Israel's War of Liberation, 1944-1948
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movement, significant intellectual and histori- each perceive the other as atavistic: The post- cal shifts have colluded to prevent its re-emer- Zionists see the entire Zionist spectrum, from gence. Firstly, bi-nationalism was a product of parties such as Yahad to Yisrael Beiteinu, as im- SHMA.COM the same intellectual environments that pro- prisoned by an obsolete 19th-century national- duced 19th- and 20th-century European na- ist vision, while Zionist ideology continues to tionalisms themselves, which asserted that the regard assimilationist liberalism as precisely the world was divided into distinct peoples defined outdated worldview that Zionism originally by shared language and territory. Its principle of emerged to correct. Meanwhile, the original re- duality sought to acknowledge the reality of ligious underpinnings of the bi-nationalist idea two peoples in Palestine while eliminating the have been phased out and replaced with a thor- standard nation-state’s numerical determina- oughgoing secular framework. This may have tion of power according to majority and minor- contributed to the current reputation of the sin- ity. However, after 1948 and 1967, as favor for gle-state solution as the solution nobody wants. a single-state solution migrated from being the If there is to be a renewed “bi-nationalism,” in living motivating force of a small Zionist far-left the sense of an approach to living together to being the polemical watchword of a non- based on the reality of two peoples sharing the Zionist and anti-Zionist far left, it also assumed land, it will likely be forced to draw on the re- the usual characteristics of a non-nationalist lib- sources of Judaism and Islam. Here too, both eralism. This is the background behind the skeptics and adherents to conventional wisdom early-’90s post-Zionist call for Israel to be a should be asked to defend the record of their “state of all its citizens.” This has produced a own purportedly sober and realistic approaches strange polemical situation in which two sides to conflict resolution. Israel’s War of Liberation, 1944-1948 YISRAEL MEDAD he founding myth of the Herut move- war, 338 British subjects had been killed in ment, which in 1973 evolved into the Palestine, while the military forces there had cost TLikud and, with a plurality of Knesset the British taxpayer 100 million pounds. The re- seats in 1977, facilitated Menachem Begin’s as- newal of Arab violence on the announcement of cendancy to the position of Prime Minister of the United Nations decision to partition Israel, was that in its pre-state form — as the Palestine and the declared intentions of Jewish Irgun underground — it had expelled the British extremists showed that the loss of further British from Mandate Palestine. This claim was derided lives was inevitable…[The] continued presence by the hegemonic socialist Zionist factions that there of British troops and officials could no dominated Israel’s political scene until 1967. longer be justified. As the British admitted, they They treated the Irgun and the Lehi (another were forced to surrender their mandate because militant Zionist group) derisively as “dissi- of what Winston Churchill referred to in early dents.” For decades, Israel’s schoolchildren 1947 as a “squalid, senseless war.” never read that in early 1944 an armed revolt What was obvious to England’s Prime was declared against the mandatory regime, ul- Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Minister timately, over the course of four years, forcing Ernest Bevin in 1946-48 was consistently denied the British to leave. Oddly enough, it was the for decades after Israel’s establishment: Without British government, in a white paper published the armed underground resistance against the on May 15, 1948, that had recorded the circum- British regime in the Land of Israel, initiated and stances that forced it to decide to bring to an led by the Irgun and Lehi and, during November end its mandate and to prepare for the with- 1945 to July 1946, joined by the Haganah (an- drawal from Palestine of all British forces. In this other paramilitary group that later became the Yisrael Medad is the director of official version, we read that: Israel Defense Forces) and the Palmach (the information resources at the …84,000 troops, who received no coopera- Haganah’s elite strike force), the State of Israel Menachem Begin Heritage tion from the Jewish community, had proved in- could not have been established at that time. Center in Jerusalem and co- sufficient to maintain law and order in the face Moreover, if the establishment of the Zionst editor, with Harry Hurwitz, of Peace in the Making: The of a campaign of terrorism waged by highly or- state had been predicated solely on the creation Menachem Begin-Anwar Sadat ganized Jewish forces equipped with all the of more kibbutzim and the bringing in of ships Personal Correspondence. weapons of the modern infantryman. Since the with “illegal” immigrants from Europe — even [10] MAY 2011 | IYAR 5771 with all of Chaim Weizmann’s diplomacy and French informed him of the British intentions), Ben-Gurion’s bluster — delays might have re- the entire political situation might have been dif- sulted in losing the window of opportunity, and ferent. Even despite his ignorance of the British Israel might not have come to be. betrayal, Begin possessed the better vision. SHMA.COM Already in 1944, as the recent research of To be clear, the Irgun was not the sole player Dr. Meir Zamir, professor of Middle Eastern in the drama of Britain’s last years in Palestine. studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Begin, along with the Lehi, never asserted ex- has revealed, Britain was promising Syria that clusive responsibility for Britain’s withdrawal. they would not support an independent Jewish But their underground work — the explosion at state; rather, Britain would support the unifica- the mandate secretariat’s offices in the southern tion of Transjordan, Lebanon, and Syria into a wing of the King David Hotel, the Acre Prison “Greater Syria.” France was furious when it break, and the hanging of two sergeants in re- found out about this treachery. Two things hap- taliation for the hanging of three Irgun fighters — pened: First, in a meeting held on October 6, served as catalysts, along with the ships from 1945, with Marc Jarblum, head of the Zionist Europe, the establishment of kibbutzim, and the organization in France, Charles de Gaulle stated constructing of a pioneer society, for the creation that “the Jews in Palestine are the only ones of Israel in the political and diplomatic arena. who can chase the British out of the Middle Thanks to recent research as well as to the East.” Second, France provided guns, ammuni- Likud party’s centrist position within the Israeli tion, and other military supplies bound for political spectrum, the years of 1946-1948 in Palestine. The weaponry was sent on the Israel are now being understood in a new way. Altalena, the Irgun arms ship, which was Before, the official view of Zionists and leading shelled on Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s Jewish intellectuals was that the Irgun was “ex- order on June 22, 1948 off Tel Aviv’s beach. tremist” and “fascist,” and that the dissidents Zamir’s work demonstrates that Menachem practiced “terror.” Even Albert Einstein Begin’s declaration of a revolt in February 1944, weighed in, writing in April of 1948 that “…the even without knowing exactly what Britain’s Terrorist organizations build up from our own post-war policies and machinations were in- ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associ- tended to be, proved, with hindsight, the better ated with those misled and criminal people.” strategy. Had Ben-Gurion united the Haganah Now, however, these matters can be judged in and Palmach with the Irgun and Lehi in 1944, a more reasoned manner that justifies the rather than forming the United Resistance armed resistance of the Irgun and the Lehi as a Movement only in November 1945 (after the war for liberation from foreign rule. History and Mythmaking: A Response DAN HELLER n his essay, Yisrael Medad takes to task La- cist — it was their debates between the First and bor-Zionist leaders who dominated the ear- Second World War about the efficacy of armed Ily decades of Israeli politics for actively sup- conflict for creating a Jewish state that proved pressing the Israeli public’s memory of the Irgun the most incendiary. During the Arab Revolt of and Lehi’s role in the military struggle for the cre- 1936-1939, Labor Zionist leaders promoted a pol- ation of the Jewish state. The battle over the place icy of havlaga (restraint) against Arab attacks, of these groups in the national memory of Israelis while members of the Irgun launched reprisals was just one front in a larger war waged since that targeted Arab civilians. the mid-1920s between Labor Zionists, who were Between 1944 and 1948, relations between at the helm of the Haganah, and the Revision- the Haganah, the Irgun, and Lehi changed both ist Zionist movement — from which Lehi and the frequently and dramatically. In 1944, when the Irgun emerged — over the ideologies and tactics Irgun declared an armed revolt against the that would bring about a Jewish state in Pales- British, the Haganah, which had relied on the Dan Heller is a doctoral tine. Although their disagreements were many British army for much of its training and am- candidate in Stanford University’s history — Revisionists, for example, vehemently rejected munition, confiscated the weapons of Irgun department. He is currently the socialism of Labor Zionists, who in turn members, interrogated them, and turned sev- writing a dissertation on the claimed that the Revisionist movement’s eco- eral of them over to the British police.