Hamas: A Pale Image of the Jewish Irgun And Lehi Gangs

By Donald Neff

AS EASY as it is to dismiss clichés as banal and misleading, the troubling problem is that they often cloak an essential truth. Scoffs and derision often greet the cliché that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Yet freedom fighters is exactly how Israelis view the early Zionists who fought in 1947 for the establishment of Israel—and how Palestinians now consider their fighters resisting Israeli occupation.

The reality is that when faced with a superior military force, such as Britain possessed in 1947 and Israel does today against the Palestinians, terror is the underdog’s only viable weapon. Once a state has been established and legitimized, however, as in the cases of Israel and South Africa, the former “terrorists” tend to gain a veil of legitimacy as well. But legitimacy is now being denied Hamas. Even though Palestinians elected a Hamas-led government in free and fair elections, Israel denies it legitimacy on the grounds that Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Sixty years ago, however, at the time of the British Mandate, it was Jews in Palestine who mainly waged terrorism against the Palestinians. As Jewish leader David Ben-Gurion recorded in his personal history of Israel: “From 1946 to 1947 there were scarcely any Arab attacks on the Yishuv .”

The same could not be said for the Zionists. Jewish terrorists waged an intense and bloody campaign against the Palestinians, British, and even some Jews who opposed them leading up to the establishment of Israel.

The two major Jewish terror organizations in pre-independence Palestine were the Irgun Zvai Leumi—National Military Organization, NMO, also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel—founded in 1937, and the Lohamei Herut Israel, Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, Lehi in the Hebrew acronym, also known as the Stern Gang after its leader Avraham Stern, known as Yair, founded in 1940.

More at;
WRMEA

Please remove this loathsome thread.

Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945. By Donald Neff. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1995. Pp. xii, 350. ISBN 0-88728-262-8 (hardcover) $25.00, 0-88728-259-8 (Paper) $15.00.

This book is a study, and indeed a critique, of the American policy towards the question of Palestine and towards Israel from 1945 to our days. Its chapters, which trace the developments in this policy throughout the years and under various American administrations, are organized according to the "pillars" of this policy: attitudes toward Zionism; the partition of Palestine; the Palestinian refugees; Israel's borders; the Palestinian people; Jerusalem; Jewish settlements in the occupied territories; and arms supplies to Israel. This thematic organization of the book provides a clear depiction of the subject matter while keeping it an interesting historical narrative of patterns and development in the U. S. policy in the Middle East. However, many of the developments in this policy are only cursorily analyzed, both in terms of internal and international politics. In addition, although the book is well documented, and the book's eighty pages of 23 appendices provide further documentation of the first decade of the period under study, it does not seem that Neff's research involved significant archival work, and the book is based largely on secondary material and on press reports. This is a conspicuous lacuna in any study of diplomatic history, especially since much information about the earlier years which are discussed in the book is available in American, Israeli and other archives.

The major argument which underlies the narrative and analysis of Neff's book is that the contradictions between the declared principles and actual policies of the United States towards Palestine/Israel, and the double standards applied in this policy harm America's interests and international image. Furthermore, Neff sees the American alliance with Israel as detrimental for the Palestinians and burdensome for the United States.

Overall, the book is an interesting and well documented perspective on the American policy in the Middle East and on Israeli-Palestinian relations, but it falls short of providing an insightful analysis of these issues.

Ronen Raz

Princeton University

http://www.lib.umich.edu/area/Near.East/rev64.htm#Fallen

"Overall, the book is an interesting and well documented perspective on the American policy in the Middle East and on Israeli-Palestinian relations, but it falls short of providing an insightful analysis of these issues."

...to find more about him, don't recall hearing of him before, and I'm pulling up stuff like he was Time's bureau chief in Jerusalem and he's been a journalist for forty years. He's a mideast policy guy. His books show up on the recommended reading lists or footnotes of political papers from political courses at Cornell, MIT and the National Defense University.

What gives?

PB

As I think I know why the claims have been made. Basically, Mr. Neff is frequently cited by those whose agendas are extremely anti-Semitic at times. This includes I believe StormFront and a few others of the nastier element. However, I disagree that this makes him anti-Semitic as there are very well established people whose works are sometimes quoted similarly out of context by these same people.

Mr. Neff is biased in his historiography and obviously has gaps in his research that results from his slant, but then again so are other legimiate people whose works are commonly cited here.

L-

'Fallen Pillars
U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945
By Donald Neff

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/fallenpillars.htm

___________________

'The United States and the Middle East

Spring 2006

Texts (*=required reading)


* Abel's Course Pack (available at 715 23rd St.: you must show your student ID and a copy of this syllabus to obtain a copy).
* Z. Brzezinski, The Choice (NY: Basic Books, 2004). ($7.99 new from amazon.com)
* Samuel P. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations Debate, Foreign Affairs reprints.
* Douglas Little, American Orientalism (U of North Carolina Press, 2004) ($13.57 from amazon.com)
Hedrick Smith, The Power Game, Ballantine Books, 1996 ($11.53 from amazon.com)

Note: You should also be reading the New York Times (available on the WWW at http://www.nytimes.com) or Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com) and other sources of international news on a regular basis to keep up with current events. The BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/ ) is also useful, with pointers to the Middle East. Middle East Policy, The Daily Star, and Ha'aretz are also good sources of news and commentary. You will find many other sources free of charge on the Internet, but you may wish to compare them with "conventional" media coverage of the Middle East. Excellent recommended background readings are

Congressional Quarterly, The Middle East 10th ed, 2005, 1-933116-13-7 - strongly recommended reference book for $41.
Fawaz A. Gerges, America and Political Islam (Cambridge UP, 1999).
Glenn P. Hastedt, American Foreign Policy: Past, Present, Future (Prentice Hall 2003).
George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (Duke U. Press, 1990) - sympathetic to big business.
Donald Neff, Fallen Pillars: US Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1995) - sympathetic to the Palestinians.
Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict (U of Chicago Press, 1985) - sympathetic to Israel.
Shibley Telhami, The Stakes in the Middle East, 2002

http://www.la.utexas.edu/chenry/usme/syllabus.html#texts

It says right there -- sympathetic to the Palestinians.


You can't have that. People would have to like, analyze what they read or something and decide for themselves which viewpoint is skewed and which isn't. Students can't hear the other side, they might be confused. (do I really need a sarcasm indicator?)

It's quite distressing that any thread even slightly critical of Israel is immediately branded as anti-semetic. Discussion and a book recommendation is quite useful for educating yourself. Reading one side of a conflict is no way to make an informed and educated opinion. I'm quite capable of detecting bias. In fact, I *expect* bias, which is why reading many sources is so important.

Never get all your news in one place, even if you don't like what you hear elsewhere.

Donald Neff is a notorious antisemite.

It said NOTHING about being sympathetic to Palestinians; it said NOTHING about being anti-Semitic BECAUSE it was critical of Israel; and, it said NOTHING about trying to silence the "other side."

Did you not understand the comment was about the AUTHOR not the fact that it was anti-Israeli?

"It's quite distressing that any thread even slightly critical of Israel is immediately branded as anti-semetic." If that were only true, it would indeed be distressing!

And then I googled the guy, just like the poster up thread did and found him to have legitimate credentials.

I might agree or disagree with his viewpoint, I don't know, but I'm not going to brand him as a notorious anti-semite for criticizing israel when his credentials look legit. If he is a "notorious anti-semite" how about some proof of that rather than just stating it.

I'm sick of having a sacred cow called israel because we need an ally in the middle east. There should be no sacred cows, including our own government. Israel is not infalible.

Why are people so quick to label someone an anti-semetic when they print the truth about zionist or zionism??

"Why are people so quick to label someone an anti-semetic when they print the truth about zionist or zionism??"

Because, more often than not, they are anti-Semitic.

that I'm not quite sure his facts are correct, and his omission of certain facts (e.g. that the majority leadership acted against the Etzel and Lehi, sometimes going so far as to hand them over to the British*, and that they were accepted into the leadership after being slapped down hard, disarmed, and then spending the better part of a generation in, at best, low-level positions (or more often, in the opposition)), the author fails to prove - or even address - the point he's supposedly trying to make.

The article title is "Hamas: A Pale Image of the Jewish Irgun And Lehi Gangs". This implies the author is trying to show Hamas is not as bad as the Irgun and Lehi. Yet except for the second paragraph, Hamas is never mentioned; nor is any event after 1947.


*Look up the "season" (or "sezun") which happened at the time the author is describing (1946)

Then that's a whole nother can of worms. If his facts are not facts, then say that, but don't throw around the serious accusation of anti-semitism if you don't agree with his conclusions.

Dishonest scholarship is enough to label him as being biased. Conclusions made from agreed upon facts aren't.

Another poster, Jim Sagle, did without providing a single skerrick of evidence to back up that accusation....

The author here indulges in distortion by date selection. Violence in Palestine, as we all know here, hardly commenced in '46, nor did the formation of the Jewish groups the author references occur in a vacuum, as he rather suggests by ommission.

These groups arose towards the end the period of intense Arab violence directed at Jews and Englishmen in the decade immediately prior to the Second World War, generally refered to as the Arab Revolt, that led among other things, to the Peel Commision with its initial partition plan, and certainly qualifies as a major element in the history of the place and times. It was certainly a major campaign from the point of view of England, which shifted many soldiers from Egypt's garrison to supress it. Omitting any mention of it is either a confession of ignorance, unfitting the author to be regarded as an authority in the matter, or an example of deliberate distortion, unfitting the author to be regarded as an honest man.

There is no need to pursue further backwards the history of Arab Nationalist and Jewish violence in the period of the Mandate, and the years of military occupation pure and simple prior to it, as just the above is sufficient to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the author's attempt at pretending violence was introduced into the situation by these small groups of violent Jews. It is, however, worth noting that Hamas bears a direct relation to the Moslem Brothers, active and violent in the thirties and fourties of the last century already, and if one is really looking for the roots of that organization, it is in that earlier fundamentalist wave the search would be most profutably focused, at least by a writer genuinely interested in providing honest information.

These groups arose towards the end the period of intense Arab violence directed at Jews and Englishmen in the decade immediately prior to the Second World War, generally refered to as the Arab Revolt,

They were the offshoot of Jabotinsky who broke away from the Haganah back in the 20's, but more importantly as a result of the influence of Trumpeldor who curiously enough ties both the Haganah and the Irgun together, albeit thru completely different outlooks.

Remember, the predecessor of the Haganah was the Ha-Shomer which was founded in the middle of the Second Aliyah just before WWI and the Mandate. One of the main players in the Ha-Shomer was Trumpeldor who was a colleague and major influence on Jabotinsky in expressing the need for the rebirth of a Jewish military. Between the two of them, they founded the first Jewish military unit, the Zion Mule Corps, as part of an attempt to found a Jewish Legion to be used in Palestine. Later, Trumpeldor organized the first Hashomer units in the new Jewish settlements in the Galilee area shortly after the start of the Mandate and was killed defending one of them.

It's really convoluted and comes from the same path. But they came as a combination result of the rise in tension during the Second Aliyah and the rise in Nationalism sparked by the opportunities presented by WWI.


L-

And men of the Jewish Legion took part in reprisal raids in the early twenties after the mobbings at Jaffa that led more or less to the founding of Tel Aviv. But there was something unique in the character of the Irgun at its establishment, in that it did take as its tactic assassination pure and simple. Another element that fed into the mix was the "special companies" of Jews recruited by the English during the Arab Revolt, and employed quite ruthlessly by Wingate. There is a good deal of back-story on all sides of the matter, which to my mind only emphasises the flaws of the presentation in the article referenced above.

Than what Mr. Neff attempts to write about and even worse when you consider the shoddy state of his scholarship. From what I've seen I don't think him a bigot, but he most certainly has a particular prism he views events thru. However, he is not the first nor the last who will pick the facts to suit whatever thesis they want to pursue.

Back to Trumpeldor, the histories of both Palestine and Israel are the stories of very strong personalities. Makes for some damned interesting reading, though sometimes finding good source material can be difficult. One day I will find affordable copies of Glubb Pasha's books _My Years with the Arabs_ and _The Story of the Arab Legion_.

L-

Was indeed a striking figure: one-armed soldiers exert a certain fascination, which he multiplied by getting himself shot dead in circumstances that allowed him the martyr's laurel.