Operation Agatha

Operation Agatha was a large scale police operation conducted by the British authorities in Palestine starting on Saturday, June 29, 1946. One objective was to dissuade the Haganah, and particularly its operational arm the Palmach, from undertaking further attacks against British troops and officials. In this, they were successful.

(Alan Cunningham, Palestine-The Last Days of the Mandate, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944), Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1948), p. 485.)

However, the more extreme groups, the LEHI (Stern Gang) and the Irgun Tzvai Leumi, headed by future Prime Minister Menachem Begin, continued and even intensified their attacks. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/defense.html)

In a detailed account of the King David Hotel Bombing, Thurston Clarke asserts that the British government also wished to bolster army morale and forestall a coup d'etat in which community leaders would unilaterally proclaim a Jewish state.

(Clarke, By Blood and Fire, Putnam, 1981, Ch.6.)

The Agatha operation is sometimes called Black Sabbath or Black Saturday because it began on the Jewish sabbath. Soldiers and police searched for arms and made arrests in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, and Haifa, and in several dozen settlements. (The total number of British security forces is variously reported as 10,000, 17,000, and 25,000.) The semi-official Jewish Agency was raided. About 2,700 individuals were arrested.

It was a tense time. On June 16, 1946 the Palmach blew up eight international roadway and rail bridges. On June 17, the LEHI attacked railway operations in Haifa. Shortly afterwards, the Irgun kidnapped six British officers. One officer escaped, and two were released. The Irgun announced that the remaining officers would be released only in exchange for the commutation of death sentences for two Irgun members.(http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/defense.html) (After Agatha ended, the officers were released, and High Commissioner Alan Cunningham commuted the death sentences to life imprisonment.)

The British operations were extensive. Low flying planes circled Jerusalem. Roadblocks were maintained, trains were flagged down, and passengers were evacuated and escorted home. Special licenses were required for the operations of emergency vehicles. Curfews were imposed. Agatha triggered echoes of the Holocaust in the minds of many people. Women ripped their clothing to expose concentration camp tattoos. There were incidents of people in the settlements herded into cages while screaming that this was what the Nazis did. A minority among the British troops exacerbated the situation by shouting "Heil Hitler," scrawling swastikas on walls, and referring to gas chambers while conducting searches. (Clarke, ibid., pp.68-69) Arms caches were discovered. At Kibbutz Yagur, the troops found more than 300 rifles, some 100 2-inch mortars, more than 400,000 bullets, some 5,000 grenades and 78 revolvers. The arms were displayed at a press conference, and all the men of Yagur were arrested. (http://www.etzel.org.il/english/ac09.htm)

The Irgun retaliated for Operation Agatha by bombing the south wing of the King David Hotel, which was the headquarters of the British government in Palestine.