A History of the Irgun

...A History of the Irgun Terror Out of Zion By J Bowver Bell St Martin's 374 pp $13 95 Reviewed by Eric M Breindel While writing On Revolt, a study of insurrections against British colonial forces (published last vear), J Bowyer Bell, an associate of Columbia University's Institute of War/ Peace Studies, made a fortuitous decision Unhappy with the prospect of paring to a single chapter all the material he had gathered on the Irgun Zvai Leumi during his research, he resolved to devote an entire book to the Jewish underground organization Then, just as Terror Out ofZion was being issued here this May, former Irgun commander Menahem Begin won a stunning electoral upset in Israel Begin's emergence as the Jewish State's sixth prime minister has suddenly focused attention on a largely ignored aspect of the Ziomst story And Bell's exciting narrative, based mostly on interviews with former members of the Irgun and the Stern Group, amply fills the gap Except for personal memoirs, little had previously appeared in English on the Jewish resistance in Palestine during the British Mandate (David Niv's excellent multivolume study of the Irgun in Hebrew, only recently included in the standard history curriculum in Israel's high schools, has unfortunately not been translated ) The tendency among the majority of Zionist historians has been to describe members of the underground as dissident terrorists who were at best negligible, and at worst manifestly counterproductive The departure of the British, it is maintained, was due principally to the successful tactics of the Ziomst Establishment—specifically the land settlement policy, the ingathering of immigrants and the astute practice of international diplomacy Even where it is conceded that armed resistance played a part in forcing Britain's hand, the lion's share of credit is usually given to the Haganah, the semiofficial Ziomst military force during the Mandate In recent years, this view has been propagated with great fervor for immediate political reasons—Israeli indignation over Palestinian terrorism requires downplaying the role of Jewish terror three decades ago Still, the negative historical treatment of the Irgun is merely further proof of the old adage that history is written by the victors, who in this case were the Labor Ziomsts under the leadership of-David Ben Gunon The ideological gulf between the dominant Labontes and the followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the charismatic founder of Revisionist-Zionism—parent movement of the Irgun—was extremely wide Revisionists believed that Jewish statehood could be won by force of arms alone Their militarism was reflected in their lore, their emphasis on ceremony and uniform, their slogans ("In blood and fire did Judea fall' In blood and fire will Judea arise'") Since this went against the Socialist mainstream, a bitter struggle between the two factions was waged in Palestine as well as in the diaspora, and the old wounds did not heal once the state was established In one of his first speeches following Independence, Ben Gunon paid tribute to "those who helped bring us to this point " His list of names was long, but the towering figure of Jabotmsky was not on it Terror Out of Zion will not please Labor Zionists After tracing the Irgun's roots in the Revisionist movement, Bell sympathetically discusses the policy of restraint in the face of ongoing Arab riots—which actually gave rise to the guerrilla organization He is less kindly toward the group led by Abraham Stern that broke away from the Irgun in 1939 because, at Jabotinsky's order, its commanders declared a truce with Great Britain for the duration of World War II The bulk of the book concerns the period after January 1944, when Irgun activities resumed under the command of Begin, a Revisionist youth leader from Poland whose path to Palestine, where he arrived two years earlier, had taken him through Soviet concentration camps Bell rapidly moves from bank robbery to bombing to kidnapping, emphasizing the new strategy that was adopted At its center was Begin's conviction that the Irgun, despite admittedly limited resources, could ultimately determine the course of British policy The more spectacular the Irgun's operations, he reasoned, the more intense would be the British repression As the Mandate became a glass house, particularly in a guilty and relatively philo-Semitic post-Holocaust world, the United States would be alienated by British colonial policy in Palestine Then Britons at home, recognizing that the prospects for ending the bloodshed were poor, also would presumably begin to exert pressure on their government to abandon the Mandate Bell believes < this strategy was sound He does not claim that the Irgun, by bombing Mandate headquarters at the King David Hotel, by hanging two British soldiers m retaliation for the execution of Irgun members, or by blowing up the Shell refineries in Haifa, singlehandedly drove out the British He argues simply that the Irgun was more important in accelerating the pace of events than is usually acknowledged He further contends that even the tiny Stern Group, with its doctrine of "individual terrorism," hastened the British departure—through acts such as the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne, the British resident-minister in Cairo ' Although there is no pretense here of presenting a comprehensive account of the myriad factors that contributed to the triumph of Zionism in 1947-48, the totally uninitiated reader could gam the impression that the Irgun was the principal actor in the drama of Israel's rebirth Somewhat fuller treatment of Haganah activities and Jewish Agency policy would have provided the book with a better context Technically, too, its case might have been strengthened by greater use of British foreign office documents, now available through 1945 But Bell's masterful handling of the personal interview has enabled him to uncover more detailed and explicit information than could be gleaned from any written source His Terror Out of Zion is a gripping flesh-and-blood history of an important, hitherto neglected subject...