One of the
very specific claims anti-Zionists (and, of course, anti-Semites) from Great
Britain charge Israel with is the underground militant (I would have written
"terror" but I understand that term is just not on anymore) campaign
waged by the Irgun and the Lechi.
Usually, but not always, the Hagana and Palmach seem to get lost in the
antipathy scale.
Not only do
these people not like Jews and truly can't stand Zionists but that Jews dared
shoot at, kill, mine, and even hang British soldiers and policemen who served
here in the Mandate of Palestine until 1948 is way too much for them and the
Jews are to be hated.
Parallel to
this is the assertion that especially after World War II and the loss of so
many British lives in the cause to save Jews from the Nazis, that underground
struggle was not only wrong and immoral but it was an example of ingratitude
for British blood spilled in Europe.
I understand
that approach and of course, on a personal level, the families of the almost
400 British officials, political and security who lost their lives during the
Mandate as a result of Jewish violence suffered much.
But somehow,
these people never seem to grasp what the British directly did just before and
during World War II. The partition plans
of Peel and Woodhead, the St. James Conference and the May 17, 1939 White Paper
sealed the fate of millions of Jews, confining them to Europe and making Hitler’s
job that much easier. That the Jewish
Brigade was only authorized in 1944 and that the railways to concentration camps
were never bombed only compounds the situation.
Here are a
few lines from Bruce Hoffman’s new book that illustrates the callousness which,
to my mind and that of the underground leaders at the time, should explain why
the British political establishment deserved rightly what it suffered in
Palestine in the 1940s:
We Jews were "offended".
And the response, as the British learnt, was just as offending. And coming from Jews, quite embarrassing, I presume.
UPDATE
See this.
^
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