Irgun Zwai Leumi

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Avraham Tehomi , the first commander of the Irgun

The Irgun Zwai Leumi , ( Hebrew אִרְגּוּן צְבָאִי לְאֻמִּי Irgūn Zvaʾī Ləʾummī , German 'National Military Organization' , abbreviation IZL or Etzel ), also just Irgun , was a Jewish Zionist underground paramilitary organization in the British Mandate of Palestine before the establishment of the Israeli state from 1931 to 1948 . It was close to the World Union of Zionist Revisionists of Vladimir Jabotinsky , who was also commander in chief from 1937 to 1940. As a result of the Arab uprising , the group carried out terrorist attacks against the Arab population . Later, the attacks were increasingly directed against the British mandate power. The most famous operations include the bomb attack on the King David Hotel in 1946 with over 90 victims and the participation in the Deir Yasin massacre in 1948 with over 100 victims. After Israel's independence was proclaimed in 1948, Israel's government dissolved the organization, sometimes breaking resistance with armed force, and integrating its members into the Israeli armed forces .

Surname

A long form is also more accurate HA 'I rgun HA Z va'i HA L ə'ummi bə-'Eretz Jisra'el ( Hebrew הָאִרְגּוּן הַצְּבָאִי הַלְּאֻמִּי בְּאֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל, "The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel ") used. Outside Israel, the short form is Irgun (ארגון 'Organization' ) in use, within Israel the acronym ʾEtzel ( Hebrew אצ״ל) - based on the Hebrew first letters of the name - used.

aims

The Irgun sought the establishment of a Jewish state within the boundaries of the British Mandate of Palestine, according to the plan of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. They therefore committed themselves to 1940 together with other organizations for the immigration of Jews to Palestine. The immigration of Jews was subsequently severely restricted by the British. During the Third Reich and the Holocaust in particular, Jewish refugees were turned away and sent back to Europe to their certain death. Because of this development, the Irgun directed their activities increasingly against the British mandate power. Ideologically, the underground activities were strongly influenced by Jabotinsky's Betar youth, who today call themselves “the cradle of Likud ”.

Irgun poster for distribution in Europe - the map shows Israel within the boundaries of the British Mandate for Palestine, which according to the Balfour Declaration was intended for the establishment of a Jewish state

The Irgun's logo shows the sketched area of ​​the British Mandate of Palestine, which, according to the Balfour Declaration, was intended for the establishment of a Jewish state. The arm with the rifle is a symbol of the armed struggle, the battlements on the coat of arms symbolize defensibility, the two olive branches below, on the other hand, the will to peace.
The Hebrew wordsארגון צבאי לאומי above in the picture means "National Military Organization", below (רק כך) "Only like that!"

history

Beginnings and the Arab Uprising

The Irgun split off from the Hagana in 1931 under the leadership of Avraham Tehomi , initially with its own associations to achieve more effective protection for the Jews in Palestine after anti-Jewish riots culminated in the Hebron massacre in 1929 .

Tehomi and others close to the General Zionists and Liberals returned to the Hagana to join forces during the Great Arab Uprising in 1936 . This split led to a radicalization of the Irgun.

This split led to a further radicalization of the Irgun, which, especially between 1937 and 1939, under the military leadership of Moshe Rosenberg (1937–1938) and the high command of Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky (1938–1940) carried out numerous bomb attacks on cafes and marketplaces and carried out British police stations . The organization was secretly supported by the Polish government until 1939, which wanted to get the greatest possible number of Jewish citizens out of Poland.

During the Second World War

After Jabotinsky's death in 1940, the Irgun split up. His successor David Raziel signed an agreement with Inspector General Alan Saunders (1886-1964) of the Palestine Police and worked with the British. Among Raziel's followers were Yitzhak Berman and Menachem Begin . This group finally split off in 1942 and founded Lechi .

In December 1943 Begin took over the leadership of the Irgun and from the beginning of 1944 took up the fight against the British again. He publicly declared war on Great Britain.

Between the end of the war and independence

In July 1946, under the leadership of Begin, the Irgun carried out the attack on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which at the time housed some departments of the British Mandate Government and offices of the General Staff of the British Army for Palestine. 91 British, Arabs and Jews were killed in the attack. It led to a final break with the Hagana. As a result, the Hagana initiated a series of operations against Irgun and Lechi. Winston Churchill and large parts of the British political elite turned away from support for Zionism because of the terrorist attacks by the two organizations.

Akko Citadel: Hole in the wall that the Irgun blew up in 1947

On May 4, 1947, the Irgun forcibly freed prisoners, for which purpose they received from Rechov Portzej ha-Mivtzar (רְחוֹב פּוֹרְצֵי הַמִּבְצָר 'Road the Burglars into the Fortress' ;شارع اللص في القلعة, DMG Šāriʿ al-Laṣi fī al-Qalʿa ), walled up former openings in the southern wall of Akko's citadel blew open . For this purpose, the group of liberators had approached unnoticed over the roof of the Turkish Ḥammām opposite the prison. 41 prisoners belonging to the Palestinian-Jewish underground were freed and 214 other prisoners, mainly non-Jewish Arab prisoners, escaped. Imprisoned Hagannah supporters opposed the forcible release and remained in prison.

In the skirmish that developed outside the prison between intruders and Palestinian police and British army troops , three of the intruders and six of the escaping prisoners were killed. Thirteen were captured, three of them - Avschalōm Ḥabīb (אַבְשָׁלוֹם חָבִּיבּ; 1926–1947), Me'īr Naqqar (מֵאִיר נַקָּר; 1926–1947) and Jaʿaqov Imre Weiss (יַעֲקֹב וַייְס; 1924–1947) were charged and sentenced to death. The Irgun had repeatedly kidnapped British security officials and threatened to kill them in order to extort the cancellation of executions or pardons for their sentenced members to prison terms, and if Britain persisted they had perpetrated them.

Museum of the Underground : Former Gallows, 2013

On July 12, 1947, the Irgun had kidnapped the British sergeants Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice as hostages, who set out to find and free the British and Hagannah in search of them. Ḥabīb, Naqqar and Weiss should be executed without the usual notice in order not to leave time for another kidnapping. As a result, the Superintendent of Jail (prison director) GEC Charlton refused to lead the execution because the death row inmates and their relatives had to be denied farewell letters and visits due to the short notice.

Major Charlton was replaced as superintendent by Prison Inspector PJ Hackett, who assisted Andrew Clowe, superintendent of Nablus Prison , as executioner. As ordered at short notice by High Commissioner Alan Cunningham, the executions took place on the gallows in Acre prison on July 29, 1947 (see Olei haGardom ). The Irgun immediately murdered their hostages.

The village of Deir Yasin, where the Irgun and Lechi committed a massacre

During the capture of an Arab village two kilometers west of the city in the course of the battle for Jerusalem , Irgun and Lechi caused the Deir Yasin massacre on April 9, 1948 . Over a hundred Arabs were killed, most of them civilians, including many women, children and the elderly. The Arab village of Deir Yasin had previously entered into a neighborhood agreement with the nearby Jewish settlement of Giv'at Shaul not to accept fighters from either side in order to stay out of the fighting. During the attack, the villagers holed up in their houses and offered resistance. The militarily untrained and poorly equipped attackers shied away from close combat in the winding buildings , so they went from house to house and threw hand grenades through the windows. This approach in particular led to the high number of civilians killed. Benny Morris, professor at Ben Gurion University in the Negev, writes that survivors, including women and children, were then driven on trucks through West Jerusalem, where they were mocked, spat at and pelted with stones. At least some of those presented were likely killed afterwards. There was also looting, mistreatment and rape. The Jewish leadership and Hagana condemned the action, the Jewish Agency for Israel asked the Jordanian King Abdallah ibn Husain I for forgiveness for the massacre, which the latter refused. Four days later, on April 13, 1948, in a retaliatory attack, Arab militants massacred a medical convoy on Mount Scopus, killing 77 Jews and injuring 23, most of them doctors and nurses.

Dissolution (1948)

The transport ship Altalena, which was set on fire by the Israeli army and used by the Irgun to smuggle weapons

After the founding of the state of Israel in May 1948, the government of Israel decided to dissolve the Irgun and place their approximately 4,000 fighters under the command of the Israeli army, which is dominated by the Haganah . The Irgun concluded a corresponding agreement at the beginning of June 1948, but only stuck to it half-heartedly. One of the most serious violations was the Altalena Incident, in which 16 Irgun fighters and three Israeli soldiers were killed. As a result, over two hundred Irgun fighters were temporarily detained and the rest were forcibly incorporated into the army. Only in besieged Jerusalem did a 400-strong Irgun battalion initially remain independent, but after an ultimatum handed over its weapons to the army in September.

aftermath

The political wing of the Irgun gathered in the Cherut party, founded by Begin, but it only gained influence after it formed the core of the Likud bloc in a center-right alliance in 1973.

Commanders

Commander in Chief: 1937–1940 Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky

Museums

Like the two other predecessor organizations of the Israeli armed forces, the Haganah and the Lechi , the Irgun has a museum in Tel Aviv , which is located on King George Street. This illuminates the entire history of the organization.

In addition, there is the Etzel 1948 Museum on Tel Aviv Beach , which shows the history of Etzel during the Israeli War of Independence. On the website of the museum it says: “The museum display describes the exodus from the underground and the transition to an open war. The focus is on a description of the campaign to liberate Jaffa in the week of Passover in 1948; historical documents, photos and films, newspaper clippings, maps, models and weapons as well as multimedia information for visitors, which contains information about the activities of the organization, its warriors and the fallen in the 1948 campaign. ”The museum is under the control of the Israeli Defense Ministry.

See also

Assassination attempt on Konrad Adenauer, Otto Küster and Franz Böhm

literature

  • J. Bowyer Bell: Terror Out of Zion: The Fight for Israeli Independence . 1996, ISBN 1-56000-870-9 , pp. 9-61.
  • Henning Sietz: Assassination attempt on Adenauer . Siedler, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-88680-800-9 .
  • Benny Morris: Righteous Victims - A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001. Vintage Books, 2001.
  • Calter Walton: Empire of Secrets . British intelligence, the Cold War and the twilight of empire , London (Harper Press) 2013. ISBN 0-00-745796-0 . ISBN 978-0-00-745796-0 .

Web links

Commons : Irgun Zvaʾi Leʾummi  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Meyer's Lexicon : Irgun Zwai Leumi ( Memento from January 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on May 6, 2007.
  2. ↑ Irgun Zvai Leumi, JEWISH RIGHT-WING UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT. Encyclopedia Britannica , accessed May 5, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c Arie Perliger, Leonard Weinberg, Jewish Self Defense and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel: Roots and Traditions. "Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions", Vol. 4, No. 3, 100, (2003)
  4. ↑ a b Israel's settlement policy - foundations of the Middle East conflict In: bornpower.de. , accessed April 9, 2018.
  5. ↑ Timothy Snyder : Black Earth. London 2015, p. 66.
  6. ↑ Chalk, Peter (1996). Encyclopedia of World Terrorism. Routledge. P. 394. ISBN 978-1563248061 .
  7. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. 4th edition. Munich 2006, pp. 496–501.
  8. ↑ Bernhard Dichter with Salman cotton (arrangement), Alex Carmel ( arrangement ) and Ejal Jakob Eisler ( arrangement ), עַכּוֹ - אֲתָרִים מִיָּמֵי הַתּוּרְכִּים /عَکّا: مواقع من العهد التركي(Additional title: Akko, buildings from the Turkish period / Akko, sites from the Turkish period ), University of Haifa /הַמָּכוֹן עַל שֵׁם גּוֹטְלִיבּ שׁוּמַכֶר לְחֵקֶר פְּעִילוּת הָעֹולָם הַנּוֹצְרִי בְּאֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּמֵּאָה הַ -19 (Gottlieb Schumacher Institute for Research into the Christian Contribution to the Reconstruction of Palestine in the 19th Century; Ed.), Haifa: הַמָּכוֹן עַל שֵׁם גּוֹטְלִיבּ שׁוּמַכֶר לְחֵקֶר פְּעִילוּת הָעֹולָם הַנּוֹצְרִי בְּאֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּמֵּאָה הַ -19, 2000, p. 54.
  9. ↑ a b c d "Museum of Heroism" , on: The Secrets of the Aboveground and Underground City of Akko , accessed on February 24, 2019.
  10. ↑ Abraham Rabinovich, Akko - St. Jean d'Acre , Herzliah:פַּלְפוֹט, 1980, (= Palphot's pictorial Guide & Souvenir), p. 31.
  11. ↑ a b Avraham Lewensohn, travel guide Israel with maps and city maps [Israel Tour Guide, 1979; German], Miriam Magal (ex.), Tel Aviv-Yapho: Tourguide, 1982, p. 47.
  12. ↑ a b c d e Margaret Penfold, Section 12 (May-November 1947) “The Hanging of two British Police Sergeants” , in: British Palestine Police Association , accessed August 19, 2019.
  13. ↑ Tom Segev , One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate [ יְמֵי הַכַּלָּנִיּוֹת - אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּתְקוּפַת הַמַּנְדָּט , Jerusalem:כֶּתֶר, 1999; Engl.], Haim Watzman (ex.), New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2000, p. 479. ISBN 0-8050-6587-3 .
  14. ^ Propaganda as History: What Happened at Deir Yassin? , 2005
  15. ↑ Ben Morris, The Historiography of Deir Yassin , 2006
  16. ^ Benny Morris: Righteous Victims. A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001 , p. 209.
  17. ^ The Etzel Museum - 1948. Retrieved June 1, 2019 .