The Jewish Story: The Fight for Liberation Which Preceded Freedom

to make war upon rebellion is messy and slow says TE Lawrence like eating soup with a knife now I admit I find life messy but I never seem to feel that it's slow I'm Rob Mike Feuer and this is the Jewish story episode 38 achieving liberation no I admit it I could delve into the details of the story of the underground struggle for ever not only do I just love it this chapter of our tale has a mix of history ideology drama and death the likes of which we haven't seen since the Maccabees I mean even the three Roman Wars can't touch it because with all their blood and fire and the tremendous tour that came out of them in the end the day we lost all three but 1947 is different for the first time since the Greeks amis real is about to throw an occupier out of our country and I'm kind of excited and this success will set the stage for the birth of the third Commonwealth that the Jews have known in our homeland throughout our history now while one might think that this would be seen by the Jews as an unequivocally good thing it's just not so not then and to my great sorrow not now either there are lots of reasons for why the State of Israel has lost its shine for many Jews today and we're gonna have to dig into them in the coming season but for now I want to talk about 1947 and the complications presented by our re-entry into the land through the means of a national liberation movement a look back at our story tells us that the method of entry into the land deeply defines the nature of the society that's built there starting with Joshua's path of conquest the walls of Jericho the defeat of the thirty-one came and I Kings it made my room the division of the tribal lands we can see that the method set the pattern for the story of biblical Israel and the kingdom that emerged from it and as we learned back at the beginning of season one what is indeed acquired by conquest is all so truly lost when someone else takes away from you that's true whatever your stance on historicity Bible in ancient Near Eastern history call it a literal or literary truth if the principle of might makes right is true then it holds true whether you're the winner or the loser and if you paid attention to the first third of the first season then you know how the return of Ezrin commands Rubel under the ages of a foreign Empire in many ways set the mold for the Second Temple period there was international legitimacy so long as we knew our proper role as a subservient client state to do anything more was to buck the system that had brought us home and therefore spelled disaster so in light of this idea that the method of entry for the first two common wells really set the stage for the types of societies that emerge it behooves us to think about the liberation model of 1947 and how it's going to impact not only our return to the land but the state that will build there we'll unpack the state in due time but today my eye is on how Zionism as a movement might be defined as the most ruthless and successful national liberation movement of the modern era and I want to think about the nature of the relationships that that national struggle sets up between Jews and the nations of the world I want to think about how this struggle influenced the nature of the government that the Zionists were seeking to establish and I want to consider how this revolutionary chapter of our story fits into the arc of the divine relationship with Israel which so often finds its most powerful expression through our history and in order to do this properly before we launch into the bread and butter of the historical narrative I want to give you a frame that's actually offered first by the Gemara into to boat because they're always at the very end of the track date and look it up at 110b 111a we find a framework for exile because in the midst of lots of discussions about the Land of Israel the Gemara says that actually according to some opinions it's for to leave the land of Babylon and go up to the land of Israel because God bound I'm Israel into exile with three oaths truth is he bound us with two and the third actually applies to the nations of the world first chalo yeah Luke a Houma you shouldn't go up like a wall meaning that um Israel should not go up to the land all together as it was surrounded by a wall in short not by force closely related to this was the second earth that we not rebel against the nations of the world after all since the very beginning of the Jewish story we've been tracing a storyline in which mal who'd kingship in the sense of the power to define the external context of the world was taken away from Israel and given into the hands of the nations therefore to rebel against that kingship is to rebel against God so far it's not sounding so good for militant Zionism liberation and Paul so you might get a sense why a movement founded on Lian Pinsker desire for auto emancipation would rub the religious world in the extremely wrong way but you know there were three O's the third one like I said binds the nations rather than Israel and the Gemara tells us that God made the nations swear that they shall not oppress Israel too much it always brings a chill to me when I say that it just begs the question how much is too much the Crusades the dimi status in Islam the expulsion from Spain now we could split hairs down through the centuries over this question but at the end of the day I think we'll all agree out of its is too much and so beyond the elements of European enlightened philosophy and romantic nationalism beyond the elements of Jewish cultural revival and even beyond the upheavals of colonial movement and world wars that set the stage for Zionist success we have survivalist scientism which boils down to enough is enough in fact it's too much the nations have broken their oath and so ours are no longer binding so what lies ahead is the question of what our national rebirth means in relation to the nation's and in relation to ourselves and in relation to God is it simply rebellion or will a new model of relationship emerge now we're going to end the episode at that question with unstop the united nations special commission on palestine but before we get there we need to finish the story of how we went up like a wall and how the British got the boot when General Allen Cunningham took up the position of British High Commissioner of Palestine in November of 1945 he was told that his job was simply to keep the peace in Palestine if you recall the underground war was well underway by that point World War Two was over and the ideas iStent was building steam so sending a military man recently blooded in the wars in North Africa to keep the peace was a bit of an act of escalation and one which failed because less than two years later in February of 1947 Arthur Creech Jones Secretary of State for the colonies described the mandatory administration as virtually a besieged garrison now how is it that a relative handful of guerrilla fighters and terrorists managed to bring the mighty British Empire to its knees well first of all we have to keep the global context clearly in sight World War two had cost Britain almost half its foreign investments in a third of its merchant fleet in 45 they were spending abroad more than twice their national earnings which meant they were bleeding out foreign capital and debt was piling up furthermore in 1946 and 47 British forces were still deployed around the world a major drain on their economy whose only possible solution was redeployment from overseas and large-scale demobilization but in the years 1945 to 47 the Jewish revolt forced Britain to keep close to 100,000 troops in the Palestine mandate that's five times as many as they used to crush the Arab revolt in the 30s and it doesn't even include the more than 20,000 members of the Palestine police force now in general the colonial era is over by this point the rioting has been on the wall for the British in India for quite some time and when the Royal Indian Navy mutiny did in 1946 the end became clear for everyone to read Imperial control in Egypt began to retreat already in the early 20s despite the central role Egypt played as a staging ground for the British military in World War two at this point Britain's only aspiration is to maintain control of the vital Suez Canal and even that is looking dicey so on one hand all these developments will strengthen British resolve to hold out in Palestine after all the oil alone that flows from the fields in Iraq down to the refinery and port of Haifa is a critical economic and military asset whose value grows every single day and the use of the mandate as a staging ground for British air land and sea forces is critical now that Egypt is thrown off of their yoke the Land of Israel is perfectly positioned to allow protection of the Suez Canal in a projection of power be it west toward Europe east toward India and even north against the newly rising Soviet threat so like I said on one hand imperial interest says keep the Land of Israel firmly in your grasp at the same time those very same facts of Empire make the blows of the Jewish insurgency that much more painful and all the less tolerable in the eyes of the British homefront who are struggling economically terribly war weary and less and less attached to the colonial model every single day so that's where the British are at between a rock and a hard place which is at least half of their own making what's driving the underground right now first of all despite the withdrawal of the Hagana from the United resistance in the wake of the King David hotel bombing in the summer of 1946 war rages on even after the breakup of that resistance the lacking the ear goon went on to execute some 280 operations in the ten months afterwards and the Hagana only retreated from the street battlefront in 46 they shifted their focus back to what they deemed to be the core mission of illegal immigration and settlement and not only shifted but intensified but like I said the question is what was driving them so first of all the official leadership of the issue had long denied that they were in a fight for independence in their eyes the British were the source of legitimate political power not an illegal illegitimate occupier that needed to be driven out their goal had always been even in the time of the United resistance to pressure British policymakers back toward a focus on the Jewish home promised by the mandate without any fixation on what that home would look like State Commonwealth Protectorate or what-have-you they just wanted a place the Jews could go though as there was a split in the mainstream leadership between the militants and moderates over the use of violence against the British so - there was a split over this idea of the goal of the state Ben Gurion of course led the militant camp on both fronts he was after all the first socialist leader to announce the switch from a transnational to a national visit as he said me Mahmud the UM from a class to a nation which awkwardly makes him the first Jewish National Socialist now he'd adores the biltmore program formulated by American Zionists during war - in 1942 which called for a state and of course he will be the powerful and all but autocratic leader who embraces eight autism at that sort of quasi kosher sort of fascism which frankly can save a state in the process of formation from becoming just another state of chaos and war look what happens in the world all around us and Ben Gurion did it in order to birth the new state and frankly he succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imagination but that story lies ahead in season 3 for now the Hagana and it's politicians are pushing to hold every piece of land they can lay their hands on and expand the borders as much as they can and to bring every able-bodied man they can find into the country before real war breaks out with the Arabs so that's one two is the Leki in 1946 the left it was under the command of Naughton Yellen more now the latter was certainly fighting for national independence but the anti-colonialist nature of their struggle took an increasing focus in their vision as things heated up and seeing as the fight against Empire is an intrinsically transnational conception by the way as the socialism that drove the early founders and we heard this from Ravi who Cohen in the last interlude the anti-colonial focus is going to have some surprising results for what becomes of the Leki leadership once the state comes into being for now practically yelling Moore had one eye toward the Soviet Union as allies in this struggle against the imperial occupier and he knew that as World War two ended and the Cold War heated up the USSR would cheer any blow to British interests in the Middle East and might just be willing to back those who gave them it's important to remember that the cost of maintaining the mandate is a very important factor in our struggle and it grows every year annual expenditures on the British forces stationed in Palestine consumed nearly a quarter of the total defence budget of the empire by 1947 between July 45 and November 47 Britain spent an estimated 100 million pounds on their forces in the Land of Israel so I can imagine that the Soviets were overjoyed and furthermore they were just as happy as the underground when the lezzy managed to sabotage the Haifa refinery on March 31st 1947 because it was the single most costly operation of the entire underground war 16,000 tons of petroleum products were destroyed and the site burned for more than three weeks it was a blow struck at the heart a Britain's colonial interests and it hurt them in the pocket nevertheless despite their passion and ideological clarity the legging really only consisted of a few hundred fighters if you're gonna make a war of liberation you need an army and that brings us back to Menachem bacon and they are gone now the Ergun was certainly fighting a war for independence and they concede that themselves as a guerrilla army unlike the lessee who called themselves proudly terrorists their estimated strength in 1945 was approximately 1500 and as the cycle of waren repression advanced volunteers flocked to their banner you recall I hoped that the urban strategy was to provoke British oppression through relentless attacks and then that oppression would in turn raise the entire issue of against the occupier and spark with bacon called a liberation war a just war which is conducted by an oppressed people against a foreign power that has a slaved it and it's country and war it was between 1945 and 47 underground operations killed and wounded over 616 British personnel and the ear goon claimed the lion's share furthermore Bacon's strategy was working as we'll see in the episode ahead he drove the cycle of violence and oppression mercilessly and the British flailed away on both the military and political fronts failing to stop the violence or to offer a viable alternative to it but ironically it was actually ben-gurion and the Jewish Agency executive and the Hagana which was their army which stood to benefit most from Bacon's work because they could just stand on the side and as the bombs and guns went off clucking their tongues at the excesses of the terrace and all the while shaking their heads no as the bridge produced one unsatisfactory solution after another and every day the pressure would grow as the ear goon continued to wreak havoc in the mandate now what we haven't discussed is that the Jewish Agency at this point is fast becoming a state in waiting in its administrative and political institutions and then Gurion knew that any political fruits that begin tactics managed to knock off the tree would fall directly into his lap if the British left tomorrow it would be the mainstream Zionists in charge not some underground army but recall Bacon's greatness was in his grasp of the political situation he knew well that he didn't volunteer he become the military arm of ben-gurion zuv goals and he hadn't forgotten the history between them after all the bruises of the hunting season were still fresh a year ago when they joined together in the United resistance nevertheless beggin was committed to ending the British occupation regardless of which Jew was in charge when the war ended and bacon understood that the most effective way to drive the British out was not simply to make them bleed but to humiliate them in the process when general Myles Dempsey assumed command of British forces the Middle East in June of 1946 Field Marshal Montgomery hero of Alamein and now chief of staff for the British military warned him of quote the fanatical and cunning nature of his enemy and the others methods that this enemy will use he furthermore told Dempsey that now that the Jews have flung the gauntlet in our face they must be utterly and completely defeated and their illegal organizations smashed forever it sounds intimidating but in reality these are just the noises of an angry military man trying to solve a political problem remember the old adage to someone whose only tools a Hammer Every Problem looks like a nail the Underground's goals were essentially political independence or at least autonomy war was a means that ends but the army couldn't afford to consider the political dimensions of their security challenge because the politicians couldn't make up their minds what the mission was the mandate was too precious to lose but to expenses to keep and the half-measures they periodically offered were rejected out of hand by Jew and Arab alike so in the absence of any viable policy goal the Civil Administration in the mandate fell back an approach of brute force whose goal was simply to keep order and retain control now I want to stay focused on the local story here but since there's an obvious resonance to a certain situation in which Israel finds itself today I want to get meta for just a moment because when I read the following passage my wife she thought I was reading from today's newspaper rather than from a PhD analysis of British security doctrine in 1947 mandatory Palestine it's a quote a counterinsurgency campaign without a clear strategic objective left the security forces to apply repression in a political vacuum sound familiar so when you add this to Bacon's leverage strategy meaning leveraging British oppression to increase Jewish resentment and thereby gain support for the struggle against their occupation then the parallel becomes painfully clear so whatever political situation you envision - the mess in which we find ourselves today you have been warned by history so back in our story the army geared up to smash the Jewish revolt but they knew in their hearts that these are the survivalist scientists some of them have already been to the Nazi Helen back without a viable political alternative the Jews were not going to stop until they had a home and remember the British are not the Nazis like Gandhi and the Indian independence movement who were also at the height of their struggle in 47 don't forget your gun counted on the fact that the Britain is a society of law whose soldiers are not free to suppress rebellion in a sea of blood and in Bacon's eyes blood wasn't even necessary in order to end the occupation quote the very existence of an underground which oppression hanging torture and deportation failed to crush or weaken must in the end undermine the prestige of a colonial regime that lives by the legend of its omnipotence every attack which it fails to prevent is a blow to its standing even if the tack does not succeed it makes a dent in that prestige and that dent widens into a crack which is extended with every succeeding and if we want to try and identify the moment in which that dent finally cracked in the British armor you could do worse than the night of the whippings leo ha ha ha on December 13 1946 the ER goon robbed the bank in Jaffa it was what we call an appropriation operation whose proceeds would go to fund the war except in this case it was a botched job three fighters were caught and they stood trial a few days later by this point on our story the emergency regulations are in full effect and the court that tried Binyamin NACE eliezer sued eat and seventeen-year-old Binyamin Kincaid was a military one nascent Sudeep were convicted of robbery and illegal possession of firearms and condemned to 18 years in prison a lenient sentence by the way when you consider that the court had the right to execute them chemically was also convicted of discharging a firearm with intent to endanger life and sentenced to 18 years and perhaps it was his refusal to recognize the jurisdiction of the court a practice that they adopted from the Irish struggle against the British they brought on an additional humiliating punishment of 18 lashes and so he joined another ear gluing member our own cats who was awaiting a similar punishment for possession of propaganda material now the purpose of this punishment is clear a man might be imprisoned by their equal with honour an Army imprisons its enemies but a master whips their dog and that message wasn't lost on the ear geun-hye command in their eyes the threat of the whip was a matter with serious moral and even political implications discussing their decision to react bacon later wrote these lashes would wound the soul of arity Sorrell was an oppressor now to whip us in our own land and so that your goon issued the following warning if the sentence is put into effect every officer of the British occupation army in Eretz Israel will be liable to be punished in the same way with 18 lashes but the army was in no mood to bow to terrorist blackmail as they called it and on 27th of December Aaron kimchi was duly flogged that very night the voice of fighting Zion the ear goons underground radio station announced its own verdict for centuries you have been whipping natives in your colonies with impunity in your foolish pride you dare to consider the sons of Israel in Eretz Israel as natives as well you are mistaken Zion is not exile the Hebrews are not Zulus you will not whip Hebrews in their homeland and if you do then His Majesty's officers will be whipped in full public view the next day armed ear goon men broke into the Hotel Metropole in Netanya where they found major paddy brett sitting with his wife in a lounge and before the major knew what was happening they snatched him up and whisked him away till eucalyptus Grove where the fighters stripped him to his underwear they then read out his sentence and administered 18 blows then keeping the majors pants for any possible future underground yours they returned him to the hotel half-naked and shaken around about the same time in Rishon LeZion another team sees the British sergeant major who had been dancing with a local girl at cafe Teresa and flogged him right there in the street while in Tel Aviv two sergeants were kidnapped from in front of their hotel tied to a tree in the public park and beaten 18 times each Bagan knew that he had just raised the ante but he was gambling for broke and he hadn't forgotten on cats who still awaited his own court ordered beating so he saw their beating and raised them another notch that night another warning was issued to the British if the oppressors dare in the future to abuse the bodies and the human and national honour of Jewish youths we shall no longer apply with the whip we shall reply with fire at this point the politicians stepped in between the snarling dogs on the grounds of Katz's alleged poor health the Civil Administration overruled the military court and revoked the second whipping sentence to say that the army was furious is a gross understatement Netanya Petach Tikva regional Etzion in parts of tel-aviv were all cordoned off the hunt for the perpetrators thousands of people were detained in questioned finally a roadblock inked barsabbas stopped the car transporting five-year good men they were armed with guns and carrying a whipped Aramis Rafi was killed when the soldiers the roadblock opened fire on the car well Eleazar konchi more high alkali yeah al Dresner in Heim cholesky were all captured when the four stood trial before a military code the results were basically a foregone conclusion though they were being tried on capital charges all refused to participate in the proceedings insisting like Kim played before them that the court lacked authority to judge them after only 90 minutes the verdicts were handed down alkali Dresner and cosh knee were sentenced to death while cholesky received life in prison because at 17 he was too young for the death penalty under British law the forest stood and began to sing Hatikvah the three sentence to death joined a fourth captive ear good member dove Gruner on death row and in his last act as commander of military forces in Palestine general Evelyn Barker confirmed their sentences just before he left the country the whole issue was stunned to date 22 death sentences had actually been handed to down to Jews during the underground struggle but not a single one had been carried out by comparison by the way a hundred and eight of the 182 Arab sentence to death during the Arab revolt were actually executed by the British but what the shoe didn't know is that on the first of January 1947 the British Cabinet defence committee sat in order to finally resolve a long-standing dispute between the colonial and war officers over military policy in Palestine was it to be politics or war Secretary of State for the colonies Arthur Creech Jones faced off against chief of staff Montgomery and sacristy and Secretary of State for war F J Belanger Belanger warned that continued restraint of the army might quote lead to a situation in which members of the Armed Forces would take things into their own hands the Field Marshal attacked the administration's reversal of the flogging sentence on the second terrace saying that quote by taking this line we were playing into the hands of the terrace who merely say you do not dare it is a weak and thoroughly bad policy which can only make things more difficult in the end for the government and the Armed Forces the Colonial Secretary was unable to stand up against these claims and as Montgomery later reported to his commander of forces in Palestine Prime Minister Attlee was a man that ik that leniency toward terrace was an unsound policy a view that the cabinet supported and so the verdict was for war and the first act was to send a message to High Commissioner Alan Cunningham ordering that sentences should be carried out in all cases of terrorists condemned to death unless there is some technical illegalities Cunningham therefore duly confirmed the death sentence on Dov Gruner who'd been sitting in prison longest and began to move forward with his execution but flush with victory in reversing the flogging sentence the ear goon issued a new warning execution of prisoners of war is premeditated murder we warn the British regime of blood against the commission of this execution of prisoners of war is premeditated murder we warn the British regime of blood against the commission of this crime and now the stakes began to rise rapidly on January 26 the Ergun kidnapped Tel Aviv Tel Aviv district court judge Ralph Wyndham along with a British businessman and they threatened to execute the - along with seven other Britons chosen at random if Gruner hang the following day cunningham informed secretary chris jones that in view of this there has been no alternative but to respite the death sentence under Brunner another victory for terror and not only that but less than two weeks later on February 4th the entire British policy in Palestine crossed a new threshold with the declaration of operations Poli containment and fantail Poli was the evacuation of 1,700 British wives children and non-essential personnel from Palestine by rail to Egypt while containment and Sand Hill involved the construction of restricted barbed wire encircled security zones were all remaining personnel civilian and military were relocated now the army view the move as a military one the necessary precursor to finally going on the offensive against the terrace and to throwing the full weight of its coercive powers at the rest of the uncooperative Jews of the shoe but Menachem Begin thought in an entirely different light in his eyes there could be no greater exposure of the British as foreign occupiers and therefore no greater victory in the battle for liberation than this evacuation and retreat the British had another home and they'd sent their wives and children there and they would go back to if he continued to push them into walled compounds as the Daily Telegraph back in London concluded in a mid-february editorial the evacuation of non-essential personnel was an admission that terrorism had succeeded in making the mandate uncover a ball and had raised the status of the air goon to that of an armed revolt you can add to this the rapid failure of that security zone strategy attacks only escalated in the winter in spring of 47 reaching right into the heart of these British armed camped even the martial law that was declared in March failed to stop the left-hand e'er goon now that they smelled blood in the water and when foreign secondary Ernst Bevin announced two weeks after this operation that the British government had decided to hand over the Palestine questions United Nations the underground knew that full British retreat was just a matter of time but unfortunately there was more blood yet to be spilled along the way I loved Jerusalem street names what could be better than a city that celebrates 3,000 years of history by naming it the streets after famous people in key events I mean you can wander around and it's like one unending history class but I admit they might be just a little uncountable living on a street named those who went to the gallows there's a whole neighborhood in Tokyo named for the OL agar dome the 12 members of the letting their goon who were tried in British mandatory courts and sentenced to death by hanging most of them in aqua prison and with the exception of the two le ah who's whose story retold they were the operatives who were executed in Egypt for the assassination of the British High Commissioner Lord Moines and Ashlyn will ben yosef who your call will be was Abbot Ari who first broke the restraint back in 38 all of the old Adam went to their death in 1947 now each one deserves his own story and I can tell you they're all dramatic but for the purpose of our story I want to focus in on the general role that they played in the underground war of liberation and I just mentioned as soon as foreign secretary Bevin made his announcement that Britain was watching its hands of the Palestine problem and turning it over to the United Nations the underground fighters smelled victory and that sent them into a frenzy of violence on March 1st dear goon killed more than 20 soldiers 12 in a single grenade attack on their officers club in Tel Aviv and of course I already mentioned the left he's devastating attack than the - oil refinery at the end of March but what they didn't know is that already on March 20th the army had secured from the cabinet back in London approval of a new directive one which governed the execution of condemned Terrace and it stated it is most important that the death sentences should be carried out irrespective of the possible repercussions from the Jews failure to carry out the death sentences would only serve to one encourage terrorism to affect the morale of the troops adversely three alienate Arab opinion and so on April 15th Dov Gruner who had already been saved once by the air goon was transferred from his cell in Jerusalem to Akko prison in strict secrecy and they rejoined three eunuchs who had been captured after the night of the beatings yet hail Dresner morris i alkali and Eliezer Kashani they were woken the next day before dawn and brought silently to the gallows or at least their executioner's were silent because when word passed through the prison that the four were walking their last mile every Jewish prisoner burst into song and so the four were escorted to their deaths by the sounds of the Jewish national anthem Hatikvah the hope now the underground considered its soldiers to be prisoners of war and their execution a war crime but the British saw them as terrorists and their sentence as a deterrent I leave it to you to decide whether your goon or the British were right about that whole freedom fighter terrorist thing but history tells us clearly that the British were wrong in their hopes for deterrence and so the bloody spring turned toward a summer of all-out warfare after the four were executed now another story that deserves to be told in full at some point is Bo dashes attack on the aqua prison itself when I'm a 4th in the wake of these four executions less than three weeks before the year guten penetrated to the very armored heart of the British occupation in order to free two dozen of its members it was a blow from which British prestige would never recover especially because but this time everyone knew that they're occupying army was on the way out that door but never downplay the ability of an army like that to do damage in the last month's the struggle aku prison-break was a fantastic success but it came at a high price for the Irgun nyan attackers were killed and eight captured the latter were tried and on July 8th three more death sentences were handed down three more death sentences which by the summer of 1947 the Jews knew were no longer an empty threat and remember bacon had already warned that the ear goon viewed the execution of their prisoners as premeditated murder so four days after the verdict was given the ear goon kidnapped two British Army intelligent kora sergeants Clifford Martin and Mervyn pace in Netanya they then announced that hanging its fighters will result in the subsequent hanging of the British soldiers it was a standoff and the holy issue held its breath to see what would be now beggin had won the first round of a similar struggle when they managed to get drove gruner's first execution order delayed but remember the Army's new directive stated clearly it is most important that the death sentences should be carried out irrespective of the possible repercussions from the Jews and so have Eve the Karen Wyse were executed on July 29th 1947 and the bodies of Clifford Martin and Mervyn pace were found soon after hanging from two trees in a forest near Netanya it was a moment of horror and the shockwaves rippled not only through the shoe but around the world Menachem bacon characterized it as one of the most bitter moments of his life but nevertheless he felt that the sentence that he and his men had passed and these two sergeants had saved an untold number of Jews from the gallows and was perhaps the final blow in the war for liberation and indeed Colonel William grey inspector general police in the mandate later said quote in 1947 Britain was still an empire and an empire cannot allow itself one thing to lose and become a laughingstock when the underground killed our men we could treat it as murder but when they erected gallows and executed our men It was as if they were saying we rule here as much as you and that no administration can bear our choice was obvious either total suppression or get out and we chose the second and the simple fact is that have even a car and Weiss were the last three of the Ola Hawker dome the next person to go to the gallows in the Land of Israel will be out of Eichmann in 1961 the only person ever executed under law by the Israeli government so the Ola Hager dome are a powerful piece in our story and there's no doubt of their impact on the present chapter of the struggle for liberation but before we move on to the final element of 1947 I want to take a moment to look back over the arc of time because martyrdom is hardly a new theme in the Jewish story if you want to review its power as a foundation of Ashkenazi culture go back to season 1 episode 22 not to mention how that Ashkenazi subplot of martyrdom ends in the gas chambers of algebra but truth is it goes much further back all the way to the story of a Saratoga mal hood the ten who were killed by the kings those ten great sages who died at the hands of Rome over the course of the three Roman Jewish Wars and whose story is bound together as one event through mid regime in liturgical poetry you can revisit the height of their drama in our story with Rabbi Akiva back in season 1 episode 11 but for now just recall the 10 martyrs of the kingdom and really all of the martyrs who followed them were victims of a world that insisted that the Jews be something other than what we are victims of the attempt to dominate Israel so thoroughly that we would be subsumed into the surrounding culture and thereby erased from history and they all failed because the death of martyr is never deterrent on the contrary it's a motivator martyrdom has a power to bind together historical identity it's an impetus for those who share its fate in the present to continue the struggle and an inspiration for the future to look back on martyrdom is a means of tying together past present and future through an arc of heroism that runs through our story in the Ola haka dome fill this role but in a unique fashion because if the martyrs of the last 2,000 years sent the message to their peers and down through the generations don't lose hope the kingdom of God lives on within you no matter what's happening outside and all around then these young men can tell us don't lose hope because the time has come on Israel is seizing the moment and reestablishing our kingdom which of course should always be an expression of God's kingdom so I want to give the last word on such a powerful subject to Dov Gruner the followings from a letter that he sent to his beloved commander Menachem Begin on the night of his execution it's a bit long but listen carefully because it will illuminate many pieces of our story up to now there are many schools of thought as to how a Jew should choose to live his way of life one way is that of the assimilationists who've renounced their Jewishness there is also another way the way of those who call themselves Zionists who live negotiation and compromise as if the existence of a nation were nothing but another transaction they're not prepared to make any sacrifice and therefore they have to make concessions and accept compromises perhaps this is indeed a means of delaying the end but in the final analysis it leads to the ghetto and let us not forget this in the ghetto of Warsaw alone there were five hundred thousand Jews the only way that seems to my mind to be right is the way of the organs of I allow me the way of courage and daring without renouncing a single inch of our homeland when political negotiations prove futile one must be prepared to fight for our homeland and our freedom this is the only way left to our people in their hour of decision to stand on our rights to be ready to fight even if for some of us this way leads to the gallows for it is a law of history that only with blood shall a country be redeemed I'm writing this while awaiting the hangman this is not a moment at which I can lie and I swear that if I had to begin my life anew I would have chosen the exact same path regardless of the consequences for myself your faithful soldier dug a may 15th 1947 the United Nations General Assembly acting at British request appointed 11 member special commission on Palestine unscoped it was afforded the widest powers to ascertain and record facts to investigate all questions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine and was instructed submitted recommendations to the UN by September 1st in advance of the next session of the General Assembly now the Arab states expected an easy victory in the UN as they do now and thus they were quite supportive of the idea of a multinational committee they were less happy about the fact that unscoped was also empowered to look into the issue of displaced persons in Europe and not just to travel to the Middle East and in many respects the experience of the committee was identical to all the other committees and commissions that we've mentioned over the last two decades of our story they travel for five weeks to Europe to the Land of Israel Lebanon and Transjordan as well they received testimony from many of the exact same organizations and even individuals who'd spoken to the anglo-american Commission before them and once again the Zionists presented a happy shiny face of progress and development in the Middle East which made a deep impression on the committee especially as the Jewish Agency was able to produce settlers who spoke many of the native languages of the eleven committee members and once again the Arab hire committee which represented Palestinian Arabs declined to appear in any official capacity but nonetheless submitted a memory and of their concerns and claims through backchannels but the regular pattern of Palestine problem-solving committees was disrupted when the British towed the SS Exodus into Haifa Harbor on July 18th now you'll recall that though the pagana had withdrawn from the street battles of the Irgun and alecky they had not retreated from the war with the British on the contrary what they'd done is expand the front of illegal immigration and as the British were scrambling to suppress the violence in the issue they were also struggling on the high seas to control the wave of immigrants with which the Hagana aimed to flood the Land of Israel and toward that goal since 1946 the Hagana had purchased an outfitted any ship that would float filled it with desperate European Jews from the displaced person camps and sent it sailing toward the shores of the homeland by the summer of 1947 the British detention camps in Cyprus were bursting at the seams with more than 12,000 detainees and Hagana sensed that victory was at hand furthermore they knew just like Menachem Begin that the whole world was now watching the drama playing out in the Land of Israel and in particular that unscoped was in town the time had come for a dramatic finale and so on July 12th the Exodus set sail from southern France flying the Honduran flag and claiming to be headed for Istanbul originally built to hold around 500 it was carrying four thousand five hundred and fifteen men women and children Palma skipper like Aronowitz was its captain and the ship was manned by a crew of some 35 volunteers mostly American Jews the exodus was too large and unusual to go on notice and indeed like I said the Hagana never had any intention to hide even as the refugees began boarding the ship at a port in southern France a British Royal Air Force plane was circling overhead and a Royal Navy warship was waiting a short distance out to see the British shattered the ship for days until on 18th of July some 40 kilometer from the shore of Eretz Israel they made their move the boarding party didn't go unchallenged by the passengers and Hagana members on board and a night long hand band fight ensued in which one crew member American volunteer bill Bernstein was clubbed to death and two more passengers died of gunshot wounds but in the end the British Navy was victorious or at least in the short term because as they towed the exodus into port and proceeded to transfer the DPS onto three waiting ships for immediate return to Europe a mule Sandstrom the Swedish judge who chaired on Scop and several other members of the committee were there to watch the Jews were shipped back to France where they refused it twosome barked and the French declined to cooperate with the British by forcibly removing them what unfolded was 24 days in which the refugees remained in the ship's hold refusing to disembark and this despite a heat wave shortage of food crowding in terrible sanitary conditions world opinion rose in a wave of support the French Communist daily la manna Tay described the ship's as a floating out of it and the refugees raised the banner of a swastika painted over the Union Jack British embarrassment grew until after three weeks of the standoff desperate to bring the spectacle to any end they decided to return the would-be immigrants back to Germany they couldn't have made a worse decision because the sight of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust being forcibly relocated to Germany caused an international uproar Jon Coulton a diplomat at the British Embassy in Paris actually cabled the Foreign Office with the following message you will realize that an announcement of decision to send immigrants back to Germany will produce violent hostile outbursts in the press our opponents in France and I dare say at other countries have made great play with the fact that these immigrants were being kept behind barbed wire in concentration camps and guarded by Germans DP camps all over Europe erupted in protests and hunger strikes when they heard the news demonstrations were held on both I to the Atlantic and historians agree that the public embarrassment for the British played a significant role in the diplomatic swing of sympathy toward the Jews and the members of unscoped itself later commented that the image of the Exodus helped them press for an immediate solution for Jewish immigration and the question of Palestine because the UN special commission for Palestine issued its final report on August 31st 1947 after witnessing these events the committee was unanimous on certain basic ideas that the Palestine mandate should become an independent state as soon as possible number one number two that it should have a democratic political structure and number three that no matter what it looked like it should constitute a single economic entity there was however a split on the manner by which these principles should be implemented between two states and a bi-national state but in the end a majority of the committee's members Canada Czechoslovakia Guatemala Netherlands Peru Sweden in Uruguay recommended that Palestine should be partitioned into separate Arab and Jewish states with Jerusalem and Bethlehem set aside as an international Enclave under UN administration and so despite the complications that lie ahead all three of our oaths have now been annulled the exodus was certainly last gasp of the nations oppressing Israel too much the Irgun and Aleph a have obviously gone up like a wall to fight for our liberation and now for the first time a body representing the nations of the world had declared the desirability of the return of the Jews to independence at least some part of our ancient homeland there is a long road ahead between unstop and the Declaration of Independence but at this point in our story you can see that the path is growing clearer each step of the way I just want to thank a few people but before I do I want to make an exciting announcement the Jewish story is having an official on so this may sound strange if you've been listening both seasons but I want you to go right now to WW Jewish story Co not Co m dot Co and you'll see that we got a brand new website and there you can find that we have a new iTunes channel to click on it and if you love the Jewish story give me a good review great me let's get that story out in front and while you're there you can join all those people give their hard-earned money to make this show free and widely available and keep it happening by clicking in the upper right hand corner on that button that says be a patron and you can follow on through for a little bit of per podcast support the launch is happening people keep your ear tuned for that content to come I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network for creating a platform that allows me to reach so many wonderful people that's the Land of Israel com I want to thank the pardis Institute pa RDS org dot al for building an educational institution that allows me to touch the hearts of mine to so many