ATTACKS, TERRORIST ATTACKS AND EVEN CASTRATION – THE HIDDEN ACTIONS OF THE ISRAELI MILITIA – ISRAEL NEWS
“The memory of what was done in Lubya, like the memory of all the other heinous acts that preceded it, will shame its destructive perpetrators forever.”
These damning words were published 81 years ago in the Davar daily of the Labor movement. A few weeks earlier, in the summer of 1939, members of the Haganah – the underground army of compulsory Palestinian Jews founded by the movement before independence – had murdered two men and a woman and injured a young girl and a toddler. All of them were innocent Arabs from the village of Lubya in Lower Galilee, who were shot at home in the middle of the night.
The killings, which were described as revenge attacks for the murder of a Jew by villagers in Lubya, were carried out by members of the Haganah Special Forces. Every man who participated in the mission has a place of honor in local history books: the oldest was Yigal Allon, who later headed the Palmach (the Haganah’s elite strike force) and became general and educational and foreign defender of the Israel Defense Forces Minister.
The operation was organized by Nahum Shadmi, a senior Haganah member and future IDF colonel and president of a military appeals court, and an activist from the Mapai Party (Mapai was the forerunner of the Labor Party). His son Issachar was the commander of the Border Police Brigade, the members of which carried out the massacre in the Arab city of Kafr Qasem in 1956.
This month marks the centenary of the foundation of Haganah. Actions prior to 1948 included support for illegal Jewish migration to British Palestine; concealed construction of new settlements overnight (“Tower and Stockade” operation); Sending activists – like Hannah Scenes – to Nazi-occupied Europe or commandos to Lebanon controlled by Vichy; as well as other exploits that have become part of this country’s heritage.
But there is another aspect of the Haganah that will not play a prominent role in the centenary and that is not well known to the public or part of the high school curriculum. This aspect was excluded from museums, parades and the official and state-sanctioned history books. It shows that the concept of sacred “purity of arms” was interpreted very loosely by the organization that launched the IDF.
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The bombing of the British ship Patria on November 25, 1940.
“Now, after 100 years, it’s time to talk about these chapters too,” says Peleg Levy, a documentary filmmaker who has interviewed hundreds of veterans over the past decade, including members of right and left underground organizations, on a project that History of Israel documented. They told him about attacks, reprisals and terrorist attacks that were attributed to the Haganah. In the general public, such operations are usually associated only with the right-wing organizations Irgun and Lehi. Any mention of these names commemorates the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre two years later.
“If there is a Lehi conference that does not talk about the murder of Folke Bernadotte (the Swedish diplomat who was murdered by Lehi members in 1948), people will complain. If the Irgun has one in which they not talking about the operation of the King David Hotel, people will jump on them. Why are they allowing the Haganah to write their story without talking about similar things their people did? ”Levy asks.
Later in our conversation, he notes that the Labor movement referred to members of these two underground groups as “terrorists” while being proud of the “purity” of the Haganah organization’s actions and stressing that their methods were different.
Still, the Haganah has a list of errors in its name that former members would love to erase. They never took responsibility for most of these operations and got by with general convictions or accused villains in the organization. This is how the murder in Lubya in Davar was described. Without realizing the identity of the perpetrators, the newspaper said that the act was “a terrible murder that confirms the loss of the perpetrators’ innocence (innocent) and their lack of human sensitivity. These pictures, in which older people, women and a baby were killed, show that we are on a dark slope and are sliding towards an abyss. “
“Nest of the Murderers”
Nine years later, in January 1948, Haganah members were involved in an operation that apparently had never been thoroughly investigated over 70 years later.
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Young recruits in a Haganah training camp in the 1940s. Credit: From the Haganah Archives
It is unlikely that most people reading this will have heard of the Semiramis Hotel bombings in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem by the Haganah Moriah Battalion. This may be due to the fact that it took place at the height of the War of Independence, which was marked by many acts of violence. However, it is likely that the writers of the Haganah story have deliberately chosen to keep the mention of this incident as low as possible – as many rights believe.
The explosion was to hit the headquarters of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, the commander of the Arab militias fighting against Jewish forces in the Jerusalem region. A group of Haganah soldiers entered the hotel basement and placed explosives there before they were detonated. Husayni was not in the building, but dozens of Arab civilians. The exact number of deaths and injuries is still unknown. According to one report, 26 people were killed and another 60 injured.
Most of the deaths came from the Christian Abu Suawan family, including women and children, and the Spanish Vice Consul to Jerusalem, who lived in the hotel. Davar reported the incident the next day and, as before, did not provide his readers with the full picture. “The Haganah blew up the headquarters of the Arab militia in Jerusalem,” was the headline. “This was one of the killers’ nests in Jerusalem,” the newspaper said.
Another building was blown up by the Haganah about two years earlier, in February 1946. This was part of a Palmach operation targeting British police stations across the country. Three British women and one child were killed in the explosion. “Over the years, Haganah leaders and the pre-state Jewish community have accused us of being irresponsible in such attacks, and yet Haganah members were the first to hit British women,” wrote Natan Yellin-Mor, a Lehi leader, who later became a peace activist.
A popular song among Palmach members spoke at that time of “Castration Mohammed”. This related to an Arab from the city of Beisan – now Beit She’an – who was suspected of raping a kibbutz member. Because of the increase in the number of Jewish women raped by Arabs at the time, “the Palmach decided to take revenge according to biblical instructions to chop off a thief’s hand – or in this case, the organ that committed the crime. In other words, to castrate him, ”Mossad member Gamliel Cohen wrote years later in a book describing the first covert operations that disguised Jews as Arabs.
The official Palmach website describes the castration incident as one of the “extremely cruel exceptions” that its members have committed in these years. This operation was initiated by Allon and carried out by Yohai Ben-Nun (a future naval commander), Amos Horev (a future IDF general and president of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology) and Yaakov Cohen (later a member of all three secret services). “The instruction was that the castrated man should stay alive and run around with his injuries to scare others away,” the Palmach website explains. The team was informed by a doctor in Afula that this “operation” was being carried out.
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Yitzhak Sadeh, left, the founder of Palmach (the Haganah’s elite strike force), can be seen in this file photo, taken in 1948 alongside Yigal Allon, who later headed the Palmach. Credit: Teqoah
“From the point of view of the people who chose it, the preparations reflected the intent to implement it using a humane approach,” emphasizes the Palmach website. The three men found the suspect at home, dragged him to an open area and castrated him. “This operation had a rousing effect that resonated across the Beit She’an Valley and terrorized local Arabs,” writes Cohen in a book published by the Department of Defense.
Victim in the name of immigration
The 80th anniversary of one of the deadliest events in the history of the Zionist movement is celebrated in six months: the bombing of the British ship Patria on November 25, 1940 – an incident that also resulted in no expression of repentance by the Haganah, despite its members the perpetrators were. It was planned to prevent the eviction of around 2,000 illegal immigrants who the British from Haifa deported to an internment camp in Mauritius. However, the damage caused by the explosion was so great that the ship sank along with around 250 passengers.
Instead of calling the matter a tragedy that warranted an investigation into its perpetrators, the labor movement insisted on making it a symbol, and its victims became martyrs who were sacrificed on the homeland defense altar without knowing who was actually responsible for her death.
The next day, Berl Katznelson, the ideological leader of the labor movement, wrote to Shaul Avigur, one of the leaders of the Haganah: “Know that the day of the fall of Patria is like the day of (the fall of 1920) Tel-Hai This is tries to assign a basic national status to the event. He added that the Patria operation was “the greatest Zionist action in recent times.” Yitzhak Tabenkin, one of the leaders of the kibbutz movement, called the victims “heroic unknown soldiers”.
Eliyahu Golomb, the undeclared head of the Haganah, spoke about the incident in the same way. “For me, Patria’s day is neither a black nor a blackest day,” he said. “These were sacrifices made in the name of immigration for our right to immigrate. These victims were not without importance. “
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The young Haganah recruited an apprenticeship on the beach in 1941. Credit: From the Haganah Archives
The massacre committed by members of the Third Battalion at Palmach in Ein al-Zeitun near Safed was ultimately also glossed over. Today, anyone interested in history in Israel knows about the massacre in Deir Yassin in April 1948, which was carried out by right-wing underground members. But only a few heard about it from underground members of a leftist organization a month later. They conquered the village and locked up dozens of Arab combatants. Two days later, on May 1st, they executed her with tied hands.
Historian Yoav Gelber, in his 1948 book, writes that the zeal of the left to make accusations against Irgun and Lehi members while highlighting the Deir Yassin affair is due to their concern over the participation of Palmach commanders and -Soldiers of actions similar to that are attributable to the murder of dozens of prisoners in Ein al-Zeitun.
In 1939, the political department of the Jewish Agency issued a decree “You should not murder”, which was signed by the highest spiritual leaders of the time and in which they warned that Jews should kill Jews. The decree was aimed at the Irgun organization that had murdered Jews, whom she regarded as “traitors”. However, these guides ignored the fact that the Haganah also executed Jews and non-Jews, whom she identified as traitors and informers, says Gili Haskin, a tour guide who wrote a doctorate. Thesis about the concept of “purity of arms” in those days.
Haskin wrote in an article that the executions carried out by the Irgun and Lehi groups were open and public, while the executions carried out by the Haganah were carried out secretly by special teams.
“No clean hands”
The first Jew executed by the Haganah was Baruch Weinschell, who was accused of providing information about illegal immigration to the British. He was killed in Haifa in October 1940. Oscar Opler, a kibbutznik from Lower Galilee, was also executed. He was a British informant who had uncovered the location of hidden weapons and was subsequently sentenced to death by the Haganah. Moshe Savtani was exposed as an informant and shot by the Haganah in the stairwell of his house. He died of his wounds in the hospital. Yitzhak Sharansky from Tel Aviv, Baruch Manfeld from Haifa and Walter Strauss and others have also been victims of internal attacks by Haganah members.
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The young Haganah recruited combat training in the 1940s. The organization’s belief in “weapon purity” was not always so squeaky clean. Photo credit: From the Haganah Archives
Such operations continued until the state was founded. In late March 1947, Mordechai Berger, who worked in the Compulsory Police Department of Transportation, was murdered on the street after being suspected of having disclosed information about the Haganah to the British. “The attackers gagged him and beat him over the head with clubs. Berger was bleeding, ”wrote Prof. Yehuda Lapidot, an Irgun member who later researched the history of mandatory Palestine.
“Neither organization emerges with clean hands from this dark matter,” Haskin wrote. He added that the fingers of the right-wing organization were easier to pull off, but emphasized the role of Haganah members in the murder of Jews.
In this context, the first political murder of a Jew in compulsory Palestine cannot be ignored. The victim was Jacob de Haan, a strange character and proud poet who became ultra-orthodox and anti-Zionist and spoke to Arabs about the possibility of revoking the Balfour Declaration. Haganah member Avraham Tehomi and others were believed to be behind de Haan’s murder on a street in Jerusalem in June 1924.
British officials have also been attacked by the Haganah, although most of the attacks on mandate officers have been carried out by Irgun and Lehi members. The best known was the murder of Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State in the Middle East. He was shot by Lehi members in Cairo in November 1944. The Haganah meanwhile killed British officer William Bruce, who was shot in Jerusalem in October 1946 at the end of the Simchat Torah. “A British inspector was murdered last night walking alone in Jerusalem and wearing civilian clothes,” said Haaretz the next day.
Exceptionally for these days, the perpetrators were members of the Palmach: The Haganah commando had been set up in 1941 and worked with the British in the early years. The murder was a response to Bruce’s abuse of Palmach prisoners in a British prison a few months earlier.
Peleg Levy’s documentary project included an interview from 2010 with the operation commander, Aharon Spector. He told Modi Snir and Levy that he had followed Bruce with the intention of punishing him. “I was waiting for him, he felt that he was a target,” he said. The attack was preceded by a trial by a special Palmach court that sentenced Bruce to death. According to Spector, the order came from Yigal Allon.
“In private, people weren’t worried about telling these stories, while the collective they were part of didn’t enjoy talking about it,” says Levy.
Yisrael Medad from the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem investigated the incident as part of a series of lectures on “Purity of Arms”. “This incident is amusing,” he says, referring to a flyer that Palmach published after the murder. “They had to explain that they were different from the Irgun and Lehi terrorists – but in practice they had to do the same,” he says
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