Tuesday, September 02, 2014

The "Saison" To Be Debated

There'll be a panel discussion on the "Saison" period during the pre-state Yishuv institutions when the dissidents, that is, the Irgun and to a lesser extent, the Lechi, were hounded by the Palmah, beaten, incarcerated in caves, interrogated and handed over to the British:





If I could attend, but I cannot, I would ask this in the Q & A session, if there'll be one:

Since the Palmah and Hagana engaged in activities no less morally "impure" than those they opposed, such as the assassination of a British officer, Thomas Bruce in October 1947 simply for breaking the fingers of Palmahniks from Birya, or murdering suspected collaborators with the British such as Mordechai Berger in March 1947 or the three in Haifa in 1940 suspected of informing on illegal arms held by the Hagana, was the Palmah morally superior or simply blindly obedient to a more powerful political, ideological and financial institution such as the "movement", or the "party" or the Histadrut?

The reason given for the justification of the "Saison" is threefold:

a.  Mapai and the Left are in charge, not the Revisionists or anyone else.  They were the bosses.

b.  the Irgun's policies were wrong from a political/diplomatic sense.

c.  the actions of the Irgun and Lechi were morally tainted, what was referred to as "purity of arms".

I think (b) and (c) were patently in error and all that's left is the amoral (a).

^

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