Who detonated violence in the Middle East?, (Part-V) BY HASSAN AHMED RAAFAT

Opinion, July 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Who detonated violence in the Middle East?

(Part-V) BY HASSAN AHMED RAAFAT

Khaleej Times

18 July 2003

THROUGH the previous four parts of this column we together have traced the origin of violence and terror in the region. Our last stop was the established fact that The Zionists ideology does not recognise conservatism or conservatives, and I drove a number of examples. Menachem Begin and Isaac Shamir, who were commanders of the (Irgun) Etzel and Jewish Freedom Fighters (Lehi) gangs massacring innocent Palestinian civilians and British mandate troops as the Ottoman emperor's estates were divided following the World War I.

They absorbed the Zionist radicalism then ruminated it as violence that has been and is still taking a toll on one and all.

In June 29, 1946 British Mandate troops invaded the Jewish Agency and arrested its leaders, save those who were abroad, as the toll of killing of British by the Jewish terrorist gangs mounted. The British military command learnt that the agency was distributing the roles and that there are documents prove this fact and the agency's relation to Nazism and the massacres suffered by the Palestinians. Therefore, the agency was raided and large quantities of these documents were seized and kept at the Kind David Hotel under orders from the high commissioner. The King David Hotel was the site of the British military command and the British Criminal Investigation Division. The Irgun chose the hotel as a target. At about the same time, more than 2,500 Jews from all over Palestine were placed under arrest. The information about Jewish Agency operations, including intelligence activities in Arab countries, was taken to the King David Hotel. On July 22, 1946, the calls were made. Bombs exploded, the casualty toll was high: a total of 91 killed and 45 injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews. Few people in the hotel proper were injured by the blast.

Stories of massacres are many, but the full chronicle was published in Yediot Ahronot newspaper on July 6, 1979. The Irgun leader Menachem Begin, who later became the first Israel prime minister elected from the Likud party, recounted in his autobiography. The British documents which were allowed for publication in 1985 tell the British stance from Menachem Begin, when Mr. Abrams, the head of Zionist revisionist movement, sent a letter to Clement Davis, member of the House of Commons, reflecting that he is representing Herut Party in Britain, and Menachem Begin, the header of the party, is willing to visit the country. The Deputy Foreign Minister, G. Ward, commented that this was one of the rudest requests by the "notorious Begin". He added that he wished to purge this "poisonous puff adder" (snake) from the Britons. Consequently, Begin was denied the visa.

The extremist Jews were not satisfied with the bombing of King David Hotel, and stretched to reach other diplomats and politicians. A week later, news of a massacre of 40 Jews in a pogrom in Poland reminded the Jews of Palestine how Britain's restrictive immigration policy had condemned thousands to death.

In 1944, Winston Churchill, Britain's prime minister, two decisions: one in favour of the Jews, namely the establishment of the Jewish legion, which granted and created a legitimate military presence in Palestine, where it was not allowed to form an Arab Palestinian army. While the other decision was to expel certain Jewish terrorist elements belonging to Etzel and Lehi from Palestine to Eritrea. Those elements used to steal arms from the British arsenal and eliminate British troops in case of any resistance. The reply to Churchill's decisions by the two gangs in 1944 was the assassination of the British minister residing in the Middle East, Lord Moyne, who was Churchill's intimate friend. Moyne was residing in Cairo and the best elements of the gangs ambushed his car and showered him with bullets. An Egyptian constable managed to arrest both the perpetrators, seventeen-year-old Eliahu Hakim and his 22-year-old friend Eliahu Betzouri. They were tried and admitted before the Court and thus sentenced to death.

When the Israel Defence Forces was established on May 31, 1948, Lehi was disbanded and its members enlisted in the IDF. On September 17, 1948, Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, a UN mediator, was assassinated in Jerusalem, and Lehi members were suspected. The government outlawed the organisation's branch in Jerusalem and shut down its publication, Hamivrak. The leaders of Lehi, Natan Yellin-Mor and Mattityahu Shmuelevitz, were sentenced to long jail terms by a military court, but were released in a general amnesty.

Prime Minister David Ben Gurion was determined to assert the supremacy of the IDF and prevent the strengthening of independent militia challenging its authority. Even as the battle for Palestine still raged, he ordered the IDF to shell the Altalena and forces that came to its assistance. Survivors were treated as prisoners of war, and the Irgun's militants were arrested and kept in detention until Begin capitulated.

This is a drop in the ocean of the terrorist Zionist acts to the British, international mediators and friends; as to their culpable unforgettable and unforgivable acts against the Palestinians and the Arabs, it will be the subject of the next part.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).