Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin was prime minister of Israel and leader of the Likud party. In the 1940s Begin was associated with the terrorist organization Irgun Zvai Leumi which attacked the King David Hotel in 1946 and the Arab village of Deir Yassin in 1948, resulting in the deaths of 345 civilians.
Irgun's destruction of Deir Yassin on April 19, 1948, drew a public protest in a letter to the New York Times from prominent American Jews, including Albert Einstein. The letter began:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party”, a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
Speaking of the Deir Yassin incident, the letter read:
This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village for their base. On April 19th, terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants--240 men, women, and children--and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem.
The letter explains that while most of the Jewish community was horrified, “the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.”
The letter charged that, along with the Stern Group, Irgun inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community, and by using “gangster methods,” they “intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.”
The letter also said the Freedom Party, formed largely out of Irgun, had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine, had reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and detracted from Jewish defense activity. “Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.”[1]
Sources
Lecture by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, July 18, 1982.
- ↑ Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, Isidore Ahramowitz, et al, New York, December 2, 1948.