Concept in Definition ABC

The turbulent years before and after establishment of the state of Israel they saw many things. One of them, and although it seems paradigmatic, the establishment of organizations right-wing Jews, in some cases violent, whose intellectual heiresses still condition life politics Israeli. This is the story of one of them.

The Irgún was a terrorist organization founded in 1931 and which, until 1948, defended the Zionist ideals through armed struggle, attacking both Arabs and British people.

It was a split from the Haganah, the secret army founded in the 1920s in Palestine to defend the Jews from the attacks suffered, mainly, by the Arabs, but which also attacked the British when it considered it necessary.

The reason for founding the Irgún was to go a step beyond where the Haganah arrived, responding to Arab actions with equal or superior use of the force. The founding members were part of the Haganah, and they were disappointed with the leadership of this organization, considering that it was giving a very lukewarm response to the Arab aggressions.

It merged with another organization (Beitar) that also emerged from the Haganah a few years earlier.

Irgún means HaIrgun HaTzva'i HaLe'umi BeEretz Yisra'el, "National Military Organization in the Land of Israel", and sought to be a completely military organization, unlike the Haganah which was more properly militia.

As such, the Irgún had a military-type command structure, and carried out actions that were categorized as military missions.

Other Haganah groups also deserted from this organization, disenchanted with its politics, to end up going to the military in the Irgún. Thanks to this, the new organization was able to spread throughout the country.

Despite not agreeing with the Haganah, both organizations knew how to overcome their differences and collaborate in various aspects, understanding that they were fighting for the same end.

But during the great Arab revolt of 1936, the Irgún again took a step ahead of the Haganah, the latter more contained, in the use of the violence to respond to Arab attacks.

In 1937, and faced with the immediate possibility that the British mandate decided to split Palestine in two, creating a Jewish state in one of the parts, the Irgun became internally stressed.

This was due to the fact that a current within the organization advocated self-restraint in offensive actions so as not to enter into conflicts. with the British (and thus have an advantage at the negotiating table when the time comes, we could say "out of sympathy"), while the other current did not trust British intentions and supported an open armed struggle against the Arabs to win their own country.

This led to an internal referendum and, in April '37, to a split after which most of those who had left the Haganah returned to her, the rest (mainly those who had been Beitar activists) went ahead as Irgún with more nationalist postulates and more than right.

After the great Arab revolt, and coinciding with the Nazi persecutions, the Irgún also collaborated in the settlement of Jewish immigrants in Palestine, regardless of the quotas assigned by the British.

The Irgún also brought the level of violence to an "eye for an eye", that is, each Arab action was answered with another of equal or greater magnitude as revenge. These actions, many times, were not approved by the organization's management, if not carried out by local leaders.

The Irgún leadership hoped, by restraining its actions, to be able to create a Jewish army not in the clandestine, but official and in full view of the world, to fulfill the tasks that any army has assigned.

But between '37 and '39 the violence escalated and British politics hardened, leading the Irgún to engage in armed actions much more often.

The publication of the White Paper in 1939 roused both Arabs and Jews, and caused the violence to escalate even further. This led the Irgun to actively attack the British occupation forces.

The outbreak of the Second World War, in September 1939, caused a turn of the events: the Irgun announced that it stopped attacking the British so as not to obstruct the war effort.

The enemy was the Nazi regime, and the Jews knew it, although they still could not imagine the collective misfortune that, as a people, was coming upon them. However, not all commanders and militants agreed with the decision to stop fighting the British. These spun off creating the Lehi organization (acronym for Lohamei Herut Israel, Fighters for the Freedom of Israel).

During the war, members of the Irgún enlisted in the British Army's Jewish Brigade, in addition to the organization providing support from intelligence to allies in various countries.

Also within the continent European Union, armed actions against the Nazis were encouraged, such as the participation del Beitar in the heroic Warsaw ghetto uprising.

In 1943 he took command of the Irgún Menáchem Beguín, a Polish soldier who arrived in Palestine in 41, and for whom the future held to be Prime Minister of Israel (in the period 1977-1983.

Beguín resumed the fight against the British in 1944, when the end of the Nazi regime was already evident, and the need for a state and a series of organizations to convey the Jewish emigration that would come from Europe.

However, the organization was very touched, as the British had done their own thing, taking advantage of the truce and collaboration to carry out work with the aim of undermining organizations that bet on violence, and had even carried out arrests of leaders and militants.

On November 44, the assassination of Lord Moyne, British Deputy Minister of State for the Colonies, led to the Jewish Agency and other moderate organizations organized a purge against members of the Irgún, the well-known What saison (for the hunting season in French).

The purge also consisted of denunciations of the members of the Irgún to the British, members who were captured and imprisoned.

Beguín chose not to respond to these actions, in a policy of containment that prevented the outbreak of a true civil war between the Jewish forces. Cooperation with the Haganah was resumed once after the Second World War in Europe.

On July 22, 1946, the Irgún carried out its most infamous terrorist act: the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

This site was used by the British as the headquarters of the British Mandate authorities in Palestine. A powerful blast shook the building around noon, killing 91 British, Arab and Jewish people.

The Irgún previously notified the British authorities, who ignored the warning, causing the high mortality rate.

The operation was revenge for the RAID that British forces had carried out against the headquarters of the Jewish Agency, the seizure of sensitive documentation, and the massive arrest of activists carried out (some 2,500 people fell into said raid).

The attack marked a before and after for the British who, from this moment, would decide to evacuate the protectorate.

The creation of the state of Israel meant the end of the Irgún, but also of the Haganah, both integrated into the new Tsahal. However, earlier, both organizations were on the verge of plunging the nascent state into civil war.

It happened with the Altalena incident, a ship loaded with weapons that had been chartered by the Haganah and that had agreed to share with the Irgún. The fratricidal clash over weapons claimed 19 Israeli lives.

However, the time had come to put community interests before partisans, and the Irgún, as well as the Palmach, the Haganah and the other organizations of defense of the Jewish people in Palestine, they knew how to do it to collaborate as military forces during the War of Independence in 1948, even overcoming the incident of Altalena.

The Irgún stopped being a secret organization to go, with weapons and uniforms, to behave like a real Israeli army, attacking Arab positions and participating in the conquest of villages, as well as continuing to defend the Jewish communities established in Palestine, and who were the targets of the attacks Arabs.

In the city of Yafo, the soldiers of the irgún even fought openly against the British troops.

Finally, in May 1948, Menájem Beguín announced the dissolution of the irgún forces and his integration in the new Tsahal, the army of Israel. It was the end of one era and the beginning of another, although both would be marked by a struggle that still continues.

Photo: Fotolia - Renzo Boschi

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