History of Palestine - Holocaust, Immigration,& Stern Gang - Part 7

The Holocaust

During World War II (1939-1945), many Palestinian Arabs and Jews joined the Allied forces. Jews had a special motivation for fighting the Nazis because of Nazi persecution of Jews and growing suspicions that the Nazis were systematically exterminating the Jews of Europe -Holocaust. The specific detail of Holocaust has remained mostly blur while thorough study on Holocaust is prohibited through preventive act in Germany. This threat of extermination also created great pressure for immigration to Palestine, but the gates of Palestine were closed by the British White Paper. In 1941 the British freed Jewish Haganah underground leaders in a general amnesty, and they joined the British in fighting the Germans.

Illegal Immigration

The Jews of Palestine responded to the White Paper and the Holocaust by organizing illegal immigration to Palestine from occupied Europe, through the "Institution for Illegal Immigration" (Hamossad L'aliya Beth). Illegal immigration was organized by the Jewish Agency between 1939 and 1942, when a tightened British blockade and stricter controls in occupied Europe made it impractical, and again between 1945 and 1948. Rickety boats full of refugees tried to reach Palestine. Additionally, there were private initiatives, an initiative by the Nazis to deport Jews and an initiative by the US to save European Jews.

The Biltmore Declaration

Reports of Nazi atrocities became increasingly frequent and vivid. Despite the desperate need to find a haven for refugees, the doors of Palestine remained shut to Jewish immigration. The Zionist leadership met in the Biltmore Hotel in New York in 1942 and declared that it supported the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth. This was not simply a return to the Balfour declaration repudiated by the British and a restatement of Zionist aims that went beyond the Balfour declaration, and a determination that the British were in principle, an enemy to be fought, rather than an ally.

Lehi Group/ Stern Gang
Lehi was an armed underground Zionist faction in Mandatory Palestine,[1] whose goal was to forcibly evict the British authorities from Palestine, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state. Lehi group was founded by Avraham ("Yair") Stern which an adherent of the Revisionist Zionist movement founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and a member of the Irgun (Irgun Tsvai Leumi, National Military Organization) a Terrorist Group by British. In June 1940, when the Irgun decided to suspend its underground military activities against the British during the World War II, he left the Irgun to form his own group, which he called Irgun Tsvai Leumi B'Yisrael (National Military Organization in Israel), the name of the group was later changed to Lehi. The group known as Lehi for friends and Stern Gang for foes.

In 1940, Lehi proposed intervening in World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. It offered assistance in "evacuating"[vague] the Jews of Europe, in return for Germany's help in expelling Britain from Mandate Palestine. Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik was sent to Beirut where he met the German official Werner Otto von Hentig. Lubenchik told von Hentig that Lehi had not yet revealed its full power and that they were capable of organizing a whole range of anti-British operations.

Subsequent contact between Lehi and German official resulted for a letter was sent On January 11, 1941 from Vice Admiral Ralf von der Marwitz, the German Naval attaché in Ankara, depicting an offer to "actively take part in the war on Germany's side" in return for German support for "the establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich".[2][3]

Lehi was described as a terrorist organization[4] by the British authorities and United Nations mediator Ralph Bunche.[5] Lehi carried out the Nov 6, 1944 assassination in Cairo of Lord Moyne along with other attacks on the British authorities and Palestinian Arabs. Moyne was Minister of State for the Middle East and in charge of carrying out the terms of the 1939 white paper- preventing Jewish immigration to Palestine by force. He was also a personal friend of Winston Churchill. The assassination did not change British policy, but it turned Winston Churchill against the Zionists. The newly-formed Israeli government banned the organization under an anti-terrorism law passed three days after the Sept 1948 assassination of the UN mediator Folke Bernadotte.[6]

Israel granted a general amnesty to Lehi members on 14 February 1949 and in 1980 the group was honored by the institution of the Lehi ribbon, a military decoration the organization's former members are entitled to wear.

The Season ("Sezon") - The Jewish Agency and Zionist Executive believed that British and world reaction to the assassination of Lord Moyne could jeopardize cooperation after the war that had been hinted at by the British, and might endanger the Jewish Yishuv if they came to be perceived as enemies of Britain and the allies. Therefore they embarked on a campaign against the Lehi and Irgun, known in Hebrew as the "Sezon" ("Season"). Members of the underground were to be ostracized. Leaders were caught by the Haganah, interrogated and sometimes tortured, and about a thousand persons were turned over to the British. What transpired that the campaign were only front to win British cooperation while back in Israel the Terrorist group were honoured.

[1]^ Laqueur, Walter (2003) [1972]. "Jabotinsky and Revisionism" (Google Book Search). A History of Zionism (3rd ed. ed.). London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks. p. 377. ISBN 9781860649325. OCLC 249640859. http://books.google.com/books?id=NMjh319vnwAC&pg=PA377&dq=history+of+Lehi+stern&ei=ikMjSfHsGoHaygSb46X6Ag. Retrieved on 2008-11-18.

[2]Heller, 1995, p. 86.
[3]^ David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics, 1889-1945, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, 1974. Also see Otto von Hentig, Mein Leiben (Goettingen, 1962) pp 338-339 .

[4]^ "Stern Gang" A Dictionary of World History. Oxford University Press, 2000. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press [1].
[5]^ Ralph Bunche report on assassination of UN mediator 27th Sept 1948, "notorious terrorists long known as the Stern group"
[6]^ Ami Pedahzur, The Israeli Response to Jewish terrorism and violence. Defending Democracy, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York 2002 p.77