The number and geographic diversity of the Irgun’s branches, however, belied the group’s actual size and limited capabilities. Although both British and American intelligence reports from this period continued to insist that the Irgun’s membership was in the four thousand to five thousand or even the six thousand to eight thousand range, the reality was quite different. According to the Irgun’s official historian, David Niv, on the eve of the revolt the group numbered no more than a thousand members—of whom perhaps only about two hundred were trained, armed, and ready for combat. Further, despite Begin’s concerted efforts to build up the Irgun’s arsenal, its stores remained pathetically anemic, consisting at that time of little more than four submachine guns, sixty pistols, forty rifles, two thousand kilograms of explosive, and 150 hand grenades. Its finances were barely any better, amounting to a mere £800. The monthly base salary for unmarried Irgunists, whether a member of the high command or the rank and file, for example, was a paltry £25.21
It was against this singularly unpropitious backdrop, though, that the Irgun rose in revolt against the British Empire. The timing was especially critical to Begin. Like Stern, his strategy was shaped by the Irish exemplar of striking Britain when it was preoccupied with waging war elsewhere.
Begin’s authorship of the Irgun’s proclamation of revolt is noteworthy for its lawyerly, almost ad seriatim delineation of the dozen reasons for the uprising accompanied by the Irgun’s ten core objectives. “We are now entering the final stage of the war,” it begins, before delivering a searing indictment of British rule of Palestine:
Our people’s destiny shall be determined at this historic juncture. The British regime has violated the armistice agreement which was declared at the outset of the war … Instead they continue to work toward their goal—the eradication of Zionist efforts to achieve statehood … Let us fearlessly draw the proper conclusions. There can be no longer an armistice between the Jewish Nation and its youth and a British administration in the Land of Israel which has been delivering our brethren to Hitler. Our nation is at war with this regime and it is a fight to the finish.22
The proclamation was issued on February 1, 1944. Special teams of Irgun operatives pasted it on walls and affixed it to bulletin boards across the country. Eleven days later the Irgun initiated its battle plan and, in its first attacks on British targets since 1939, bombed the Immigration Department offices in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. The blasts, which all occurred within two hours of one another, were calculated to publicize the group’s struggle against Britain by striking at the organ of government responsible for implementing the white paper’s restrictive immigration policy. Equally important was the Irgun’s demonstration of its ability to mount coordinated operations in different parts of the country. The time of day that all the explosions occurred—between 9:40 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., when the offices were likely to be empty and there were few passersby on the streets—was also significant, according with Begin’s strategy to undermine the government’s prestige by asserting the Irgun’s moral superiority. He believed this could be achieved by targeting the physical manifestations of British rule while deliberately avoiding the needless infliction of bloodshed. So long as Britain was at war with Germany, the Irgun had declared, it would not attack British military targets in Palestine but would concentrate instead on the civil administration and police.23
Two weeks later, the Irgun bombed the offices of the Department of Taxation and Finance—the arm of the Palestine government responsible for collecting the revenue used to fund its repressive policies—in those same three cities. Once again, the blasts occurred outside normal business hours—between 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.24
An early example of the Irgun’s international outreach strategy, and particularly of its efforts to attract American attention to its cause, occurred the following day. A messenger arrived that morning at the home of the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, Lowell Pinkerton. He delivered an envelope containing an Irgun press release about the attacks on the Immigration Department offices as well as a letter from the Irgun’s “Adjutant”—written on behalf of the Irgun “Commander.” It explained, “The Jewish fighting youth is convinced that the government and public opinion of your great country faithful to the best traditions of freedom and justice, will understand and appreciate our struggle for the life and future of an ancient nation—our people—suffering extermination by the Nazi Barbarians.” In justifying the Irgun’s revolt, Begin would claim inspiration from the great American patriots Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine in addition to the Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman who came to the aid of the American Revolution.25
But the Irgun’s resurrection and renewal of its revolt now threatened to consign the moribund Stern Group to total irrelevance. Between the loss of its founder and leader and the apprehension of some forty of its most experienced operatives, the group all but ceased to exist. Since May 1942, it had been able to mount just three operations, only one of which succeeded—the murder of a lowly Jewish police informer.26
Before Stern died, he had secretly written to the imprisoned Yitzhak Yezernitzky, imploring him to work ceaselessly to orchestrate his and his comrades’ escapes. The authorities, however, were determined to ensure that the Sternists remain in jail and had taken the precaution of moving Yezernitzky and the others to an isolated and heavily guarded, segregated compound at the Mazra detention facility. There, they were allowed no visitors and kept behind three rows of barbed-wire fence punctuated by watchtowers and illuminated at night by powerful searchlights.27
The British, however, became complacent about their own security arrangements. Astonishingly, between September 1942 and December 1943 more than thirty of the Stern Group detainees were able to escape. Yezernitzky, for example, crawled and cut his way through concentric rings of barbed wire; after the remaining prisoners were moved to Latrun, Nathan Friedman-Yellin and nineteen other Stern Group members spent five months digging an eighty-three-yard-long tunnel that enabled them to flee.28
Yezernitzky, Friedman-Yellin, and a fellow Stern Group officer named Israel Scheib, Begin’s old friend from Vilna (who later changed his surname to Eldad), now formed a new quadripartite command structure that they referred to as Ha-mercaz (the Center). Yezernitzky assumed responsibility for operations and general administration; Friedman-Yellin for policy; Scheib for ideology and propaganda; and a fourth man, Shlomo Posner, for finances. This novel approach to running a terrorist group reflected Stern’s flat leadership style and also amounted to a repudiation of the military trappings of Betar and the Irgun. Thereafter, this collegial entity—unique in the annals of terrorism and underground warfare—guided the Stern Group, which in August 1943 they had renamed the Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), known to Jews by its Hebrew acronym, Lehi.29
To signal its return to active service and dramatically commemorate the two-year anniversary of Stern’s death, the Lehi high command formulated an ambitious plot to kill the highest echelon of the British administration in Palestine. They planned to detonate a bomb at Jerusalem’s St. George’s Cathedral on February 3, 1944, as the high commissioner and other senior government, police, and military officials attended Sunday services.30
Since 1941, the group that eventually became Lehi had its sights set on Harold MacMichael. More than any other British official in Palestine, the dour Scotsman had encapsulated for the Yishuv Britain’s insensitivity to the plight of European Jewry. MacMichael’s fluency in Arabic and long service in the Sudan were said to have biased him in favor of Palestine’s Arabs. His aloofness and diffidence reinforced an impression among Palestine’s Jews of arrogance and hauteur. MacMichael was especially loathed, however, for his role in the tragedy that ensued when the Struma, an ancient converted yacht packed with 769 Jews attempting to flee Europe, had been denied permission to proceed from Turkey to Palestine two years earlier. MacMichael had been instrumental in the British government’s decision to bar their entry. Turkey
was also unwilling to accept the refugees and had ordered the disabled vessel, which had been sitting in Istanbul for two months awaiting engine repairs, out to sea. It foundered and sank in mysterious circumstances. All but one person died. The Yishuv held the high commissioner personally responsible. Posters appeared throughout Palestine bearing MacMichael’s photograph above the words “Wanted for murder of 800 refugees drowned in the Black Sea on the boat Struma.”31
On the eve of the operation two Arab chauffeurs stumbled upon two members of the group planting the explosives and rigging up the command detonation wire. They alerted the police, and a shoot-out followed when two policemen attempted to arrest the Lehi team; one of the Arab drivers was also shot to death.32
Chastened by this latest failure, Lehi’s commanders lowered their sights and shifted their focus from Jerusalem to Haifa. The latter city had already been reported by British intelligence to have become a “stronghold” of sorts for the group. On the evening of February 14, two officers stopped and searched two Lehi couriers. Both policemen were shot and mortally wounded. Ten days later, Lehi opened a new campaign of violence, targeting rank-and-file policemen in addition to senior officers and government officials. These efforts, however, fared no better than their predecessors.33
This resurgence of Jewish terrorism, now from two groups rather than one and on a more sustained basis than in the past, unnerved both the Yishuv and its political representatives. On March 1 the entire Hebrew-language press (except for Ha-Mashkif, the Revisionist Party newspaper) joined in publishing the following statement: “The assassinations and acts of sabotage which have been committed in recent weeks in various parts of the country under the cloak of high national slogans … endanger our national and political efforts at a time when Israel’s fate is being decided.” It concluded with a pledge that the entire community would “find the proper methods for stopping the irresponsible acts of sabotage, the threats and extortions, and defend the purity of the … Zionist enterprise. To this end the Hebrew press will exert all its influence and offer all its assistance.”34
Various Zionist organizations and municipalities also passed resolutions and issued pronouncements condemning the violence and called on the Yishuv to assist the police in eradicating both terrorist organizations. But as the American consul general, Pinkerton, noted, “The police have, in the past, usually received little help from the local population which has been thoroughly intimidated by the terrorists.” This was by no means a new problem. From the time of the Irgun’s initial revolt in 1939, British officials in Palestine had complained about the Yishuv’s lack of cooperation when it came to Jewish terrorism. Opposition to the white paper had hardened the Yishuv against the authorities, and the advent of war, coupled with the common goal of defeating Nazi Germany, had done little to temper such sentiments. “No help could be expected from the Jewish community in an attempt to destroy the Irgun,” MacMichael had reported to London in 1941, “both because the community in general is not out of sympathy with much of the policy for which the Irgun stands, but also because of the Irgun’s known ability to deal drastically with those who threaten its interests.”35
MacMichael now made exactly the same point once again. “Jewish press and official bodies generally have strongly condemned [the] outrages,” he told the colonial secretary, Oliver Stanley, but “both official bodies and public have made no effort to help in bringing the guilty to justice.” British army intelligence agreed, presciently commenting that the Jewish Agency would “probably hesitate to take action until the Irgun … or the [Lehi] commit some act which is liable seriously to interfere with Agency policy. There is no doubt whatever that the Agency could if they so wished take effective action in the prevention of these outbreaks.”36
The high commissioner also believed that the Biltmore Program was the source of all Britain’s difficulties in Palestine. This was the resolution adopted by an extraordinary session of the Zionist Congress that had met in New York two years before and called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. “The carrying out of that programme,” he explained to Stanley, “has become the central objective of the Agency, and the terrorists regard themselves as the chosen instruments whose task it is simultaneously to intimidate H.M.G. into further measures of appeasement.” In conclusion, MacMichael again expressed the view prevalent among British officials in the country that the agency could, if it genuinely wished, stamp out the terrorist organizations. Instead, he groused, the Jewish leaders prefer to wring their hands and offer endless excuses for their continued inaction. U.S. intelligence analysts generally concurred with MacMichael’s assessment of the Jewish Agency’s role in exacerbating the situation—often using nearly identical language.37
These arguments, however, ignored the fundamental challenge of obtaining information on clandestine movements. An OSS analysis of Lehi, for instance, detailed how “each cell comprises four to six persons who do not necessarily know the members of other units. Liaison between two or more neighboring cells is reportedly maintained by the leaders. Operations are undertaken only upon the receipt of ‘orders’ from headquarters. The society’s arms caches are likewise decentralized, so that the discovery of any one would not interrupt the terrorist activities.”38
Nevertheless, the authorities had to obtain information from someone, somewhere, in Palestine if there was to be any progress in ending the violence. This was the subject of the first of many discussions that would be held between Jewish Agency and government officials. On February 28, 1944, Bernard Joseph, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive, met with MacPherson’s successor as chief secretary, Sir John Shaw. Joseph explained that he was also distressed by the recent terrorist attacks, and the Jewish Agency had issued a statement that had unequivocally condemned the violence. Although Shaw had no reason to doubt the sincerity of these denunciations, he pointed out that “lip service was not enough.” What was required instead was information, specifically the names of the members of the underground organizations. Joseph, however, took umbrage with any suggestion that he and his colleagues should “be expected to fill the role of a common informer. It was the job of the Police who were at the disposal of the Administration to discover who the perpetrators of the outrages were.” Driving home this point, the Jewish Agency official warned the chief secretary that any attempts to coerce the Yishuv, such as through the wholesale arrest and interrogation of law-abiding Jewish citizens that had taken place some days before, would surely destroy any hope that the government had of obtaining the community’s cooperation. The meeting concluded on that sour note.39
A similarly inconclusive meeting took place just a few days later between Captain John Rymer-Jones, the newly arrived inspector general of the PPF, and Harry Beilin, another Jewish Agency official. Rymer-Jones, however, was in no mood to listen to Beilin’s list of grievances. “The only time you people come to see me,” he thundered, “is when you have complaints to make. Terrorism is rampant in the country and none of you have thought fit to come in and talk to the I.G. about it.”40
This unhappy meeting prompted a return visit, this time from Joseph, in hopes of smoothing relations with Rymer-Jones. The inspector general brusquely rebuffed Joseph’s efforts to explain the Jewish Agency’s position as he had Beilin’s. When Joseph explained that the government’s policies—specifically the white paper’s restrictions on Jewish immigration—had alienated the Yishuv and undermined any inclination to cooperate with the authorities, Rymer-Jones replied that he was responsible not for determining government policy but for maintaining law and order in the country. The only thing that concerned him was the Yishuv’s reluctance to assist the police. “If you don’t want to give us the names of the people or help us directly,” the inspector general suggested, then “why don’t the Haganah stamp out these acts? If you agree that this is a bad thing why don’t you stamp it out yourselves?” Joseph demurred, pointing out that this would lead to strife within the Yishuv. Although this explanation also f
ailed to satisfy Rymer-Jones’s demands, Joseph’s enigmatic assurance that the agency would deal with the Irgun “in its ‘own way’ ” was not insincere.41
Indeed, unbeknownst to the inspector general, the Jewish Agency had already begun to consider measures of its own against the terrorists. On February 29, OSS intelligence analysts reported that two members of the Histadrut’s executive committee, Goldie Meyerson (who later changed her name to Golda Meir and served as Israel’s fourth prime minister between 1969 and 1974) and David Remez, had called for “immediate action by the Histadrut to crush the terrorists by the creation of a corps of ‘vigilantes’ who would either take direct action against them or alternatively denounce them to the Government.” Their argument that continued terrorism threatened all Zionism’s political accomplishments in Palestine was of particular relevance given the expiration the following month of the five-year time frame within which the white paper had allowed continued Jewish immigration to Palestine. Although the cabinet had already indicated that it was inclined to extend this deadline until the seventy-five-thousand-person quota had been filled, Jewish Agency officials feared that unless the Yishuv took decisive action to bring the terrorists to heel, the government might renege on its commitment.42
As compelling as these arguments were, other Jewish officials strongly opposed any form of cooperation no matter what the cost. Eliahu Golomb, the Haganah’s leader, for example, objected to Meyerson and Remez’s proposal. The government, he argued, did not deserve the Yishuv’s help given its refusal to recognize the Yishuv’s right to possess arms for self-defense. Hence, it was abhorrent to him to even consider that Jewish arms should be used against fellow Jews—no matter how threatening or harmful their activities. Golomb also questioned whether the Yishuv itself would countenance an agency-sponsored counterterrorist campaign. Public opinion, he believed, would “react violently” against it, rendering any such effort impossible. Although Golomb’s uncompromising opposition curtailed further discussion, the final word on this issue had not been heard.43
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