Class 8: Issues of Internal Security and Terrorism: "Gun Zionism" and the Emergence of Israel

 Recall British dilemmas

• governance: democracy vs. national home
• land
• people - see stats on immigration
• from Hope-Simpson 1930 to Peel Commission 1937 and the 1939 White Paper.
• Zionist Biltmore (NY) Program of 1942 - and David Ben Gurion "to fight with GB as if there was no WP" and subsequently "fight the WP as if there was no war."

World War II and "Gun Zionism" 1940-1946

• Jewish refugees - illegal immigration - and tragedies: SS Patria, Struma
• Stern Gang (1940): assassination of Lord Moyne Nov. 1944
• Vladimir Jabotinsky (d. 1940) and Menachem Begin: Irgun allying with Stern Gang (LEHI) 1944.
• Hagana (Labour mainstream) vs. LEHI and Irgun until spring of 1945. Then Hagana attacks British forces October 1945...

Could either side have "autonomy" within a binational state?

• Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (30 April 1946 report)
• King David Hotel destruction 22 July 1946 (Irgun of Menachem Begin, not the Haganah)
• Morrison Grady Plan to implement binational federation
• UNSCOP (UN Special Commission on Palestine) - June-July 1947 interviews, Arab boycott
• Distribution of Jewish settlements in Mandate Palestine, 1947 - also see land ownership on map in Smith, p.195, and at United Nations. And population by district in Mandate Palestine estimated Dec. 1946,
• Majority partition plan map; Minority Federal bi-national state map

The Emergence of Israel (map of 1949 Armistice lines (cf Smith, p.197) turned into state)

•  Nov 17, 1947 Transjordan/Zionist nonaggression pact
• Nov 25...29, 1947 partition resolution (33-13, 10 abstain)

Your readings: for discussion

• Dershowitz
  • Were the Jews unwilling to share Palestine? p 39 cf Edwatd Said about 1947-48 wheras Dershovitz 1920-1929, focusing on Haj Amin Husseini "close ally and adviser to Adolph HItler"?
  • Have the Jews always rejected a two-state solutrion? Again, Dershovitz discusses1937-1939, not responding to "accusers" concerning 1947-48 period.
  • Have the Jews Exploited the Holocaust?
  • Was the UN Partition Plan Unfair to Palestinians
  • Were Jews a Minority in What Became Israel?
• Pappe: "ethnic cleaning"?

---

18 Sept. 2008

Department of Government, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin.

Questions, Comments, and Suggestions to chenry@mail.utexas.edu