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Category: Huwara

  • The Terrorist Forefathers of Israel: The Irgun and Lehi


    To the unbiased eye, Israel’s true colors are not obfuscated due to its innumerable crimes against the Palestinians whether in the form of innocent Gazans being killed or the proliferation of illegal settlements in the West Bank. It is interesting to note that the state of Israel and the IDF’s (Israel Defence Forces) terrorist proclivities are nothing new – instead, they are rooted in the ideologies and actions of Jewish pre-independence terror groups, the Irgun and Lehi. The article describes the Irgun and Lehi’s origins, sheds light on their gruesome terrorist undertakings in Palestine, and then concludes with how their extremist legacy has been kept alive via the actions of the state of Israel.

    The Irgun and Lehi

    The Haganah was a paramilitary group active between 1920-1948 to protect Jews from Arab attacks and rioting. Poorly organized and composed mainly of farmers in its infancy, the group became better equipped and structured after the 1929 riots as well as the 1936-1939 Arab revolt. Until the end of WWII, the Haganah was moderate in its approach according to its policy of havlaga (self-restraint). The group was ordered not to attack Arabs indiscriminately and cooperated heavily with the British security forces in Mandatory Palestine. Such moderation, however, irked some members of the group which later led to splintering and the creation of the more indiscriminately violent Irgun (or Etzel) and Lehi (or Stern Gang).

    Akin to many militant organizations, the Irgun evolved from a rudimentary group to a proper fighting force over time complete with a chain of command. The Irgun was formed by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a Revisionist Zionism leader. Throughout the years it also battled an inward ideological tug of war – i.e. the debate of self-restraint versus actively attacking the Arabs and British.

    In response to dissatisfaction with Britain’s governance, Zionist land purchases, dispossession, and debt, the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 erupted in Palestine. Instances of Arab violence and terrorism against the Jews heightened in this period, which saw Irgun’s policy of self-restraint waning. In 1936, the Irgun unofficially ended this policy and began attacking Arabs in response to Arab attacks on Jews. In July 1937, Irgun’s self-restraint policy officially ended as even Jabotinsky, who had been opposed to retaliatory actions, ceded to the growing demands to attack Arabs. On 14 November 1937, or Black Sunday, a massive indiscriminate campaign was launched against the Arabs (details later).

    The British White Paper in 1939 was a watershed moment as it restricted Jewish migration to Palestine which subsequently invited the vehemence of the Irgun. The Irgun and Haganah in retaliation illegally brought thousands of Jews to Palestine.

    World War II saw increased terrorist attacks by the Irgun primarily against the British administration to coerce them into reverting the 1939 White Paper. The war also allowed the Jewish militias to arm themselves more effectively. However, there was again an internal rift, which had been festering before the war, that caused another split. Avraham Stern, once the political head of the Irgun, disagreed with Jabotinsky on certain matters. When World War II broke out, Stern wanted to leverage the Irgun and attack the British as he discerned them, not the Arabs, as the principal antithesis to the Jewish state. Conversely, Jabotinsky opined that the Irgun must cease anti-British activities and that the British could be convinced that the Jews could safeguard their interests in the region. The schism led to the creation of the Lehi on 17 July 1940. Although the Lehi were far inferior in numbers (less than 300 members), their assassinations and terrorist attacks not only shook Palestine but also the world.

    From 1944 until Israel’s independence, a Jewish insurgency led primarily by the Irgun and Lehi against British rule engulfed Palestine with hundreds of British security personnel dying. After independence, the terrorists from the Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah were either disbanded or integrated into the IDF.

    Terrorist Activities of the Irgun and Lehi

    Although there are too many terrorist attacks to form an exhaustive list here, the article will highlight the more devastating ones. The Irgun conducted over 60 attacks on the Arabs during the Arab Revolt 1936-1939. The group used four different tactics: 1) Assassinations 2) Attacking transportation routes 3) Shootings 4) Using explosive devices. One of their most infamous attacks, called Black Sunday, was where 10 Arabs were killed and many wounded by Irgun units around Jerusalem. The Irgun commemorated the day by brazenly asserting “the Day of the Breaking of the Havlagah.”

    On June 19, 1938, 18 Arabs were killed – including 6 women and 3 children – and 24 injured in Haifa by an Irgun bomb that was ignominiously detonated in a crowded Arab marketplace.

    In July 1938, the group planted a mine in a Haifa market, which tragically resulted in over 70 Arab deaths.

    In February 1939, 33 Arabs were killed in multiple attacks – a bomb that killed 24 in Haifa and another that killed 4 in Jerusalem.

    In 1939, the Irgun shifted its animus toward the British authorities. In August 1939, the British administration’s broadcast center in Jerusalem was blown up and a few days later, a high-ranking British officer was killed.

    In December 1945, 3 British policemen and 4 Sotho soldiers were killed when a British CID HQ was bombed in Jerusalem.

    One of the most infamous of these terrorist attacks was the one conducted in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The hotel was the British Mandatory authority’s central office. A bomb was placed in the basement by Irgun members and the resulting explosion “killed over a hundred people, including many civilian employees, Arab, British, and Jewish.”

    As for Lehi, it too conducted many reprehensible attacks in Palestine. One such was the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East, as he was seen as a model of Britain’s intransigence. He was gunned down in Cairo in November 1944.

    On 4 January 1948, the Lehi introduced a new form of terror to the world – the car bomb. Yaakov Heruti and Eliezer Ben-Ami, the pioneers of this evil, targeted the Saraya building in Jaffa. The explosion killed 28 Arabs including many civilians as well as injuring hundreds more. Not only was the car bomb used commonly in pre-independence Israel against the Palestinians but was later adopted by other militant groups primarily in the Middle East.

    The most detestable terrorist attack however was the Deir Yassin Massacare. On 9 April 1948, around 120 Lehi and Irgun fighters in cooperation with the Haganah attacked Deir Yassin village and massacred hundreds of Arab civilians, many of whom were women and children. This incident was so heinous that it was condemned by Jewish authorities, the chief Rabbinate, as well as Ben-Gurion. Condemnation, however, was not enough as no one was ever punished for the tragedy that befell the Arabs. According to Benny Morris, Deir Yassin was not an isolated incident. He says, “The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70)…. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres.”

    Legacy

    Labeling and admonishing the Irgun and Lehi as terrorists is neither controversial nor hyperbolic. To the British leaders, the Jewish Agency, prominent Jews including Albert Einstein, and most importantly, the Palestinian Arabs, the members of the Irgun and Lehi were nothing less than terrorists.

    Perhaps the most monolithic of Israel’s sins was permitting these terrorists to become soldiers in the new IDF as well as allowing the Irgun and Lehi’s leadership to segue, without culpability, from terrorism into politics. For example, Menachem Begin, an Irgun leader in 1944, later founded the Likud party and became Israel’s 6th PM. Yitzhak Shamir, leader of Lehi in 1943, served in the Mossad and became Israel’s 7th PM. One of Lehi’s members, Yaakov Heruti, who pioneered the car bomb, later founded the right wing political parties Tehiya and Tsomet – and was responsible for helping settlers buy land in the occupied territories. Due to this this post-independence apathy, the Irgun and Lehi’s terrorist proclivities still permeate within Israel’s political and security power corridors.

    This is evidenced by Israel’s perennial war crimes and human rights abuses against the Palestinians. In the last 4 conflicts in Gaza (from 2008 to May 2021), 18,992 Palestinian casualties (civilians and combatants) occurred compared to 1,563 Israeli casualties (civilians and combatants) – 92% of the casualties were Palestinian.

    On May 11, 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was deliberately killed by the IDF. Despite Israel rebuffing this, independent investigations from many organizations including CNN and Forensic Architecture assert otherwise. The latter stating that the IDF deliberately targeted Shireen “with the intention to kill.”

    Violence in the occupied West Bank has also surged in the past year with Israel conducting “near-daily raids over the last year, killing hundreds of Palestinians.” The recent Huwara riots or “pogroms” as many are calling it also traumatized the world, which saw hundreds of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank ravaging Huwara by torching buildings and cars. The violence led to one Palestinian’s death and hundreds injured. Commentators rebuked the settlers, the IDF for its inaction, as well as ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich who stated that Huwara should be “wiped out.”

  • UN Human Rights Chief Condemns Israeli Minister’s​ ‘Unfathomable’ Threat to Huwara



    United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Friday called out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for saying that Huwara, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, “needs to be wiped out” and “the state of Israel should do it.”

    Smotrich’s comment Wednesday came after Israeli settlers on Sunday rampaged through Huwara, killing a 37-year-old Palestinian man—mass violence that came just hours after a Palestinian gunman murdered a pair of Israeli brothers, who were 19 and 21.

    While presenting a report on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and “the current intensification of violence” to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Türk blasted Smotrich’s remark as “an unfathomable statement of incitement to violence and hostility.”

    “Over half a century of occupation has led to widening dispossession, deepening deprivation, and recurring and severe violations of their rights, including the right to life.”

    More broadly, Türk lamented that “the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is a tragedy. A tragedy, above all, for the Palestinian people. Over half a century of occupation has led to widening dispossession, deepening deprivation, and recurring and severe violations of their rights, including the right to life. Nobody could wish to live this way—or imagine that forcing people into conditions of such desperation can lead to an enduring solution.”

    “2022 saw both the highest number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in the past 17 years, and the highest number of Israelis killed since 2016,” he highlighted. “This death toll has further, and sharply, deteriorated in the first weeks of 2023, and in the month that has just ended.”

    Türk’s office found that over the reporting period, Israeli security forces frequently used lethal force, “regardless of the level of threat—and, at times, even as an initial measure, rather than as last resort.” Researchers also documented “several cases of apparent extrajudicial, targeted killings” by such forces.

    As the rights chief told the council, other key findings in the report include:

    • Israeli security forces killed 131 Palestinians—including 65 people who were unarmed and did not engage in violence—and since 2017, fewer than 15% of such killings have been investigated, and fewer than 1% led to an indictment;
    • Palestinians killed 13 Israelis—and nine more, including three children, have been killed in two attacks since then;
    • Israel increasingly imposes collective punishments such as the blockade of Gaza, which are prohibited by international law, on Palestinians;
    • 967 Palestinians are being held in “administrative detention,” the highest number in 15 years; and
    • There are over 270 illegal Israeli settlements across Palestine.

    “The occupation is eating away at the health of both societies, on every level—from childhood to old age, and in every part of life,” Türk stressed. “For this violence to end, the occupation must end. On all sides, there are people who know this.”

    The U.N. leader urged decision-makers in the region and around the world to heed the recommendations of his office’s reports “and to step back from the precipice to which increasing extremism and violence have led.”

    While the settler attack on Huwara drew rare widespread rebuke—including from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a pair of conservative Jewish organizations in the United States—the Israeli government’s recent shift to the right has stoked fears that violence in the region will only get worse and more frequent.

    As Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said earlier this week, “The Israeli settlers burning down Palestinian homes and attacking Palestinians in the street are supported by the Israeli military and the Israeli government.”

    Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, declared Friday that “under Israel’s apartheid system, impunity reigns.”

    “Despite the intensity and scale of Sunday’s attacks, which resulted in the killing of one Palestinian and the wounding of nearly 400 more, and despite a rare show of international condemnation of settler violence, Israeli police yesterday released six suspects who were arrested in connection with the attacks,” she noted. “Meanwhile two others have been issued with administrative detention orders, which violate international law.”

    Like Miller, Morayef emphasized that “Israeli authorities have long enabled and incited settler attacks against Palestinians, and in some cases soldiers have directly participated.”

    “State-backed settler violence is endemic in the occupied West Bank,” she continued. “Towns and villages like Huwara, which was the epicenter of Sunday’s attacks, are frequently targeted as they are surrounded by illegal settlements. For example, in October 2022, settlers broke into a school in Huwara where they smashed windows and beat teachers and pupils; less than two weeks later a café was set on fire, and groups of settlers assaulted Palestinian residents with pipes and rocks.”

    “Amnesty International reiterates its call on Israeli authorities to remove all settlements, which are war crimes under international law, and to dismantle its system of apartheid against Palestinians,” Morayef added. “Apartheid is a crime against humanity and violence against civilians will continue for as long as it is in place.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.