This article is about an event. For other uses, see Hunting Season.
The Hunting Season or The Saison (Hebrew: הסזון, short for French: la saison de chasse) was the name given to the Haganah's attempt, as ordered by the official bodies of the pre-state Yishuv to suppress the Irgun's insurgency against the government of the British Mandate in Palestine, from November 1944 to February 1945.
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in the British Mandate of Palestine (1921–48), which became the core of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The Irgun was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the older and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. When the group broke from the Haganah it became known as the Haganah Bet, or alternatively as haHaganah haLeumit or Hama'amad. Irgun members were absorbed into the Israel Defense Forces at the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. The Irgun is also referred to as Etzel, an acronym of the Hebrew initials, or by the abbreviation IZL.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1923 in the region of Palestine as part of the Partition of the Ottoman Empire under the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine.
Irgun poster boasting its success in deterring the British forces from interfering with the Yom Kippur prayer at the Western Wall, adding that only thus can the national dignity be defended.
At the outbreak of World War II the Yishuv was torn between its fight against the British for free Aliyah and a Hebrew state, and the desire to join them against Nazi Germany. The Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion called to "fight the war as if there was no White Paper and fight the White Paper as if there was no war".[1] Indeed, by 1940, the Irgun ceased its activities against the British mandatory regime and sent its men to assist the British in several missions, one of which, in May 1941, resulted in the death of its commander, David Raziel, in Iraq.
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv Ha-Ivri is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in the land of Israel prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living across the Land of Israel, then comprising the southern part of Ottoman Syria, and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were some 630,000 Jews there. The term is used in Hebrew even nowadays to denote the Pre-State Jewish residents in the Land of Israel.
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the Land of Israel. Also defined as "the act of going up"—that is, towards Jerusalem—"making Aliyah" by moving to the Land of Israel is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism. The opposite action, emigration from the Land of Israel, is referred to in Hebrew as yerida ("descent"). The State of Israel's Law of Return gives Jews and their descendants automatic rights regarding residency and Israeli citizenship.
Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is also known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Nazi regime ended after the Allies defeated Germany in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe.
In 1943, as the tide was shifting in favor of the Allies, the Agency decided to assist the British in any possible way, hoping to gain political benefits after the war. The Irgun and Lehi opposed the decision, which resulted in a heated confrontation.[2]
The Allies of World War II, called the United Nations from the 1 January 1942 declaration, were the countries that together opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War (1939–1945). The Allies promoted the alliance as a means to control German, Japanese and Italian aggression.
In February 1944, the Irgun and Lehi began an insurrection against the British, and Irgun commander Menachem Begin declared a "Revolt" against the British Mandate, stating that the British had betrayed the Yishuv's trust and that denial of Jewish immigration was a crime. Therefore, Irgun announced its intention to fight the British in order to drive them out of the Land of Israel. Ben Gurion and the Agency objected and started a public struggle to force the Irgun and Lehi to cease such activities.
Menachem Begin 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.
The Land of Israel is the traditional Jewish name for an area of indefinite geographical extension in the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definitions of the limits of this territory vary between passages in the Hebrew Bible, with specific mentions in Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47. Nine times elsewhere in the Bible, the settled land is referred as "from Dan to Beersheba", and three times it is referred as "from the entrance of Hamath unto the brook of Egypt”.
Between February and November 1944 the parties negotiated but to no avail. Despite Begin informing Eliyahu Golumb in October that "We have no intention of seizing power in the Yishuv. We have said this on many occasions. We have no such ambitions... we think that Ben-Gurion is the man who can lead our youth into battle today", the Jewish Agency's leadership regarded the issue as an important power struggle and the Haganah forces started preparing for a possible armed conflict.
The decision
Due to the increasing level of violence and number of Irgun actions, and to lesser extent, of Lechi as well, Yehuda Bauer writes (on page 275 in the Hebrew edition of his study, "From Diplomacy to Resistance") that the decision to go forward with an anti-Irgun operation was taken in late September/early October 1944. The men selected belonged to the Shai, the Hagana's intelligence unit, and the Palmah. On October 20, training courses opened for 170 volunteers. According to a document dated October 29, 1944 and sent from the office of the Head of the National Command (HaRaMa) of the Hagana to the regional command officers, an anti-Irgun operation was about to be authorized.
Shai, established in 1940, was the intelligence and counter-espionage arm of the Haganah and the forebear of the Military Intelligence Directorate in Mandate Palestine.
The Palmach was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach was established on 15 May 1941. By the outbreak of the Israeli War of Independence it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units. With the creation of Israel's army, the three Palmach Brigades were disbanded. This and political reasons compelled many of the senior Palmach officers to resign in 1950.
On November 6, 1944 Lehi members Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet-Zuri assassinated the British Resident Minister of state, Lord Moyne. This was the last straw as far as the Agency was concerned, and it made a series of decisions to curb Irgun and Lehi:
Firing suspects of membership from workplaces and expelling them from schools.
Denial of members of shelter and sanctuary.
Withholding funds for their activities
Cooperation with the British struggle against them.
The Watch-Tower in Kiryat Anavim, which the Haganah used as a jail for Irgun kidnappees
The Saison unit began following Irgun members for reconnaissance. A list of Irgun donors that was found was handed over to the British. Unit squadrons arrested Irgun members in hiding places in Kibbutzim (Ein Harod, Mishmar HaEmek and Alonim, among others). Irgun vice commander Ya'akov Meridor was even handed over to the British while Yaakov Tavin, the head of the Irgun intelligence, was held in solitary confinement at Ein Harod for about six months. Some testimonies suggested violent inquisitions and severe internment conditions.[3] In addition to the kidnappings, dozens of Irgun members and supporters were fired from their jobs and students were expelled from educational institutions.
The Irgun refused to cease action against the British. Begin ordered his men not to react violently in order to prevent a "fraternal war". At that point the conflict worsened as the Agency ordered the Haganah to hand Irgun men to the British. Obedience to that order was purely voluntary, and some Haganah members were relieved of their duties for refusing to go along with it. Nevertheless, there was partial cooperation between the Agency's "department for special tasks" and the Palestine Police in the struggle against the Irgun.
During the Saison, the "department for special tasks" provided the British with information regarding several hundred Irgun members and armories. The transfer of information was conducted mostly by Kollek, who had direct contact with MI5.[4][5] Thanks to that information, several Irgun leaders and hundreds of its members were arrested and some were even deported to detainment camps in Africa (mostly in Eritrea). There is also evidence suggesting that the Agency used the Saison for political motives, naming members of the Revisionist Party who weren't Irgun members. A letter from the High Commissioner to the Minister of Colonies dating March 1, 1945, read: "Unfortunately, the Jewish Agency's lists of so-called terrorists continues to include numerous people who have no terror connections, but politically speaking are undesirable to the Jewish Agency. This adds to the difficulties the police has in separating the sheep from the goats […]".[2]
Despite the efforts, Begin's hiding place wasn't found. Still, the Irgun was severely struck by the Saison and by the end of February, 1945, its main aim – ceasing action against the British – was achieved.[6] Subsequently, protests increased among the Yishuv against the Saison and by the end of March the Agency aborted it. In May 1945 the Irgun resumed its activities against the British, although to a lesser extent. In late October 1945 the Jewish Resistance Movement was established, joining Haganah, Irgun and Lehi together in a violent struggle against the British Mandate.
The "Little Saison"
The "Little Saison" refers to the actions undertaken by the Haganah in the spring and summer of 1947, meant to sabotage the Irgun and Lehi insurgencies against the British when Palestine was handed to the UN and UNSCOP. This time, the Haganah did not collaborate with the Mandate and didn't hand people over. During this period, unlike the first, the Irgun did, on occasion, take countermeasures
The term is also used in reference to the actions by Irgun against Lehi in 1940, during the Avraham Stern split. The Irgun leadership gave the British the Lehi leaders' hiding place and many of them were arrested.
Legacy
Some regard the Saison as one of the biggest moments of crisis faced by the Yishuv, setting it on the brink of a civil war, together with the Altalena affair. Uri Avnery considered Begin's decision to restrain as one which prevented a violent conflict.[7] Others think that, by being a decisive step in establishing the Jewish Agency's position as the sole leader of the Yishuv, the Saison made possible the establishment of the State of Israel without a violent sectarian struggle. It has also been seen as a "minor civil war" which vaccinated the Israeli society.[8]
The Season left its mark on the Israeli political discourse in the following decades. It is sometimes linked to the tension between Herut and Mapai, specifically between their respective leaders, Begin and Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion would address Begin as "The MK sitting to the right of MK Bader" and mention "the sacred cannon" which opened fire on the Altalena. He would also say "without Herut and Maki" in reference to his potential coalition parties.[citation needed]
The Season was mentioned by the Israeli right in the context of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan,[9] and parallels were also drawn between the Season and the Fatah–Hamas conflict in the Israeli occupied territories.[10] Meretz MK Avshalom Vilan described in an interview the situation prior to the disengagement as one in which "Arik Sharon will have to make a Ben-Gurion-like decision. He will not be able to go on juggling all the balls in the air. It's an Altalena situation...The government has to make it clear that it has cannons. And rifles. And that it is ready to use them...the security cabinet will be ready to make the same tough decision that Ben-Gurion made in the face of the Altalena."
Related Research Articles
Zionist political violence or refers to acts of violence or terror committed by Zionists.
Lehi, often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang, was a Zionist paramilitary organization founded by Avraham ("Yair") Stern in Mandatory Palestine. Its avowed aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by resort to force, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state, a "new totalitarian Hebrew republic". It was initially called the National Military Organization in Israel, upon being founded in August 1940, but was renamed Lehi one month later. According to Jean E. Rosenfeld, the group admitted to having used terrorist attacks.
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, and Haifa, and in 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.
The Altalena Affair was a violent confrontation that took place in June 1948 by the newly created Israel Defense Forces against the Irgun, one of the Jewish paramilitary groups that were in the process of merging to form the IDF. The confrontation involved a cargo ship, Altalena, captained by Monroe Fein and led by senior IZL commander Eliyahu Lankin, which had been loaded with weapons and fighters by the independent Irgun, but arrived during the murky period of the Irgun's absorption into the IDF.
Kol Tsion HaLokhemet was the underground radio station of the Irgun.
Olei Hagardom refers to members of the two Jewish Revisionist pre-state underground organisations Irgun and Lehi, who were tried in British Mandate courts and sentenced to death by hanging, most of them in Acre prison. There were 12 Olei Hagardom.
Israel Eldad, was an Israeli Revisionist Zionist philosopher and member of the pre-state underground group Lehi.
The Jewish Resistance Movement, also called United Resistance Movement (URM), was an alliance of the Zionist paramilitary organizations Haganah, Irgun and Lehi in the British Mandate of Palestine. It was established in October 1945 by the Jewish Agency and operated for some ten months, until August 1946. The alliance coordinated acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks against the British authorities.
Eliyahu Lankin was a Revisionist Zionist activist, Irgun member and an Israeli politician.
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 hanged their booby-trapped bodies in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya. When the bodies were found, the booby trap injured a British officer as they were cut down. This act was widely condemned in both Palestine and the UK. After hearing of the deaths some British troops and policemen attacked Jews in Tel Aviv, killing five and injuring others. The killings also sparked off rioting in some British cities.
The Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine involved paramilitary actions carried out by Jewish underground groups against the British forces and officials in Mandatory Palestine. The tensions between Jewish militant underground organizations and the British mandatory authorities rose from 1938 and intensified with the publication of the White Paper of 1939, which 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, the 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. The conflict with the British lasted until the eruption of the civil war and to some degree also until the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948.
From 1944 to 1948, Irgun and Lehi men being held without trial at the Latroun concentration camp were deported by the British Mandate of Palestine authorities to internment camps in Africa, located in Sembel, Carthago, Sudan and Gilgil. The deportees were returned in July 1948, only after the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi attacked Deir Yassin, a Palestinian Arab village of roughly 600 people near Jerusalem. The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine.
Amichai Paglin, code name "Gidi" was an Israeli businessman who served as Chief Operations Officer of the Irgun during the Mandate era. He planned and personally led numerous attacks against the British during the Jewish insurgency in Palestine, commanded the battle to conquer Jaffa in the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, and participated in the Israeli War of Independence. Following independence, he ran an industrial oven factory together with his father, and was later appointed Prime Minister Menachem Begin's counter-terrorism adviser.
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.
References
↑ Statement by Ben Gurion in September 1939, quoted in James William Parkes (1947), A History of Palestine from 135 A.D. to Modern Times, p. 342
↑ Eric Silver, Begin, A Biography. 1984, ISBN0-297-78399-8. Page 51: "His captors wanted information. In order to get it they were ready to beat him, suspend him from a wall, knock out his teeth, keep him chained in his own filth, and stage mock executions."
לפידות, יהודה. ה"סזון" צייד אחים. Daat (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2008-01-10.
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