Kidnappings, Beatings, Murders and Hangings Attacks by the Irgun and Stern
Gang
Jewish resistance to the British
mandate had begun before the Second World War when Jews extremists set up an
organization called, "Irgun Zvia Leumi" (IZL) or simply, "The Irgun". Their aim
was to campaign for the establishment of the state of Israel.
Abraham Stern
At the outbreak of the Second World
War most of the Irgun selected to support the Allies and fight the common enemy,
"Nazism. "A splinter group led by a Abraham Stern decided to continue the fight
against the British. This group, better known as the "Stern" gang, was
responsible for many terrorist atrocities and murders in the following decade,
though Stern himself was killed in a gunfight with the Palestine Police in the
early 1942.
In 1944, with the end the
war in sight, Irgun, now under the leadership of Menachem Begin , the future
Prime Minister of Israel 1977-83, began to attack the British administration in
Palestine, starting with bomb attacks on the immigration offices, tax offices
and police stations. Because the war was not yet over these activities met with
condemnation even from the Jewish Agency and Haganah, the main Jewish Defense
Force, and the forerunner of the Israeli Army. This disapproval did not deter
Irgun or the Stern Gang, and in 1944 the Stern gang murdered Lord Moyne the
British Minister of state for the Middle East in Cairo, and started a
series of bomb attacks on British installations
King David Hotel Bombing
In November and 1945 there were some
serious Arab Jewish riots in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. These riots were put down
by the 3rd Parachute Brigade part of the newly arrived 6th Airborne division.
These riots lasted seven days resulting in some loss of life.
During December 1945, the focus of
the Jewish attacks shifted to RAF airfields, police stations and armories. There
was frequent exchanges of fire and some loss of life on both sides. The High
commissioner, Lord Gort , left Palestine in November 1945 and was replaced by
another British general Sir Allan Cunningham. Cunningham decided to mount a
major blow against the IZL and on the 28 to June 1946, 17,000 British troops
flooded into Jerusalem to carry out Operation Agatha. The Jewish Agency offices
were raided, arms found and the agency shut down, with a large number of Jews
suspected of terrorism being arrested. Jewish terrorists soon started planning
the a reprisal for Operation Agatha and made plans for the bombing attack on the
King David
hotel.
The British response to the
King David bombing was another 48 hour cordon and search, code named Operation
Shark. This operation was mounted by the men and 6th Airborne division. The aim
of Operation shark was to remove the few remaining hard core terrorists left on
the scene. British and American press agencies were quick to take the
opportunity to sell more newspapers but the result was to place the British Army
in a bad light, as in Aden years later, propaganda pictures of British soldiers
seemingly being brutal to women and children were splashed in the world
newspapers.
On January the 27th 1945 the
first kidnapping took place. Judge Windham was kidnapped from his own courtroom
in Tel Aviv . Windham was released when the British government gave in to his
kidnappers demands, which was the release of Jewish detainees. On the 18th
of June 1946 the kidnappers struck again. This time they held up the British
Officers Club in Tel Aviv and took five British officers and one one RAF service
man and dragged them to get away cars out side. One of the officers had to be
clubbed to subdue him. The object of this raid was to obtain hostages to hold
against the two Jews who had been captured in a arms raid at Sarafand in March.
Four days later two of the kidnapped officer were released.
They said that their captors had not
been violent towards them, but they had been kept shackled in chains
on their hands and feet. The remaining three officers were held
captive for another 12 days. They were released after the two
condemned Jews had their sentences commuted. Before releasing them the
Jews first chloroformed the three officers. The three officers were
then unceremoniously dumped still unconscious, on a street corner in
Tel Aviv, where passers by took no notice of their predicament.
The Americans were strongly
pro Jewish and very anti British. One Hollywood motion picture Mogul declared in
the British press that he had a holiday in his heart every time a British
soldier was killed in Palestine. and large sections of the American media echoed
this sentiment. At one point early in 1945 Winston Churchill became so
irritated with continual American shouting about Palestine that he suggested
that since the Americans were so unhappy about the way Britain was handling
Palestine, "the best solution would be for them to take the job over
themselves, I'm not aware that Britain has to vaunt about this painful and
thankless task, he said, and someone else should have their turn and the sooner
the better".
Not all of violence took place on
land. Royal marines and paratroopers were regularly sent a board the illegal
immigrant ships as they tried to enter Palestine. Some boarding parties were met
with scolding steam hoses, firebombs, pistol shots and attacks from men wielding
axes. A number of sailors soldiers and immigrants were killed in these sea
counters.
On the 25th of April 1945 the Stern
Gang carried out their most cold blooded attacks to date. A large car
park in Tel Aviv was being used by the 6th Airborne Division as a
transport deport. The car park was surrounded only by barbed wire and
guarded by a section of 8 men and from the 5th Parachute brigade who
were billeted in tents near to entrance of the car park. At
20:30 hours, three trucks pulled up un-observed outside a house
opposite the car park entrance. From these trucks 25 armed
members of the Stern gang got out. The Jewish terrorists entered the
house and held to occupants at gun point as they set up firing postions
towards the car park entrance. About 15 minutes later a bomb was thrown at the
main gate of the car park and the the terrorists opened fire on the British
Paratroops.
Those not killed in this initial
hail of fire took cover in the tents. About 20 terrorists then left the
house and entered the car park. They entered the first tent and found two
British soldiers and a NCO who had been off duty and were now trying to take
cover from the fire from the house. All three were shot at close range with
machine guns. The NCO was somehow not hit and pretended to be dead.
The terrorists then moved on to the next tent were they murdered another two
unarmed Paratroopers. In all 7 british soldiers were killed, most were
unarmed. This attack had a serious effect on the British Army, which had
previously been very sympathetic to the Jewish cause. The 6th Airborne
Division had seen a lot of fighting in northwest Europe towards the end of the
war and had first hand experience of liberating the Nazi concentration camps in.
As a result the airborne soldiers had arrived in Palestine prepared to
help and support the Jewish community. But the Stern gangs attack and the
murders of the August 25, 1946 changed all that.
In December 1946, a new twist was
added to the story of terror in Palestine. A court sentenced two Irgun youths to
a long term in prison and 18 strokes of the birch for taking part in bank
robberies. In reprisal the Irgun kidnapped four British soldiers and a Major of
the 6th Airborne Division and flogged them.
British courts now started
sentencing Jewish prisoners to death for murder or terrorist acts, such as the
terrorist bombing of the British Officers club in Haifa where over 30 people
were killed and injured. These men were sentenced for murder and bombings and
not for the religious or political beliefs, but the Jews refused to accept this,
in their eyes these men were martyrs and the hatred of the British and the
bloodshed continued.
A typical episode occurred
on the evening of the 28 to June 1947 in Haifa when the Astoria restaurant in
which a number of officers of the 6th Airborne Division were dining was
attacked. Two Jewish terrorists in a taxi in drew up opposite the
restaurant and fired Thompson sub machine guns through the windows at the
Offices inside. Captain Kissane of the 9th parachute battalion was killed and
two other officers were wounded. The remaining Officers who escaped injury took
up the fight and forced the terrorists to withdraw. The taxi was hit repeatedly
as it sped off and was abandoned by the two Jews who ran down a side street. One
of them sustained wounds from the barrage that struck the taxi. On March the 1st
1947 the IZL blew up Goldsmith Officers club in Jerusalem, killing 13 and
wounding another 18
One incident that stands out most is the
hangings of Sergeants Martin and Paice.
On the 16th of June 1947, a sentence
of death had been passed by the British courts on three Jews who had
participated in the attack on Acre prison in
which many Jewish prisoners had regained their freedom. Almost a month later in
the early hours of the 12th of July, two British field security NCOs Sergeants
Paice and Martin were on duty in Nathanya in the company of the Jewish Clerk.
They were held up by five armed Jews and driven off to a secret hiding place.
For the next two weeks and British security forces diligently searched for the
kidnapped sergeants but no trace of them was ever found.
Bodies Mined
On the July 29th British
authorities, unable to bow to the blackmail of the Irgun, even though British
lives were at stake had no alternative but to allow the sentence of death on the
three Jews to take it's course. Two days later, on the 31st to July, the bodies
of the two British NCOs were found hanging from a eucalyptus tree one and a half
miles from where they had been kidnapped. They had been dead for about two days.
The area around the bodies was mined. The bodies had also been booby trapped. As
the bodies were being cut down a hidden device on one body exploded. In this
explosion a British officer was severely wounded. A few days later the Irgun
posted notices in Hebrew on the walls around Haifa which read :
Announcement
The two British spies, Martin and Paice, who were under arrest
by the underground since the July 12th have been put on trial,
following the inquiry into their criminal anti Hebrew
activities in. Martin and pace had been accused of the following
crimes
1. Illegal entry into our home land :
2. Membership of the British
criminal terrorist organize Asian known as the British army of
occupation in Palestine, which is responsible:
for depriving our people of the right to live; for
cruel, oppressive acts; for tortures; for the
murder of men, women and children; for the murder of
prisoners of war; and deportation of Hebrew citizens from
their country Homeland.
3. Illegal possession of arms intended
for the enforcement of oppression and despotism :
4. Anti Jewish spying, disguised in
civilian clothes :
5. Conspiracy against the Hebrew
underground, it soldiers, bases and arms, the arms of freedom :
The court has found two to be guilty of all charges and
sentenced them to die by hanging by their necks until their souls
would leave them.
The request of the condemned man for clemency has been
rejected.
The sentence has been carried out.
The hanging of the two British spies is not a retaliatory act
for the murder of Hebrew prisoners-of-war, but it is an ordinary
legal action of the court of the Underground which has sentenced
will sentence the criminals who belong to the criminal Nazi British
army of occupation.
We shall revenge the blood of the prisoners war who have been
murdered by actions of war against the enemy.
The Court of Irgun Zvai Leumi In Eretz
Israel.
There are many more recorded
incidents like these. It has to be said that the measure of restraint show by
the British forces in Palestine, who were faced by these acts of terrorism, was
of the highest standards. There were however a some members of the British
forces who took matters of revenge into their own hands. The night after the Tel
Aviv car park attack, troops of the 6th Airborne Division stationed at Qastina
took the law into their own hands for a short time and damaged several Jewish
houses. The ringleaders of this revenge attack were caught and punished.
On the 31st of July 1947 just after the bodies of Martin and Paice were
discovered, 5 Jews were killed and 15 wounded in Tel Aviv in reprisals be
members of the Security forces for the murder of the two sergeants. (
Authors note : Information on this last incident is scant to date.)