Evening star., 1948-12-10
Letters to The Star
! 1EsSiisrcaE
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Trgun Tactics Defended

1rgun Tactics Defended
70 tire Editor OF The STAR
Your editorial Of November 20, based as 1t is
upon Q letter by three clergymen who never
have interested themselves In the cause OF
Israel except to hamper Hebrew liberation,
does not merit discussion. am writing only
to deal with misstatement.
You wrote that "Irgun boasted" Of the kid
mapping of two innocent British sergeants who
were murdered. and whose bodies were then
BOBBY trapped in the hope Of manning any
one who might cut them down."
The two British sergeants were innocent"
In the same sense that any soldier carrying
out the orders Of his commanders is limo
cent" If you will refer to 1.-THE Birth Of Is
rael" by Jorge Garcia -Granados, a member
of the United Nations Special Committee on
Palestine, you will find proper evaluation OF
the Irguns action. In violation of a United
Nations request to "all governments to refrain
from the threat or use Of force or any other
action which might create an atmosphere OF
prejudice" the British government had chosen
the occasion of the UNSCOP's first official day
in Palestine to sentence to death three OF the
five members of the Jewish underground Or
ganization, the 1rgun zvai Leumi, who had
PdI IGlClpdUCQ AL AC1c G1AoOA bAOuh'
DR.. Garcia-Granados makes 1t quite plain
that he holds the British administration re-
sponsible for the deaths of the two sergeants
II considered these sentences q defiance OF the
United Nations by Britain. could not know
whether the British deliberately timed the
sentencing to coincide with the beginning of
our work, but surely they must have known it
would only promote new disturbances
Every fiber of my being protested against the
principle of capital punishment for political
acts" The attack on Acre and the release
of q large number Of Hebrew and Arab pris-
oners was accomplished without any loss OF
British life)
We come now to the allegation that the
bodies of the two British sergeants were BOBBY
trapped Here is Dr. Garcia -Granados ac
count, which has been confirmed by every
authority, including the British Information
Office:
Apparently waiting only until our COM
mittee had left the Middle East, the British
government had executed the three Irgun
youths - The youths had been awakened in
the middle Of the night and told they would
die at dawn = - The inevitable followed. The
1rgun hanged the two British sergeants in cir
cumstances which made the spotlight of
world attention beat upon Palestine even more
fercely. The police came upon the bodies in
q wood near Natanya. The two sergeants had
been hanged from a tree. The Irgun had
warned that approaches to the tree were
mined. British sappers tested the area and re-
ported it clear. But apparently one mine was
overlooked; for as a British captain sought
to remove one of the bodies, there was ar
explosion: the body was blown to pieces and
the British officer wounded"
The British administration seized on the
oby-trapping" story as the only way OF
creating revulsion against the Irgun. So rep
rehensibe was the governments behavior In
connection with the execution of the Irgunists
that no one would have blamed the 1rgun for
the retaliatory action forced upon it. Only a
charge Of mutilation Of the corpses could be
counted on to Offset this feeling. But when
the Irgun announced the next day that 1t had
not booby-trapped the bodies, 1t was impos-
sible even for the official British Information
Service to persist: 1t therefore offered the
alternative explanation. The Irgun's reputa-
ton for veracity and for accepting full respon-
sibility for its actions had been so well estab-
nshed among correspondents in Palestine that
the British could not have taken any other
course. HARRY LOUIS SELDEN.