#British mandate

[eretzyisrael]

eurojewcong

77 years ago today, the UN voted to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two countries, one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish side accepted the UN plan for the establishment of two states. The Arabs rejected it and launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish state.

[casavanse]

*dies of frustration*

*gets up on a stage*

*takes a deep breath*

*screams*

PALESTINE WAS NEVER A COUNTRY!

[secular-jew]

Did ancient Palestinians (who were European Aegeans/Greeks) speak English and Hebrew? These manhole covers are not only English, and not only have Hebrew writing (no Arabic), but they also have the sign of the Volkan Company, which was a metal factory established by Judeans.

The cover also has the sign of the Volkan company, a metal factory established by Judeans in the 1930s.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Reminder that the "Palestinians" are Jordanians. Who neither Jordan nor Egypt want.

[thebrightestwitchofherage]

Heyo!

I hope it's fine for me to ask, but some time ago I came across a meme about the Irgun and the Lehi, which as far as I know were Zionist groups operating in British Palestine. Are they actually terrorists, or freedom fighters for the Jews? What are their backgrounds, actually?

https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/iBsWe8tcQV.

I submitted it once to spot-the-antisemitism but they dont have a clear answer for me: https://spot-the-antisemitism.tumblr.com/post/765787943892926464/i-just-came-across-a-history-meme-about-the

Ohhh, I got you! Yeah, I agree that the initial response you got is both informative and antisemitic. This is a long post incoming! For clarity, I will be referring to the Irgun as "Etzel," which is the common Hebrew name.

Israeli followers- feel free to add information or correct any mistakes I might have made :)

TLDR- yes, the Etzel / Irgun were an extreme and violent resistance group that was considered a terrorist organization by the British during the British mandate. However, they were *not* the majority of people and were heavily criticized both then and now. Unfortunately, many people use them to claim that Israelis were always violent.

---

Background -The land of Israel was under Ottoman rule (16th-20th century) and, later, British mandatory rule (1917-1945). Up until the first mass "Aliyah" (immigration) to Israel, the Jewish population was made up of descendants of Jews from the 2nd Temple period (516 BCE—70 CE) and Jewish families who came back independently from exile all over the globe. There were 5 Aliyahs overall until 1948, and many later- they continue to this day!

The Irgun is mostly known in Hebrew as Etzel - the acronym for "Irgun Tzva'ai Leumi", National Military Organization:

Sorry for using Wikipedia, it’s the best English source I could find for this.

Their later actions and ideologies are known to be extreme and violent. That is why the other resistance groups at the time criticized them & refused to collaborate; Their most known actions are blowing up British assets, HQs, bridges, etc, and kidnapping British officers (in response to the death penalty that was placed on members).

They believed that was the only way to free Israel from centuries of occupation- hence their slogan... The main takeaway is that they represented a minority. Here are some examples:

1.The Altelena affair- a confrontation between the then newly formed IDF and the members of Etzel. At the time, there were many arguments about implementing former members of Etzel in the IDF in general.

"....The process of absorbing all military organizations into the IDF proved complicated, and several paramilitary groups continued to be active outside the IDF. One of the largest groups, the Irgun, planned to ship weapons and fighters to the newly formed state. The plans included a ship renamed Altalena (a nom de plume of Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky)".

Overall, Nineteen Israelis, three of them IDF soldiers and 16 of them Etzel members, were killed in the confrontation. The confrontation almost turned into a civil war! It was stopped by Etzel leader Menachem Begin (future president), who told his forces that they should not retaliate.

The Wikipedia article about the confrontation is surprisingly accurate! Read about it to further understand the extent of criticism the Etzel faced, and the tension between the different resistance groups and the newly formed IDF back then. ---- 2. Another important thing to note is that there were many Jewish underground organizations against the Ottomans and, later on, the British: Nili*, Hashomer, Lehi, Hahagana, the Jewish Resistance Movement, Hamagen, Bar-Giora, and many more. *Unfortunately,(and maybe deliberately) Etzel is the only example used by Anti-Zionists to claim that Jews and Israelis "were always violent"...

Many of these organizations were made up of young Zionists who made Aliyah (some without their families!). Their main focuses, besides fighting for an independent Israel and equality for Jews, were farming, building new Jewish cities, and helping other diaspora Jews make an Aliyah and start a home in Israel. Some were based on socialist or revisionist ideals.

In High school, I literally had a test on the comparison of the ideologies of each group... Let's just say the Etzel are indeed the most extreme. Nilli is my personal favorite, I'll add some reading recs about it below.

—

Recommend sites for further reading:

Hebrew: The official Etzel website and This Wikipedia-like page. *I'm hoping you could use some automatic translation for these.

English:

This is my favorite visual timeline & explanation of who ruled over Israel across history. **Nili - iconic resistance group against the Ottomans, operated between 1915-1917. Unlike most of the Yishuv back then, they sided with the British. Nili is an acronym that stands for the Hebrew phrase: "Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaker" (1 Samuel 15:29), which translates as "the Eternal One of Israel will not lie".

You can read about their leader, Sarah Aaronson, here. There's also a great book about her and the movement by Dvorah Omer. I wish it was translated to English so I could link it...

This is the house in Zichron Ya'akov from which the resistance operated. It's a museum today!

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

[girlactionfigure]

[archtroop]

Some very neutral, historical context to current events.

[makingcontact]

The Origins of Zionism

Front cover of “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.” Credit: Macmillan Publishers For the last 6 months, the world has been witness to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Outsized, and unprecedented attacks on the people of Gaza, and support from western countries for these Israeli attacks have led to a situation where Gaza is being referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison.  In this episode…

[argaman01]

This coin was minted in 1927, during the time when the British ruled Palestine as a Mandate from the League of Nations. It is not evidence for an independent state of Palestine that existed before Israel was founded in 1948.

The top line reads "Filastin" in Arabic. The middle line is English. The bottom line is Hebrew and reads "Palestina (EI)." The two letters in parentheses are the initials for the Hebrew phrase Eretz Israel = Land of Israel. Coinage, stamps, and signs were in all three languages.

A Palestinian coin older than Israel

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[secular-jew]

Truth - Eretz Y’Israel

[sefaradweb]

Soldados británicos evacuando judíos del barco Éxodo en el puerto de Haifa, 18 de julio de 1947

El 11 de julio de 1947, el barco Presidente Warfield partió de Francia hacia la Tierra de Israel con 4.500 pasajeros, en su mayoría sobrevivientes del Holocausto. Rebautizado como Éxodo 1947, fue atacado el 17 de julio por destructores británicos en aguas internacionales y remolcado a Haifa el 18 de julio. Debido a esto, el gobierno británico ordenó deportar a los pasajeros. Se embarcaron en tres barcos británicos: Empire Rival, Runnymede Park, y Ocean Vigour. Francia no permitió el desembarco, y los pasajeros fueron mantenidos a bordo durante más de tres semanas antes de ser enviados a Alemania. Allí, fueron desembarcados por la fuerza en Hamburgo y llevados a campos de personas desplazadas. El trato inhumano hacia los pasajeros del Éxodo 1947 causó indignación a nivel internacional.

On July 11, 1947, the ship President Warfield set sail from France to the Land of Israel with 4,500 passengers, most of them Holocaust survivors. Renamed as Exodus 1947, it was attacked on July 17 by British destroyers in international waters and towed to Haifa on July 18. As a result, the British government ordered the deportation of the passengers. They were transferred to three British ships: Empire Rival, Runnymede Park, and Ocean Vigour. France did not allow disembarkation, and the passengers were kept aboard for over three weeks before being sent to Germany. There, they were forcibly disembarked in Hamburg and taken to displaced persons camps. The inhumane treatment of the passengers of Exodus 1947 caused international outrage.

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

@crazypeanutsurewhynot A crucial point. And there's more:

Hamas was built on a foundation of Nazism, with an active call for the extermination of the Jews inside and outside of Israel. After the October 7 atrocity, Hamas agents were caught in Denmark and The Netherlands, planning further massacres of Jews. This is damning proof that Hamas' attack on Israel had nothing to do with the Israeli-Arab conflict, but with a desire to carry out genocidal Islamic jihad against the Jewish world.

Furthermore, Egypt also proscribes Hamas as a terrorist organisation. The Muslim Brotherhood, the parent terrorist organisation to Hamas, was dethroned in Egypt within the last decade. Egypt has had an active blockade on Gaza for several years, including flooding the tunnels that Hamas uses to smuggle arms. Egypt has placed maximum restrictions on the number of Palestinian Arabs who can enter the country from Gaza.

Yet Hamas did not launch a genocidal attack on Egypt.

Either the millions worldwide slandering Israel haven't read Hamas' Charter from 1988, or they don't want to. We still have people refusing to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, so it isn't surprising that people don't want to contend with the inherent evil of Palestinian terrorist ideology in its love of and desire to emulate the Nazi extermination doctrine preached by Adolf Hitler.

They don't want to contend with the fact that they have been thoroughly duped by people whom they consider to be vulnerable and oppressed; that these people have a fundamentally sick and murderous culture that cannot be appeased by any geopolitical concessions. A sick and murderous culture that is not only a threat to Israel, but also to the West as well.

This cowardice and slavery to illusions is what drives attempts to project Hamas' own criminality onto Israel and the Jewish people. There's no moral strength here, only intellectual surrender to the genocidal tyranny of Islamic terrorism, an intellectual surrender that has been in force since at least the September 11 attacks of 2001.

People have submitted themselves to their mortal enemies in the vain hope that this will afford them protection from mass murder. It won't, but they are too intellectually stunted or wilfully blind to see that in appeasing jihadists, they are signing their own death warrant.

Instead of examining the roots of their own moral bankruptcy, they choose to vent their spleen against Israel, which dares to stand up and defend both itself and civilisation as a whole. They blame Israel for enraging the terrorists, not realising the terrorists need no provocation to commit genocide. The goal of Hamas, as with all Islamic terrorists, is the apocalyptic subjugation of the "infidel" civilisations, not the acquisition of land or other political gains.

That is why people trumpeting the two-state solution will be in for a huge shock if they are brave enough to do some research: Palestinian terrorists and many Palestinian supporters of terrorists have never wanted a two-state solution: what they want is the obliteration of the Jewish State because it is Jewish. They have no issue with the fact that Jordan is actually built on the majority of the original Mandate for Palestine, and that's even considering the fact that the PLO terrorist group has historic bad blood with the Hashemite royal family. It's only the Jewish state that has aroused their ire to hysterical, murderous rage.

This is why Palestinian terrorism is not modelled on ambitions for a state, as gullible Westerners foolishly claim when they listen with breathless adulation to slick pro-Palestinian talking heads well trained in Soviet techniques of deception, but on the al-Aqsa mosque. Hamas terrorists copy PLO terrorist Yasser Arafat in styling their genocidal crimes after the al-Aqsa mosque (the al-Aqsa Flood/brigade), which represents the conquest of Islam in the Holy Land.

Every time we see pundits who skate by these glaring, inconvenient truths in order to demonise Israel, we are seeing someone who is either uninformed, or too afraid to say things that will displease the Palestinian side. We have seen the aggression and hatred that pro-Palestinians have shown towards Jews worldwide, another piece of evidence disproving their claim that they anger is only over Israel's policies. From America to Europe, Jews have been harassed, chased, excluded, slandered, demonised, and assaulted. People have openly celebrated the murder and kidnapping of their fellow Jews, and called for further attacks.

Even Jews who are normally critical of the Israeli government have found themselves attacked and ostracised since October 7. US Senator Bernie Sanders has been harassed, despite openly calling for a restriction of US support to Israel and condemning Netanyahu. His "crime"? Correctly refusing to accuse Israel of genocide, especially since he is the descendant of those who suffered the worst genocide in history, the Holocaust. Sanders, for all his disdain for Israel's right to self-defence, knows this claim is a strategic lie.

There has been no justification for any of this abuse whatsoever, not least since Jews living abroad are not responsible for every error that Israel's government makes. Yet pro-Palestinians aren't making that distinction. Why? Because they hate Jews. It's that simple.

We're not dealing with a localised political conflict over land, but a systematic, global hatred of the Jewish people, and the pro-Palestinian cause is currently the largest driver of that hatred.

What I think many people don't really think about is that Hamas is fighting Israel because Israel is Jewish. It is the only Jewish nation on earth and they would wipe it out if they could. But Israel is not fighting Hamas because it is Muslim. We have many Muslim neighbours who we have peaceful relations with. We are fighting Hamas for our survival. That is why we must win.

[immaculatasknight]

Perfidious Albion