India and Israel Against Islamic Terror

CHAPTM 11 THE STRUGGLE AND THE HOME COMING 161
I
this t,wonat’on theory. Islam prevailed, and the British and the

Moslems got wnat they wanted. The result, a partition of the

country on religious lines, riots and blood-bath and crores of

bruised national feelings in India. Here, as in Palestine, the British

left a legacy of two nations permanently hostile to each other

with no possibility of reconciliation.
Irgun repeated their warnings on subsequent Days of

Atonernent to the British that any violent action against the Jews

would be met with violence. Although moderates under

Hagannah counselled restrained, Irgun continued their operations

unhindered without breaking the unity of the resistance

movernent. The warning to the British on the Wailing Wall was

followed by an attack on police strong posts at Haifa, BeitDajan,

Kalkiliah and Katara. The British had learnt their lesson

and on the Day of Atonement stood passively by. Extensive

campaign of enlightenment by the Hebrew Committee of National

Liberation in the United States also played an important role in

awakening world opinion towards the happenings in Eretz Israel.

Nevertheless, the Irgun and other terrorist organisations had

their moments of worry. The one truth that emerged from the

struggle was that the ”idealists” and the ”materialists had to work
OC-’
in tandem. To quote Begin again:
”Which is cause and which effect? Do men make events or

do unavoidable events make the men? In our underground

cellar we did not find the answer to this weighty question.

E$ut we did learn that an idea, after it has taken shape,

rfysteriously gives birth to the men who bring it to

fruition.Recognizing this truth, I assert that if at any stage of

tPe revolt all of us in the Irgun had been captured or killed,

ethers would have taken our places and fought the oppressor

jntil he was beaten. We learnt that the aim makes heroes

(f the weak, turns privates into officers, quite ordinary people

jf%> swayers of minds and hearts, theoreticians into men of

Action, students into strategists. I have read somewhere a

c^nial of the old theory that nature abhors a vacuum. What

i^ certain is that an idea will not tolerate a vacuum in the

f-#nks of those who are to bring it to fruition.”
QUARTER 1 1 THE STRUGGLE AND THE HOME COMING 163
we determined there and then that when the time came we

would cleanse our people of this shame, and if we should

have the strength we would not permit the oppressor’s

myrmidons to violate our Holy place, disturb our prayers

and desecrate our Festival.”
As juxtaposed to this sentiment is the sad story of Indian

history where successive invaders, conquerors and Moslem rulers

destroyed hundreds of temples without even a whimper of

protest from the local populace. Our fatalism and spirit of

tolerance had more often than not verged on cowardice. We

forgot the teachings of our sages and Lord Krishna that injustice

should not be tolerated. To submit to tyranny is a bigger crime

than committing tyranny itself. The recent case of Ayodhya has

shaken the conscience of our people. The holiest of our shrines,

the Ram temple, the birth place of Lord Rama, was destroyed

by Babar and a non-mosque structure erected in its place. This

misdeed has been crying loud for retributive justice. The

sentiments of the people were so aroused that a mob did what

our weak-kneed leaders failed to do. The structure was destroyed.

But the furore which followed from the so-called ’secularists’

defies comprehension. Instead of calling 6th December,!992, a

Day of Deliverance and Restoration of National Honour, these

secularists have been calling it a Day of National Shame. What

a difference between the attitude of Jews and our ’secularists’

who claim to be the opinion makers of our nation.
The Floggings
Certain sections of the British Government seemed to have a

fatal attraction for the whip. In fact, flogging by the whip became

the visible symbol of British rule in their colonies. A cane or a

little whip was enough to scare the natives as some one described

the whip as the ”scepter of gentle peace”. But this bestial

punishment was not acceptable to the proud jews and they

decided to retaliate. While floggings of the Jews were common

in Hitler’s occupied Europe, Eretz Israel stood apart. The Irgun

decided that if the British Army whipped their boys they would

whip British officers in return. This warning was published
164 INDIA AMD ISRAEL CHAPTER i -j
prominently in their underground newspaper and pasted on the

walls of Jerusalem. Prompted by the incredulity of the rank and

file of the British occupation forces that their officers may be

flogged the hierarchy refused to believe this ”preposterous” threat.

As it happened, British took a young Jew, Kimche, out of the

Jerusalem jail and gave him 18 lashes in public, as per their law.

Soon after Herut, the underground newspaper, issued a second

warning to the Government:
”For hundreds of years, you have been whipping ’natives’

in your colonies-without retaliation. In your foolish pride

you regard the Jews in Eretz Israel as natives too. You are

mistaken. Zion is not Exile. Jews are not Zulus. You will not

whip Jews in their Homeland. And if British Authorities whip

them British officers will be whipped publicly in return.”
The news spread like wildfire. The Irgun warned that if

”whip-education” was good for Hebrew soldiers it was good for

British officers as well. And retribution followed. In Nathanya,

Tel Aviv, and Rishon-le-Zion British officers were caught and

given eighteen lashes each. The British were quick to learn the

lesson and the flogging stopped. Jewish warning went:
”If the oppressors dare in the future to abuse the bodies

and the human and national honour of Jewish youths, we

shall no longer reply with the whip. We shall reply with fire.”
The whole world laughed at the discomfiture of the British

authorities. While the Irgun was kind to British captives, the

gesture was not always reciprocated by the British authorities.

Dovgruner was one of the brave Hebrew boys who was captured

and sentenced to death. So was his comrade Meir Nakar. The

third such martyr was Yaacov Weiss who had valiantly saved the

lives of hundreds of jews from the Nazis. While Dovgruner was

hanged alone, the two Jewish boys and the third one Haviv

were to be hanged together. As the British officer in charge of

the execution said to Haviv, Nakar and Weiss ”You will be hanged

by the neck until you are dead.” In reply all the three sang

Hatikvah just as our revolutionary freedom fighters sang ’Vanrte

Mataram’ before taking the noose, The hangings were avenged
•TJAPTER 11 THE STRUGGLE AND THE HOME COMING 165
The fighting spirit of the Irgun could not be suppressed.

”Yhey carried out an assault on Acre prison and released Jewish

prisoners; they blew up King David Hospital; they looted

armouries at Sarafana and Ramat-Cen as described earlier. During

trie war they carried out acts of sabotage against the Mandate

authorities, revenged floggings and hangings and they carried

out the conquest of Jaffa.
1
CZ^lhtajpteir

XIZ
Making ofa Nation State
I! I | David Ben-G^non_ declared the independence of Israel on 114
I May, 1948, and the British Governrrient decided to terminate iits
j’j || mandate on May 15,1948. Anticipating a chaos and an inevitable
,,i |!f| Arab offensive, the jews prepared for a war along with guerrillla
| ’[ operations to protect their homeland. Truly enough, within houirs
”I h’ of the British withdrawal armed forces of Egypt, Syria, Iraq,
’, i’l Lebanon and Transjordan attacked Israel from all sides to destroy
•If the nascent state. We need not go into the details of the war
ill where the jews fought with exceptional valour and military

expertise, coupled with guerrilla tactics and worsted the>ir
tl j opponents. The siege of Jerusalem lasted about two months
t ending on June 11, 1948, as the first truce began. But durimg
I | the intense fighting, particularly in the Jewish quarter, the jews
1 bore the brunt of the battle, where 2000 devout Jews huddled
^«, in closed dwellings surrendered to the victorious Arabs, and thie
*H I | city passed into Arab hands. Some Jews were taken prisoners
. ’ and the others moved out to Katamon area of west Jerusalem.
1 • On their departu re, in keeping with the historical precedence,
! j the Arabs looted synagogues, schools and homes of Jews and
j |’ ! put to fire everything they could find. In all, twenty-sevem
m* J| ( (,! synagogues and thirty schools were damaged or destroyed. Th’e
j|P IB ; 1 ii’ area of east Jerusalem under Jordan rule for almost 19 years,
••; H L j| which contained the famous Jewish cemetery on the Mount o>f
KM ! I Olives, was vandalized. According to a historian:
.»••• ,„ 12 MAKING OF A NATION STATE 167
BARTER I*
graves had been ripped open and bones scattered;
thousands of tombstones had been smashed or removed by
the Jordanian Army to build fortifications, footpaths, army
camps, and latrines. The Arab Jerusalem Municipality had
granted concessions to merchants who destroyed graves and
sold the gravestones to building contractors.”
The remains of the Jewish quarter bore the look of Stalingrad
or Berlin after the World War II. Appeals of the Jews to the
United Nations of Jordanian’s destructions fell on deaf years.
While the Jews complained of the breach of the truce agreement
and the safety of shrines and holy sites, Jordan replied by citing
desecration of some so called Muslim graves in west Jerusalem.
Jerusalem thus divided into two halves by a barbed wire fence,
virtually became two states with the Jews dominating the west
and the Arabs dominating the eastern part. This caused avoidable
clashes in both the communities visiting their holy places on
either side of the fence.
Despite their losses, Israel and Jordan emerged as the gainers

in the 1948 war. Syria and Lebanon lost most of their claimed

territories as in May 1949, King Abdullah signed an armistice

agreement with Israel dividing Palestine into two parts, with

Transjordan boundary lying along the river Jordan and claiming

east part of Jerusalem. In spite of the world reaction and Arab

protestations to the contrary, Jordan and Israel stood their grounds

and undertook the task of governing the partitioned territory of

their respective halves of Jerusalem. The Israelis carried out heavy

construction works, including University Campus, hospital

complexes, hill side suburb of Ein-kerem and moved their Foreign

Ministry’s office from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
/ Before we start narrating the growth of the new state of

lsrael after its inception on 14th May, 1948, a few important

’acts have to be kept in mind. The Jews arriving from different

Pa|ts of the world spoke different dialects. Mention has been

^ade earlier of Yiddish. The local dialect of the indigenous
alestinian Jews called ”Sabra” was part Arabic and part Hebrew.
n 1951, four-fifths of the Israeli soldiers corresponded in foreign

anguages. But in an achievement of linguistic coherence five
I
168 INDIA A\O IVRALL
CHAPTER 12
years later, just as many wrote their letters in Hebrew. Th

leader of the immigrants David Ben-Gurion carried a socialist

baggage due to his birth in Bolshevik territory, as was the case

with other East European Jews. However, intense nationalism

and devotion to their horneland tempered these ideologjca|

differences across the spectrum from capitalism to socialism. The

construction of ’Moshav’ was one off-shoot of the Russian

collective farming. Thanks to David Ben-Gurion’s sense of

pragmatism and his personal charisma, divergent political

ideologies and varying dialects merged themselves into a Jewish

theme and Hebrew was declared a common national language.

This is reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi uniting contradictory

political ideologies on one common platform for the struggle for

national freedom. This general confederation of Hebrew workers

called ’Histadrut’ was on the lines of our Indian National Congress.

David Ben-Gurion turned the Labour Zionist movement into

the main instrument of national renaissance. There were many

other constituents under this umbrella organization. The Jews

also raised a demand of one billion dollars for the Jewish

properties usurped by the Germans under the Nazi regime which

was accepted by Chancellor Konrad Adenaur as a starting point

in the Jewish reparation.
On termination of the War of Independence in 1948, as
pointed out earlier, while David Ben-Gurion accepted the
U. N. recommendations, the Arabs refused. Ben-Gurion spelt
out the future policy of the new state. Firstly, there shall be no
return of the refugees who had left Israel. Being the ”aggressors”
they forfeited that right. However, David Ben-Gurion invited the
Arabs in the task of building of the new state. The Arab exodus,
he stressed, was not of Israel’s making. His argument was:
”We did not want the war. Tel Aviv did not attack Jaffa. It
was Jaffa which attacked Tel Aviv and this should not occur
again. Jaffa will be a Jewish town. The repatriation of the
Arabs to Jaffa is not justice, but folly. Those who declared
war on us have to bear the result after they have been
defeated.”