British-Trained Resistance Group Declares War On British Policies

Hannah Szenesh came to Palestine from Hungary as a child. She became a member of a collective Sdot Yam, located near the ruins of ancient Ceasarea. When war broke out, Hannah Szenesh volunteered for special service in Hungary and enrolled as a parachutist. She was trained by the British. Hannah was to make contact with Jewish members of the Hungarian resistance movement and relay certain Allied Command instructions to them. She was caught, tortured, and finally shot by a firing squad. Hannah Szenesh was a member of Haganah.

It was on the beach near Naharia that I saw the rusted and rotting hulk of a tiny craft that had brought a few hundred "unauthorized" immigrants to Palestine. Named after Hannah Szenesh, this boat escaped detection by His Majesty's Imperial Navy, and was able to unload its human cargo on this stretch of lonely beach. The operation had been carefully planned. Strategie defenses were set up and the approaching roads were mined. As night fell, some hundred young men and women took their assigned positions, and waited. They waited far into the night but no word or sight of the boat. In the early hours of the morning they gave it up and disbanded. The next day communication was re-established with the Hannah Szenesh, which had run into engine trouble just off the territorial water. She would try once more tonight. The operation was set up again and again they waited. This time the boat did come, but as she neared the shore she ran afoul of some rocks and was unable to come any closer. She began to heavy. To unload these men, women and children by small boats would take too much time. The ship was in danger of capsizing and it was late. A scheme was hit upon. Ropes were thrown from the dock and secured on shore. Members of the shore party went into the water and ranged themselves along the ropes. Then, by means of this human life line, some two hundred souls were relayed, arm to arm, from the sea to the land. These were men of the Hagansh, the Jowish Resistance Movement.

The British General Staff credits Haganah with having a reserve of some 75,000 men under arms. It is, in every sense of the word, a people's army. Its active, striking force is called the Palmach, and numbers some few thousand members, who have voluntarily enlisted. The British have been aware of Haganah and Palmach since the earliest days of their existence, have helped build their organization, trained their members, furnished them with materials and even utilized their power, for their own purposes. In 1936, Brigadier General Orde Wingate, of Burma fame, came to Palestine on Intelligence duty for the British Army. He organized raiders in Palestine. He trained Haganah men to defend British installations. In 1939, before the White Paper, stopping Jewish Immigration and land purchase, was issued, Wingate was relieved of his duty, and men who continued the training begun by him were imprisoned. In the spring of 1941, when the services of Haganah were again required, these men were released and the British themselves took over the training of a large group of men to create an effective military force for secret commando operations. Men and women of the Palmach undertook many missions for the British during the war. Hannah Szenesh was but one of the many who gave their lives.

Today Haganah has had to go underground again. It is no longer useful to the British, but it has the backing of the entire Jawish population of Palestine and is responsible to it. It has undertaken to bring in an many immigrants, as it possibly can and to settle on forbidden land in defiance of the White Paper. The Palestine community refuses to accept the legality of a document or policy that forbids entry to Palestine of their families, which is about what it amounts to today. Leaders of Haganah submitted a memorandum to the Anglo-American Commission of Enquiry which said, "We have declared war against the hostile policies of the British government towards us. But we have no animosity either towards the English people or toward the British Common-wealth of Nations. . . . The only conflict that exists between us was created by the British government when it repudiated the Mandate."

News item: JERUSALEM, Oct. 7--"Operation Land," long and carefully planned by Jewish groups in Palestine as the next phase of Jewish resistance to the British policy of restricting Jewish immigration and land acquisition, was carried out successfully last night, when more than 1,000 Jewish settlers, including 300 girls, arrived in 200 trucks in the Negev, the southern desort part of Palestine, and established twelve settlements in the strategic district which the British had reserved for themselves under the "federalization plan.