The Sergeants affair
Encyclopedia
The Sergeants affair was an incident that took place in Mandate Palestine in July 1947 in which the Jewish underground group the Irgun
kidnapped two British army
Intelligence Corps NCOs
, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice, and threatened to kill them if the death sentences passed on Irgun militants arrested by the British authorities on charges of illegal possession of arms, and with 'intent to kill or cause other harm to a large number of people', were carried out. When the executions were carried out, the Irgun killed its hostages and hung their booby-trapped
bodies in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya
. This act was widely condemned in both Palestine and the United Kingdom
. Soon after hearing of the deaths, British troops and policemen "went on the rampage" in Tel Aviv
, killing five Jews and injuring others. The killings also sparked off antisemitic rioting in some British cities.
were calling to end the Mandate. They were led by opposition leader Winston Churchill
, who denounced Britain’s costly occupation of Palestine for no economic benefit.
Trying to maintain control and civil order as required under the Mandate, the British enacted the Defence Emergency Regulations
in September 1945. These regulations suspended Habeas Corpus
and established military courts. They prescribed the death penalty for various offences, including carrying weapons or ammunition illegally and membership in an organization whose members commit these offenses.
The British authorities began applying the death penalty under these regulations, specifically against those who participated in actions that undermined their authority (see below). While the first member of a Jewish underground group, Shlomo Ben-Yosef
, was executed in 1938 for his part in an unsuccessful shooting attack on Arab civilians who were travelling on a bus, no further executions of Jews for politically motivated violence were held in Palestine until the late 1940s. The sentences affected the dissident extremist groups Irgun and Lehi
, who were carrying out militant attacks largely in protest at the British refusal to allow unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. Following unrest in the 1930s caused mainly by the rapid demographic change resulting from unrestricted immigration, in 1939 the Mandate authorities imposed a limit of 75,000 immigrants for the period 1940-1945; this was violently opposed by Revisionist Zionists such as Irgun, who believed that all Jews had a right to travel to Palestine irrespective of where they were born.
During one of the Jewish Resistance Movement
attacks, Irgun militants Michael Eshbal and Yosef Simchon were arrested and sentenced to death on June 13, 1946. There were many pleas and petitions for clemency by various institutes and Jewish leaders, which were not effective. Irgun decided to threaten to carry out its own “gallows regime”, declaring a policy of reprisal
killings. Five days later, Irgun kidnapped five British officers in Tel Aviv
, and another one the following day in Jerusalem. Two weeks later, perhaps due to the kidnappings, Eshbal and Simchon’s sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. The officers were released the next day.
In January 1947 another Irgun militant, Dov Gruner
, was sentenced to death for shooting and placing explosives with intent to kill during an Irgun raid on a Palestine Police Force
station in Ramat Gan in April 1946. On January 26, two days before Gruner’s scheduled execution, Irgun kidnapped a British intelligence officer in Jerusalem. The next day, on January 27, Irgun men also kidnapped the British President of the District Court of Tel Aviv. Sixteen hours before the scheduled execution the British forces commander announced an “indefinite delay” of the sentence, and Irgun released its hostages.
Meanwhile in Britain, Churchill, now the leader of the Opposition, demanded a special meeting on the subject, and on January 31, a four hour discussion in the British Parliament took place, with Churchill demanding the suppression of the “terrorists in Palestine”.
On April 16, 1947, Gruner and three other Irgun militants, Yehiel Dresner, Mordechai Alkahi and Eliezer Kashani, who were caught during the Night of the Beatings
, were executed. Five days later two other prisoners, Meir Feinstein
of Irgun and Moshe Barazani
of Lehi
, were scheduled to be hanged for, respectively, a murder committed during the IED
attack on the Jerusalem railway station and the attempted murder of a senior British officer. However, a few hours before they were due to be executed they committed suicide using IEDs smuggled to them by their colleagues.
May 4, 1947 saw the Acre Prison break
: Forty-one prisoners were released, albeit six of them were killed and seven others were rearrested. Among the perpetrators of the prison break, three were killed and five were arrested. Those arrested included Avshalom Haviv
, Yaakov Weiss and Meir Nakar. All of the arrested Irgun militants refused to accept British judicial authority. However they were tried by a military court and three of the five - those named above - were sentenced to death.
In an attempt to forestall the likely death sentences, the Irgun kidnapped two British military policemen, a sergeant and a private, at a swimming pool in Ramat Gan on June 9. However, the attempt to use them as hostages failed, as 19 hours later British troops aided by the Haganah
found the hiding place and rescued them. Two days later the three Irgun militants were sentenced to death. All that was needed for the sentences to be carried out was approval from the Commander in Chief. Irgun resumed, with increased urgency, its kidnapping attempts. Several attempts were thwarted.
On July 8, three weeks after the sentences were passed, they were confirmed by the commander. Meanwhile, UNSCOP (the United Nations
committee which was asked to recommend the future government of Palestine) visited the region and an appeal was made to the committee to intervene on the convicted men's behalf. Due to the concurrent visit of UNSCOP the executions were postponed. This delay, intended not to anger the committee, gave the Irgun extra time to accomplish the kidnapping of hostages.
by the name of Aaron Weinberg, who worked as a clerk in a British military resort camp in north Netanya
. This information was already known to the local SHAI
(the intelligence arm of the Haganah
) commander, Yehoshua Bar-Ziv, who entrusted him with striking up a relationship with two British sergeants, Clifford Martin and Marvin Paice, who used to spend a lot of time in the camp.
The sergeants were of interest to SHAI since they belonged to the field security unit and worked with the Tulkarm
police, which was in charge of the Sharon district.
Weinberg was very successful in his task, and occasionally got the sergeants to go out to the Netanya beach, in plain clothes. During the tense days of the summer of 1947 such excursions were very risky, and were probably unknown to their commanders.
On one of those visits, on the night of Saturday, July 4, they were noted by an Irgun member sitting in the Gan Vered café who heard them speaking English and who followed them back to the camp. Based on his information, a week later Irgun made arrangements to kidnap them in the hope that they would return to the café.
On July 11, 1947 the Irgun group retrieved weapons, chloroform
, cloths and ropes from a hidden cache. After the recent failures, the Irgun militants in Netanya were sceptical regarding the chances of this kidnapping attempt. Because of this they did not go to any great lengths to cover their tracks, considering the complicated crime they were planning: they did not steal or borrow a vehicle or bring in non-local members who were less likely to be recognized. Furthermore, Yosef Meller, a longtime Netanya resident and newly recruited Irgun militants, volunteered to use his black taxi cab, which was well known around town, for the kidnapping. At nightfall one basic precaution was taken; the taxi's license plates were changed in an attempt to prevent it being recognized in the course of the crime.
That evening Weinberg and the intended victims showed up once more at the café. Martin and Paice were in civilian clothes, were unarmed, were outside their camp at a forbidden time and were not part of a group of four, as required by standing orders at the time. After being informed that his intended victims were there, Kaplan posted his men around the coffee shop and along the road leading north to the camp and waited for an opportunity to perform the abduction. Weinberg and the two sergeants did not leave the coffee shop until after midnight. Meller's cab, with Kaplan and three others inside, started after them. It pulled over and the four men emerged, masked and holding guns, and assaulted their targets. After resistance by one of the sergeants, they were forced into the car and Meller drove off. Weinberg was left, under guard, in an orchard in north Netanya, from where he was later taken to another orchard and released.
The hostages were taken to a specially-built underground chamber that had been made in the cellar of the inactive "Feldman" diamond polishing plant in the industrial area in the south side of Netanya. It was airtight and soundproof and its tiny entrance hatch was hidden by a thick layer of sand. Inside was a canvas bucket, a week's supply of food and two cylinders of oxygen which the sergeants were instructed to use to refresh the air in their cell. Every few days while they were there, the bucket was emptied and the food re-stocked.
Reports of the kidnapping also reached the Haganah in Netanya. Oved Ben-Ami, head of the Netanya council, called an emergency council meeting. He did not invite the revisionist party members, who were identified with Irgun. The decision was made in accordance with the Yishuv
’s position, which was published the next day, calling the kidnapping a provocation that might jeopardize what hope was left for clemency for those condemned to death. It pleaded for every decent civilian to assist in the search for the hostages.
Meanwhile Haganah set out to find and release the kidnapped men, by force if necessary. The SHAI commander in the region arrived in order to personally oversee the search. Bar-Ziv, who had resigned as SHAI commander in Netanya in the meantime, provided him with information about a recently built underground bunker under the house of Irgun member Haim Banai in Ramat Tiomkin. They were convinced that this was where the hostages were kept, and passed that information to Haganah.
All the while, Ben-Ami was desperately trying to pacify the British authorities and promise them that Yishuv would do anything to find the hostages. However, after his conversation with Netanya council members of the Revisionist party, he published an announcement in a newspaper saying that he had been told by Irgun that the hostages would not be returned until the condemned Irgun members’ fate was made clear. Subsequently, the British Army placed a cordon around Netanya and the surrounding area of Emek Hefer, and on July 13 they began an extensive search of the settlements.
At this point Haganah believed that they had accurate information on the location of the hostages. The information made it all the way up to the Haganah chief of staff, Yisrael Galili
who passed it on to the Haganah high commander and chairman of the Jewish Agency, David Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion was conducting the "Little Saison" against Irgun and Lehi, and was determined to cooperate with the authorities. Galili, on the other hand, opposed any collaboration with the British, and had already ordered preparations for a forced release by the Haganah.
Ben Gurion thought that a forced release, no matter by whom, would lead to the hanging of the condemned in Acre, and Irgun's finger would be pointed at the Agency, Haganah and SHAI. He therefore made two decisions: First, the hostages were to be released by force; but not by Haganah, as Galili suggested, but by the British. Second, the information regarding the location of the hostages was to be passed anonymously not only to the British, but to Ben-Ami as well. By doing this he hoped to give the impression that Ben Ami had passed the information to the British. Ben Gurion was relying on this, plus Ben Ami’s call to the Netanya residents "to leave no stone unturned" to attract reprisals from Irgun if the hostages were rescued.
The next day, during the extension given by the British to the Haganah to the Yishuv to conduct its own search, approximately 15,000 Netanya residents were placed under curfew. The British, acting on the information from Haganah, decided to search Banai’s house. In the late afternoon the neighbourhood was surrounded by military vehicles, including tanks and armoured cars. Banai and his neighbours were arrested as searches began. However, as the equipment had already been removed, nothing was found.
All the while the hostages were kept in the polishing plant. They had been drugged with chloroform
during their abduction and when they came to, Kaplan told them they had been taken hostage. On the advice of Amichai Paglin
, Irgun’s "operations officer" who arrived from Tel Aviv on the day of the kidnapping, a decoy was arranged: a pickup truck was loaded with kidnapping equipment and sent to Herzlia, where it was left at the beach, leaving clear traces. Paglin also arranged for oxygen tanks to be brought to the bunker, before returning to Tel Aviv.
On an ordinary day the police might not have taken his report seriously, but this time a strong force was sent to investigate, accompanied by a plain-clothes officer. They conducted a search of the plant. However, one of the owners, who did not know about Irgun’s unauthorised use of his property, naively convinced them there was nothing in there to concern them. Having found nothing, the policemen left the scene.
Ben Ami’s assessment was correct. On July 27 an official radio announcement said the High Commissioner
, Alan Cunningham had given the order to hang the condemned. On July 29, at the break of dawn, while singing Hatikvah
, Haviv, Weiss and Nakar were taken to the gallows and executed, thereby becoming the last of the group known as the Olei Hagardom
.
, ordered Assaf to hang the hostages. Initially Assaf and Paglin looked for a suitable grove, but given the large military and police presence they decided to kill the hostages at the plant itself. Since the hangings were meant as a 'lesson for all to see', they still wanted to hang the bodies in public. That was so clear that the mayor of Tel Aviv, Yisrael Rokah, feared Irgun would hang them in the city’s main square, while in Netanya it was feared that they would be hanged on local lamp posts. Haganah increased its patrols around the city centres, which made the transfers even more difficult.
In the afternoon Paglin and four other men arrived at the factory. At around 18:00 Paice and Martin were individually taken out, hooded, tied by the wrists and ankles, stood on a chair, had a noose placed around their necks and then, by the kicking away of the chair, hanged. The first man to be pulled out asked if he could write a message, but was told that there was no time.
The next day, early in the morning of July 30, a taxi brought from Tel Aviv, so as not to be recognized, arrived at the plant. Meanwhile Meller was looking for a route to move the bodies without risking arrest. After several hours such a route was found, and at 9:00 the order was given to move the bodies into the cab. The Irgun group concealed the bodies in bags and moved them out of the plant in broad daylight. They were seen doing this by workers at the neighboring plants.
Many of those were Haganah members, and several of them asked what was in the bags. The Irgun members lied, saying that the bags contained guns, at which point some of the workers suggested that they should be confiscated. The Irgun men threatened to murder them if they tried, so they backed off.
From that point time was critical for the Irgun group; It was clearly a matter of time before SHAI—and the British—were informed that Irgun were moving possible bodies. They drove east to a eucalyptus
grove near the village of Even Yehuda, about four km from Netanya. They hung the bodies from two adjacent trees and pinned notes to them which read:
An anti-personnel mine
was then set. Most accounts said that this was buried below the bodies, where it would have targeted anyone cutting them down. One account, which was based on what Irgun sources said, said that the mine was buried under the track leading to the grove, in order to target vehicles.
men, who, because of the warning, stayed clear. Soon British soldiers, Yishuv representatives and reporters arrived at the scene. They observed that the bodies had been partly stripped, their shirts wrapped around their heads and that the bodies appeared "blackened, bloodied." According to most sources, having thoroughly checked the surrounding area, the officer in command, a captain, began cutting down the body of Clifford Martin using a knife fastened to a pole. When it fell, the mine went off, blowing Martin's body to pieces and knocking sideways the tree from which Paice's body was hung. Despite jumping back, the captain received wounds to his face and a shoulder. The account written using Irgun sources said that the mine went off after a jeep which was towing the cut-down bodies clear ran over it.
As news regarding the bodies became known throughout Netanya, the residents, fearing reprisals, began stocking food and some even left the city. The council called upon the residents not to believe false rumors and Haganah men stood in the central bus station to prevent people from leaving the city.
Irgun boasted about the murders and a response was delivered in the Irgun press:
The Irgun also received a belated request from Paice’s father, asking for clemency for his son. This was disregarded, and Kol Zion Halohemet, the station of the Irgun
, aired a reply saying that his request should have been addressed to the British government.
The first response came from Ben-Ami, who said that “of all the crimes committed to this day in this country this is the most despicable one, defiling our war of liberation… I testify that most of our population made desperate efforts to free the kidnapped and prevent this disgrace.” The memorial grove was established, that still exists nowadays.
The Yishuv’s official institutions gave similar responses, condemning the perpetrators as murderers of two innocent persons, who took upon themselves the authority to decide in life and death issues. Jamal al-Husayni
, head of the Arab Higher Committee
compared it with the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, saying that the Arabs had not performed such actions.
Investigators trying to find out who was responsible for the five deaths and for injuring fifteen other Jews examined each armoured car's guns and ammunition, but the guns had been cleaned and ammunition replenished. Members of the regular mobile patrols who must have known the truth were interrogated, but refused to divulge any information. In the end, a few policemen were disciplined and the Lydda mobile police units reformed, but no criminal charges were brought.
On 1 August, Paice and Martin were buried in the Ramleh Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery
, while at the funeral for the five dead Jews, mourners and police clashed again; 33 Jews were injured.
commented that: 'it is difficult to estimate the damage that will be done to the Jewish cause not only in this country but throughout the world by the cold-blooded murder of the two British soldiers..’. The Manchester Guardian, while urging the government that it was 'time to go' from Palestine, similarly noted that the hangings were 'a greater blow to the Jewish nation than to the British government.'
voiced Anglo-Jewry's 'detestation and horror at the appalling crime committed against innocent British soldiers' and the Anglo-Jewish Association branded the Irgun action as 'a barbarous act of a kind peculiarly repugnant to civilised man.' Similar criticism poured in from all sections of Anglo-Jewry, including the Association of Jewish Ex-Service Men and Women who condemned outright the murder by terrorists of the two Army sergeants.
As so often the case before, the editorial of the Jewish Chronicle captured the grave and foreboding mood of the moment. In one particularly poignant passage the JC expressed Anglo-Jewry's shame at the Irgun murders:
'Although the general public in Britain recognise that Jewry in this country are powerless to prevent the outrages, British Jewry cannot but feel a deep sense of shame that these murders have been committed.'
Editor John Shaftesley's carefully chosen words, while clearly articulating Anglo-Jewry's abhorrence at the Irgun's crime, can also be interpreted as a plea to British society not to blame Anglo-Jewry for the 'cold-blooded murder of the two British sergeants,' or to seek revenge against the community. Shaftesley's plea was ignored by some, and during the bank holiday weekend, which began on August 1, 1947, and throughout the following week, British Jews across the country felt the powerful impact of the Irgun murders, facing a sharp rise in hatred, abuse and ultimately rioting.
On summer bank holiday weekend, Friday August 1, 1947, antisemitic violence and rioting began. News of the "cold blooded Irgun murders" spread across Britain through extensive coverage in the British media. The tabloid press reported the "Irgun murders" in graphic detail. The Daily Express
carried a large picture on the front page, showing the victims as they were found with hands tied behind their backs, shirts wrapped round their heads and hung from eucalyptus trees under the headline: "Hanged Britons: picture that will shock the world". The rioting started in Liverpool
and subsequently spread across Britain's urban centers from London
to Glasgow
.
Incidents were reported in West Derby
, where a wooden synagogue was burnt down, in Glasgow, where "bricks were thrown through the windows of Jewish shops", and in Liverpool, where "over a hundred windows belonging to Jewish owners were shattered". The rioting was most intensive and long lasting in Liverpool: For over five days the city saw violence and looting, and the Lord Mayor issued an appeal to the city "to assist the police in the prevention of attacks on property and shops supposedly owned by Jews". In total over 300 Jewish properties were affected by the rioting in Liverpool, and the police made 88 arrests.
Synagogues and easily recognizable Jewish properties and symbols throughout Britain were targeted by attackers. In Hendon
, London, windows of the Raleigh Close synagogue were smashed and a piece of paper was found with the words "Jews are sin". Blackpool
and St John's Wood
synagogues received telephone calls threatening that they would be blown up, and the walls of Plymouth Synagogue
were attacked and marked with anti-semitic signs and slogans: "Hang all Jews" and "Destroy Judah". In other attacks on Jewish targets, gravestones in a Jewish cemetery were uprooted in Birmingham
, "Hitler was right" was daubed on properties in North Wales
, and Jewish property in Halifax
, Pendleton, Lancashire
, Bolton
, Holyhead
and Southend were also attacked. In a further incident, the back door of the JC representative's home in Cardiff
was marked "Jews—good old Hitler". On August 5, 1947, The Times
and JC reported that in Eccles
, Manchester
, a crowd of 700 people "cheered each hit" as missiles pelted Jewish properties smashing their windows.
James Chuter Ede
gave a written statement to Parliament regarding the matter.
The Manchester Guardian (the former name of The Guardian before it moved its head office to London) called the violence 'a disgrace'.
The Jewish Chronicle
, which since Shaftesley's appointment as editor had assiduously followed a restrained and sensitive editorial line regarding Anglo-Jewry's position in society, was provoked by the rioting to explicitly express its anger and disillusionment with Anglo-Jewry's treatment by its compatriots.
It was, however, the Association of Jewish ex-Servicemen who gave the most informative and telling Anglo-Jewish reaction to the Irgun murders. In an unequivocal display of Anglo-Jewish loyalty to Britain, even in the face of the animosity that the anti-Jewish rioting presented, the Association placed a wreath at the plinth of the Cenotaph with the inscription: 'In memory of Sergeant Martin and Sergeant Paice, who died doing their duty in Palestine. From the Jewish ex-Service comrades of the British forces.'
,' a Haganah-operated ship laden with 4,500 Jewish displaced person
s, which set sail from France
and was refused entry to Palestine, instead being sent back to Port-de-Bouc
.
Though the intention to terminate the British Mandate of Palestine not later than in 1948 was announced by British government in 1938, and included in the White Paper of 1939
, Begin
claims in his book "The Revolt" that the "cruel act" was one of the events which tipped the balance in the British withdrawal from Palestine.
In a November 1948 letter regarding an entrance visa to the United States
for Menachem Begin
, Robert A. Lovett
wrote that it might spark a conflict with Britain, due to Begin's association with Irgun acts including the murders of Paice and Martin.
In 1981 it was claimed that Clifford Martin met the Halachah definition of a Jew, since his mother came from a Jewish family from Cairo
.
Irgun
The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...
kidnapped two British army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
Intelligence Corps NCOs
Non-commissioned officer
A non-commissioned officer , called a sub-officer in some countries, is a military officer who has not been given a commission...
, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice, and threatened to kill them if the death sentences passed on Irgun militants arrested by the British authorities on charges of illegal possession of arms, and with 'intent to kill or cause other harm to a large number of people', were carried out. When the executions were carried out, the Irgun killed its hostages and hung their booby-trapped
Booby trap
A booby trap is a device designed to harm or surprise a person, unknowingly triggered by the presence or actions of the victim. As the word trap implies, they often have some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it. However, in other cases the device is placed on busy roads or is...
bodies in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya
Netanya
Netanya is a city in the Northern Centre District of Israel, and is the capital of the surrounding Sharon plain. It is located north of Tel Aviv, and south of Haifa between the 'Poleg' stream and Wingate Institute in the south and the 'Avichail' stream in the north.Its of beaches have made the...
. This act was widely condemned in both Palestine and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Soon after hearing of the deaths, British troops and policemen "went on the rampage" in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, killing five Jews and injuring others. The killings also sparked off antisemitic rioting in some British cities.
Background
In the late 1940s, as the third decade of British Mandate was drawing to a close, many within and outside of BritainUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
were calling to end the Mandate. They were led by opposition leader Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, who denounced Britain’s costly occupation of Palestine for no economic benefit.
Trying to maintain control and civil order as required under the Mandate, the British enacted the Defence Emergency Regulations
Defence (Emergency) Regulations
The Defence Regulations are an expansive set of regulations that were first enacted by the Mandatory authorities in British Mandate Palestine on 27 September 1945...
in September 1945. These regulations suspended Habeas Corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
and established military courts. They prescribed the death penalty for various offences, including carrying weapons or ammunition illegally and membership in an organization whose members commit these offenses.
The British authorities began applying the death penalty under these regulations, specifically against those who participated in actions that undermined their authority (see below). While the first member of a Jewish underground group, Shlomo Ben-Yosef
Shlomo Ben-Yosef
Shlomo Ben-Yosef was a noted member of the Revisionist Zionist underground Irgun...
, was executed in 1938 for his part in an unsuccessful shooting attack on Arab civilians who were travelling on a bus, no further executions of Jews for politically motivated violence were held in Palestine until the late 1940s. The sentences affected the dissident extremist groups Irgun and Lehi
Lehi (group)
Lehi , commonly referred to in English as the Stern Group or Stern Gang, was a militant Zionist group founded by Avraham Stern in the British Mandate of Palestine...
, who were carrying out militant attacks largely in protest at the British refusal to allow unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. Following unrest in the 1930s caused mainly by the rapid demographic change resulting from unrestricted immigration, in 1939 the Mandate authorities imposed a limit of 75,000 immigrants for the period 1940-1945; this was violently opposed by Revisionist Zionists such as Irgun, who believed that all Jews had a right to travel to Palestine irrespective of where they were born.
During one of the Jewish Resistance Movement
Jewish Resistance Movement
The Jewish Resistance Movement , sometimes called United Resistance Movement , was an umbrella group for Jewish Resistance movements in the British Mandate of Palestine...
attacks, Irgun militants Michael Eshbal and Yosef Simchon were arrested and sentenced to death on June 13, 1946. There were many pleas and petitions for clemency by various institutes and Jewish leaders, which were not effective. Irgun decided to threaten to carry out its own “gallows regime”, declaring a policy of reprisal
Reprisal
In international law, a reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. Reprisals in the laws of war are extremely limited, as they commonly breached the rights of civilians, an action outlawed by the Geneva...
killings. Five days later, Irgun kidnapped five British officers in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, and another one the following day in Jerusalem. Two weeks later, perhaps due to the kidnappings, Eshbal and Simchon’s sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. The officers were released the next day.
In January 1947 another Irgun militant, Dov Gruner
Dov Gruner
Dov Gruner was a Jewish Zionist leader born in Kisvárda, Hungary on December 6, 1912. On April 19, 1947, he was executed by the British Mandatory authorities in Palestine on the charge of "firing on policemen, and setting explosive charges with the intent of killing personnel on His Majesty's...
, was sentenced to death for shooting and placing explosives with intent to kill during an Irgun raid on a Palestine Police Force
Palestine Police Force
The Palestine Police Force was a British colonial police service established in the British Mandate for Palestine on 1 July 1920, when High Commissioner Herbert Samuel's civil administration took over responsibility for security from General Allenby's Occupied Enemy Territory Administration...
station in Ramat Gan in April 1946. On January 26, two days before Gruner’s scheduled execution, Irgun kidnapped a British intelligence officer in Jerusalem. The next day, on January 27, Irgun men also kidnapped the British President of the District Court of Tel Aviv. Sixteen hours before the scheduled execution the British forces commander announced an “indefinite delay” of the sentence, and Irgun released its hostages.
Meanwhile in Britain, Churchill, now the leader of the Opposition, demanded a special meeting on the subject, and on January 31, a four hour discussion in the British Parliament took place, with Churchill demanding the suppression of the “terrorists in Palestine”.
On April 16, 1947, Gruner and three other Irgun militants, Yehiel Dresner, Mordechai Alkahi and Eliezer Kashani, who were caught during the Night of the Beatings
Night of the Beatings
The Night of the Beating refers to an action taken by the Irgun on December 29, 1946 in the British Mandate of Palestine, in which several British soldiers were flogged in response to a similar punishment inflicted upon an Irgun member.-Background:...
, were executed. Five days later two other prisoners, Meir Feinstein
Meir Feinstein
Meir Feinstein was born in the Old City of Jerusalem. His parents, Bela and Eliezer, immigrated from Brisk. He was an Irgun operative who lost an arm on Oct. 30, 1946 while planting an Improvised Explosive Device in the railway station in Jerusalem, and was subsequently captured and sentenced to...
of Irgun and Moshe Barazani
Moshe Barazani
Moshe Barazani, also Barzani , was an Iraqi Kurdish Jew and a member of Lehi . He was born in Baghdad to a Jewish family from Northern Iraq that moved to Jerusalem when he was an infant. He joined Lehi at an early age and took part in sabotage operations...
of Lehi
Lehi
Lehi refers to:In Mormonism:* Lehi , a prophet in the Book of Mormon of the 7th-6th centuries BC* Lehi, son of Helaman, another prophet in the Book of Mormon of the late 1st century BC...
, were scheduled to be hanged for, respectively, a murder committed during the IED
Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
attack on the Jerusalem railway station and the attempted murder of a senior British officer. However, a few hours before they were due to be executed they committed suicide using IEDs smuggled to them by their colleagues.
May 4, 1947 saw the Acre Prison break
Acre Prison break
The Acre Prison break was a operation undertaken by the Irgun on May 4, 1947 in the British Mandate of Palestine, in which its men broke through the walls of Acre prison and freed 28 incarcerated Irgun and Lehi members.-Background:...
: Forty-one prisoners were released, albeit six of them were killed and seven others were rearrested. Among the perpetrators of the prison break, three were killed and five were arrested. Those arrested included Avshalom Haviv
Avshalom Haviv
Avshalom Haviv , was a pre-Jewish state Irgun underground member and one of the 12 Olei Hagardom tried by the British Mandate courts and sentenced to death by hanging at Acre Prison.-Childhood and adolescence:...
, Yaakov Weiss and Meir Nakar. All of the arrested Irgun militants refused to accept British judicial authority. However they were tried by a military court and three of the five - those named above - were sentenced to death.
In an attempt to forestall the likely death sentences, the Irgun kidnapped two British military policemen, a sergeant and a private, at a swimming pool in Ramat Gan on June 9. However, the attempt to use them as hostages failed, as 19 hours later British troops aided by the Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
found the hiding place and rescued them. Two days later the three Irgun militants were sentenced to death. All that was needed for the sentences to be carried out was approval from the Commander in Chief. Irgun resumed, with increased urgency, its kidnapping attempts. Several attempts were thwarted.
On July 8, three weeks after the sentences were passed, they were confirmed by the commander. Meanwhile, UNSCOP (the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
committee which was asked to recommend the future government of Palestine) visited the region and an appeal was made to the committee to intervene on the convicted men's behalf. Due to the concurrent visit of UNSCOP the executions were postponed. This delay, intended not to anger the committee, gave the Irgun extra time to accomplish the kidnapping of hostages.
Kidnapping
Several weeks earlier, Irgun learned about a Jewish refugee from ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
by the name of Aaron Weinberg, who worked as a clerk in a British military resort camp in north Netanya
Netanya
Netanya is a city in the Northern Centre District of Israel, and is the capital of the surrounding Sharon plain. It is located north of Tel Aviv, and south of Haifa between the 'Poleg' stream and Wingate Institute in the south and the 'Avichail' stream in the north.Its of beaches have made the...
. This information was already known to the local SHAI
SHAI
Shai , established in 1940, was the intelligence and counter-espionage arm of the Haganah and the forebear of the Military Intelligence Directorate in Mandate Palestine....
(the intelligence arm of the Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
) commander, Yehoshua Bar-Ziv, who entrusted him with striking up a relationship with two British sergeants, Clifford Martin and Marvin Paice, who used to spend a lot of time in the camp.
The sergeants were of interest to SHAI since they belonged to the field security unit and worked with the Tulkarm
Tulkarm
Tulkarem or Tulkarm is a Palestinian city in the northern Samarian mountain range in the Tulkarm Governorate in the extreme northwestern West Bank adjacent to the Netanya and Haifa districts to the west, the Nablus and Jenin Districts to the east...
police, which was in charge of the Sharon district.
Weinberg was very successful in his task, and occasionally got the sergeants to go out to the Netanya beach, in plain clothes. During the tense days of the summer of 1947 such excursions were very risky, and were probably unknown to their commanders.
On one of those visits, on the night of Saturday, July 4, they were noted by an Irgun member sitting in the Gan Vered café who heard them speaking English and who followed them back to the camp. Based on his information, a week later Irgun made arrangements to kidnap them in the hope that they would return to the café.
On July 11, 1947 the Irgun group retrieved weapons, chloroform
Chloroform
Chloroform is an organic compound with formula CHCl3. It is one of the four chloromethanes. The colorless, sweet-smelling, dense liquid is a trihalomethane, and is considered somewhat hazardous...
, cloths and ropes from a hidden cache. After the recent failures, the Irgun militants in Netanya were sceptical regarding the chances of this kidnapping attempt. Because of this they did not go to any great lengths to cover their tracks, considering the complicated crime they were planning: they did not steal or borrow a vehicle or bring in non-local members who were less likely to be recognized. Furthermore, Yosef Meller, a longtime Netanya resident and newly recruited Irgun militants, volunteered to use his black taxi cab, which was well known around town, for the kidnapping. At nightfall one basic precaution was taken; the taxi's license plates were changed in an attempt to prevent it being recognized in the course of the crime.
That evening Weinberg and the intended victims showed up once more at the café. Martin and Paice were in civilian clothes, were unarmed, were outside their camp at a forbidden time and were not part of a group of four, as required by standing orders at the time. After being informed that his intended victims were there, Kaplan posted his men around the coffee shop and along the road leading north to the camp and waited for an opportunity to perform the abduction. Weinberg and the two sergeants did not leave the coffee shop until after midnight. Meller's cab, with Kaplan and three others inside, started after them. It pulled over and the four men emerged, masked and holding guns, and assaulted their targets. After resistance by one of the sergeants, they were forced into the car and Meller drove off. Weinberg was left, under guard, in an orchard in north Netanya, from where he was later taken to another orchard and released.
The hostages were taken to a specially-built underground chamber that had been made in the cellar of the inactive "Feldman" diamond polishing plant in the industrial area in the south side of Netanya. It was airtight and soundproof and its tiny entrance hatch was hidden by a thick layer of sand. Inside was a canvas bucket, a week's supply of food and two cylinders of oxygen which the sergeants were instructed to use to refresh the air in their cell. Every few days while they were there, the bucket was emptied and the food re-stocked.
The search for Paice and Martin
Weinberg, who remained in the orchard until daybreak, then reported the kidnapping to the British army. Shortly afterwards he was interviewed by the Palestine Police, and gave them the details of what had happened.Reports of the kidnapping also reached the Haganah in Netanya. Oved Ben-Ami, head of the Netanya council, called an emergency council meeting. He did not invite the revisionist party members, who were identified with Irgun. The decision was made in accordance with the Yishuv
Yishuv
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...
’s position, which was published the next day, calling the kidnapping a provocation that might jeopardize what hope was left for clemency for those condemned to death. It pleaded for every decent civilian to assist in the search for the hostages.
Meanwhile Haganah set out to find and release the kidnapped men, by force if necessary. The SHAI commander in the region arrived in order to personally oversee the search. Bar-Ziv, who had resigned as SHAI commander in Netanya in the meantime, provided him with information about a recently built underground bunker under the house of Irgun member Haim Banai in Ramat Tiomkin. They were convinced that this was where the hostages were kept, and passed that information to Haganah.
All the while, Ben-Ami was desperately trying to pacify the British authorities and promise them that Yishuv would do anything to find the hostages. However, after his conversation with Netanya council members of the Revisionist party, he published an announcement in a newspaper saying that he had been told by Irgun that the hostages would not be returned until the condemned Irgun members’ fate was made clear. Subsequently, the British Army placed a cordon around Netanya and the surrounding area of Emek Hefer, and on July 13 they began an extensive search of the settlements.
At this point Haganah believed that they had accurate information on the location of the hostages. The information made it all the way up to the Haganah chief of staff, Yisrael Galili
Yisrael Galili
Yisrael Galili was an Israeli politician, government minister and member of Knesset. Before Israel's independence in 1948, he had served as Chief of Staff of the Haganah.-Biography:...
who passed it on to the Haganah high commander and chairman of the Jewish Agency, David Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion was conducting the "Little Saison" against Irgun and Lehi, and was determined to cooperate with the authorities. Galili, on the other hand, opposed any collaboration with the British, and had already ordered preparations for a forced release by the Haganah.
Ben Gurion thought that a forced release, no matter by whom, would lead to the hanging of the condemned in Acre, and Irgun's finger would be pointed at the Agency, Haganah and SHAI. He therefore made two decisions: First, the hostages were to be released by force; but not by Haganah, as Galili suggested, but by the British. Second, the information regarding the location of the hostages was to be passed anonymously not only to the British, but to Ben-Ami as well. By doing this he hoped to give the impression that Ben Ami had passed the information to the British. Ben Gurion was relying on this, plus Ben Ami’s call to the Netanya residents "to leave no stone unturned" to attract reprisals from Irgun if the hostages were rescued.
Leak of information to Irgun
Ben Gurion’s plan didn’t work. In the course of a meeting with Revisionist party member Yaakov Chinsky, Ben Ami told him that Haganah knew the kidnapped soldiers were being imprisoned under Banai’s house. Chinsky, who knew the information was wrong, passed it to a local Irgun leader, Avraham Assaf. Assaf knew the hostages were not in Banai's cellar, but it did contain the equipment used in the kidnapping, and he thought its discovery might assist the British in finding the kidnappers or their hostages. He therefore arranged to have the evidence removed.The next day, during the extension given by the British to the Haganah to the Yishuv to conduct its own search, approximately 15,000 Netanya residents were placed under curfew. The British, acting on the information from Haganah, decided to search Banai’s house. In the late afternoon the neighbourhood was surrounded by military vehicles, including tanks and armoured cars. Banai and his neighbours were arrested as searches began. However, as the equipment had already been removed, nothing was found.
All the while the hostages were kept in the polishing plant. They had been drugged with chloroform
Chloroform
Chloroform is an organic compound with formula CHCl3. It is one of the four chloromethanes. The colorless, sweet-smelling, dense liquid is a trihalomethane, and is considered somewhat hazardous...
during their abduction and when they came to, Kaplan told them they had been taken hostage. On the advice of Amichai Paglin
Amichai Paglin
Amichai Paglin, code name “Gidi” , was the Chief Operations Officer of the Irgun, the commander of the battle to conquer Jaffa in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and, following independence, Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s counter-terrorism advisor.-Early life :Paglin's family immigrated from Lithuania...
, Irgun’s "operations officer" who arrived from Tel Aviv on the day of the kidnapping, a decoy was arranged: a pickup truck was loaded with kidnapping equipment and sent to Herzlia, where it was left at the beach, leaving clear traces. Paglin also arranged for oxygen tanks to be brought to the bunker, before returning to Tel Aviv.
Near discovery of hostages by police
A few hours after Paglin's departure, an incident took place that could have led to the release of the hostages: the two lookouts at the plant noticed a police car patrolling the area. Fearing it was heading towards the plant, they hid themselves. The police car was on routine patrol and went on its way, but the guard in the nearby plant noticed them slipping through the window, assumed they were burglars, and called the police.On an ordinary day the police might not have taken his report seriously, but this time a strong force was sent to investigate, accompanied by a plain-clothes officer. They conducted a search of the plant. However, one of the owners, who did not know about Irgun’s unauthorised use of his property, naively convinced them there was nothing in there to concern them. Having found nothing, the policemen left the scene.
Execution of Haviv, Weiss and Nakar
On Thursday, after three days, the curfew around Netanya was lifted, although the town itself remained isolated. The search continued unsuccessfully, but the cordon was lifted after two weeks, on July 26. Ben Ami assessed that the British had resolved to hang the condemned men despite the risk to the hostages.Ben Ami’s assessment was correct. On July 27 an official radio announcement said the High Commissioner
High Commissioner
High Commissioner is the title of various high-ranking, special executive positions held by a commission of appointment.The English term is also used to render various equivalent titles in other languages.-Bilateral diplomacy:...
, Alan Cunningham had given the order to hang the condemned. On July 29, at the break of dawn, while singing Hatikvah
Hatikvah
"Hatikvah" is the national anthem of Israel. The anthem was written by Naphtali Herz Imber, a secular Galician Jew from Zolochiv , who moved to the Land of Israel in the early 1880s....
, Haviv, Weiss and Nakar were taken to the gallows and executed, thereby becoming the last of the group known as the Olei Hagardom
Olei Hagardom
Olei Hagardom refers to members of the pre-state Jewish underground who were tried in British Mandate courts and sentenced to death by hanging, most of them in Acre prison...
.
Killing of Paice and Martin
That morning, eighteen days after the kidnapping, the Irgun chief of staff, Haim LandauHaim Landau
Haim Landau was an Israeli independence fighter, Knesset member and Minister in the government of Menachem Begin.-Career:Landau was born in Kraków, Austria-Hungary and made aliyah to Mandate Palestine in 1935...
, ordered Assaf to hang the hostages. Initially Assaf and Paglin looked for a suitable grove, but given the large military and police presence they decided to kill the hostages at the plant itself. Since the hangings were meant as a 'lesson for all to see', they still wanted to hang the bodies in public. That was so clear that the mayor of Tel Aviv, Yisrael Rokah, feared Irgun would hang them in the city’s main square, while in Netanya it was feared that they would be hanged on local lamp posts. Haganah increased its patrols around the city centres, which made the transfers even more difficult.
In the afternoon Paglin and four other men arrived at the factory. At around 18:00 Paice and Martin were individually taken out, hooded, tied by the wrists and ankles, stood on a chair, had a noose placed around their necks and then, by the kicking away of the chair, hanged. The first man to be pulled out asked if he could write a message, but was told that there was no time.
Relocation of the bodies
Many of those were Haganah members, and several of them asked what was in the bags. The Irgun members lied, saying that the bags contained guns, at which point some of the workers suggested that they should be confiscated. The Irgun men threatened to murder them if they tried, so they backed off.
From that point time was critical for the Irgun group; It was clearly a matter of time before SHAI—and the British—were informed that Irgun were moving possible bodies. They drove east to a eucalyptus
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...
grove near the village of Even Yehuda, about four km from Netanya. They hung the bodies from two adjacent trees and pinned notes to them which read:
'Two British spies held in underground captivity since July 12 have been tried after the completion of the investigations of their "criminal anti-Hebrew activities" on the following charges:
1. Illegal entryIllegal entryIllegal entry is the act of foreign nationals arriving in or crossing the borders into a country in violation of its immigration law.Migrants from nations that do not have automatic visa agreements, or who would not otherwise qualify for a visa, often cross the borders illegally in some areas like...
into the Hebrew homeland.
2. Membership of a British criminal terrorist organisation known as the Army of Occupation which was responsible for the torture, murder, deportation, and denying the Hebrew people the right to live.
3. Illegal possession of arms.
4. Anti-Jewish spying in civilian clothes.
5. Premeditated hostile designs against the underground.
Found guilty of these charges they have been sentenced to hang and their appeal for clemency dismissed. This is not a reprisal for the execution of three Jews but a "routine judicial fact."'
An anti-personnel mine
Anti-personnel mine
Anti-personnel mines are a form of land mine designed for use against humans, as opposed to anti-tank mines, which are designed for use against vehicles...
was then set. Most accounts said that this was buried below the bodies, where it would have targeted anyone cutting them down. One account, which was based on what Irgun sources said, said that the mine was buried under the track leading to the grove, in order to target vehicles.
Reactions in Palestine
At 11:00 on 30 July the Irgun publicly announced the killings. The army and Haganah searched intensively for the bodies, but had not found them by the end of the day. Fearing that the mine they had planted might injure a Haganah patrol, the Irgun telephoned the Netanya town council, giving the location of the bodies and a warning about the mine. At 07:00 the next morning, the bodies were located by Jewish Settlement PoliceJewish Settlement Police
The Jewish Settlement Police were a division of the Notrim established in Mandatory Palestine in 1936, during the Arab Revolt.-History:...
men, who, because of the warning, stayed clear. Soon British soldiers, Yishuv representatives and reporters arrived at the scene. They observed that the bodies had been partly stripped, their shirts wrapped around their heads and that the bodies appeared "blackened, bloodied." According to most sources, having thoroughly checked the surrounding area, the officer in command, a captain, began cutting down the body of Clifford Martin using a knife fastened to a pole. When it fell, the mine went off, blowing Martin's body to pieces and knocking sideways the tree from which Paice's body was hung. Despite jumping back, the captain received wounds to his face and a shoulder. The account written using Irgun sources said that the mine went off after a jeep which was towing the cut-down bodies clear ran over it.
As news regarding the bodies became known throughout Netanya, the residents, fearing reprisals, began stocking food and some even left the city. The council called upon the residents not to believe false rumors and Haganah men stood in the central bus station to prevent people from leaving the city.
Irgun boasted about the murders and a response was delivered in the Irgun press:
We recognize no one-sided laws of warGeneva Convention (1929)The Geneva Convention was signed at Geneva, July 27, 1929. Its official name is the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva July 27, 1929. It entered into force 19 June 1931. It is this version of the Geneva Conventions which covered the treatment of prisoners of war...
. If the British are determined that their way out of the country should be lined by an avenue of gallows and of weeping fathers, mothers, wives, and sweethearts, we shall see to it that in this there is no racial discrimination. The gallows will not be all of one color...Their price will be paid in full.
The Irgun also received a belated request from Paice’s father, asking for clemency for his son. This was disregarded, and Kol Zion Halohemet, the station of the Irgun
Irgun
The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...
, aired a reply saying that his request should have been addressed to the British government.
The first response came from Ben-Ami, who said that “of all the crimes committed to this day in this country this is the most despicable one, defiling our war of liberation… I testify that most of our population made desperate efforts to free the kidnapped and prevent this disgrace.” The memorial grove was established, that still exists nowadays.
The Yishuv’s official institutions gave similar responses, condemning the perpetrators as murderers of two innocent persons, who took upon themselves the authority to decide in life and death issues. Jamal al-Husayni
Jamal al-Husayni
Jamal al-Husayni , , was born in Jerusalem and was a member of the Husayni family.Husayni served as Secretary of the Palestinian Arab Action Committee and the Muslim Supreme Council. He was founder and chairman of the Palestine Arab Party and its delegate to the Arab Higher Committee, led by his...
, head of the Arab Higher Committee
Arab Higher Committee
The Arab Higher Committee was the central political organ of the Arab community of Mandate Palestine. It was established on 25 April 1936, on the initiative of Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and comprised the leaders of Palestinian Arab clans under the mufti's...
compared it with the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, saying that the Arabs had not performed such actions.
Reprisals by British troops and policemen
On the evening of 31 July, groups of British troops and policemen went on the rampage in Tel Aviv, breaking the windows of shops and buses, overturning cars, stealing a taxi and assaulting members of the Jewish community. Groups of young Jews then took to the streets and started stoning police foot patrols, which were then withdrawn from the city. On learning of the stonings, without waiting for orders, members of mobile police units temporarily based at the Citrus House security compound drove into Tel Aviv in six armoured vehicles. These policemen opened fire on two buses, killing one Jew and injuring three others on the first bus and killing three Jews on the second. They also raided two cafés, detonating a grenade on departing from the second. Later, a body was found nearby, bringing the Jewish death toll to five.Investigators trying to find out who was responsible for the five deaths and for injuring fifteen other Jews examined each armoured car's guns and ammunition, but the guns had been cleaned and ammunition replenished. Members of the regular mobile patrols who must have known the truth were interrogated, but refused to divulge any information. In the end, a few policemen were disciplined and the Lydda mobile police units reformed, but no criminal charges were brought.
On 1 August, Paice and Martin were buried in the Ramleh Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery
Ramleh Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery
Ramleh Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing is for personnel of both World Wars, and the period of the British mandate of Palestine located in the town of Ramla in Israel....
, while at the funeral for the five dead Jews, mourners and police clashed again; 33 Jews were injured.
Public and media Reaction
Condemnations of the Irgun's 'bestialities' came from all sections of British society and media. Under the headline 'Murder in Palestine' The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
commented that: 'it is difficult to estimate the damage that will be done to the Jewish cause not only in this country but throughout the world by the cold-blooded murder of the two British soldiers..’. The Manchester Guardian, while urging the government that it was 'time to go' from Palestine, similarly noted that the hangings were 'a greater blow to the Jewish nation than to the British government.'
Condemnation of the Irgun by British Jews
The Board of Deputies of British JewsBoard of Deputies of British Jews
The Board of Deputies of British Jews is the main representative body of British Jews. Founded in 1760 as a joint committee of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewish communities in London, it has since become a widely recognised forum for the views of the different sectors of the UK Jewish...
voiced Anglo-Jewry's 'detestation and horror at the appalling crime committed against innocent British soldiers' and the Anglo-Jewish Association branded the Irgun action as 'a barbarous act of a kind peculiarly repugnant to civilised man.' Similar criticism poured in from all sections of Anglo-Jewry, including the Association of Jewish Ex-Service Men and Women who condemned outright the murder by terrorists of the two Army sergeants.
As so often the case before, the editorial of the Jewish Chronicle captured the grave and foreboding mood of the moment. In one particularly poignant passage the JC expressed Anglo-Jewry's shame at the Irgun murders:
'Although the general public in Britain recognise that Jewry in this country are powerless to prevent the outrages, British Jewry cannot but feel a deep sense of shame that these murders have been committed.'
Editor John Shaftesley's carefully chosen words, while clearly articulating Anglo-Jewry's abhorrence at the Irgun's crime, can also be interpreted as a plea to British society not to blame Anglo-Jewry for the 'cold-blooded murder of the two British sergeants,' or to seek revenge against the community. Shaftesley's plea was ignored by some, and during the bank holiday weekend, which began on August 1, 1947, and throughout the following week, British Jews across the country felt the powerful impact of the Irgun murders, facing a sharp rise in hatred, abuse and ultimately rioting.
Riots
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
carried a large picture on the front page, showing the victims as they were found with hands tied behind their backs, shirts wrapped round their heads and hung from eucalyptus trees under the headline: "Hanged Britons: picture that will shock the world". The rioting started in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and subsequently spread across Britain's urban centers from London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
.
Incidents were reported in West Derby
West Derby
West Derby is a suburb in the north of Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is also a Liverpool City Council ward. At the 2001 Census, the population of the ward was 14,801 .-History:...
, where a wooden synagogue was burnt down, in Glasgow, where "bricks were thrown through the windows of Jewish shops", and in Liverpool, where "over a hundred windows belonging to Jewish owners were shattered". The rioting was most intensive and long lasting in Liverpool: For over five days the city saw violence and looting, and the Lord Mayor issued an appeal to the city "to assist the police in the prevention of attacks on property and shops supposedly owned by Jews". In total over 300 Jewish properties were affected by the rioting in Liverpool, and the police made 88 arrests.
Synagogues and easily recognizable Jewish properties and symbols throughout Britain were targeted by attackers. In Hendon
Hendon
Hendon is a London suburb situated northwest of Charing Cross.-History:Hendon was historically a civil parish in the county of Middlesex. The manor is described in Domesday , but the name, 'Hendun' meaning 'at the highest hill', is earlier...
, London, windows of the Raleigh Close synagogue were smashed and a piece of paper was found with the words "Jews are sin". Blackpool
Blackpool
Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...
and St John's Wood
St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district of north-west London, England, in the City of Westminster, and at the north-west end of Regent's Park. It is approximately 2.5 miles north-west of Charing Cross. Once part of the Great Middlesex Forest, it was later owned by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem...
synagogues received telephone calls threatening that they would be blown up, and the walls of Plymouth Synagogue
Plymouth Synagogue
The Plymouth Synagogue is a synagogue in the city of Plymouth, England. Built in 1762 it is a Listed Grade II* building and the oldest synagogue built by Ashkenazi Jews in the English speaking world. -History:...
were attacked and marked with anti-semitic signs and slogans: "Hang all Jews" and "Destroy Judah". In other attacks on Jewish targets, gravestones in a Jewish cemetery were uprooted in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, "Hitler was right" was daubed on properties in North Wales
North Wales
North Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England...
, and Jewish property in Halifax
Halifax, West Yorkshire
Halifax is a minster town, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. It has an urban area population of 82,056 in the 2001 Census. It is well-known as a centre of England's woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward, originally dealing through the Halifax Piece...
, Pendleton, Lancashire
Pendleton, Lancashire
Pendleton is a small village in Ribble Valley, within the county of Lancashire, England. It is close to the towns of Whalley and Clitheroe. The village used to be a secluded village two miles from the A59, Liverpool to York main road, on the north west side of Pendle Hill at the bottom of the Nick...
, Bolton
Bolton
Bolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...
, Holyhead
Holyhead
Holyhead is the largest town in the county of Anglesey in the North Wales. It is also a major port adjacent to the Irish Sea serving Ireland....
and Southend were also attacked. In a further incident, the back door of the JC representative's home in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
was marked "Jews—good old Hitler". On August 5, 1947, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
and JC reported that in Eccles
Eccles, Greater Manchester
Eccles is a town in the City of Salford, a metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester in North West England, west of Salford and west of Manchester city centre...
, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, a crowd of 700 people "cheered each hit" as missiles pelted Jewish properties smashing their windows.
Denunciations of anti-Semitic violence
Denunciation of the rioting was expressed from within and without Anglo-Jewry. In a clear indicator of the severity of the disturbances, Home SecretaryHome Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
James Chuter Ede
James Chuter Ede
James Chuter Ede, Baron Chuter-Ede CH, PC, DL was a British teacher, trade unionist and Labour politician. He notably served as Home Secretary under Clement Attlee from 1945 to 1951.-Early life:...
gave a written statement to Parliament regarding the matter.
The Manchester Guardian (the former name of The Guardian before it moved its head office to London) called the violence 'a disgrace'.
The Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish Chronicle is a London-based Jewish newspaper. Founded in 1841, it is the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world.-Publication data and readership figures:...
, which since Shaftesley's appointment as editor had assiduously followed a restrained and sensitive editorial line regarding Anglo-Jewry's position in society, was provoked by the rioting to explicitly express its anger and disillusionment with Anglo-Jewry's treatment by its compatriots.
It was, however, the Association of Jewish ex-Servicemen who gave the most informative and telling Anglo-Jewish reaction to the Irgun murders. In an unequivocal display of Anglo-Jewish loyalty to Britain, even in the face of the animosity that the anti-Jewish rioting presented, the Association placed a wreath at the plinth of the Cenotaph with the inscription: 'In memory of Sergeant Martin and Sergeant Paice, who died doing their duty in Palestine. From the Jewish ex-Service comrades of the British forces.'
Aftermath
The UNSCOP committee, which operated in Palestine at that time, could not have ignored the act. However, it was soon overshadowed by a new crisis over 'the ExodusExodus (ship)
Exodus 1947 was a ship that carried Jewish emigrants, that left France on July 11, 1947, with the intent of taking its passengers to the British mandate for Palestine. Most of the emigrants were Holocaust survivor refugees, who had no legal immigration certificates to Palestine...
,' a Haganah-operated ship laden with 4,500 Jewish displaced person
Displaced person
A displaced person is a person who has been forced to leave his or her native place, a phenomenon known as forced migration.- Origin of term :...
s, which set sail from France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and was refused entry to Palestine, instead being sent back to Port-de-Bouc
Port-de-Bouc
Port-de-Bouc is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in southern France.-Population:-References:*...
.
Though the intention to terminate the British Mandate of Palestine not later than in 1948 was announced by British government in 1938, and included in the White Paper of 1939
White Paper of 1939
The White Paper of 1939, also known as the MacDonald White Paper after Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary who presided over it, was a policy paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate for Palestine, as recommended in...
, Begin
Menachem Begin
' was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944,...
claims in his book "The Revolt" that the "cruel act" was one of the events which tipped the balance in the British withdrawal from Palestine.
In a November 1948 letter regarding an entrance visa to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
for Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin
' was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944,...
, Robert A. Lovett
Robert A. Lovett
Robert Abercrombie Lovett was the fourth United States Secretary of Defense, serving in the cabinet of President Harry S. Truman from 1951 to 1953 and in this capacity, directed the Korean War. Promoted to the position from deputy secretary of defense Domhoff described Lovett as a "Cold War...
wrote that it might spark a conflict with Britain, due to Begin's association with Irgun acts including the murders of Paice and Martin.
In 1981 it was claimed that Clifford Martin met the Halachah definition of a Jew, since his mother came from a Jewish family from Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
.