Word: irgun
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Your story about two British soldiers who were tortured and killed by the Irgun Zvai Leumi is an insulting distortion of the true facts...
...native-born Israeli and former member of L.H.I. (the Stern group), I can tell you the true story. The two British soldiers were kidnaped and held as hostages for two Irgun members captured by the British and sentenced to death. The British authorities had been warned that if the execution took place, the two British sergeants would be hanged in retaliation. It was, of course, "undignified" for the British Empire to give in, so the two freedom fighters were hanged. As a consequence, the two Britons were also hanged. They were never tortured...
Begin soon became commander of Irgun, which was diametrically opposed to the methods of the Jewish Agency, headed by Ben-Gurion and other Zionist socialists. The agency sought a Jewish homeland through negotiation with the British and was willing to settle for a Jewish state coexisting with an Arab one in Palestine. The Irgun demanded all of Palestine and Transjordan; its motto: "Judea collapsed in fire and blood...
...Irgun and a smaller group, the Stern Gang, began a campaign of terror designed primarily to drive the British out of Palestine. In 1946 Begin's men blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which was then British government headquarters. Ninety people?Jewish and Arab employees, in addition to British officials?were killed. The Irgun also tortured two British soldiers to death, then strung up their booby-trapped bodies in an orange grove...
...incident that shocked the world was an assault on the Arab village of Deir Yassin in April 1948. Begin claimed that the Irgun warned the villagers to leave Deir Yassin before the attack; in fact, the truck carrying the hit team's loudspeaker fell into a ditch. Using Sten guns, rifles, hand grenades and long Arab knives, Begin's men massacred more than 200 villagers, mostly old men, women and children. Many were mutilated and the women raped...