The Hidden British Crimes of Pre-State Israel

Zionism, critics of the Jewish state often claim, is nothing but a European colonial enterprise. But in reality the Jews of the Land of Israel were, in the 28 years before the state’s creation, subjects of British colonial rule—which was not always benign. According to recently declassified documents from the Mandatory period, British police killed or wounded a number Jews without provocation. Itamar Eichner writes:

Some of these files show that the British tried to cover up the killings, [whether] made in cold blood, as acts of self-defense, or misfires; . . . in many cases, the families of the dead were not informed about subsequent investigations.

On November 12, 1947, British troops attacked a house in Ra’anana where [the Jewish militant group] Leḥi was conducting a firearm course for a group of youths. In the attack, four children aged fifteen to eighteen and a nineteen-year-old instructor were killed. Already at the time, the British were blamed for killing the children in cold blood. According to testimonies, the group did not fire back and were mowed down while running away from the house.

Another incident uncovered in the British police files is the 1947 killing of Meir Plaskowski and his son Reuven in Moshav Karkur. On September 17, 1947, Plaskowski and his son were riding their motorcycle from Hadera to Pardes Hannah, when both were intentionally run over and killed by a British armored car. . . . In his testimony, the soldier driving the armored car said that he took off his sunglasses, lost control of the vehicle, and smashed into a roadside tree, unaware at all that he ran someone over. However, the uncovered documents show another testimony belonging to a Jewish man . . . who was driving that day to Pardes Hannah . . . and saw the armored car swerve intentionally and hit the motorcycle.

Read more at Ynet

More about: History of Zionism, Mandate Palestine

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF