Sir, - Congratulations to Shmuel Katz for his trenchant and necessary reminder to a new generation of how the heroes of Israel's struggle for independence were forced to battle not only British and Arabs, but the Jewish establishment ("They hunted us like animals," May 1). It served as a reminder of what Katz has noted elsewhere - that what is generally described as Israel's War of Independence was in fact a war of defense, or survival, against invasion by foreign Arab armies.
Israel's real War of Independence was waged against the British by the Jewish underground, sporadically, as Katz notes, by elements of the Haganah, but chiefly by the Irgun and even earlier by the Lehi or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, which became better known, thanks to the hostile Jewish establishment, as the Stern Gang.
ERICH ISAAC
Irvington, Indiana
Showing posts with label Saison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saison. Show all posts
Monday, May 7, 2007
Letter in Jerusalem Post Re: S. Katz's 'Saison' Op-ed
Trenchant reminder
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Shmuel Katz's article on Teddy Kollek
They hunted us like animals
THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 30, 2007
The recent revelation that during the revolt against British rule in Palestine Teddy Kollek was engaged in his younger life in having Jewish underground fighters handed over to the British police came as a shock to many people in the country. The story, however, has a very much wider background than the early career of the man who became world-famous as the mayor of Jerusalem. It opens a long-shuttered window on the tragic scene of Jewish internal conflict in the middle 1940s - and the prelude to the birth of Israel.
The young Teddy Kollek must be viewed through that window not as a "loose cannon," but as one of the executors of the policy of the Zionist establishment to help the British government remain in control of Palestine - a policy that, if successful, would prevent the rise of a sovereign Jewish state.
Take this: On December 8, 1944, Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, found it necessary and appropriate to send a dutiful, indeed ingratiating, telegram to the British prime minister reporting "how our co-operation with the authorities [in Palestine] in stamping out terrorism is proceeding satisfactorily. 500 names of suspects have already been supplied to the police, of whom 250 have been arrested." The 250, almost all members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, were promptly exiled to British colonial internment camps in central Africa.
IN WEIZMANN'S telegram there is not a hint of the fact that at that moment masses of Weizmann's fellow Jews in Europe - men, women and children - who were being murdered by the Nazis, would still be alive if Britain had not closed the gates of Palestine against them.
The text of Weizmann's telegram became available to research only years later. But there was no secrecy attached to the speech delivered by the chairman of the Zionist Executive, David Ben-Gurion, at a Labour Conference some days before Weizmann's telegram. In that speech Ben-Gurion spoke of the underground fighters against Britain's oppressive regime as though they were criminals. He demanded that the public cooperate in expelling from his or her community anybody suspected of being in contact with the underground or in possession of its literature.
Nobody was to be spared. Clerks and farmers, lawyers and tradesmen, teachers and pupils, all were fair game. To the Hagana - the force that had been created for Jewish defense - Ben-Gurion's demand was transmitted as a direct order. The operation planned by Ben-Gurion was playfully called hasaizon - "the season" (a term borrowed from English fox hunting).
There were, however, many Hagana members who refused to comply. The order was consequently shelved. The job was then taken on by an ad-hoc body of volunteers from the movement, who created a three-tiered formation - for fingering suspects, for capturing them and for delivering them to the police.
The fruits of the "season" seem statistically meager - some 400 detainees landed in central Africa - but it had great impact morally and socially. The ordeal of these young detainees over the next years did not quench their patriotism or their creativeness, and their remarkably ingenious plans for escape from the British, some of them successful, created an epic chapter in modern Jewish history.
Many of those young men used the time in captivity for completing their education. Some of them later rose to distinction in the State. One became prime minister; another, president of the Supreme Court.
THE PRECISE context of the revolt was the British government's "White Paper" of 1939 - representing the last phase of calculated British retreat and betrayal of the Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate had been entrusted to Britain in 1922 for the specific purpose of helping to bring about a Jewish state by facilitating immigration and settlement. Britain had not easily achieved this trust for she was famously suspected, notably in the US, of colonialist ambitions; and Churchill, the British colonial minister, asked Weizmann to persuade the American president Harding that the Jewish people believed that the British were really and truly acting only to help the Jewish people.
Weizmann and his colleagues made a public campaign, succeeded in their assurances - and their trust turned out, from the beginning, to be gravely misplaced.
By 1939 British governments had gradually so downgraded their obligations under the Mandate that they now projected, in the White Paper, a final five-year trickle of Jewish immigrants (1,500 per annum) and then a complete stoppage of immigration - thus establishing an Arab majority, with a British "super"-government which would "protect" the Jewish minority! The Jewish nation would be thrown back to its state of homelessness. No less.
The White Paper evoked worldwide Jewish protests and uproar even in the British parliament, with a resulting severe drop in the Conservative government's majority. But the government ignored all protests. It could however not proceed to implement the White Paper.
THERE WAS one obstacle: the Palestine Mandate required that every change in British policy had to be approved by the League of Nations. When the British government thus submitted the White Paper for approval by the overseeing authority, the League's Mandates Commission, that approval was refused. The White Paper, the commission declared, did not conform to the Mandate. In consequence, the White Paper never became law.
That ruling by the commission was issued in summer 1939, a few weeks before World War II broke out. Thus the British plan for the deathblow of Zionism was blocked. Legally it had become a dead letter. Yet the government even ignored that rejection, and henceforth behaved until the very end of its rule as though the White Paper was a legal, enforceable document.
Why Winston Churchill, who had vigorously opposed the White Paper in parliament, did nothing to revoke it, or even mitigate its effects when he came to power, was never explained. Indeed the only seemingly positive, though enigmatic, statement he made, in conversation with Weizmann toward the end of the war, was that the Jews "would get the plum in the pudding." At war's end Weizmann was to discover that not only was there neither plum nor pudding, there was also no Churchill. His Conservative Party had been defeated in the general election that was held shortly after the war.
It did not take long for Weizmann and the official Zionist establishment to discover that the Labour Party - which in opposition had vigorously fought the White Paper policy - had turned completely around when they came to power. Indeed, the whips of the Conservatives were being replaced by the scorpions of Labour.
Prominent among the decisions of the new government, headed by Clement Attlee and with Ernest Bevin as foreign minister, was the refusal to allow the 100,000 survivors of the Holocaust to enter Palestine. They remained interned in British camps in Europe.
THE ZIONIST leaders and the Hagana responded by embarking on a campaign of "illegal" immigration such as they had opposed when organized by Jabotinsky before the Holocaust - this again in the face of British resistance, as we had known it in the days of that earlier campaign.
Ernest Bevin turned out to be the greatest practicing British anti-Semite of the century. One of his bright ideas was that survivors of the Holocaust should remain in a Europe soaked in the blood of their families. Some of the "illegal" boatloads of survivors captured by the Royal Navy were indeed returned to Europe, others were re-interned in Cyprus.
More significant was the Hagana's conversion to rebellious action inside Palestine. It was now ordered into the battle with the British. Unbelievably, in November 1945 the United Resistance Movement was formed by agreement between the three organizations: Hagana, Irgun and Lehi. They coordinated their separate plans, with overall monitoring by the leadership of the Hagana. The Hagana carried out a number of major operations, notably the destruction of bridges, demonstrating that the bulk of their members were of the same tough breed as the members of the Irgun.
THEN THE British, claiming collusion between the Zionist leadership and the Hagana, simply arrested all the available members of the World Zionist Executive. (Weizmann and Ben-Gurion both happened to be abroad at the time). The resistance leadership decided that this would not be tolerated - and an Irgun plan for a major attack was agreed upon, blowing up the King David Hotel, which had been chosen by the British to house their heavily-defended military headquarters. Though given due warning of the attack (a warning received also by the nearby French Consulate and The Palestine Post) the head of the British administration decided to ignore it ("Here I give the orders, not the Irgun!" he is said to have exclaimed) and some 80 people were killed in the building.
Zionism's left wing, where there had been persistent refusal to "justify" an armed struggle, was much emboldened by the shock of the King David Hotel disaster, and now urgently renewed its demand to dissolve the United Resistance. Weizmann openly opposed the resistance, and though Ben-Gurion at first blew hot and cold (which Weizmann described as a "hot frost") joined forces with him.
Under British pressure, then, and evident internal disunity, the Zionist Executive members, who had been detained at Latrun, signed a "good conduct" avowal and were released. At the subsequent World Zionist Congress in Switzerland, December 1946, the Weizmannist policy, supported fully by Ben-Gurion, won the day. The leader of the Hagana, Dr. Moshe Sneh, resigned in disgust at Ben-Gurion's betrayal of the agreement between them; and the United Resistance Movement came to an end.
Relations between the underground organizations resumed their former patterns, with the Irgun going on to ever more weighty attacks on the British, and the Zionist leadership and the Hagana (with much-lessened influence) trying unsuccessfully to prevent them.
But the Irgun's operations, and the British government's complete failure to find an answer to them, had by now created a climate of defeat in Britain, both in the press and in parliament, where Churchill kept repeating the slogan "Beat them or get out."
In September 1947, the British government, after bringing her problem to the United Nations, announced that it was leaving Palestine. Britain did so on May 15 1948, thus setting the date for the birth of the State of Israel.
THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 30, 2007
The recent revelation that during the revolt against British rule in Palestine Teddy Kollek was engaged in his younger life in having Jewish underground fighters handed over to the British police came as a shock to many people in the country. The story, however, has a very much wider background than the early career of the man who became world-famous as the mayor of Jerusalem. It opens a long-shuttered window on the tragic scene of Jewish internal conflict in the middle 1940s - and the prelude to the birth of Israel.
The young Teddy Kollek must be viewed through that window not as a "loose cannon," but as one of the executors of the policy of the Zionist establishment to help the British government remain in control of Palestine - a policy that, if successful, would prevent the rise of a sovereign Jewish state.
Take this: On December 8, 1944, Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, found it necessary and appropriate to send a dutiful, indeed ingratiating, telegram to the British prime minister reporting "how our co-operation with the authorities [in Palestine] in stamping out terrorism is proceeding satisfactorily. 500 names of suspects have already been supplied to the police, of whom 250 have been arrested." The 250, almost all members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, were promptly exiled to British colonial internment camps in central Africa.
IN WEIZMANN'S telegram there is not a hint of the fact that at that moment masses of Weizmann's fellow Jews in Europe - men, women and children - who were being murdered by the Nazis, would still be alive if Britain had not closed the gates of Palestine against them.
The text of Weizmann's telegram became available to research only years later. But there was no secrecy attached to the speech delivered by the chairman of the Zionist Executive, David Ben-Gurion, at a Labour Conference some days before Weizmann's telegram. In that speech Ben-Gurion spoke of the underground fighters against Britain's oppressive regime as though they were criminals. He demanded that the public cooperate in expelling from his or her community anybody suspected of being in contact with the underground or in possession of its literature.
Nobody was to be spared. Clerks and farmers, lawyers and tradesmen, teachers and pupils, all were fair game. To the Hagana - the force that had been created for Jewish defense - Ben-Gurion's demand was transmitted as a direct order. The operation planned by Ben-Gurion was playfully called hasaizon - "the season" (a term borrowed from English fox hunting).
There were, however, many Hagana members who refused to comply. The order was consequently shelved. The job was then taken on by an ad-hoc body of volunteers from the movement, who created a three-tiered formation - for fingering suspects, for capturing them and for delivering them to the police.
The fruits of the "season" seem statistically meager - some 400 detainees landed in central Africa - but it had great impact morally and socially. The ordeal of these young detainees over the next years did not quench their patriotism or their creativeness, and their remarkably ingenious plans for escape from the British, some of them successful, created an epic chapter in modern Jewish history.
Many of those young men used the time in captivity for completing their education. Some of them later rose to distinction in the State. One became prime minister; another, president of the Supreme Court.
THE PRECISE context of the revolt was the British government's "White Paper" of 1939 - representing the last phase of calculated British retreat and betrayal of the Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate had been entrusted to Britain in 1922 for the specific purpose of helping to bring about a Jewish state by facilitating immigration and settlement. Britain had not easily achieved this trust for she was famously suspected, notably in the US, of colonialist ambitions; and Churchill, the British colonial minister, asked Weizmann to persuade the American president Harding that the Jewish people believed that the British were really and truly acting only to help the Jewish people.
Weizmann and his colleagues made a public campaign, succeeded in their assurances - and their trust turned out, from the beginning, to be gravely misplaced.
By 1939 British governments had gradually so downgraded their obligations under the Mandate that they now projected, in the White Paper, a final five-year trickle of Jewish immigrants (1,500 per annum) and then a complete stoppage of immigration - thus establishing an Arab majority, with a British "super"-government which would "protect" the Jewish minority! The Jewish nation would be thrown back to its state of homelessness. No less.
The White Paper evoked worldwide Jewish protests and uproar even in the British parliament, with a resulting severe drop in the Conservative government's majority. But the government ignored all protests. It could however not proceed to implement the White Paper.
THERE WAS one obstacle: the Palestine Mandate required that every change in British policy had to be approved by the League of Nations. When the British government thus submitted the White Paper for approval by the overseeing authority, the League's Mandates Commission, that approval was refused. The White Paper, the commission declared, did not conform to the Mandate. In consequence, the White Paper never became law.
That ruling by the commission was issued in summer 1939, a few weeks before World War II broke out. Thus the British plan for the deathblow of Zionism was blocked. Legally it had become a dead letter. Yet the government even ignored that rejection, and henceforth behaved until the very end of its rule as though the White Paper was a legal, enforceable document.
Why Winston Churchill, who had vigorously opposed the White Paper in parliament, did nothing to revoke it, or even mitigate its effects when he came to power, was never explained. Indeed the only seemingly positive, though enigmatic, statement he made, in conversation with Weizmann toward the end of the war, was that the Jews "would get the plum in the pudding." At war's end Weizmann was to discover that not only was there neither plum nor pudding, there was also no Churchill. His Conservative Party had been defeated in the general election that was held shortly after the war.
It did not take long for Weizmann and the official Zionist establishment to discover that the Labour Party - which in opposition had vigorously fought the White Paper policy - had turned completely around when they came to power. Indeed, the whips of the Conservatives were being replaced by the scorpions of Labour.
Prominent among the decisions of the new government, headed by Clement Attlee and with Ernest Bevin as foreign minister, was the refusal to allow the 100,000 survivors of the Holocaust to enter Palestine. They remained interned in British camps in Europe.
THE ZIONIST leaders and the Hagana responded by embarking on a campaign of "illegal" immigration such as they had opposed when organized by Jabotinsky before the Holocaust - this again in the face of British resistance, as we had known it in the days of that earlier campaign.
Ernest Bevin turned out to be the greatest practicing British anti-Semite of the century. One of his bright ideas was that survivors of the Holocaust should remain in a Europe soaked in the blood of their families. Some of the "illegal" boatloads of survivors captured by the Royal Navy were indeed returned to Europe, others were re-interned in Cyprus.
More significant was the Hagana's conversion to rebellious action inside Palestine. It was now ordered into the battle with the British. Unbelievably, in November 1945 the United Resistance Movement was formed by agreement between the three organizations: Hagana, Irgun and Lehi. They coordinated their separate plans, with overall monitoring by the leadership of the Hagana. The Hagana carried out a number of major operations, notably the destruction of bridges, demonstrating that the bulk of their members were of the same tough breed as the members of the Irgun.
THEN THE British, claiming collusion between the Zionist leadership and the Hagana, simply arrested all the available members of the World Zionist Executive. (Weizmann and Ben-Gurion both happened to be abroad at the time). The resistance leadership decided that this would not be tolerated - and an Irgun plan for a major attack was agreed upon, blowing up the King David Hotel, which had been chosen by the British to house their heavily-defended military headquarters. Though given due warning of the attack (a warning received also by the nearby French Consulate and The Palestine Post) the head of the British administration decided to ignore it ("Here I give the orders, not the Irgun!" he is said to have exclaimed) and some 80 people were killed in the building.
Zionism's left wing, where there had been persistent refusal to "justify" an armed struggle, was much emboldened by the shock of the King David Hotel disaster, and now urgently renewed its demand to dissolve the United Resistance. Weizmann openly opposed the resistance, and though Ben-Gurion at first blew hot and cold (which Weizmann described as a "hot frost") joined forces with him.
Under British pressure, then, and evident internal disunity, the Zionist Executive members, who had been detained at Latrun, signed a "good conduct" avowal and were released. At the subsequent World Zionist Congress in Switzerland, December 1946, the Weizmannist policy, supported fully by Ben-Gurion, won the day. The leader of the Hagana, Dr. Moshe Sneh, resigned in disgust at Ben-Gurion's betrayal of the agreement between them; and the United Resistance Movement came to an end.
Relations between the underground organizations resumed their former patterns, with the Irgun going on to ever more weighty attacks on the British, and the Zionist leadership and the Hagana (with much-lessened influence) trying unsuccessfully to prevent them.
But the Irgun's operations, and the British government's complete failure to find an answer to them, had by now created a climate of defeat in Britain, both in the press and in parliament, where Churchill kept repeating the slogan "Beat them or get out."
In September 1947, the British government, after bringing her problem to the United Nations, announced that it was leaving Palestine. Britain did so on May 15 1948, thus setting the date for the birth of the State of Israel.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Yossi Sarid Responds to Kollek's Role in the Saison
From Yossi Sarid's op-ed in Haaretz, "Free peoples in their Own Lands":-
A month ago, Yedioth Ahronoth published classified MI5 documents that had recently been made public. They revealed that Teddy Kollek, later mayor of Jerusalem, had given the British security service information about the activities of the Etzel and Lehi underground movements. The newspaper published this and there was an outcry, as if by conditioned reflex. Since then, not only those involved, but also numerous infuriated talkback participants have had their say, and there were suggestions that Teddy's name be removed from the Jerusalem stadium that bears it and replaced with that of Lehi leader Avraham ("Yair") Stern.
Indeed, it is not nice to be a teller of tales and not fitting to pass such information to the British, and we all know what happens to an informant under Jewish religious law. But there are times when such behavior should not necessarily be criticized. In his autobiography, Kollek wrote: "I was always opposed to the anarchy among our people. It was vital that the Jewish Agency, our government at the time, take action against terrorist groups who took the liberty of making their own decisions and endangering policy ... I was opposed to the Etzel and the Lehi, just as after the Yom Kippur War, I was opposed to those who set up settlements against government policy."
Kollek was right, and whoever wishes to be convinced of this is invited to take a look at Israel's position toward the Palestinian Authority. Israel categorically demands that the PA assert control over its rebels and impose the central government's authority on them. Israel also praises any sign of Palestinian cooperation with it. But every nation under a foreign yoke has the tendency to consider its dissidents as heroes, and those who collaborate as traitors. History teaches us that lawbreakers bring disaster upon movements of national liberation.
Had the Palestinians stopped their indiscriminate violent opposition and turned it into civil disobedience, they would have been rid of the occupation a long time ago. Terrorism is harming their justified struggle for independence; every terrorist attack merely delays the end of their subjugation. The violent underground activities of the Etzel and Lehi, which were also stained with terrorist acts, did not further Israel's independence, and possibly even held it up.
From time to time, the argument flares up over who really expelled the British from here - the organized Yishuv (Jewish community) or those who did their own thing - and it seems that there is still no more burning argument than this one, which brings all the bears out of the forest. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, "no one expelled them; they decided to go because they considered this in their best interests after they lost the support of the Americans, and this was lost because of the impact of the Holocaust." And Haim Guri once said to me that one "Exodus" - a ship overflowing with refugees - at sea was worth as much as all the campaigns on land, from the attempt on Lord Moyhinan's life to the attack on the King David Hotel.
David Ben-Gurion, Kollek and their colleagues in the Haganah understood that Britain had made up its mind to fold up the flag of the empire and that the Yishuv must prepare for its real war of liberation, against the Arabs, and not waste its strength in a war against the rearguard of an imaginary enemy. Following World War II, it became clear that the empire was a liability rather than an asset, and United Kingdom citizens were more interested in how to heat their homes than whether the sun would ever set over India and Ceylon. Palestine was as interesting to them as last year's snow. England saved itself when it shed its colonies; the burden of control was too large for its democratic measurements and vital needs. The other colonial powers followed suit, throwing colony after colony and mandate after mandate off the deck so that they would not sink.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Moshe Arens on the "Saison"
Add them to the Pantheon
By Moshe Arens
Sooner or later the truth will out. Although long suspected, it is now official. Teddy Kollek informed on fighters of the prestate Irgun underground to British intelligence during the waning years of the Mandate, and many of those Etzel fighters
who languished for months in British concentration camps in the wilds of Africa were there based on information provided by Kollek to the British. One of them was Yaakov Meridor, Menachem Begin's second in command, who eventually succeeded in escaping
from the Gilgil concentration camp in Kenya in March 1948.
Kollek did not act on his own. The leaders of the Labor movement, led by David Ben-Gurion, decided on cooperation with the British authorities toward the end of 1944 in an attempt to crush the underground movement that was fighting the British. The period that followed has been named the Saison, or the hunting season, when Etzel and Lehi members were hunted down and turned over to the British. Not everybody in the Labor movement was prepared to implement the decision of the Labor leadership.
A notable exception was Yigal Allon, then a senior commander in the Palmach.
Anita Shapiro writes in her book "Yigal Allon: Spring of His Life" that in October 1944, at the convention of the Ahdut Haavoda party, Yisrael Galili, one of the leaders of the Haganah, insisted that the need to act against Etzel and Lehi
fighters stemmed from the fascist nature of these organizations. The convention united around a declaration that the "the terrorist gangs are a Jewish transmigration of world Fascism."
Labeling Jabotinsky and his adherents as fascists was nothing new. What might seem surprising in retrospect is that this slander was still being used against a rival Zionist movement toward the end of World War II. As a matter of fact, under German occupation in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Socialist Zionist movements considered Betar, the Revisionist youth movement, as fascist. Mordechai Tenenbaum, one of the founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the ghetto, wrote in a publication of Dror, the Socialist Zionist youth movement, led by Antek Zuckerman and Tzivia Lubetkin, that both the Italian Socialist Giacomo Matteotti and Chaim Arlosoroff had been the victims of Fascism. "Matteotti was murdered by killers hired by Italian Fascism: Arlosoroff - by men sent by the Fascist organization that has arisen among Jews. The death of the martyrs, Matteotti and Arlosoroff, cries out for retribution." This was written when news of the mass murder of Jews by the Germans in Vilna, Lublin, and other places had already reached Warsaw, and only a month before the transport of Warsaw's Jews to the Treblinka gas chambers began.
It is little wonder that the Revisionists in the ghetto were not included in the ranks of the Jewish Fighting Organization, together with representatives of all other political groups, and that the two fighting organizations that led the uprising, the Jewish Fighting Organization, commanded by Mordechai Anielewicz, and the Revisionist-led Jewish Military Organization, commanded by Pawel Frenkel, did not fight the Germans as a united force.
Sadly, the story does not end here. The fact that Pawel Frenkel and his fighters fought the main battle of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising at Muranowski Square has been obscured for more than 60 years. A deliberate and effective effort has been made to
ignore, or at the very least minimize, the participation of Frenkel's fighters in the uprising, while adopting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a creation of the Labor movement.
The hunting season of underground fighters in Palestine occurred a year and a half after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Labor party leadership at that time was not about to give credit to the comrades of Etzel who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto. As a
matter of fact, it took years before the contribution Etzel and Lehi made to the establishment of the State of Israel in fighting British rule in Palestine began to be recognized, and their fighters who went to the gallows were acclaimed as national heroes.
Today there is hardly a town in Israel that does not have a street named after the Etzel and Lehi. For that matter, there is hardly a town that does not have a street named after Mordechai Anielewicz. And rightly so. But Pawel Frenkel is still missing
from the national pantheon.
David Landau, one of Frenkel's fighters who survived the uprising, wrote in his book "Caged" that shortly before the uprising began, Frenkel, in an address to his fighters, said: "Comrades! We will die before our time but we are not doomed. We
will be alive as long as Jewish history lives." It is high time that Pawel Frenkel and his comrades become part of Jewish history.
By Moshe Arens
Sooner or later the truth will out. Although long suspected, it is now official. Teddy Kollek informed on fighters of the prestate Irgun underground to British intelligence during the waning years of the Mandate, and many of those Etzel fighters
who languished for months in British concentration camps in the wilds of Africa were there based on information provided by Kollek to the British. One of them was Yaakov Meridor, Menachem Begin's second in command, who eventually succeeded in escaping
from the Gilgil concentration camp in Kenya in March 1948.
Kollek did not act on his own. The leaders of the Labor movement, led by David Ben-Gurion, decided on cooperation with the British authorities toward the end of 1944 in an attempt to crush the underground movement that was fighting the British. The period that followed has been named the Saison, or the hunting season, when Etzel and Lehi members were hunted down and turned over to the British. Not everybody in the Labor movement was prepared to implement the decision of the Labor leadership.
A notable exception was Yigal Allon, then a senior commander in the Palmach.
Anita Shapiro writes in her book "Yigal Allon: Spring of His Life" that in October 1944, at the convention of the Ahdut Haavoda party, Yisrael Galili, one of the leaders of the Haganah, insisted that the need to act against Etzel and Lehi
fighters stemmed from the fascist nature of these organizations. The convention united around a declaration that the "the terrorist gangs are a Jewish transmigration of world Fascism."
Labeling Jabotinsky and his adherents as fascists was nothing new. What might seem surprising in retrospect is that this slander was still being used against a rival Zionist movement toward the end of World War II. As a matter of fact, under German occupation in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Socialist Zionist movements considered Betar, the Revisionist youth movement, as fascist. Mordechai Tenenbaum, one of the founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the ghetto, wrote in a publication of Dror, the Socialist Zionist youth movement, led by Antek Zuckerman and Tzivia Lubetkin, that both the Italian Socialist Giacomo Matteotti and Chaim Arlosoroff had been the victims of Fascism. "Matteotti was murdered by killers hired by Italian Fascism: Arlosoroff - by men sent by the Fascist organization that has arisen among Jews. The death of the martyrs, Matteotti and Arlosoroff, cries out for retribution." This was written when news of the mass murder of Jews by the Germans in Vilna, Lublin, and other places had already reached Warsaw, and only a month before the transport of Warsaw's Jews to the Treblinka gas chambers began.
It is little wonder that the Revisionists in the ghetto were not included in the ranks of the Jewish Fighting Organization, together with representatives of all other political groups, and that the two fighting organizations that led the uprising, the Jewish Fighting Organization, commanded by Mordechai Anielewicz, and the Revisionist-led Jewish Military Organization, commanded by Pawel Frenkel, did not fight the Germans as a united force.
Sadly, the story does not end here. The fact that Pawel Frenkel and his fighters fought the main battle of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising at Muranowski Square has been obscured for more than 60 years. A deliberate and effective effort has been made to
ignore, or at the very least minimize, the participation of Frenkel's fighters in the uprising, while adopting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a creation of the Labor movement.
The hunting season of underground fighters in Palestine occurred a year and a half after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Labor party leadership at that time was not about to give credit to the comrades of Etzel who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto. As a
matter of fact, it took years before the contribution Etzel and Lehi made to the establishment of the State of Israel in fighting British rule in Palestine began to be recognized, and their fighters who went to the gallows were acclaimed as national heroes.
Today there is hardly a town in Israel that does not have a street named after the Etzel and Lehi. For that matter, there is hardly a town that does not have a street named after Mordechai Anielewicz. And rightly so. But Pawel Frenkel is still missing
from the national pantheon.
David Landau, one of Frenkel's fighters who survived the uprising, wrote in his book "Caged" that shortly before the uprising began, Frenkel, in an address to his fighters, said: "Comrades! We will die before our time but we are not doomed. We
will be alive as long as Jewish history lives." It is high time that Pawel Frenkel and his comrades become part of Jewish history.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Teddy Kollek's Role During the 'Saison'
Newsreports are in about Teddy Kollek's role during the 'Saison' period, 1944-1945, when members of the Irgun, mainly, were handed over to the British:
1. JTA
The late Teddy Kollek reportedly spied for Britain against the hard-line Jewish underground in British Mandate Palestine. Citing declassified documents, Yediot Achronot reported Thursday that Kollek, who is best remembered as Jerusalem's longest-serving mayor, had spent much of the 1940s passing information to the British authorities that helped them crack down on Etzel and Lehi fighters. At the time Kollek was a senior figure with the Jewish Agency, which was largely aligned with the more moderate Zionist movements Haganah and Palmach.
One of Etzel's leaders, Menachem Begin, topped Britain's wanted list, eluded capture and went on to become Israeli prime minister. According to Yediot, Israeli diplomats asked Britain's government archives to keep the files on Kollek sealed while he was still alive. Asked about the report, Kollek's son Amos told the newspaper, "Dad never spoke of his activities during that period."
2. Israel Insider
MI5: Teddy Kollek served as informer for British against other Jews
By: israelinsider staff and partners
Published: March 29, 2007
Yediot Aharonot reporter Ronen Bergman uncovers the unsavory news that an Israeli hero, recently deceased, was in fact an informer against Jewish patriots on behalf of the British occupiers in pre-State Palestine, and even tried to rat out future prime minister Menachem Begin.
Teddy Kollek, the legendary mayor of Jerusalem, lent a hand to the British authorities in their 1940s crackdown against the underground movements that sought to drive the British out of Palestine, secret MI5 documents have shown.
Kollek, who died three months ago, supplied the British intelligence agency with information about the activities of the Irgun and Stern Gang.
Beyond intelligence about the clandestine activities of the two groups, Kollek tried to help the British capture one of their most wanted men: Irgun leader and future Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
3. YNET
Kollek was British informer
Former mayor of Jerusalem helped British troops in their 1940s crackdown against right-wing underground Zionist groups, Irgun and Stern Gang
Ronen Bergman Published: 03.29.07, 12:54 / Israel News
Teddy Kollek, the legendary mayor of Jerusalem, lent a hand to the British authorities in their 1940s crackdown against right-wing underworld movements that sought to drive the British out of Palestine, secret MI5 documents have shown.
Kollek, who died three months ago, supplied the British intelligence agency with information about the activities of the Irgun and Stern Gang.
Beyond intelligence about the clandestine activities of the two groups, Kollek tried to help the British capture one of their most wanted men: Irgun leader Menachem Begin.
Begin commanded the Irgun from 1944 to 1948.
According to the newly released files, Kollek was instrumental in leading to the arrests of dozens of Irgun and Stern Gang members, the confiscation of arms, and the thwarting of numerous attacks against British interests.
Kollek's collaboration with the British came in the framework of a campaign waged by the Jewish Agency against the Irgun and Stern Gang, whose violent activities it deemed harmful to its political plans.
Leaders of the Yishuv, the Jewish population in Palestine, were keen on building bridges with the British to seek approval for their plans to bring thousands of refugees to Palestine from Europe.
The British mandate cashed in on Kollek's position as the deputy head of intelligence in the Jewish Agency to gain access to sensitive information about the Irgun and Stern Gang.
The scorpion
During a meeting with an MI5 officer on August 10, 1945, Kollek disclosed the location of a secret Irgun training camp in an abandoned building near Binyamina [Shuni].
British forces raided the training camp soon after, arresting 27 Irgun members, including three women and a handful of commanders who topped Britain's list of most wanted underworld figures.
"It will be a great idea to raid the place," Kollek is quoted as telling his British contact during one of their meetings.
The British contact wrote in one of his briefings that success against "Zionist terror" depended on Kollek and his men.
Last year the British government opened its extensive intelligence library on MI5 activities in the '40s to the public.
The Israeli Embassy in London was particularly interested in file number 66968, which documented Kollek's collaboration with MI5.
The Foreign Ministry however asked that Britain freeze the release of Kollek's file so long he was alive.
Although many of Kollek's testimonies were omitted, his name appeared on the file in which he is referred to as "the source." His codename was Scorpion.
Kollek never admitted to having collaborated with the British against Zionist underground groups but in his autobiography he said that he was against the violence exhibited by the Irgun and Stern Gang, referring to their attacks as "anarchy."
Kollek served as the mayor of Jerusalem from 1969 to 1993 when he lost to Ehud Olmert.
1. JTA
The late Teddy Kollek reportedly spied for Britain against the hard-line Jewish underground in British Mandate Palestine. Citing declassified documents, Yediot Achronot reported Thursday that Kollek, who is best remembered as Jerusalem's longest-serving mayor, had spent much of the 1940s passing information to the British authorities that helped them crack down on Etzel and Lehi fighters. At the time Kollek was a senior figure with the Jewish Agency, which was largely aligned with the more moderate Zionist movements Haganah and Palmach.
One of Etzel's leaders, Menachem Begin, topped Britain's wanted list, eluded capture and went on to become Israeli prime minister. According to Yediot, Israeli diplomats asked Britain's government archives to keep the files on Kollek sealed while he was still alive. Asked about the report, Kollek's son Amos told the newspaper, "Dad never spoke of his activities during that period."
2. Israel Insider
MI5: Teddy Kollek served as informer for British against other Jews
By: israelinsider staff and partners
Published: March 29, 2007
Yediot Aharonot reporter Ronen Bergman uncovers the unsavory news that an Israeli hero, recently deceased, was in fact an informer against Jewish patriots on behalf of the British occupiers in pre-State Palestine, and even tried to rat out future prime minister Menachem Begin.
Teddy Kollek, the legendary mayor of Jerusalem, lent a hand to the British authorities in their 1940s crackdown against the underground movements that sought to drive the British out of Palestine, secret MI5 documents have shown.
Kollek, who died three months ago, supplied the British intelligence agency with information about the activities of the Irgun and Stern Gang.
Beyond intelligence about the clandestine activities of the two groups, Kollek tried to help the British capture one of their most wanted men: Irgun leader and future Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
3. YNET
Kollek was British informer
Former mayor of Jerusalem helped British troops in their 1940s crackdown against right-wing underground Zionist groups, Irgun and Stern Gang
Ronen Bergman Published: 03.29.07, 12:54 / Israel News
Teddy Kollek, the legendary mayor of Jerusalem, lent a hand to the British authorities in their 1940s crackdown against right-wing underworld movements that sought to drive the British out of Palestine, secret MI5 documents have shown.
Kollek, who died three months ago, supplied the British intelligence agency with information about the activities of the Irgun and Stern Gang.
Beyond intelligence about the clandestine activities of the two groups, Kollek tried to help the British capture one of their most wanted men: Irgun leader Menachem Begin.
Begin commanded the Irgun from 1944 to 1948.
According to the newly released files, Kollek was instrumental in leading to the arrests of dozens of Irgun and Stern Gang members, the confiscation of arms, and the thwarting of numerous attacks against British interests.
Kollek's collaboration with the British came in the framework of a campaign waged by the Jewish Agency against the Irgun and Stern Gang, whose violent activities it deemed harmful to its political plans.
Leaders of the Yishuv, the Jewish population in Palestine, were keen on building bridges with the British to seek approval for their plans to bring thousands of refugees to Palestine from Europe.
The British mandate cashed in on Kollek's position as the deputy head of intelligence in the Jewish Agency to gain access to sensitive information about the Irgun and Stern Gang.
The scorpion
During a meeting with an MI5 officer on August 10, 1945, Kollek disclosed the location of a secret Irgun training camp in an abandoned building near Binyamina [Shuni].
British forces raided the training camp soon after, arresting 27 Irgun members, including three women and a handful of commanders who topped Britain's list of most wanted underworld figures.
"It will be a great idea to raid the place," Kollek is quoted as telling his British contact during one of their meetings.
The British contact wrote in one of his briefings that success against "Zionist terror" depended on Kollek and his men.
Last year the British government opened its extensive intelligence library on MI5 activities in the '40s to the public.
The Israeli Embassy in London was particularly interested in file number 66968, which documented Kollek's collaboration with MI5.
The Foreign Ministry however asked that Britain freeze the release of Kollek's file so long he was alive.
Although many of Kollek's testimonies were omitted, his name appeared on the file in which he is referred to as "the source." His codename was Scorpion.
Kollek never admitted to having collaborated with the British against Zionist underground groups but in his autobiography he said that he was against the violence exhibited by the Irgun and Stern Gang, referring to their attacks as "anarchy."
Kollek served as the mayor of Jerusalem from 1969 to 1993 when he lost to Ehud Olmert.
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