Something went wrong!
Hang in there while we get back on track
רק כך : הודעה / בית הדין של הארגון הצבאי הלאומי בארץ-ישראל.
Raḳ Kakh : Hodaʻah / Bet ha-Din shel ha-Irgun ha-Tsevaʼi ha-Leʼumi be-Erets-Yiśraʼel.
1947
Irgun announcement of the charges and verdict against two British spies, held in an Irgun-run prison and tried in an Irgun-administered court. The prisoners, Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice, worked for the British Army Intelligence Corps. They were captured by the Irgun in response to the death sentences imposed on three Irgun fighters after the Acre prison break, Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss, and Meir Nakar, executed on July 29, 1947. The next day, the Irgun executed Martin and Paice. The executions sparked anti-Jewish riots in Britain, and were widely condemned by the main Jewish institutions in the Yishuv and by David Ben-Gurion himself. The mainstream labor Zionist military organization, the Haganah, attempted to find and rescue the British prisoners. Nonetheless the execution, known as the Sergeants Affair, is credited with finally breaking the British will to remain in Palestine.
Collection
Part of
Underground Publications and Ephemera Printed in Palestine at End of the Palestine Mandate
These documents capture a fascinating moment in Jewish history, a turmoil-filled “interregnum” of sorts, between the destruction of European Jewry in World War II and the establishment of Israel: the violent fight against the British, efforts to rescue Jewish refugees in Europe and smuggle them into Eretz Israel, diplomatic maneuvering over the end of the British Mandate, the proposed partition of Palestine, and anticipation of a war with the Arab world. But this collection does more than merely capture this moment. It adds nuance and layers to a dominant discourse that too often suffers from overly simplistic, ahistorical, and context-free narratives about the history of Zionism, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Metadata
- Publisher
- [Israel] : Irgun, [July 1947].
- Language
- Hebrew
View all metadata for this item













