arabs, in Palestine or beyond. Their leaders had a high level of confidence that they would prevail if it came to a fight, as they assumed it would.13 The Haganah had a centralized command. It could field 35,000 men, including the 2,500-strong Palmah. The ‘dissidents’ of the Irgun and Stern Gang accounted for a few thousand more, in total making up an extraordinarily large percentage of the adult Jewish population. Approximately 27,000 Jews had enlisted with British forces during the war. In addition, the institutions of the Yishuv exercised national discipline. ‘The Jewish Agency … is really a state within a state with its own budget, secret cabinet, army, and above all, intelligence service’, observed Richard Crossman, the British Labour MP who had visited Palestine as a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. ‘It is the most efficient, dynamic, toughest organisation I have ever seen.’14 If it came to war, he predicted, the Haganah would trounce the Arabs. Crossman’s was an astute assessment (and at odds with the view of the British military).15 Still, his confidence was not widely shared. ‘We knew that 635,000 Jews were facing hundreds of millions of Arabs: “the few against the many”’, Uri Avnery, a young German-born Jew, wrote shortly afterwards. ‘We knew: if we surrender, we die.’16 Volunteering was the norm among Jewish youth: Tikva Honig-Parnass, a seventeen-year-old Hebrew University student, enlisted in the Haganah in November 1947. ‘It was well-known on campus who was a member’, she recalled.

People fled as news spread of massacres like that on April 9, 1948, in the village of Dayr Yasin near Jerusalem, where one hundred residents, sixty-seven of them women, children, and old people, were slaughtered when the village was stormed by Irgun and Haganah assailants.35

For the first time, the Haganah and its right-wing counterparts, the Irgun and Stern Gang, joined together. They blew open a British detention camp, letting out two hundred illegal immigrants. They sabotaged the railroad in Palestine and blew up a British coast guard vessel. The largest operation came on the night of June 17, 1946, when the Haganah’s strike force—the Palmach—simultaneously blew up eleven bridges connecting Palestine and the surrounding territories. The Jews hoped that these measures would convince the British to allow more refugees in.