Early Israeli Terrorism

From April, 1896, when the English translation of his book Der Judenstaat appeared, Herzl became the leading spokesman for Zionism. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl#Zionist_leader).

Although Zionism was created by Theodor Herzl in 1897, the history of Zionism can be seen as beginning earlier and related to the Jewish religion and history; that is the desire of Jews to return to their ancestral homeland as encouraged in their holy book the Torah. The Age of Enlightenment for Jews, known as Haskalah, brought with it an increase in Rabbis calling for Jews to “ascend” to Palestine (Hebrew: Eretz Yisra'el, “the Land of Israel”), in a highly praised and spiritual act called Aliyah. Thus significant movements took place of Jews from around the world. The so-called first Aliyah started in 1881 and saw the arrival of 30, 000 Jews over twenty years. Further Aliyah’s followed between the two World Wars, fuelled in the 1930’s by anti-Semitism and Nazi persecution. These numbers would play a vital role in the future of obtaining a Jewish state.

In the 1890’s Herzl infused Zionism with a new and practical urgency; a political Zionism which aimed to reach a political agreement with the power ruling Palestine. He brought the World Zionist Organization (WZO) into being and organized its first Zionist congress meeting in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. There Herzl was elected president (a position which he held until his death in 1904) and in the following year began a series of diplomatic initiatives intended to build support for a Jewish state.
“To bring the Zionist project into fruition, the Zionist thinkers claimed the biblical territory and recreated, indeed reinvented, it as the cradle of their new nationalist movement.” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) In around the year 1906 Chaim Weizmann (successor of Herzl), whom would later serve as the first president of Israel, had met with British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour during one of Balfour’s electoral campaigns. Weizmann then began the process of convincing Balfour that Palestine ought to be the Jewish national home. It was at this time the British Zionist movement began actively lobbying the British government in their cause. Then on November 2nd, 1917 the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, wrote to Jewish leader Lord Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild) assuring him that:

“His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.”

As Ilan Pappe puts it in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Balfour had given Zionism its toe-hold in Palestine. The Zionists immediately understood this declaration to be ‘the most important international statement they had ever received’.

Early Zionist settlers in Palestine were quickly inspired and began directing their energies towards buying up plots of land throughout Palestine in an attempt to create favorable conditions to sustain relatively small groups of newcomers. “The more precise strategies of how best to take over Palestine as a whole and create a nation-state in the country, or in part of it, were a later development.” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) “Between 1933 and 1936, 164,267 Jewish immigrants poured into Palestine; 61,854 came in 1935 alone. The Jewish minority increased from 18 percent of the population in 1931 to 29.9 percent in December 1935, and the Zionist saw themselves becoming the majority in the not-too-distant future.” (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators) Sometime in the year 1920 the Hagana was founded; an underground military organization. Under the influence of Orde Charles Wingate, a Major-General of the British army enchanted by the Zionist dream, the Hagana quickly became the military arm of the Jewish Agency and the Zionist governing body in Palestine. It was this notorious group which “implemented plans for the Zionist military takeover of Palestine as a whole, and the ethnic cleansing of its native population.” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) The Arab Revolt gave Hagana members the chance to practice military tactics which in turn claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinians by the end of the 1920s.

The Hagana’s main purpose was to defend Jewish communities against Arab violence. Yet their focus weighed heavily on the continuing monitoring and infiltration of some 1200 or so Palestinian villages which dotted the countryside. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, written by Ilan Pappe gives an extremely detailed description of numerous accounts where Israeli terrorist groups, such as the Hagana, brutally attack Palestinian villages and innocent civilians. “The Jewish troops rolled barrels full of explosives, and huge steel balls, down into Arab residential areas, and poured oil mixed with fuel down the roads, which they then ignited.” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) It was this kind of activity that caused uproar from the Palestinians. However the Hagana successfully fought and repelled murderous attacks from the Palestinians throughout the Arab rebellion in 1936-1939. “During the Arab rebellion, Hagana initiated the founding of 52 new settlements, known as Stockade and Tower, and defended them.”
(http://www.hagana.co.il/show_item.asp?itemId=54&levelId=60321&itemType=0)
Palestine was now a Jewish state-in-the-making. The British realized their proposal had a potentially violent core and were impelled to make a serious attempt in solving the smoldering conflict. British authorities blocked immigration of Holocaust survivors almost entirely and banned new Jewish settlements. But their efforts had not the effect they wished for. Hagana began smuggling into Palestine Jewish immigrants defying British restrictions. They “launched extended operations (Ha’apala), at sea and by land, to rescue thousands who survived the death camps, and to smuggle Jews from Arab States.”
(http://www.hagana.co.il/show_item.asp?itemId=54&levelId=60321&itemType=0) Moreover, Hagana launched a civilian and armed struggle against the British authorities. This and the Arab rebellion, fought with such determination, forced the British government to station more troops in Palestine. After three years of brutal and ruthless attacks from both sides, the British military subdued the revolt.

“In 1930-31 a band of Hagana officers set up their own group called “Irgun Bet” or Irgun Z’vai Leumi (IZL), commonly referred to as Etzel. They wanted the Hagana to abandon its defensive strategy and take an aggressive, retaliatory line.” (Righteous Victims) Irgun’s ideology was expressed as “every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs and the British; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state”. Up until mid-1937 the Jews had supposedly adhered to a policy of restraint, excluding the number of squads passing through Arab neighborhoods and throwing bombs and sniping at Arab homes on Jaffa’s northern perimeter, or the Haifa contingents attacking pedestrians at Tira, or the platoon which attacked a Bedouin encampment just north of Tel Aviv, or the August ambush of Jaffa train by Irgun Bet, or the chucking of grenades every once in a while often killing and injuring a few bystanders, passengers and pedestrians – excluding all that which happened in 1936 alone.

But in October of 1937 Arab terrorism had “triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses.” Massive bombs were placed in ‘crowded Arab centers, marketplaces, bus stations, movie theatres, and other public buildings’ becoming routine targets. The Irgun bombs of 1937-38, which came one after the other, embedded terror in the Arab population. “On July 6th 1938, an Irgun operative dressed as an Arab places two large milk cans filled with TNT and shrapnel in the Arab market in downtown Haifa. The subsequent explosions killed twenty-one and wounded fifty-two. On July 15th another bomb killed ten Arabs and wounded more than thirty on David Street in Jerusalem’s Old City.” (Righteous Victims) Many more bombs followed these two including one in Jaffa’s vegetable market which killed twenty-four Arabs and wounded thirty-nine. The Irgun bombings were condemned by the Jewish Agency and other important Jewish parties, whom refused to believe the terrorists responsible for the attacks were Jews.

In any case the Palestinians were suffering a great deal and little was being done to stop the raving mad Irgun group. Sometime in 1936, all of Tiberia inhabitants were forced to leave their homes while Irgun members then demolished each and every standing home there. After their work was done, nothing was left of the homes but loads of rubble. Both the Hagana and Irgun engaged in countless attacks on the Palestinians throughout the whole of the 1930s. It is noted that the two groups used techniques such as attacking villages from three sides in three directions- north, south and west, allowing only a few survivors from every village they rampaged to escape from the east. This was to serve one purpose only; so that the survivors would flee to the other nearby villages or towns and warn the people living there. By allowing this, Palestinians would hear of the atrocities and leave on their own. After all, the Hagana’s and Irgun’s aim was in acquiring more land for the Jews to build more settlements and further expand the territory which would one day belong to Israel.

In 1939-1945 Hagana was deployed to fight along side British forces in the Second World War. In this, significant military experience was attained and would prove valuable in the following years when fighting the Palestinians. Although the uprising had calmed down, the Hagana in all essentials continued with the plans set forth by the World Zionist Organization. “In a single night in 1946 Hagana set up 11 new settlements in the Negev, which secured the south as part of Israel, and took part in founding and defending many more, despite British denial and Arab armed resistance.”
(http://www.hagana.co.il/show_item.asp?itemId=54&levelId=60321&itemType=0)
Hagana commanders began collaborating with individuals with technical knowledge whom initiated the private weapons industry. “It developed into a successful covert industry manufacturing ammunition, explosives and weapons.”

(http://www.hagana.co.il/show_item.asplevelid
=61005&itemid=49704&itemtype=3&prm=t=4) By 1940, seven factories had already been established in which mortars, bombs and explosives were manufactured in. Of course theses factories had to be concealed and were done so very well. For example each factory was given its own code name such as Q Factory, a bullet manufacturing factory; S Factory which inlaid fuses into grenades. Weapons manufactured in these factories were not used by the Hagana solely in defense of Jewish communities in Palestine against Arab aggression, but more to attack Palestinian villages and towns that had already existed for hundreds of years.

There was now a drive for an exclusively Jewish state and could be clearly seen in the activities and development of the Jews in Palestine. This was especially evident in the founding of the Lehi (Stern Group) in 1940 by Avraham Stern, whom was originally a member of Irgun but separated from the group to form his own group. “Lehi was an armed underground Zionist faction in Palestine that had as its goal the evictions of the British from Palestine, to allow unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state.” (http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Lehi_(group)) Avraham Stern crystallized the ideology of his organization in what was called the 18 Principles of Rebirth: The Nation, The Homeland, The Nation and Its Land, The Goals, Education, Unity, Pacts, Force, War, Conquest, Sovereignty, Rules of Justice, Reviving the Wilderness, Aliens, Ingathering of the Exiles, Power, Revival, and Temple. From the 18 principles listed, three of them and their descriptions prove injustice by the group. ‘The Nation and Its Land’ suggests Israel alone has a right to the land of Palestine, while Arabs have inhabited the land for hundreds of years. ‘War’ suggests constant war against those who stand in the way of fulfilling the goals, while some of the goals set out are unfair and those who attempt to fight them face a life long time of war. And ‘Alien’ suggests the expelling of Arabs to be replaced by Jews. The belief that it is okay to remove an entire people from their home, their land, and their lives is disgusting. “In the West, Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by The New York Times newspaper, and by the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry. Irgun attacks prompted a formal declaration from the World Zionist Congress in 1946, which strongly condemned “the shedding of innocent blood as a means of political warfare”.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_Bombing)

Although small in size, never exceeding over a hundred members, the Lehi group effectively brought its message home in several small-scale operations. On November 6th, 1944 Lehi assassinated one of the highest ranking British government representatives Lord Moyne for his support for a Middle Eastern Arab Federation. On July 22nd, 1946 Lehi targeted the King David Hotel which was the site for the British Military in Command in Palestine. The British had unexpectedly shown up at the Jewish Agency on June 29th and took large numbers of documents, which were to be assessed by intelligence analysts in the King David Hotel. All documents where destroyed during the bombing and 91 people killed. On January 12th, 1947 several members of the Lehi group drove a truckload of explosives into a British police station, located in Haifa, Palestine killing 4 and injuring over 140. And “on March 1st, 1947, IZL gunmen killed more than twenty British service-men, twelve of them in a grenade attack on their Officers Club in Tel Aviv, and injured 30.” (Righteous Victims) The British could no longer stay in Palestine and therefore the fate of the Palestinians was placed into the hands of a new and inexperienced international organization, the UNSCOP. That fate was resolution 181 of November 29, 1947. “The Jews who owned less than 6 percent of the total land area of Palestine and constituted no more than one third of the population were handed more than half of its overall territory. The partition resolution incorporated the most fertile land in the proposed Jewish state.” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) In the words of highly respected Palestinian historian Walid Khaleedi, resolution 181 was a hasty act of granting half of Palestine to an ideological movement that declared openly already in the 1930s its wish to de-Arabise Palestine. The demands of Palestinian authority figures to test the legality of this resolution in the International Court of Justice “founded in 1946 were not met.”

Zionist groups were out of control and continued to carry out assassinations, bombings and sabotage against British targets as well as Palestinians. On September 17th, 1948 Lehi assassinated the UN mediator Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem while pursuing his official duties. “The Cairo-Haifa train was mined several times in 1948 and Lehi was responsible for some of these events. The train attacked was used by both British soldiers and civilians. A total of 28 soldiers and 40 civilians were killed, along with a total of 95 wounded.”
(http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Lehi_(group)) But Lehi’s most famous was the Deir Yassin massacre (accomplished together with the Hagana) in 1948, which occurred about a month prior to the outbreak of the much larger 1948 Arab-Israeli War. “The Deir Yassin massacre refers to the killing of between 100 to 120 villagers, alleged to have been mainly old people, women and children during and after the battle at the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine by Jewish irregular forces between April 9 and April 11, 1948.” The massacre of al Dawayma is also one of Lehi’s most famous. On October 29, 1948 Stern Gang terrorists charged into Dawayma where they massacred scores of Palestinian villagers. Heads of children were fractured with sticks, women were raped and shot or trapped in a house with men and elderly people without food or water where they stayed crammed for days till the Zionists finally felt that it was enough and would blow the house up with everyone in it. “Lehi was described as a terrorist organization by the British authorities, the mainstream Yishuv, and by the United Nations mediator Ralph Bunche.”
(http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Lehi_(group))

It was inevitable that the Zionists would nationalize Palestine for it had been revered throughout the centuries by Jews as a place for holy pilgrimage.The various Zionist terror groups which emerged in Palestine had gone about the years justifying there actions based on the ideology that “a Zionist state in Palestine was impossible without violence and the forcible transfer of the indigenous population. The Zionist state could only be established “in blood and fire”. (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jun2003/irae-j21.shtml) On May 14th, 1948 Israel was officially proclaimed. It was then followed by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which was settled with the 1949 Armistice Agreements. In truth the war was never brought to an end and is still going today. Moreover, the existence of Israel has lead to ignorance, non tolerance and extremism. It has become a fuel of hatred to many. Israel’s reputation in the world is one of conflict and fear; was this part of the ideology of the Zionists? Who can envy this kind of existence?

In conclusion, after extensive research, it is clear that the state of Israel was without doubt accomplished through the early efforts of Zionist terror groups. Death, destruction, terrorism and ethnic cleansing were the foundation of the Jewish State of Israel. Zionism served as the justification politically and religiously. The United Nations led by the United Kingdom, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United States of America , Allowed this injustice to the Palestinian people to occur, partly out of guilt for its failure to stop the genocide of the Jews of Europe and also because the people of Palestine were not economically nor politically important to them.

God will never allow injustice to stand “as you sow so shall you reap”.