page_title: Night of the Beatings
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Night of the Beatings / Background
caption_attribution_description: Poster published by the Irgun warning of flogging. End of 1946 (?)
context_page_description: The Night of the Beating refers to an Irgun operation carried out on December 29, 1946 in the British Mandate of Palestine, in which several British soldiers were flogged in response to a similar punishment inflicted upon an Irgun member.
context_section_description: On December 13, 1946 the Irgun robbed a bank in Jaffa. Three of the perpetrators - Benjamin Nes, Eliezer Sudit, and Benjamin Kimchi - were caught and tried a few days later. Nes and Sudit were convicted of robbery and illegal possession of firearms and were given long sentences, while Kimkhi was also convicted of discharging a firearm with intent to endanger life. He refused to recognize the British courts jurisdiction and was sentenced to an eighteen-year imprisonment and eighteen lashes. Twelve lashes was also the punishment given to another Irgun member, Aharon Katz, for possession of propaganda material.
  Upon notification about the punishment, the Irgun headquarters convened and decided that such a "humiliating" punishment was not to be tolerated. It published a warning, in Hebrew and English, to the British authorities not to carry out the flogging, threatening to do the same to British officers.
  On Saturday, December 28, Kimchi was lashed eighteen times.
caption: Irgun poster warning the British not to carry out the flogging punishment.
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