Excerpt : Israeli founders of the state used terror groups to drive Palestinians out of the country and force the British to establish their state
The pioneerss of today's Jewish settlers, who currently terrorize the Palestinians in the occupied Gaza, West Bank and Jerusalem, committed horrific terrorist acts in the 1930s and 1940s. Founders of Zionist Israeli regime used terrorism as a political weapon in the Middle East. After the creation of Israel, their actions became official Israeli state policy of terror as evidenced in the numerous massacres committed by the Israeli army and the violence perpetrated against the Palestinian people. Long before Palestinian resistance groups like Hamas picked up arms against the Israeli occupation, a plethora of Jewish militias were bombing and shooting dead British officials and Palestinian Arabs.
According to US Department of Justice, “JEWISH TERRORISM AGAINST BRITISH AND ARABS did contribute heavily to the removal of the british from palestine, the abandonment of the league of nations mandate and the creation of a Jewish state of Israel”. It cites three groups - THE HAGANAH, THE IRGUN, AND THE LOHAMEI HERUT(LEHI), THEIR MILITARY AND PARAMILITARY GROUPS. John Lois Peeke, an American military expert, also writes that Zionist terrorism was at the core of the idea of Israel. “Jewish terrorism against British and Arabs did contribute heavily to the removal of the British from Palestine, the abandonment of the League of Nations mandate and the creation of a Jewish state of Israel,” he wrote in his book Jewish-Zionist Terrorism and the Establishment of Israel.
The British historical researcher and author, Thomas Suarez, in his book “State of Terror: How Terrorism Created Modern Israel” says “they engaged in an unrelenting litany of infrastructure bombings, mass
killings, and massacres of Palestinian villagers. Equally, they committed systematic acts of terrorism directed against British Mandate officials, oil refinery facilities, colonial railways, police vessels and infrastructure. Fighting the British served the Zionist claim that they were fighting a “war of liberation” against a colonial power, which suited their public relations in the West, especially in the USA.”
The Jewish Agency in Palestine, an offshoot of the World Zionist Organization, and founded in 1929orchestrated these efforts during the Mandate period. David Ben-Gurion, later to become Israel’s first
Prime Minister, served as the chairman of the Agency’s Executive Committee. It was chargedwith resettling Jews in Palestine. It had a “defense” force, the MILITARY wing
Haganah, and a strike force, the Palmach. The Haganah engaged in anti-British and anti-Palestinian terrorism together with other terrorist organizations, the Irgun and Lehi.
David Ben-Gurion founded Hagana which raised the slogan “Judaea was lost by blood and fire and will rise again by blood and fire. During World War II, hundreds of Haganah members enlisted in the British army to help Britain in its war against Nazi Germany and her allies. This gave them valuable military experience and enabled them to amass large hoards of weapons. At war's end, and in order to hasten the creation of a Jewish state, members of the Haganah and their elite units, called the Palmach, numbering over 60,000 male and female fighters began to carry out terrorist operations against British military and civilian outposts throughout Palestine. They launched a regular offensive to clear the Arab settlements.
In 1943, Menachem Begin, a Polish Jew, arrived in Palestine, having defected from the Polish Army. Begin immediately joined the Irgun, and advanced to command Irgun in a very short period of time. There were three basic tenets of Irgun ideology: (1) All Jews had a right to enter Palestine; (2) Only active retaliation would deter the Arabs; (3) Only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish State. For instance, in July 1946, Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where the British administration headquarters were located, killing 92 people. to destroy the secret documents which would have linked the Jewish Agency and Ben- Gurion to Haganah terrorism.” On April 1, 1948 an Irgun unit totally destroyed the Arab village of DIR YASSEN outside Jerusalem killing two-hundred and fifty people. The organization was was named as a terror group by the UN, the US and the UK. But despite such a strong censure, Begin later formed Herut, a right-wing Israeli political party. Begin went on to became the sixth prime minister of Israel in 1977. Herut, alongside other prominent leaders of Lehi terror group, later merged into the Likud Party of incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Another underground Jewish terrorist group, Lohamey Heruth Israel (fighters for the freedom of Israel) or Lehi, was formed under the leadership of Avraham Stern and came to be perceived by conventional eyes as the most violent and unrestrained terrorist organization of the modern era. Whereas the Haganah acted as an undergroupnd militia and the Irgun as an underground army, Lehi focused on the assassinations of significant British officials, the most notable being the murder of the British ambassador in Egypt. The Jewish Agency protected these terrorist groups whenever the British asked for the Agency’s help in controlling their violence. Most Israelis viewed these groups and their members as the most dedicated, sacrificial, and effective contributors to the Zionist cause.
The Jewish Agency developed Jewish settler “hiking parties” to guide Zionist forces in their ethniccleansing of Palestinians and land seizure. Moreover, in their effort to increase Jewish settlers in Palestine, the Zionists developed campaigns to encourage American Jews to make Aliyah (immigration to Israel). Today, there are nearly 600,000 US citizens living in the West Bankalone. The Zionists also sought to populate Palestine with surviving European Jewish orphans. These children could be easily socialized into the Zionist narrative and provide a ready-made second generation to sustain the transformation of Palestine. Thousands of Jewish children were forcibly removed from the adoptive families that had saved them when their parents perished years earlier, the kidnappings sometimes assisted by these Jewish groups. Suarez writes that Zionists blocked American and European resettlement efforts of Jewish victims of Nazi Germany to places other thanPalestine. Terrorism would be used to force European Jews to move to Palestine after the war and to prevent Jews in Palestine from leaving.
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