The Irgun, or Etzel, was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandate Palestine and then Israel between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the older and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts.
Zionist political violence refers to politically motivated violence or terror perpetrated by Zionists. The term is used to describe violence committed by those who support the political movement of Zionism, and violence committed against opponents of Zionism. The violence often takes the form of terrorist attacks and has been directed against both Jewish and Arab targets. The most active period of most notable Zionist political violence began on June 30, 1924, through the 1940s, and continues to the present day, usually for the purpose of expanding Zionist settlements in Palestine.
Menachem Begin ; Polish: Menachem Begin ; Russian: Менахем Вольфович Бегин Menakhem Volfovich Begin; 16 August 1913 – 9 March 1992) was an Israeli politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of Israel. Before the creation of the state of Israel, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944, against the British mandatory government, which was opposed by the Jewish Agency. As head of the Irgun, he targeted the British in Palestine. Later, the Irgun fought the Arabs during the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and its chief Begin was also noted as "leader of the notorious terrorist organisation" by the British government and banned from entering the United Kingdom.
Lehi, often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang, was a Zionist paramilitary militant organization founded by Avraham ("Yair") Stern in Mandatory Palestine. Its avowed aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by use of violence, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state. It was initially called the National Military Organization in Israel, upon being founded in August 1940, but was renamed Lehi one month later. The group referred to its members as terrorists and admitted to having carried out terrorist attacks.
David Shaltiel was an Israeli military and intelligence officer, later also diplomat, and was most well known for being the district commander of the Haganah in Jerusalem during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Operation Agatha, sometimes called Black Sabbath or Black Saturday because it began on the Jewish sabbath, was a police and military operation conducted by the British authorities in Mandatory Palestine. Soldiers and police searched for arms and made arrests in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and several dozen settlements; the Jewish Agency was raided. The total number of British security forces involved is variously reported as 10,000, 17,000, and 25,000. About 2,700 individuals were arrested, among them future Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett. The officially given purpose of the operation was to end "the state of anarchy" then existing in Palestine. Other objectives included obtaining documentary proof of Jewish Agency approval of sabotage operations by the Palmach and of an alliance between the Haganah and the more violent Lehi and Irgun, destroying the Haganah's military power, boosting army morale and preventing a coup d'état being mounted by the Lehi and Irgun.
Revisionist Zionism is a form of Zionism which is characterized by territorial maximalism. Revisionist Zionism promoted expansionism and the establishment of a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan River.
Israel Eldad, was an Israeli Revisionist Zionist philosopher and member of the Jewish underground group Lehi in Mandatory Palestine.
The Sergeants affair was an incident that took place in Mandate Palestine in July 1947 during Jewish insurgency in Palestine, in which the Jewish underground group Irgun kidnapped two British Army Intelligence Corps NCOs, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice, and threatened to hang them if the death sentences passed on three Irgun militants—Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, and Yaakov Weiss—were carried out. The three had been captured by the British during the Acre Prison break, tried, and convicted on charges of illegal possession of arms, and with 'intent to kill or cause other harm to a large number of people'. When the three men were executed by hanging, the Irgun killed the two sergeants and hung their booby-trapped bodies in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya.
A successful paramilitary campaign was carried out by Zionist underground groups against British rule in Mandatory Palestine from 1944 to 1948. The tensions between the Zionist underground and the British mandatory authorities rose from 1938 and intensified with the publication of the White Paper of 1939. The Paper outlined new government policies to place further restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases, and declared the intention of giving independence to Palestine, with an Arab majority, within ten years. Though World War II brought relative calm, tensions again escalated into an armed struggle towards the end of the war, when it became clear that the Axis powers were close to defeat.
Nathan Yellin-Mor was a Revisionist Zionist activist, Lehi leader and Israeli politician. In later years, he became a leader of the Israeli peace camp, a pacifist who supported negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization and concessions in the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Yaakov Banai born Yaakov Tunkel, Alias Mazal served as the commander of the Lehi movement's combat unit. Banai was a senior Lehi member who masterminded numerous military encounters against British and Arab targets during the Mandate period and the 1947–1949 Palestine war.
Yehoshua Zettler was an Israeli who served as the Jerusalem commander of the Jewish paramilitary group Lehi, often called the Stern Gang. He conceived and planned the September 17, 1948, assassination of Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, who was representing the United Nations Security Council as a mediator in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Yaakov Heruti was an Israeli lawyer, right wing activist and Zionist militiant. He was a member of the pre-state militant group Lehi, during which he built bombs for the organization and in particular, assembled the letter bomb that was sent to Roy Farran while stationed in Britain as an undercover agent. He later became the leader of the group Kingdom of Israel, which bombed the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv and carried out other acts of terrorism in the 1950s, for which he served a two-year prison term. He later became involved in politics and settlement activity, participating in the founding of two right-wing political parties and assisting settlers in purchasing land.
Events in the year 1942 in the British Mandate of Palestine.
Geoffrey J. Morton, BEM (1907–1996) was a member of the Palestine Police who in separate incidents shot dead two suspects and Avraham Stern, the leader of the militant Zionist group, Lehi, which staged an insurgency against British rule in Palestine during World War II with the aim of creating a Jewish state. The circumstances under which Morton killed Stern were disputed, and the controversy effectively ended his active police work in Palestine.
Avraham Stern, alias Yair, was one of the leaders of the Jewish paramilitary organization Irgun. In September 1940, he founded a breakaway militant Zionist group named Lehi, called the "Stern Gang" by the British authorities and by the mainstream in the Yishuv Jewish establishment. The group referred to its members as terrorists and admitted to having carried out terrorist attacks.
Shoshana Borochov was the daughter of Ber Borochov, one of the founders of socialist Zionism. For over a decade she was married to Thomas James Wilkin, an Assistant Superintendent in the Criminal Investigation Department of the Palestine Police, who was assassinated by the Lehi on September 29, 1944.
Martial law in Mandatory Palestine refers to the period when martial law was imposed by the British military on Jewish areas of Palestine during the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. Statutory martial law was imposed on 2 March 1947 and enforced for 15 days in Jewish sectors of Mandatory Palestine. The crackdown was known as Operation Hippo in the greater Tel Aviv region and as Operation Elephant in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
