From: rivk@ellis.uchicago.edu (nora gayle rivkis)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: Freedom fighter or Terrorist
Date: 24 Jan 93 20:34:08 GMT
Reply-To: rivk@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago

In article <1jth0bINNd25@manuel.anu.edu.au> bdm@cs.anu.edu.au writes:
>In article <1993Jan23.235313.20213@midway.uchicago.edu> 

>>I'll concede the point because it isn't relevant. I am willing to call the
>>PLO and assorted other groups I have problems with by the names they chose
>>for themselves, despite thinking they have very little to do with Liberation,
>>not a whole lot to do with Palestine, and not as much Organization as I'd
>>like to see. I expect the same courtesy. Lechi chose a name and used it;
>>there is no reason not to take it as standard.
>
>That's what I call them.

Okay. I brought up the point at all simply because someone started
throwing around other terms. I have a whole bunch of other terms I
could start bringing up for Hamas etc. if we're allowed to use names
of our own -- or other opponents of the group in question's -- choosing.
I prefer to keep it simpler and call everyone what they call tmeselves.

>>>>Second of all, I at least see them as a bunch
>>>>of fruitcakes who had one really rather neat idea (buzzing London and
>>>>dropping leaflets) that never materialized because they couldn't get
>>>>their act together, and who otherwise did nothing especially useful
>>>>and very little of any noticeable effect whatsoever... they made a lot
>>>>of noice and pulled off a prison break and a couple of semi-spectacular
>>>>assassinations. I am inclined to condemn them more on grounds of idiocy,
>>>>disorganization, and incompetence than I am on moral grounds, simply be-
>>>>cause I don't think they were ever competent enough to pull off much of
>>>>moral significance one way or the other. 
>
>>>You are forgetting the Deir Yassin massacre.
>
>>Deir Yassin was an indication of *competence*?!?!?! 
>
>No, I meant it was an example of an action with moral significance.

Marginally.

Fundamentally, I do consider being sufficiently stupid a moral crime
when it has sufficiently nasty consequences. And in that sense, Deir
Yassin certainly did have moral significance. But I don't tend to take
seriously as an evil institution that has to be worried about and screamed
over anyone who managed to accomplish so little, good or bad -- there
are always lunatics; I focus on the lunatics who get something done. Deir
Yassin was a singular example of almost inadvertently getting something 
done... everyone's assorted incompetences came together with everyone's
assorted prejudices and the result was a royal mess. I'll hold everyone
involved responsible for it, certainly (though I wonder how many of the
murders, including mass-murders, committed by the Palestinians and Arab
countries against Israelis or against the rest of the world because of
their rage against Israelis you spend so much attention attacking as you
do on one incident forty-five years ago); but I don't take it as repre-
sentative of anything but idiocy because that seems to be the overwhelming
factor involved.

>>Deir Yassin was one
>>of the stupidest, most messed-up pseudomilitary debacles I've ever heard
>>of since the Charge of the Light Brigade!! ;-)
>
>That depends on your point of view.  Menachem Begin (who denies it was
>a massacre) writes in glowing terms of how the massacre "lie" helped
>in the Irgun campaign of ethnic cleansing. 

If this is accurate (I have no reason to argue with you on it, I just
haven't read it myself), then it's a crock. Fine. I've never claimed
to agree with Begin, or Irgun, all the time.

Fact is that any competent military person can give you textbook lessons
on everything that was done wrong at Deir Yassin... to the extent that we
even know what *happened* at Deir yassin, as one of the things that was
done wrong was such a confusion over command, communications, planning,
and execution that to this day nobody is completely sure except that a
whole lot of people got killed. There are a number of politicians, amateur
and professional, who try to gloss over the incompetence involved in a
variety of ways, but on a purely technical basis it's as impossible to
avoid to anyone who is a professional in the field as the statement that
two plus two equals seventeen.

>>Seriously, how much of Deir Yassin was Lechi and how much was Irgun will
>>never be known; more to the point, how much was deliberate massacre and
>>how much was a complete bungling that led to chaos and disaster will never
>>be known. Tragedy it certainly was -- and Israel's responsibility it cer-
>>tainly was, and I'm not trying to evade it. We're as much to blame for
>>the results of our mistakes as the results of our malice. But I don't think
>>it's possible to draw much in the way of coonclusions regarding competence
>>or intent from it, as there seems to have been precious little of either
>>present at the time.
>
>The Irgun version (which may be biased against Lehi) is that Lehi 
>proposed a massacre but Begin overruled the idea.  The provision of
>a loudspeaker truck by the Irgun is evidence in favour of that version,
>though a massacre eventuated anyway.  Further evidence of the moral
>standards of Lehi members came later, when a Palmach unit composed
>largely of former Lehi members massacred 80-100 civilians at Ad Duweima.
>(I could provide references.)

Wouldn't be terribly surprised, though I'd like to see the references on
general principle. I am not claiming that Lechi was a decent, well-behaved
bunch of people who used minimum violence to achieve their aims. I'm claim-
ing I've more important things to worry about than a bunch of fruitcakes
who were generally so out to lunch that they couldn't achieve their aims
with or without it.

>>If you can produce a case where you've evidence it (a) wasn't done and (b)
>>was definitively a group-decided assassination rather than the action of
>>an individual without the group's consent (Lechi was not terribly well-
>>organized or good at keeping rein on their members), I'll listen. But my
>>point was again, that Lechi targeted *individuals* who had *personally*
>>done something against them, not three-year-olds from third countries
>>altogether who happened to be visiting their grandparents in a fourth
>>country altogether at the wrong moment.
>
>All terrorist groups consider themselves competent to judge who is
>fit to die and who isn't.  However, you are correct that the Lehi 
>mostly targetted specific individuals; see below for a comparison 
>with the Irgun. 

>>I haven't seen Lechi as regarded particularly well among Israelis... mostly,
>>they're forgotten and ignored, actually, as having had very little impact.
>>The Haganah is revered, the Irgun is looked at with a mixture of pride and
>>nervousness much the way it was at the time, 
>
>I wonder how much this would change if the Irgun was seen behind all
>the whitewash.  It seems like nobody knows or cares that the Irgun
>did anything beyond blowing up the King David Hotel and organising
>illegal immigration.  The large number of acts of pure indiscriminate
>terror, such as setting off bombs in public places frequented by Arabs,
>seem to have been largely forgotten.  The fact that such actions were
>more the province of the Irgun rather than the Lehi should make one wonder 
>who started the story that "Lechi was the most extreme branch of the Jewish resistance", and why.

The Irgun was a great deal better at what they did. This means they actually
got a chance to put some of their more extreme ideas into practice; Lechi
generally couldn't get their act together. As for setting off bombs in
public places frequented by <target national group>, seems to me I've seen
that before. On the part of the PLO, the *most* moderate of the Palestinian
organizations.

>Brendan.

	-Naomi

-- 
Oseh shalom b'imromav, hu ya'aseh shalom, aleinu v'al kol Yisrael.