Talk:Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine

Article Neutrality

This acticle gives a one sided view on the issues and the conflict, using quotes to slant the arguement without evenly balancing the points. Suggest it is re-written balancing both points of view and not using misleading quotations.

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The title "British conflict with Zionism" is slanted, suggesting as it does British culpability.JohnC (talk) 06:32, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, the quality of this article is exceedingly poor. Zero^talk 08:00, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Funny, I see the article itself as suggesting Zionist culpability. :) Stellarkid (talk) 00:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Lord Moyne anti-semite or anti-zionist

There is a contradiction between this article and the one on Lord Moyne. Unless anyone can source info on him being Anti-Semitic I think this article should show him as Anti-ZionistJonathan Cardy (talk) 13:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC).

I suggest you read the article on Lord Moyne through to the end. There is plenty of evidence there to suggest that he was an anti-semite. Telaviv1 (talk) 07:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

By reverting my edit you've left this article contradicting another. Can I suggest you reconsider and revert your last edit? I've reread Lord Moyne, and don't see either of your points, there is plenty of evidence in that article that he was anti-zionist and that Britain's antizionist policy was the motive of his assassins, and specifically that it was the office he held that made him a target.

There are a couple of very anti-semitic points, but both are clearly challenged within the article. His responsibility for Britain operating an Anti-Zionist policy in the mandate is clear as is the motive of his assassins.

As for the relevance in an article on 'British conflict with Zionism of his being a close friend and ally of Churchill, the article on Lord Moyne says: British prime minister Winston Churchill, until then the Zionists' main supporter in London, was deeply disillusioned and his further support for Zionism was greatly subdued.[59][60] Moyne had been sent to Cairo because of their long personal and political friendship, and Churchill told the House of Commons:

"If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of an assassin's pistol, and the labours for its future produce a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, then many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past".[61]

The Times of London quoted Ha'aretz's view that the assassins "have done more by this single reprehensible crime to demolish the edifice erected by three generations of Jewish pioneers than is imaginable."[62]

In November 1943, a committee of the British Cabinet had proposed a partition of Palestine after the war, based loosely on the 1937 Peel Commission proposal. The plan included a Jewish state, a small residual mandatory area under British control, and an Arab state to be joined in a large Arab federation of Greater Syria. The Cabinet approved the plan in principle in January 1944, but it faced severe opposition from the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden among others. "Moyne's position differed from that of nearly all the British civil and military officials in the Middle East: the consensus of British official opinion in the area opposed partition and opposed a Jewish state; Moyne supported both."[64] The partition plan was before the Cabinet for final approval in the same week that Moyne was assassinated, but the assassination caused it to be immediately shelved and never resurrected. Moyne's successor in Cairo, Sir Edward Grigg, was opposed to partition.[65] Some historians, such as Wasserstein and Porath, have speculated that a Jewish state soon after the war had been a real possibility.[66][67]

So there is a conflict between these two articles, the one on Lord Moyne spells out that the death of a close ally of the then British Prime Minister led to a major change in British Policy re Zionism, this article merely describes him as an anti-semite and makes no mention of the repercussions of his assassination on British conflict with Zionism.Jonathan Cardy (talk) 07:24, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Anti semitism and anti-zionism are not the same. To suggest that Moyne was anti-semitic because he may have been anti-zionist is incorrect. It is the equivalent of equating being anti-South African with being anti-Apartheid.JohnC (talk) 06:34, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

From some historians of the period, speaking only to the anti-semite/anti Zionist issue :

Churchill's promised land by Michael Makovsky, pg 174 -- "In addition, there was a rise of anti-Semitism and xenophobia among the populace during the war, and these sentiments were outright rampant throughout the ranks of the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, military, and other branches of the bureaucracy. Several senior Cabinet ministers, such as Lord Moyne(Walter Guinness), who held various portfolios, and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, disliked Jews and were anti-Zionist. These officials regularly communicated a cold indifference to the Jews' fate in Europe and elsewhere, and a steely determination to keep them out of Palestine no matter the dire consequences. They did not believe that the Jews deserved a homeland in Palestine and did not wish to upset the Arabs for strategic and other reasons. [2]"

Brother against brother Ehud Sprinzak , pg 36-37 -- "Lehi commanders killed Moyne because they believed him to be anti-Semitic and personally responsible for blocking the entrance to Palestine of Holocaust survivors and other Jewish refugees. [53]"

Jabotinsky and the revisionst movement, 1925-1948 Jacob Shavit pag 234 -- "Moyne was hated because of anti-Semitic remarks he had made, but principally he was murdered because of his contribution to the implementation of the immigration regulations of the White Paper... "

Religious fundamentalism and political extremism , pg 111 By Leonard Weinberg, Ami Pedahzur -- "Lord Moyne was minister of the British colonies at the beginning of the Second World War and was appointed resident minister for the Middle East on 28 January 1944. In the Jewish settlement he was already known for his hostility, expressed both in his long-term support in favor of a Middle Eastern Arab Federations as well as in his anti-Semitic lectures(such as his call for Arab sovereignty in the Land of Israel based on the superior purity of the Arab race compared to the mixed Jewish race).[71]" Stellarkid (talk) 20:17, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

None of these are anywhere near sufficient to apply the label "anti-semitic" to him personally. Having made antisemitic remarks is not the same as being an anti-semite, let alone such a flagrant, undisputed and prominent one that it is proper to use it as an identifying description in another article. It would involve OR to go from most of these to "antisemitic." The only one that uses "anti-semitic" applying to him is Sprindzak, who says Lehi "believed him to be anti-Semitic" which is the most one could say.John Z (talk) 20:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't disagree with that, but the original question was labeling him antisemite or anti-Zionist. There is plenty of evidence that he was basically an antisemite, not merely an anti-Zionist. However, I don't believe it is up to WP editors to pin a pejorative label on him. Simply state the facts or what other reliable sources (historians and others) claim the facts are, and otherwise say nothing. However I do disagree about your interpretation of the quotes above. Makovsky says that Moyne..."disliked the Jews," which sounds like a good def of "antisemite," and Weinberg refers to "antisemitc lectures" as well as clear racist remarks ("the superior purity of the Arab race compared to the mixed Jewish race.") An antisemitic comment or two may be made in ignorance or taken out of context, but "antisemitic lectures" would be another think altogether. Stellarkid (talk) 12:37, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

We shouldn't be attaching labels to names (pejorative or not) unless they are the consensus of reliable sources. If the label is not the consensus, we must either omit the label or note the various non-fringe opinions of the sources. That seems to be what NPOV demands. In this case I think omitting the label is the correct way, since the issue is too complex and peripheral for this article. Incidentally, regarding Weinberg and Pedahzur, what Moybe actually said can be read here (at column number 198). He never actually says Arabs are racially pure, though this interpretation can be forgiven. The mainstream historian Bernard Wasserstein wrote an article that defended Moyne's speech, quoting him as saying that the only pure races on Earth were to be found in the jungles of New Guinea. It should be remembered that at that period of history everyone described populations in racial words. But none of this belongs in this article, imo. Zero^talk 14:09, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

lede

Well, again I am having a hard time getting by the first couple of sentences. The first one is alright but the second has issues. "Between 1945 and 1948, the decision of the British government to halt Jewish immigration to the British Mandate of Palestine led to an increasingly bitter conflict between Britain and Palestinian Jews. In particular it resulted in large scale illegal Jewish immigration, "boat people", and Zionist political violence in Palestine." It is true that there was large scale (hmmm...what constitutes 'large scale'?) Jewish immigration to the Mandate, but the cause was WWII, not the conflict between the Brits and the Jews. The result of the British government's making Jewish immigration illegal was to turn people who were trying to escape the death camps into criminals, and not allowing them any refuge; resulting in the deaths of more Jews, and was the direct cause of the bitter conflict and Zionist political violence. It did not result in ... illegal Jewish immigration. The immigration was happening. The British just criminalized it. This is not clear in that second sentence. Stellarkid (talk) 01:17, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

It has never been clear to me what this article is supposed to be about. If the opening "between 1945 and 1948" is to be taken seriously, it is mainly about that period (with earlier periods mentioned only as background). In 1945-1948 there were no people trying to escape death camps. The second sentence seems to be trying to say that illegal immigration (not immigration in general) resulted from British policies. Zero^talk 01:31, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I just had an edit conflict with you which said: "Also the dates are weird. The Brits had put restrictions on Jewish immigration (not Arab though) much earlier than '45; actually in the 20's. The Struma incident for example happened in 1941 already. You can't define the British-Zionist conflict between those two arbitrary and late years. Stuff happened before then. Stellarkid (talk) 01:37, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

There was the SS Exodus which I believe was '47. No one wanted the Jews but no one wanted to let them go to Palestine either. The survivors sat in the concentration camps now guarded by British soldiers. The article needs serious expansion and certainly not these date restrictions. so yeah I agree with you.Stellarkid (talk) 01:44, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Though I do think the article is needed and there is much in it that is good. It is not an easy subject to do! Stellarkid (talk) 01:48, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

There was no-such nationality as a jew back then. Upon liberation the people in the former concentration camps became legally Displaced Persons (DP's) and citizens of whichever country they had been deported-from, such as Poles, Hungarians, Germans, etc. As such, the British were in no position to say who went where and how, as they were not British Subjects, the people were the responsibility of the respective governments of the countries they were citizens-of, and the British had no legal say in what happened to them once they ceased to be prisoners and became DP's.

Therefore the only jews who the British had any legal obligation to allow into the then-Palestine were British Subjects (as were the Arabs already living there). The rest were 'foreigners' under the control of (and were the responsibility of) their respective national governments.

And of the Zionist criticism of the British in all this, it is as well to remember that if it hadn't been for the British the jewish race/ethnic group would have been extinct in Europe by now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.75.103 (talk) 16:13, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Where is this page from? Likely copyvio.

It is pretty clear that this page is largely copied from somewhere else, but I can't find the source. Maybe it is a translation or copied from a book. Even the earliest version has references to arcane sources like unpublished documents from the British Foreign Office, and is well beyond the knowledge level of the editor who typed it. We aren't allowed to use unpublished documents as sources, nor are we allowed to extract bulk text from another source. What to do? Zero^talk 07:59, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

At the end of March 2010, this problem persists. Many of the references in this page are obviously just copy-pasted from some unacknowledged intermediate source. That is not permitted. Zero^talk 10:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Uncited statements

There are two statements in this article that need to be sourced. These are 'British foreign policy, as defined by Ernest Bevin, and its military policy, as defined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was to help the Arabs.', and 'Fearing an invasion of Egypt and Transjordan, and acting on the basis of the mutual defence pacts with these countries, Britain's Ministry of Defence began to prepare for the possibility of invading Israel.' These statements may well be true, but they are not (so far as I can immediately tell) supported by the currently available sources. Robofish (talk) 18:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Enough history revisionism by the paliphiles

Those here on the talk page who wish to delete or whitewash the article are not honest editors and should admit to their exploits and straighten up , or go edit somewhere else. enough is enough looking at history pages there is a grim and consistent change to white wash anything up until it touches the surface of conspiracy theories presented as truth or ideological terminology used freely at literal meaning. oh and please don't delete this talk page entry like you did the last times(read my talk apge of this ip for other posts I made) instead have constructive proposals and reliable sources 79.176.49.28 (talk) 15:36, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

etzel.org.il as a source

The web page http://www.etzel.org.il is a private initiative by modern supporters of the Etzel, many of them former members of Etzel or their children. It is uniformly adulatory and spins unpleasant facts like the marketplace bombings that in total killed hundreds of random civilians. I don't see any way it can meet the requirements for a reliable source. Is there a case for reliability? Zero^talk 04:43, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion, the Britain's Small Wars site and the Jewish Virtual Library Lehi article (whose provenance was the Israeli Foreign Ministry) shouldn't be being given as sources either.     ←   ZScarpia   12:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Lead section - Jewish Resistance Movement

Currently, the Lead says:

The British-Zionist conflict refers to the military conflict between the British Mandate of Palestine and the Jewish Resistance Movement, which eventually led to the creation of an independent Jewish state: Israel.

That statement is unsourced and inaccurate: the Jewish Resistance Movement only existed briefly and only until the King David Hotel bombing and therefore had little bearing on the eventual creation of the state of Israel. -- ZScarpia (talk) 01:46, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

1946, King David Hotel bombing

Reenem, your new wording is fine by me.     ←   ZScarpia   20:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Ceasefire with Egypt

From memory, not all the planes shot down were spitfires. They were patrolling to ensure that Israeli forces were complying with a UN Security Council (or an independently given US and UK) order to withdraw. As reconnaissance planes, some of them were not carrying ammunition; some of them that were had not had their guns armed. These were not capable of defending themselves. Ben-Gurion ordered that at least one of the wrecks was towed east to make it appear as though it had been shot down over Israeli, rather than Egyptian, lines.     ←   ZScarpia   14:02, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I think you're right about this though I heard it was Ezer Weizman who had them towed not Ben Gurion.

This seems like a good source for the incident [1] Telaviv1 (talk)

Well done, that's the most detailed account that I've seen. I see that it was four spitfires and a tempest that were shot down. Perhaps it would be worth adding details of the earlier shooting down of the mosquito to the timeline?     ←   ZScarpia   12:14, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Its a brilliant piece and definitely deserves a mention. Also it shows how the British were caught in the middle. Telaviv1 (talk) 13:14, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Lead section: Paul Bagon MPhil Dissertation

Is Paul Bagon so notable or his MPil dissertation so worthy that the dissertation should be mentioned? The Introduction undermines confidence in its reliability. Several times, it makes the mistaken claim that Palestine was partitioned.     ←   ZScarpia   14:53, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll remove the dissertation. Telaviv1 (talk) 09:21, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

MPhil/PhD theses that passed examination are normally regarded as reliable sources. I don't see any reason to treat this one differently. I don't understand ZScarpia's objection, Bagon is just referring to the fact that Palestine was partitioned in 1948 between Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. I don't know much more about Bagon, though he has published a book. Zero^talk 10:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't asking for the removal of the reference to the dissertation, as such, just querying whether it is worth having. Up to now I'd not seen the way that Palestine was split between Israel, Jordan and Egypt referred to as partition, but I have now. If you both think that the reference should be re-inserted, I have no objection.     ←   ZScarpia   12:28, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it matters. there is sufficient reference there already. Telaviv1 (talk) 13:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

British attacks on Jewish civillians

WE need someone to add to the time line British attacks on Jews, otherwise the timeline is entirely one sided.

Most importantly the truck bomb on King George st in Jerusalem which to this day is the largest terror attack in Israeli history also shootings of unarmed holocaust survivors on illegal migration ships (about 2 or 3 per ship) random shooting of civilians in Israel - there were quite a few of these and they will need to be documented.

Telaviv1 (talk) 09:31, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you are referring to Ben Yehuda Street, which was not a British operation even though it involved some British deserters. Zero^talk 10:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes that's the one. Telaviv1 (talk) 12:51, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Zionist Political Violence

This section is clearly just poorly disguised propaganda. The information in it belongs in the timeline and it does not fit where it is located in terms of chronlogy or flow of the article.

Telaviv1 (talk) 09:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

The section is highly relevant and factual - as you would expect a section titled "Zionist violence against British targets" to be to an article title "British-Zionist conflict". It doesn't belong in the timeline section because the Zionist violence against British targets is highly important to this article and the pre-eminent reason for the British riots against Jews; stuffing it down among minor incidents does not make sense considering the importance of this events listed. Factomancer (talk) 14:11, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Pardon me for sticking my nose in, but should we try some negotiation?     ←   ZScarpia   14:36, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much scope for compromise in this dispute; we either have the section or we do not. Unless you had a particular suggestion? Factomancer (talk) 15:21, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

One thing for sure is that the way it was heading was an edit-warring case on one of the noticeboards, something worth trying to avoid if you can. By being open to compromise and willing to negotiate you should hopefully achieve at least some of your objectives, will make it easier for others to support you and, if it does go to dispute resolution, will be more likely to look like the sinned-against rather than the sinning party.     ←   ZScarpia   19:00, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Everything in it already exists elsewhere in the article and there is no attempt at balance, organization or relevance to the rest of the article.

More importantly the brritish riots agianst the jews were the product of antisemitism. If you believe the violence was justified then presumably you also believe that violence against moslems in the UK is also justified: in fact the attack in Palestine were taking palce in antoher country and directed at british military personnel while Islamists have attacked within britain itself and targeted civillians. Clearly attacking unrelated moslem civillians would be racism as were the attacks in Britain. Do you agree?

I will move it lower down for the time being.

Telaviv1 (talk) 18:11, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Here's what my book of the moment (which I've been quoting all over the place), Major Farran's Hat, says about the most serious rioting (including its motivations), which occurred after the revenge hanging of Sergeants Martin and Paice (p148):

"News of this atrocity spread like wildfire through the security forces. British troops and police in Tel Aviv went on the rampage, killing five Jews and injuring fifteen. Back in Britain, grisly photographs and reports were splashed across the newspapers on the eve of the August bank holiday weekend. Over the following four days synagogues and Jewish-owned properties were attacked and damaged by mobs in Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. Anti-Jewish incidents also occurred in Hull, Brighton, Leicester, Plymouth, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Newcastle and across London. The anti-Jewish riots had been brewing before the atrocity in Palestine and were partly a reaction to continued food shortages and the perceived association of Jews with the black market. Yet the connection with Palestine was tangible and in the wake of the riots, some Jewish traders put notices in their shop windows denouncing Jewish terrorism."

    ←   ZScarpia   20:31, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Telaviv1: my personal beliefs have no relevance to improving this article and to discuss them is a violation of WP:SOAP. The treatment of Muslims in the UK is utterly irrelevant. The sources clearly state that the riots were a reaction to Zionist violence against the British in Mandate Palestine and not simply a spontaneous outbreak of antisemitism. We should (and must) follow the sources. Factomancer (talk) 03:26, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

David Cesarani was my dissertation supervisor at Royal Holloway and this incident was mentioned in my dissertation. The point is not to suggest that the riots were in anyway justified, the riots were an antisemitic act and that should be made clear while explaining the background to what happened. The fact that these riots took place at all indicates very high levels of antisemitism in British society. The hangings had equally good reasons. One could go on like that for ever. Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Telaviv1 (talk) 17:36, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Is explaining the reasons why there was heightened antisemitism the same as trying to justify the attacks?     ←   ZScarpia   22:28, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

It depends how you phrase it. Telaviv1 (talk) 10:56, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

No it doesn't, justification and causation are two completely different things. Factomancer (talk) 11:23, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

If we all stick to the sources and present facts as facts and opinions as opinions hopefully we should pull through.     ←   ZScarpia   11:42, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Lord Moyne

(Article)

The decision to kill Lord Moyne had probably been taken some years earlier when as Colonial Secretary he had refused to aid or admit the Jews on the ship "Struma" to Palestine. In addition during a speech in June 1942 he referred to the Arabs as a "pure race" while denigrating the Jews as a "mixed race". The Sturma was a small ship which no country would admit and eventually sunk killing the 800 Jews crowded on board. It was also believed that Moyne was the cause of the failure of the "Blood for goods" plan in which it was proposed that the Nazis release a million Jews in return for 10,000 trucks. The organizer of negotiations, Joel Brand, claimed that Lord Moyne had said "What can I do with this million Jews? Where can I put them?".

• From memory, I think that what I've read said tht Moyne was killed because he was the target whose death would be most spectacular rather than any other reason. I'll have a look in the books I've got.
• What exactly does Heller say about Moyne's speech? I know that figures from both the Zionist left (Ben-Gurion) and right (Jabotinsky) took "blood purity" very seriously, but did the Lehi really decide to target Moyne for calling Arabs a "pure race" and Jews a "mixed one"?
• I thought that it was well established that the Struma was torpedoed by the Soviets and didn't just sink.
• It's probably better to try to source material somewhere other than the www.eretzyisroel.org site.
• Ben Hecht ("every time a British soldier dies, I have a little holiday in my heart") isn't the most neutral of sources.
• The Blood for goods plan (a million Jews in return for 10,000 trucks to use on the Eatern front) was, for obvious reasons, a non-starter. It's failure wasn't due to Moyne.

    ←   ZScarpia   13:48, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

• Nobody really knows why Moyne was killed. Heller suggests it was the Struma and the speech, but others suggest it was mostly that Moyne was the most senior British politician in their reach. There is more on this at Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne.
• Heller (p123) does say that Moyne called the Jews 'mixed' and the Arabs 'pure' but it isn't clear if he is writing in his own voice or is describing Lehi's perception of Moyne. You can see from the actual speech that Moyne said Jews are a mixed race (though with a pure culture) but nowhere does he say that Arabs are a pure race. Bernard Wasserstein wrote a spirited defense of Moyne in which he showed that Moyne (an amateur anthropologist) believed that pure races were only to be found in places like the highlands of New Guinea.
• I think it is a mistake to treat Perfidy as a history book. It is a very famous polemic. No serious historian would cite Perfidy as an unbiased source. eretzyisroel.org is of course totally out of the question (and the article being cited is self-published, as Katz is the site manager).
• See Struma (ship). Yes, Soviet torpedo. Katz' apparent ignorance of that underscores his unreliability.

Zero^talk 15:31, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Jonathan ( Telaviv1), what do you think of our comments? Thanks for the link to the Moyne speech Zero. It's interesting to read a debate from 1942 about what would happen after the war.     ←   ZScarpia   18:49, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Most of the comment seem fair enough, though I don't think Ben Gurion was into race stuff and I am unware of any evidence that Lehi were into it either. One of Herzl's generation was, can't remember which one right now but being on the whole Jews didn't follow race theory.

While Struma was a torpedo no one knew that until two years ago but I guess that link was a mistake.

I will remove the stuff you have commented on. I tried to find the Wasserstein article which seems like a good source but couldn't find it.

Telaviv1 (talk) 09:06, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The Zionist most famously into racial theory was Arthur Ruppin. For most of them, and for Moyne, we should remember that race was a normal part of discourse in the Western world (and maybe the rest of the world) until the 1940s at least. Eugenics was a popular idea in the Yishuv just as it was in Europe and the US. This stuff only went out of fashion as a reaction to Nazi excesses. The Wasserstein article is "New Light on the Moyne Murder", Midstream, 26(3),30-38 (1980). If you can't find it, send me email and I'll give it to you. Zero^talk 09:50, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I mentioned Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky by name because I can directly quote them on the subject of blood purity. In the case of Ben-Gurion, there's some fairly shocking stuff in Koestler's Promise and Fulfilment.     ←   ZScarpia   12:05, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Wasserstein has a clear opinion about the reason why Moyne was assassinated:

That the decision to kill Moyne was not actuated primarily by personal animosity against him was stressed by Eliahu Bet-Tsuri in a statement which he made in the course of his preliminary examination by the Egyptian Procurator-General on November 10, 1944. Bet-Tsuri explained: "No calculations were made as to whether Lord Moyne was a good man or a bad man. It was considered only that he was the key man for Britain in governing the Middle East, and as such is responsible for what is happening in Palestine."

Nevertheless, after the event, it was clearly to the interest of Lehi to portray Moyne in its propaganda as a supremely wicked exponent of British imperialism and enemy of the Jewish people. A Hebrew flysheet circulated by the group immediately after the murder pronounced Moyne "a sworn enemy of the Hebrew nation and of its land." It cited a speech on Zionism delivered by Moyne in the House of Lords in June, 1942, at a time when he had been temporarily out of office. It further accused him of having been responsible for the British government's refusal to admit to Palestine the Jewish refugees on board the S.S. Struma in February, 1942, and for the subsequent death by drowning of most of those on the ship. Another count in the Lehi indictment against Moyne was his alleged responsibility for the deportation by the Palestine government in December, 1940, of over 1,500 Jewish refugees to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, where they remained interned until after the end the War. Later Lehi repeated and expanded on these themes.

According to Wasserstein, Benjamin Budovsky wrote:

Lord Moyne had assiduously studied and imbibed the Hitlerian theories of race. The Jews, he maintained, are a mixture of many races, a melange of various peoples under the sun, unlike the Arab tribes who are of pure Semitic blood .

Budovsky based this on a speech in which Moyne said:

The tragedy of the Palestinian question is, as was said by the Royal Commission, that it is a conflict between two rights. When Jerusalem was destroyed and its site ploughed up in the year 135 A.D., the Jews had occupied the country for about 1,300 years. Since the Mahomedan invasion of 632 the Arabs have occupied Palestine for practically the same period. To these Arabs the Jews are not only alien in culture but also in blood. It is very often loosely said that Jews are Semites, but anthropologists tell us that, pure as they have kept their culture, the Jewish race has been much mixed with Gentiles since the beginning of the Diaspora. During the Babylonian captivity they acquired a strong Hittite admixture, and it is obvious that the Armenoid features which are still found among the Sephardim have been bred out of the Ashkenazim by an admixture of Slav blood.

Wasserstein comments:

These words were seized upon by the Lehi propagandists as evidence that Moyne believed in an ideal purity of race after the Nazi fashion, and that he regarded the Jews as impure and therefore in some sense inferior. In fact, Moyne's speech, when placed in the context of his known views on matters of race can be shown to contradict this interpretation totally. Moyne was himself an anthropologist and ethnographer of some note.

On the question of whether Moyne said, "What would I do with' a million Jews," Wasserstein says:

Brand admits that his interlocutor was not, in fact, Moyne at all, although he mistakenly thought so at the time. In spite of this retraction the remark continues to be widely attributed to Moyne, most reacently on the occasion of the transfer to Israel for state burials with full honors of the bodies of Moyne's assassins. Of course, on such an occasion the story served a useful purpose for Lehi's latter-day champions: however, it may safely be dismissed as baseless.

Wasserstein sums up:

The Moyne murder was not an act of mindless vengeance, but a meticulously planned operation with an overriding purpose of propaganda for the political ideology of the Lehi group, an ideology whose primary aim was the destruction of British power in Palestine by any means, including collaboration with Hitler. The character of Lord Moyne and his political views were irrelevant as motives for the killing: Moyne was selected merely because of the office he held; indeed the murder of the Minister Resident was decided upon by Abraham Stern long before Moyne assumed office as Minister in Cairo. It was only after the murder and in the face of shocked indignation among the Yishuv as well as elsewhere that a formidable indictment of alleged crimes against the Jewish people was publicized by the Stern group supporters.

    ←   ZScarpia   00:49, 15 April 2010 (UTC)