More from RIGHTEOUS VICTIMS (continuing from the post below this one): THE REVOLT, 1936-39 The First Stage On the evening of April 15, 1936, a gang of armed Arabs set up a roadblock....From Arab drivers they extorted contributions for arms and ammunition. They then shot three Jewish drivers....They were later seen as the first victims of the Arab rebellion. In an act of revenge two days later, members of Irgun Bet drove up to a shack...and shot dead its two Arab occupants. The Tel Aviv funeral of one Jewish victim on April 17 turned into an angry demonstration against the Arabs and the British. The official history of the Haganah blames this on hot-tempered and disorganized Oriental [Sephardic] Jews. An Arab passerby and a policeman who came to his defense were badly beaten. The following day several Arab shoeshine boys and peddlers were assaulted....On April 19 mobs of unemployed peasants and migrant workers from Syria, fired by rumors that an Arab woman and three Syrian laborers had been murdered in Tel Aviv, rampaged through Jaffa, killing nine Jews and injuring almost sixty.... The disturbances spread rapidly. Almost from the first, the Arabs referred to them as a revolt (THAWRA) or The Great Arab Rebellion. .... On April 25, representatives of the various factions met in Jerusalem and set up a wall-to-wall eight-man body called the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), which...led the Palestinian struggle during 1936-39 and 1946-48....At the end of April the AHC declared that the strike would end only when the government put a stop to Zionist immigration and land transfers, and allowed a popularly elected legislature; if the demands were not accepted by May 15, the Palestine Arab community would embark on active resistance, including armed violence. .... The [British] government readied reinforcements....But it also tried appeasement, announcing on May 18 a limit to Jewish immigration of 4,500 during the following half year. But the AHC, which wanted a complete end to immigration, responded by extending the strike and shifting to urban terrorism and to armed rebellion in the countryside. (pp. 128-130.) The Jewish Response The Arab fear of our power is intensifying,, Ben-Gurion said...[Arabs] see...exactly the opposite of what we see. It doesnt matter whether or not their view is correct....They see immigration on a giant scale...they see the Jews fortifying themselves economically....They see the best lands passing into our hands. They see England identify with Zionism. The Arabs, he said, felt that they were fighting dispossession....the fear is not of losing land, but of losing the homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn into the homeland of the Jewish people....There is a fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine....By our very presence and progress here, [we] have nurtured the [Arab] movement. .... The Haganah devoted its energies mainly to guard duty...In practice Irgun Bet for months abided by the policy of [restraint] while the Revisionist press berated the Haganah for cleaving to it. Only in mid-August, after the murder of two nurses in Jaffa, four Jews...and a child in Tel Aviv, did the Haganah briefly deviate from its policy of passive defense....On August 17 Irgun Bet ambushed the Jaffa train, killing an Armenian passenger and wounding five Arabs. Next they murdered two Arabs near Petach Tikva. (pp. 136-137)
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 19:45:22 +0000
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