The Jewish Story: The Revolt

ours is an almost biblical generation of suffering and Courage said Menachem Begin ours is a generation of destruction and redemption ours is the generation that rose up from the bottomless pit of hell well history didn't place me in that generation but God gave me the gift of telling their tale because I'm Rob Mike Feuer and this is the Jewish story episode 36 the revolt so I want to start off with a moral question it's an old one a classic if you will but one that's going to become pressing as our story progresses and in fact it might just be one of the more important questions of our day despite its somewhat prosaic nature and that is do the ends justify the means and before you rush in there with the obvious answer of no I want to remind you that a few episodes ago we touched on the problematics of the term terrorists and then I made an argument that labeling someone a terrorist is less a tool of analysis of their means than it is an effort to avoid thinking about the ends toward which they're aiming I mean after all just to give it some context at this point in the Jewish story we are in the midst of a brutal world war and in fact in the final month of world war two the world will witness aside from ultimately the liberation of Auschwitz the firebombing of Dresden in which tens of thousands of innocent civilians will die at the hands of Allied bombs not to mention the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the only time such a thing has ever been done in war which will kill hundreds of thousands and one might be tempted to call these acts of terror on a massive scale that light up the darkest dreams of today's terrorists and at the same time you could make an argument that they were the only way that could save lives by swiftly ending the war and furthermore we look at what they actually did to the nations that were being fought we take the wisdom of many historians who believe that the primary reason World War one rolled so quickly into World War two was that at the end of the Great War Germany was left unbroken that only the shattering of the enemy allows them to re-enter the fraternity of nations sufficiently humbled so that they can play a new and constructive role in the world community and the reality is when you look around Germany and Japan are pillars of the rule of democratic nations today and we have to add to this this important and problematic idea of the rules of war now the Geneva Conventions emerged out of the 19th century European experience of the horror of total war which by the way built on a good 15 hundred years of slaughter and a deep desire to at least ameliorate the effects of war if the causes couldn't be totally uprooted and I do believe that humanizing the inhuman marks a snap forward for Humanity these laws embody an empathy for other and a concern for life that did not have a solid place in law beforehand nevertheless they also blur the brutal reality of the truth that it's not armies which go to war it's societies that do the Armed Forces are just the most obvious tool of conflict but in our present world of cyber battles and narrative warfare and terror the battlefield on the homefront are once again all but impossible to separate furthermore the rules of war are stacked in the favor of the nation-state just like most of international law I mean after all the Geneva Conventions were updated and finalized in 1949 just as the nation-state was achieving its absolute victory it's the only legitimate model of governance in the second half of 20th century and down to our very day though it may be showing some cracks it still presumed to be the sole embodiment of people hood but nation-states are not the only bodies engaging in conflicts today far from it depending on how you count they might actually be the minority and you add to this the nature of military technology the skill of force and the cost of that force wielded by nation-states puts non-state actors in one of two positions either they have to have a cultural fortitude to wage a nonviolent battle or they end up engaging in what we call asymmetrical warfare it's a wonderful term isn't it and one man's freedom fighter may be another man's terrorist but what marks them both is the need to use tactics that lie outside the norms of warfare because they simply don't have a budget for tanks and planes nor the political and territorial integrity to separate the homefront from the battlefield so who exactly is responsible for the death of perhaps innocent bystanders when freedom fighting terrorists launch missiles from a kindergarten roof it's a question that belies technical analysis you can't simply judge one the set of means versus the others and therefore it pushes us back to the question of what role the ends play in evaluating the morality of the means if we're not willing to do that what we end up with is a situation in which anyone who managed to grab a nation-state at some point in history that legitimacy will always give them the upper hand both militarily and morally and I have to say that the chapters that lie ahead in our story are filled with brutal warfare Jews Arabs and British will fight one another and each other amongst themselves militias terrorists freedom fighters and imperial forces are all going to be struggling for the upper hand in this little slice of God's good earth and no one's hands will be clean from bloodshed of the most ruthless type and so we have to answer this also the Shoah and I have no idea how to factor the incomprehensible reality of national and sturm extermination into this moral equation yet I have a sense that we can't avoid doing so so I want to consider these questions closely over the upcoming episode of the final military struggle for Jewish liberation in the Land of Israel because if we don't look at them closely and begin to try to parse out the political from the psychological the emotive from the moral then I fear that we'll end up in a world which will look just as Anne ran described it force and mind she says our opposites morality ends where a gun begins on August 31st 1939 the day before the Nazis invaded Poland the Ergun general command convened for a special session in tel-aviv now these underground fighters could not have known that the very next day would change the world but nonetheless I'm confident it was a tense and stormy meeting it had been nearly two years since the breaking of the restraint since these militant underground fighters had decided to let loose their guns and bombs on the Arabs of the mandate and the violence of the Arab revolt had all but run its course David Rozelle was not there this charismatic commander that had led the transition of the Irgun from passive to active defense as he called it who had proclaimed the truth to his men that quote the objective of war is to break the will of the enemy and it taught them that this couldn't be done except by shattering their power was now sitting in a British jail cell the Criminal Investigation the department the CID that will hear much about today had finally caught up with him the Jews called him the the secret police and this department was the spearhead of the British imperial rule and their struggle against the Jewish underground liberationists they'd arrested him only two days after the white paper of May 17 1939 you remember I hope that we spoke about it it was the paper that shut the doors of Palestine to anything more than symbolic immigration just as you're a burst into flames and the British knew they knew that the fighters the year goon would not abandon their brothers in Europe without a fight so snatching their commander off a plane at the leader Airport was quite a coup conical I was now commander in chief he'd replaced Raziel and abiram Yair Stern who'd been summoned back to the land of Israel from Poland was now head of the information department and in the two months since the announcement of the white paper and Rafael's arrest the Ergun had gradually turned its gun on the tools of British power in the mandate they started with somewhat symbolic acts striking telephone network junctions rail lines they even once plunged Jerusalem into darkness by destroying for British electricity corporation transformers and I can imagine that the meeting that night was for the purpose of planning the next series of strikes against the British power that was blocking the escape of the Jews from Europe and with the Nazi shadow already stretching its hand over Europe I bet the mood was for escalation but oddly enough it was probably a more unified group with the commander absence because since the breaking of the restraint David Raziel and Avram yet your Stern had clashed their basic argument was over who is the true enemy Raziel saw the Arabs as the main front in the battle for Jewish independence and he looked at the British must as his mentor Jabotinsky did wayward allies who needed to be prodded back onto the right path even if that prodding was at the point of a gun yet ear on the other hand saw very clearly that the British were the true enemy his heart and mind told him that the Arabs might strike a deal but that the Empire would never willingly abandon an asset like Eretz Israel to anyone else's role certainly not to the Jews Raziel and Stern had also clashed over the relationship between warn politics Yair Stern knew his comrades believed the Ergun had to break its dependence on the revisionist party the legal status enjoyed by these politicians made them unfit to lead underground revolutionaries and frankly the public profile made them a risk the Hebrew Revolution would not be led by a political party David Raziel on the other hand saw himself as a military commander in his eyes Tibetan Ski and the movements leaders were the ones who should determine the political path and the ear gun like a good army should bow to their authority but whatever the mood the meeting didn't last long right at its height CID detectives and heavily armed policemen burst into the room the entire general command had been discovered taken first to Jaffa and then on to Jerusalem jail they had no way of knowing that the war in Europe was breaking out even as they were being taken away but David Raziel knew because after two months he'd already settled somewhat into prison life at least enough to have sources of information and as soon as word of the war reached him the commander also knew what had to be done he may have seen the Arabs as the local opponent but it was clear to Raziel that Hitler was the arch enemy of the Jews and it was also clear to him that the British now stood nearly alone against him Raziel wrote a letter from his place of detention to the British commander in chief in Palestine to the mandatory government secretary and even to the British police commissioner whom he had no love lost for in it he told them that he was ready to declare a truce between the Irgun and the British and furthermore he offered to help the Allies in their struggle against the Nazis at the same time Raziel sent secret instructions to Benjamin Zeroni who was now acting commander the Irgun at the arrest of the entire general command and on September 11th there only distributed the following leaflet quote to avoid disrupting the course of the war against Germany and in order to invest maximum effort and assisting Great Britain and its allies that your goons have I leo me has decided to suspend all offensive activities in Palestine which could cause harm to the British in any way be of assistance to the greatest enemy the Jewish people has ever known German Nazism the leaflet did conclude with the hope that the war would bring quote this tortured nation the sole recompense it deserves the achievement of sovereign independence within the historic borders of liberated homeland nevertheless it was a truce at best and the members of the general command who are now sitting in a detention camp at sera bond by the way if the prison adjacent to the Seraphin camp britain's largest military base in the middle east of the time they didn't share David Rossi ELLs view and despite the hopes expressed at the end of his leaflet they read it as a message of surrender months of negotiations followed but by June of 1940 David Raziel had managed to free all of the Ergun prisoners in return for his commitment to a truce and his express readiness to fight on the behalf of the British and immediately after the release the general command held yet another stormy meeting in tel-aviv essentially picking up right where they left off our Amir sternest followers had spent nearly a year in prison watching the British military presence grow david Raziel meanwhile had been glued to his radio and news of the war only days before the meeting the Allies had evacuated Dunkirk Europe now belong to the Nazis and what followed was perhaps inevitable there was no easy way to bridge the gap in vision between Raziel and stern nor apparently much will to do so on July 17th 1944 my ear Stern together with his most loyal men seceded from the Irgun and founded the locum a Karrueche sale the Israel freedom fighters letti for short the split as it was known devastated the air gun along with a good chunk of the rank-and-file members many senior commanders withdrew and there was a rancor and recriminations and a lot of accusations and public fight and all that chaos that accompanied the breakup made the underground secrecy which was so critical to their struggle all but impossible to maintain the ear goon and the newborn lacking were totally exposed to both the Hagana and to the cid each of which began to draw up lists of names addresses and positions of the active members but they kept those cards close to their chests for now now I can't tell every story although I have to admit it drives me crazy that's not possible but there are a few things that you need to know about the Leki or the stern gang as they came to be labeled by their British and Jewish detractors first of all was the unique diversity of political ideologies held by his members and even amongst his leadership you can see this by what happened after let he broke up in the early years of the state some like Yitzhak Shamir for instance join the mainstream right-wing parties Shamir of course went on to serve as Prime Minister on behalf of Lee could others went to the left not in Yellin more found a left-wing party called the fighters list which had a short-lived life and only won a single seat in Israel's first elections and some just didn't map on to the right left binary at all there was a group of let a veterans who went on to establish the Semitic action movement in 1956 they were in pursuit of a regional Federation between Israel and its Arab neighbors based on the principle an anti-colonialist alliance of indigenous inhabitants of the Middle East and God willing next week I'm gonna bring in someone to speak a little bit more about such an off the map idea but if you want to get a sense of the depth and power of the thought that went into the vision that coalesced around Abraham years turn around the Leki all you need to do is read his 18 principles of the rebirth I'm not gonna go through them all now because eating is a big number if you want you can send me an email I'll send them do or frankly just google it it's 2018 people but their goals were simple redemption of the land establishment of sovereignty and revival of the and to borrow a phrase from another revolutionary they were willing to pursue these goals by any means necessary the second thing you need to know is that the Leki were proud terrorists that's right I remember actually my oldest daughter's first met the pellet her first caregiver was a lefty fighter sweet elderly sorority woman named Tamar who used to get this nostalgic smile whenever I asked her to tell me stories about her life in the underground and I'll never forget the first time she said to me hey I ain't no paradise team yes yes we were terrorists with this unbelievable smile the halassi saw no shame in this label on the contrary as they proclaimed in their underground publication has eat the front neither Jewish Ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat we are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes we have before us the commandment of the Torah whose morality surpasses that of any other bodies of law in the world ye shall blot them out to the last man and the explanation that was given about the goals of terror in that very article might shock you and they may sound very familiar it demonstrates against the true terrorists who hides behind his piles of papers and laws he has legislated it is not directed against people is a directed against representatives therefore is effective it also shakes the shoe from the complacency good and well and last the Leki were willing to negotiate with the devil himself in this case even the Nazi Germans in order to free their brothers from Europe and throw the British out of their land and so they robbed banks to purchase weapons shot down British policemen in the street and published their underground manifestos their goal was to strike the Imperial occupier in anyway they could in order to provoke collective punishment which would awaken the Jews of the Land of Israel to the reality that they were under occupation and all the while they were looking to provide the Jews of the issue with an ideologically clear alternative to what they saw as the confusion of the Hagen Omni or goon now of course the British did not take this escalation of violence laying down wanted posters offering a handsome sum soon plastered ya ears face all over the country and he slipped from hiding place to hiding place as one by one the leading members of the letti were captured or simply gunned down by the agents of the CID in the winter of 1942 while the Nazis were bogged down at Stalingrad and the plains of the Ukraine were just starting to soak with Jewish blood the CID finally caught up with you here the official police records say he was shot while trying to escape but his Latin followers were certain that the British police had murdered yet year in cold blood but no matter how you tell the story the moral is the same those who are willing to give their life for their cause will we remember it according to its righteousness and their deeds I meet 1941 I hope you recall the British were on the defensive all over the world the situation in the Middle East looked particularly grim Rommels Afrika Korps was storming across North Africa and threatening Egypt the French Leisha government that occupied Syrian Lebanon was threatening the British bases in Palestine from the north in Iraq Arab leaders sympathetic to the Nazi cause were in full-scale revolt they took over the critical Mosul oil fields and place a major airbase under siege the staff of the British Embassy in Baghdad were actually hostages in their hands in desperation the empire remembered David Rossi Allah's promise and the head of British intelligence in Egypt turned to the Irgun to send a unit to blow up the refineries in Baghdad hoping to at least deny the luftwaffe the German air force the fuel reserves that were there Raziel quickly organized a four-man unit which he decided to lead himself now the mission changed many times along the way but didn't really matter because when a German plane scored a direct hit on the car carrying Raziel and a British officer the ear goon was thrown into great confusion it's hard to accept the loss of such a leader and furthermore many members didn't really understand why Raziel had gone on the mission to begin with did the blood of a man committed to Hebrew liberation really serve that cause by soaking the santur Rock Rafael's death only compounded the problems that were begun by the split with Aleph a their path became unclear and the internal debates only grew it might have been that Jabotinsky could have given them guidance even from abroad but he was gone as well nearly a year before right about the time of a split Jabotinsky had gone to the United States in pursuit of his dream of a Jewish brigade a unit of Jews who could fight the Nazis alongside the British forces as their own national people worn out from his struggle to save European Jewry from the human disaster Rosh Peter had suffered for years from heart trouble in the first signs of the destruction of European Jewry and the shattering of the Irgun were just too much his heart broke and on August 4th 1947 America Vote insky suffered a fatal heart attack while at a bait our camp in New York and so in the hour of the Jewish people's greatest need the Irgun was left rudderless and it was only in that fateful winter of 1942 that they began to slowly recover from the blows the war had reached a turning point with the halt of the Nazi advance at Stalingrad and as we've spoken about the information about the extermination of European jury was beginning to seep into the issue and before the stones of Jerusalem and even had a chance to absorb yet ear stearns blood the ear goon leadership had already begun to reconsider its position on the situation they began with reorganization of the ranks officer training courses new recruits the underground newspaper a roots freedom began once again to appear on a regular basis and as the war shifted in the favor of the Allies as the year turned toward 1943 and furthermore as the evidence of mass murder began to mount more and more members of the Year goon favored ending the truce which David Rozelle had declared at the outbreak of the war and on June 17 1943 hey route gave the following warning evidence that a change in relations with the British authorities had taken place within the AeroGarden command when war broke out the Jewish people declared their loyalty to the British government to help it vanquish the enemy of the entire world and of the Jewish people Great Britain has betrayed this friendship the Jewish people have not been acknowledged as a fighting nation a hebrew army has not been established and the one area where that your gun had maintained its opposition to the british illegal immigration had only inflamed their anger even more toward the occupier because despite their growing awareness of the final solution the British government had kept the gates of the mandate firmly shut now that you're gonna be involved in ally abet as it was known since its inception but now as the Jews were not only prohibited from entering into Land of Israel were being interned in camps and Cyprus or Africa and some were even being sent back to the slaughter in Europe the time for more direct action seemed to have arrived the erewan General Headquarters came to the conclusion that the truce it had proclaimed when the war broke out had to be ended and that it was essential to take action against the British without waiting until the war was over all they lacked was a leader now hum Begum was born he rests the tough city of the Russian Empire right on the Polish border in 1913 a passionate Zionist from an early age menachem started out as did most of his peers in the socialist Zionist movement specifically in Hashomer hats the ear but it was when he joined Zeb Jabotinsky 'he's baked our youth movement at age 16 that he truly found his home after graduating from polish government school bacon went on to study law at the university of warsaw this is where he learned his oratory skills something that would become one of his hallmarks as a political leader it was also where he first organized a self-defense group of jewish students to counter harassment by anti-semites and this use of violence to fight those he saw as the enemies of the jews was another characteristic that would define his leadership for years to come Ben graduated Law School in 1935 but he never practice law because by this time he was a close disciple of Zev Jabotinsky and he was a rapidly rising star within bait our faith 22 he would already be steering the stage with his mentor at the bait our World Congress in Krakow and he went on to become head of bait our Poland the movements the largest branch by the time Menachem Begin was in charge bait our poem was far more than just a youth movement it's nearly 100 thousand members were engaged in weapons training to defend Polish Jewry preparation and transport of illegal immigrants to Israel agricultural training and communications in other words they were an army of conquest in the making an army which lacked only the command to strike and in 1938 as the debate around restraint ranged in the Land of Israel and the ear goon emerged as the unofficial on the ground of the revisionist movement Zev Jabotinsky continued to hold out for a cautious approach rosh Betar felt the time was yet ripe for war and many people believe that was because he feared that all their preparations would be washed away if they move too soon Menachem Begin however did not agree in fact he had become the unofficial spokesman for the activist opposition within Betar and when the two shared the stage for the last time at the world Bottari conference in Warsaw 1938 bacon saw the movement at a crossroads to either descend into political irrelevance or rise to war now there was no way the two could know that this would be the last such conference and when Jabotinsky finished his opening speech and his final words hung in the air over the heads of the delegates if you will not liquidate the exile the Exile will liquidate you the room fell silent but it was when Menachem beggin rose and suddenly appeared on the stage and gave an answer to this warning that the packed room began to hum with suppressed energy as he reached his crescendo we do not wish to become subjects of ridicule and shame let Jewish youth collect iron let it create the military potentialities and then we shall ensure for the Jewish nation a better tomorrow the activists had taken the harlot conference voices began to whisper maketh not only the hope of our movement pagan is the hope of our nation and early on Friday morning in the last hours of the gathering Jabotinsky took the stage for one last time he knew that the movement was out of his control and was rushing toward war too soon in his mind but none of them could know that they were all too late leukemia gone maja no he said God has created us for pain and suffering for the hangman's rope and for prisons these will accompany your lives in the struggle for the freedom of our land and nation but the day will come when the nation will choose you to lead in the town will truly be yours and if today the youth in Eretz Israel have taken up arms then remember this is the work of bait our therefore carry with dignity and pride your name bait re now we heard last episode what fate lay in store for bata our polling and all the Polish Jewry Rosh Betar had never said it more true word and in 1940 having fled worse off for Vilna together with much of the base our leadership Menachem bacon was arrested by Stalin's n key NKVD that's the forerunner of the KGB and a little bit harder to say and sent to a Siberian labor camp with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 the political map of Europe was overturned once again and Stalin ordered all Polish citizens set free Monacan bacon among them unbroken e'en even unbent by more than a year of torture and suffering he remained steadfast and focused on his goal the liberation of the land of Israel for the Jewish people he just had to figure out how to get there so soon after his release bacon joined the Polish free army I mean the world was at war after all and in 1943 his unit was sent to the British controlled Palestine for training and he'd come home he come home at a time which seemed ordained by the highest wisdom as I said it was just that summer when that year good military command had decided to take action against the British and now through God's grace their leader had arrived not quite he was still wearing a Polish uniform a fact and his radical companions many of whom now made up the leadership of the Leki having split from the Irgun when that truce with the British was declared implored him to desert and join the underground right away but ever the stickler for law and propriety bacon waited until he was officially discharged to disappear from daily life and when he did dear goon General Headquarters came to the conclusion that the truce it had proclaimed when the war broke out was over and it was now essential to take up action the military leadership that you're gone immediately begged beggin to take charge and when he protested that he knew nothing about warfare they told him they didn't lack for fighters what they needed was quote a leader of authority to blaze our political and ideological path and so in December 1943 menachem Begum assumed command of the Irgun at the first meeting of the General Headquarters he passed two critical resolutions number one that an armed struggle against the British mandatory government had to be launched without delay the resolution actually stipulated to restricting conditions number one the rejection of individual terror as a method and number two a postponement of attacks on military targets until the war ended and so through this they really maintained their distinction from the pathology the second resolution was that the Irgun had to detach itself from the revisionist party and determine its own path and in this they honored a certain aspect of years vision in the end on February 1st 1944 the following posters appeared on the walls of the buildings all over the Land of Israel to the Jewish people dwelling in Zion we are in the last stage of the world war we face a historic decision on our future destiny each and every nation is now conducting its national reckoning what are its triumphs and what were its losses what road must have take in order to achieve its goal into a Philips mission who are its friends and who its enemies who is the true ally and who the traitor and who is proceeding toward the decisive battle sons of Israel Hebrew youth the armistice proclaimed that the beginning of the war has been reached by the British the rulers of the country have chosen to disregard loyalty concessions and sacrifice they continue to implement their aim the eradication of sovereign Zionism we must draw the necessary conclusions without wavering there can no longer be a truce between the Hebrew nation and youth and the British administration of Eretz Israel which is betraying our brothers to Hitler our nation will fight this regime fight to the end the revolt had begun so at this point of our story we have three separate underground armies forming I want to make sure they're clear in our minds the first to come together was the Hagana formed initially in response to the violence of the Arab riots of the 20s their name really tells us all we need to know about their ethos Hagana means defense and I refer you back to episode 33 for more of the story about how the year goon first broke away from the Hagana over the very questions of violence and restraint in for a reminder that the Hagana striking arm the palma was quite capable of applying violence when they felt the need or that it was morally justified but what's critical to recall is that the Hagana was formed originally under the aegis of the east route that all-embracing workers Federation which was more of a state in the making than just a union and because of this it was made up almost entirely of labour Zionists and when the executive of the Jewish Agency took over a responsibility for the Hagana it became the unofficial army of the unofficial Jewish government in the mandate David ben-gurion personal militia the story that you're guna I've just filled in it only remains to emphasize that their association with Jabotinsky and the revisionists gave him a political base but it put them beyond the pale of the overwhelmingly left-leaning Zionist mainstream in the Shu this was as opposed to the popularity amongst Eastern European jury but that voting bloc never made it to the Land of Israel and finally we've introduced the locum a cheroot Israel the Israel freedom fighters of the letti to hug and on the mainstream leadership yet ear Stern and his followers were on one hand terrorists and as such more of a threat to the Zionist project than the British or even the Arabs but on the other hand they saw a potential left-wing ally them but no matter how you slice the politics they certainly didn't weep when yet ear was murdered the relationship between the ear good and the lefty was complex as we mentioned and the tension between them is going to remain in our story for some time to come despite Bacon's personal relationship with much of its leadership but for now the Letty certainly welcomed the ear goons call to revolt they saw it as a final waking up to the truth that they've been pursuing for years though they did differ with the ear goons strategic vision Menachem bacon had studied the Irish war of independence and the Indian independence movement and from this knowledge he devised a strategy he believed would force the British out of the land he proposed a relentless wave of guerrilla attacks aimed at humiliating the British damaging their prestige but not actually destroying their imperial power he hoped these attacks would of force the British to then resort to repressive measures which in turn would alienate the Jews of the issue while at the same time attracting the attention of the international media this should sound familiar and the mandate would then become in his words a glass house with the whole world looking in the Jews within standing united against British repression while outside global sympathy would create political pressure on the Empire and ultimately he believes that the British would be forced to choose between increasing force or withdrawing and he was certain in the end they would cave now the first target that the Irgun chose when it opened up its guns in the revolt was the immigration officers of the mandatory authorities more than anything else these offices symbolized the injustice of the British occupation and the forces that barred the gates of the mandate has the Jews of Europe burned next came income tax offices a target always sure to rally public support and then a series of strikes on police station throughout Israel the intensity of the tax rose as the year 1944 progressed and casualties mounted on both sides not to be outdone the left he joined the momentum of the revolt a series of shooting attacks an individual policeman but the real turning point of the underground struggle came in November of 1944 with the assassination of Walter Edward Guinness 1st Baron Lord Moines in 1944 Lord Moines was the British resident minister of state in Cairo which under the colonial system at that time meant he was responsible for Persia the Middle East including of course mandatory Palestine and large chunks of North Africa and Moyne was seen by the Jews to be an anti Zionist I'm not going to get into the rhetoric of whether that's true or not it doesn't really matter that's how he was seen by them and as the Minister of State who was directly responsible for the enforcement of the white paper not only was he the one holding the door shut as the six million died he was personally one responsible for the destruction of the SS struma that we discussed back in last episode and it would be the Leki who decided his fate now the al-hakim in Le Albert turi two lucky members lacking an extensive operational experience but fluent in Arabic and therefore able to blend into the local population were dispatched to Cairo their mission was quite clear and after many trial runs the two ill Yahoo's lay in wait for their target outside his home on November 6 1944 in the early afternoon the residents car pulled up to his house and the driver jumped out to open the door Bates we shot first hitting the driver while Hawking pulled the door open and fired three shots at Lord mind himself he died hours later on the operation table as the doctors struggled to save him their mission complete the two assassins made their getaway on rented bicycles but they didn't get far within minutes and after a brief firefight they were there in the hands of the Egyptian police and on January 10th 1945 the two Illya hos were charged with murder in the Egyptian Court in a week later their trial was held now they refuse to recognize the court or to participate in the proceedings against them it was a posture that they'd learned from other revolutionaries and one that would be repeated by many laughing and even ear goon fighters in the year ahead however when the testimony against them was completed le ahoo Hakim rose to a seat and said the following we accuse Lord Moines and the government's he represents with murdering hundreds and thousands of our brethren we accuse him of seizing our country and looting our possessions we were forced to do justice and fight the sentence was death and when it was passed the two young men rose to their feet and sang hatikvah the hope the national anthem of the Jewish people and on March 23rd 1945 le ahoo Hakeem and Elia Ho Bates uri were marched barefoot to the gallows blinded at the base of the scaffold and hanged by the neck until dead British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who himself had sent Moyne to Cairo because of their long personal and political friendship and who had once described himself as a Zionist had the following to say in the House of Commons if our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of the assassins pistols and our Labour's for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past if there is to be any hope of a peaceful and successful future for Zionism these wicked activities must cease and those responsible for them must be destroyed root and branch the assassination of Lord Moines and the reaction amongst the British establishment created shock waves in the Palestine mandate and throughout the world even before the identity of assassins became known the Jewish Athens the executive gathered and issued an even fiercer condemnation than that of Churchill to these shoe together with all the civilized world the Jewish community has been shocked to hear of the despicable crime of murder of the British Minister in the Middle East a crime rendered more despicable by the fact that British people have been engaged for the past six years with great heroism and supreme effort together with their allies in a life-and-death struggle with the Nazi foe they went on to say terror in this country can stifle the prospects of our political struggle and destroy our inner peace the shoe viz exhorted to cast out of its midst all members of this destructive and ruinous gang not to succumb to their threats and to extend the necessary aid to the authorities to prevent acts of terror and to eradicate his organization since this is a matter of life and death for us and as everyone knows in matters of life and death there can be no compromise and so the hunting season began the hunting season or say zone in French as it was known was the code name for the haagen-dazs full-scale persecution of the ear goon it was presented as an effort to root out terrorism from the political culture of the issue but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it was also an effort to put an end to the activities of a hated rival one that was a long time in coming we've discussed over the course of many episodes the rising competition the political tension and even the sporadic violence that occurred between the labor Zionists and the revisionists go back to episode 32 for a bit of a refresher and the revolt of 1944 only added new fuel to this fire the heads of the Jewish Agency who constituted the official leadership of the issue both in their own eyes and those of the mandate had already split with the air gun and Jabotinsky revisionists over the question of restraint visa fee the Arabs during the revolt and despite their complicity in undermining the mandatory government's policy through immigration they were still categorically opposed to attacking British targets especially as the Empire was fighting the Nazis it's no longer simply a question of rivalry now as they saw it the ear goon was directly challenging the policy of Jewish leadership in a time of war in a way in which they saw as a threat to the entire Zionist project and so toward the beginning of the revolt in September of 1944 Menachem bacon held two meetings with Moshe snare head of the Hagana General Headquarters in le al golem one of the commanders in order to come to a new understanding the message he received was that the national institutions have been democratically elected and therefore that the ear goon and the laughy must accept their authority now this is a theme which continues in our political discourse unto this very day whoever wants to claim legitimacy to their power loves wrap themself in the sacred cloak of democracy no matter what anti-democratic means they choose to employ and ends they pursue you keep your eye carefully on who espouses democratic culture and who pursues it over the next thirty years of our story so Moshe snare in one of the meetings had the following to say on the question of national authority it is we you control the public we do not intend to renounce that control because it is we who have received a mandate from the Jewish people if you continue your activities a clash will result and I hope Golan was even more direct we demand that you cease immediately we do not want a civil war but we will be ready for that as well it is clear that we're not speaking about your physical liquidation but the developments could lead to that as well they could lead to your destruction and then it will not matter who started but that was all in September once Lord Moyne was assassinated two months later the labor zionist leadership of the shoe had decided that the time for talking was done now it's noteworthy that though it was the levy who killed the British resident the hunting season which erupted in its wake was directed solely against Lea goon now this was partially because of their size this might be a ideological clarity over the anti-imperial struggle that drove the Leki's readiness for violence numerically they were insignificant as a competitor for national leadership unlike dear goon and furthermore apparently Gollum and snare had a more direct and perhaps more productive conversation with the levy the let me agreed to suspend all activities against the British for the time being but made it very clear that they would respond to any violence with a violence of their own in preparation for the hunt the Hagana hired more than 300 people to begin to follow your goon members and at the same time they began to set up detention centers in large towns and Anki would seem the opening stroke of the season was the kidnapping of ear gluing commanders on December 11th alone le ah who rallied their goons chief storekeeper was kidnapped and interrogated next came daniel Janoski who was kept blindfolded throughout the months of his captivity he was soon followed by Mordecai Kaufman Ronon who's snatched in pet Activa and whose interrogation was accompanied by torture and there are no exact numbers for exactly how many ear gluing members were taken off the streets by their fellow Jews but the history book of the Hagana gives the following details according to one source it says 20 people were kidnapped by the Hagana for interrogation in 91 were interrogated without being arrested some 700 names of individuals and institutions were given to the police and some 300 people were arrested on the basis of those lists a special committee was actually appointed to discuss the problem of high-school students were active in the air gun and it was decided to expel 30 of them from various schools and before long the entire Hagana command was preoccupied with the season they shadowed suspects kidnapped fighters on the basis of a list that they had received from the Hagana intelligence service the shy and all the while the palma their striking arm stood guard over the Jewish Agency leaders for fear that the Irgun might react with counter kidnappings the Jewish Agency even set up a department for special assignments in order to maintain close contact with the CID because the 1,000 Jews were handed over to the British in a matter of months most were taken to the Latrun detention camp and several hundred of these so-called hard-core were deported from there to further detention camps in Africa a letter from the High Commissioner in Jerusalem to the Colonial Secretary in London reveals that the Jewish Agency was interested in more than just rooting out terror from their midst it's clear that they exploited the season in order to turn in active members of the revisionist party who are not even members of your gun and thereby rid themselves of hated political rivals levers the letter states the following number one in all the Jewish Agency has supplied so far details of eight hundred and thirty suspects of whom 337 had been located and detained of these 241 are being held under the emergency regulations we'll speak about those in the next episode the remainders have been released under surveillance or unconditionally several useful arrests have been made in the ear goon Center in Tel Aviv listen to number two unfortunately the Jewish agencies list of so-called terrace continues to include numerous people who have no terror connections but politically speaking are undesirable to the Jewish Agency this adds the difficulties the police have in separating the sheep from the goats only two members of the Jewish Agency executive the head of the Mizrahi party Rabbi Yehuda Fishman 9:1 and he atop green bong protested this brutal policy but the kidnappings were fiercely condemned throughout the rest of the issue the Chief Rabbinate even published a strong worded notice that declared this cruel deed is utterly prohibited by the Torah and is alien and abominable to the Jewish people and to every Jew it desecrates the name of Israel and our settlement in Eretz Israel ceased these cruel and despicable acts a voice of protests was heard from the other end of the cultural spectrum as well when the distinguished philosopher Hugo Bergman who was a member of breach alone and thus a sworn opponent of everything for which the Ergo and stood nevertheless wrote the following these kidnappings are the tomb of democratic public life a death sentence against all we hold dear in the shoe Bergman knew well that the Jewish Agency executive and the other power structures created by the World Zionist Organization could only be characterized at best as quasi Democratic and that was without considering their dominance by labor zionist since the 30s one that will continue up until the 1970s but what really disturbed the philosopher was the thought of the damage being done to the tender democratic culture that he was so eager to see foster than issue and one might assume that they are goon which had come into being after all through its refusal to restrain Jewish arms against Arab violence would be the first to fight back against such aggression from their brothers in fact it may have been part of the overall plan of the hunting season to 1st decapitate the leadership of the year goon and then provoke its remnants into a futile Civil War thus allowing the labor zionist deal legitimize and destroy their rivals in one fell swoop but the issue of leadership did not know Menachem Begin or perhaps they were unable to separate the reality of the man in his leadership from the lair of demonization with which they painted he and his followers now it was no simple task for Bagan to persuade the remnants of the your goon command to exercise restraint in the face of these kidnappings torture and arrest which it decimated their ranks and he gave two fundamental reasons why they should and in many ways they're really the same first they can argue that to react would plunge the entire issue of into civil war which itself would just spell the end of their struggle against the British in Eretz Israel and give an easy victory to the Imperial occupiers don't forget divide and conquer is the oldest tool of empire second despite his pain and anger bacon wanted to maintain whatever relations he could with the Hagana he knew from his own intelligence that has the season progressed dissent was growing amongst the Hagana ranks who were being asked to fight their brothers rather than their enemies and he knew that should the huggin I decide to join the struggle against foreign rule they would be a tremendous asset as we'll see in the coming episode his foresight was quite accurate and it's a testimony to the power of Menachem Bacon's leadership as well as the core value hava thesis a love the love of Ami's rel that drove many of the members of the underground that he was able to hold back the members of a militia that had been born and trained in the spirit of breaking the restraint and the following is from a 1944 pamphlet published by the ear goon proclaiming its policy of non retaliation in the face of the hunting season it's titled there will be no fraternal war the air is filled with gunpowder orders and leaders do not cease to speak of the internal strife one of them has said that has already begun the second even more loud mouth has profaned his lips with the hysterical cry of blood for blood and eye for an eye a third has labored in labor until he finally devised a plan to save the Jewish people and this is it to expel from their homes to expel from schools to starve and hand over our fighting use to the British police it is damn Rosset declared and all means are acceptable in order to liquidate them that's from ben-gurion speech at a history through conference and what will they do ask the pamphlet these persecuted people against whom the terrible edicts are directed how will they defend themselves these are grave questions and we feel it our duty on our own behalf and on behalf of the organs vallejo me in palestine to provide an answer and this is our answer you may stay calm loyal Jews there will be no fraternal strife in this country and the power of the determination to hold the people together even in the face of such a provocation is something which will play a role in Bacon's leadership with critical power in the years ahead and we should all merit to see such leadership in our days so I just want to thank a few people before I finish up here first I want to make a dedication Theresa watch mol whose love and kindness will always live I want to invite you if you'd like to send me a message if you want to dedicate a show to someone you love in their memory and also want to thank all the people that give their hard earned money to help make this show possible keep it free and widely available I want to invite you to join them go right now to rob mic calm in the upper right hand corner you'll see a button that says be a patron you can click on through a little bit of her podcast support and I want to thank the Land of Israel network at the Land of Israel calm for creating a platform that allows me to reach so many amazing people I want to thank Hard Day's Institute P AR des Bourg IL for building a school that allows me to teach such amazing Jews