The Split Within the Irgun
(June 1940)
by Prof. Yehuda Lapidot
Irgun occurred in June,
1940, and was rooted in the enduring differences of opinion between
two schools of thought in the Irgun. The dominant group,
headed by David Raziel,
regarded Jabotinsky as the main leader and accepted the authority of the Revisionist party; the second group, led by Avraham Stern (Yair) held
that the Irgun should
determine its own political path and free itself of Jabotinsky's tutelage. In
addition, Raziel believed that the Arab front was the main front, while Stern regarded the British
as the principle enemy. This opinion was reinforced by the
publication of the White
Paper on May 17, 1939.
- Arrest of David Raziel
- Outbreak of War
- Death of David Raziel
The Arrest of David Raziel
On Friday, May 19, 1939, Raziel was on his way from Tel
Aviv to Haifa for a meeting with Pinhas Ruttenberg, one of the
leaders of the Yishuv. At the time, the British were setting up
roadblocks, and Raziel decided to travel by air. At Sdeh Dov airport near Tel Aviv he
boarded a plane headed for Haifa. The plane deviated from its route
and landed at Lydda airport for a stopover. The passengers were taken
to the waiting room, where they were asked, as was customary, to show
identification. Several minutes later, British policemen appeared and
arrested David Raziel.
David Raziel
|
Hanoch Kalai, his deputy, was
appointed Commander in Chief. Avraham
Stern, who was then in Poland, was summoned back to Palestine and
appointed head of the Information Department. The other members of
the General Headquarters remained in their positions. At the first
meeting of the General Headquarters under Kalai, it was decided to
launch a second front against the British administration in
retaliation for the publication of the White Paper. In accordance
with Irgun procedure,
the jailed commander was not consulted, and Raziel did not take part in
decision-making.
The first operations directed against
the British took place in Jerusalem. On June 2, 1939, Irgun fighters blew up
three telephone network junctions. Close to 1,750 telephones were cut
off, including some serving the army and the police. On the same day,
a mine exploded near the Old City wall, killing five Arabs and
injuring many more. After the Jerusalem operations, telephone network
junctions were also blown up in Tel Aviv, and the railway line
between Tel Aviv and Lydda was attacked.
Four days later the Irgun fighters again
launched an attack on British targets. This time they damaged eight
telephone network junctions, and dozens of public telephone
structures. They also destroyed four of the British Electricity
Corporation transformers, plunging the city into darkness. In all,
they attacked 23 sites and dozens of fighters took part in the
operation.
The Outbreak of War
On August 31, 1939, the Irgun General Headquarters
convened for a special session in Tel Aviv. At the height of the
meeting, CID (British Intelligence) detectives and policemen burst
into the room. The entire General Headquarters was arrested (Hanoch Kalai, Avraham Stern, Aharon Heichman) as well as
Haim Lubinsky and Yashka
Eliav, who were not members. The detainees were taken first to
the Jaffa police station and later to the Jerusalem jail. They were
cut off from the outside world and were unaware that the day after
their arrest, the Germans invaded Poland and war broke out.
Raziel regarded Hitler as the
prime enemy of the Jewish people, and therefore decided that it was
essential to collaborate with the British against the joint enemy.
When war broke out, Raziel wrote a letter from his place of detention to the British Commander
in Chief in Palestine, to the Mandatory government secretary and to
the British police commissioner. In his letter, he informed them of
his readiness to declare a truce and offered help to the Allies in
their struggle against the Germans. In parallel, Raziel despatched
instructions to Benyamin
Zeroni, who had been appointed commander of the Irgun after Kalai's arrest,
to announce the suspension of Irgun operations.
Consequently, on September 11, Zeroni distributed a
leaflet, which stated:
To avoid disrupting
the course of the war against Germany, and in order to invest
maximum effort in assisting Great Britain and its allies, the Irgun Zvai Le'umi has decided to suspend all offensive activities in Palestine
which could cause harm to the British government and in any
way be of assistance to the greatest enemy the Jewish people
has ever known - German Nazism.
The leaflet concluded with the hope that the war
would give "this tortured nation the sole recompense it deserves
- the achievement of sovereign independence within the historic
borders of the liberated homeland."
The members of the Irgun General
Headquarters, who had been transferred from the central jail in
Jerusalem to the detention camp at Sarafand, did not share Raziel's
views, and were particularly surprised that he had stipulated no
conditions whatsoever in return for collaboration with the British.
Criticism was also levelled at his excessive intimacy with the
leaders of the Revisionist party, who were also being detained at Sarafand.
In mid-October, 1939, Raziel was brought to
Jerusalem for a meeting with Giles, the head of the CID, the deputy
government secretary and Pinhas Ruttenberg, one of the leaders of the
Yishuv. Raziel reiterated that, due to the emergency situation, the Irgun had decided to
suspend all hostile action, and was ready to collaborate with the
British in their war against Nazi Germany. He demanded that all Irgun members who had been
arrested by the British be freed. On the following day, Raziel was released and
ordered to report once a week to Giles' office in Jerusalem. Eight
months later (June 18, 1940), his comrades were also freed.
Immediately after their release, the General Headquarters held a
stormy meeting in Tel Aviv. The main confrontation took place between Avraham Stern (Yair) and David Raziel on two central
issues: the first was the question of party authority. Stern and his comrades
argued that the Irgun had to extricate itself from its dependence on the Revisionist party, and decide for itself on its future political path. In their
opinion, the leaders of the Revisionist movement, who enjoyed legal
status and were known to the authorities, were undermining the
conspiratorial nature of Irgun activity, and obstructing the struggle against the British because of
their concern for the survival of their party. Raziel, on the other hand,
asserted that the party was the source of public moral and financial
support, and a reservoir for the recruitment of fighters to the
underground. According to Raziel,
the movement's leaders, headed by Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky,
should determine the political path and the Irgun should bow to their
authority.
The second issue was the question of
the truce. Stern claimed that the fight against the British should continue, even
though Great Britain was at war with Germany. To his mind, as long as
the British ruled Palestine, they were the main foe and had to be
driven out of the country. For Raziel, on the other hand,
the Germans were the arch enemy of the Jewish people, and he argued
that no impediments should be placed in the path of the British as
long as they were fighting Hitler. On this issue, Raziel was in accord with Jabotinsky who, the White Paper policy
notwithstanding, regarded the British as allies in the war against
Germany. To these differences of opinion should be added personal
conflicts based on character and style, which added fuel to the
flames.
The split was inevitable, and on July
17, 1940, Avraham Stern seceded and founded the organization known at first as Irgun Zvai
Le'umi Be'yisrael - National Military Organization in Israel.
(Raziel's organization was called Irgun Zvai Le'umi Be'eretz Yisrael
- National Military Organization in Eretz Israel). Later, Stern's organization became
known as Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Israel Freedom Fighters) - Lehi for short. The split had a devastating
effect on the Irgun and
was accompanied by mutual recriminations. Many senior commanders and
rank-and-file members withdrew, and the underground was exposed to
the Haganah and the CID, which was able,
with ease, to draw up lists of names, addresses and positions of many
active members. The arsenals also passed from hand to hand and some
even fell into the possession of the Haganah.
At the time of the split, Jabotinsky was in the
United States, where he was trying to organize Jewish units to fight
the Nazis within the framework of the British armed forces. Jabotinsky, who had
been suffering for years from heart trouble, spared no effort to
rescue European Jewry from the imminent catastrophe. The occupation
of Poland by the Germans and the destruction of the Jewish
communities in Europe broke his heart, and on August 4 he suffered a
fatal heart attack while at a Betar camp near New York. Word of his
death stunned Jews all over the world, and there was profound
mourning in Eretz Israel and in the Diaspora.
The Death of David Raziel
The first task of the new General Headquarters was to rally the ranks
and reorganize the branches, which had been operating without a
central guiding hand. In parallel, Aryeh Posek and Yitzhak Berman
concentrated on establishing closer ties with British army
intelligence, seeking ways of collaborating with them.
In mid-1941, the British were on
the defensive. The German army was advancing in North Africa and was
threatening Egypt; the French Vichy government, ruling under the
auspices of the Germans, was occupying Syria and Lebanon and
constituted a threat to Palestine from the north; in Iraq, Rashid Ali
al Kilani had started a revolt and had taken over the oil fields,
which were vital for the war effort. To make matters worse, on May 2,
Kilani directed the revolt against the British, placed the Habaniyeh
airbase under siege and took the staff of the British Embassy in
Baghdad hostage.
In their plight, the heads of
British intelligence in Egypt turned to Berman, and asked if the Irgun could despatch a unit
to blow up the refineries in Baghdad, since the fuel reserves were
vital to the Luftwaffe. Berman passed on the British request to Raziel, who immediately
assented. He organized a four-man unit and decided to head it. His
comrades tried, unsuccessfully, to dissuade him from taking part. On
Sunday, May 17, 1941, the four left for the military airfield at Tel
Nof. Raziel was accompanied by Yaakov Meridor, Yaakov-Sika Aharoni and
Yaakov Harazi (the latter two were unaware of Raziel's true identity). At
Tel Nof, they boarded an RAF transport plane, and several hours later
landed at Habaniyeh. After landing, it was explained to Raziel that the plan had been
postponed and that, instead, the unit was to carry out intelligence
missions in preparation for the capture of Faluja (which was en route
to Baghdad).
The next day the unit set out,
accompanied by a British officer and reached the river, which they
were scheduled to cross. However, there was room for only two
passengers in the sole available boat. Raziel ordered Meridor and Sika
to cross the river and carry out the mission, while he himself, with
Harazi and the British officer, made their way back to the car.
Suddenly a German plane swooped down and bombed the area, scoring a
direct hit on the car and killed Raziel and the
British officer instantly. The driver of the car was injured while
Harazi, who managed to jump clear, was unscathed. That evening Meridor returned
from the mission, heard the tragic news, and proclaimed:
"This is the
Commander in Chief of the Irgun Zvai Le'umi, David Raziel."
Word of Raziel's death stunned and greatly
confused the Irgun. It
was hard to accept the loss of the leader, and many members could not
understand why Raziel had gone on a mission to Iraq. The Irgun's path became
unclear, and the internal debates intensified. Yaakov Meridor was chosen to
head the General Headquarters and, together with his comrades, he
sought ways of overcoming the crisis. It was only in the winter of
1942, about a year after David
Raziel's death, that the Irgun began to recover from the blow it had suffered. This period was a
turning point in the course of the war, as the Allied forces began to
prevail over Germany. Information was beginning to flood in on the extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis,
and it was clear that it was no longer possible to remain inactive.
The reorganization of the ranks began: officer training courses were
held to prepare a cadre of instructors of new recruits, and the
underground newspaper Herut began to appear on a regular basis.
Propaganda activities were stepped up among the young generation, and
efforts were made to acquire weapons to replenish the arsenals which
had been emptied during the split. More and more members favored
ending the truce, which the Irgun had declared at the outbreak of the war, and terminating the
collaboration with the British army.
On June 17, 1943, Herut reported
a change in relations with the British authorities:
When war broke out,
the Jewish people declared their loyalty to the British
government, to help it vanquish the enemy of the entire world
and of the Jewish people. Great Britain has betrayed this
friendship. The Jewish people has not been acknowledged as a
fighting nation. A Hebrew army has not been established.
Sources: The Irgun Site |