Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 31.07.2026
The Zionist propaganda characterizes the Palestinian resistance as terror and the Palestinian fighters as Terrorist, yet the history of the occupation of Palestine and the history of the Zionist state from its creation is a history of terror either by groups or the state.
“I would suggest you to come round in time to the “Greater Palestine” programmed before it is too late…. The Basle Programme must contain the words “Great Palestine’ or ‘Palestine and its neighboring lands’ – otherwise it is nonsense. You do not get the ten million Jews into a land of 25,000 square Kilometers.”[i]
This letter sent to Theodore Herzl by one of his close friends and adviser, Datfid Trietch, on 29 October 1899, expresses with perfect clarity the inner logic of Zionist policies.
The very principle of Zionism that is to turn Jewry from a religious community into a nation and a state; to consider all the Jews in the world as belonging to that nation; and to struggle to bring them into that nation’s state inevitably committed the Zionists to a series of wars of expansion to conquer “living space”. The entire history of the aggressions and annexation in, and beyond, Palestine has followed from this inexorable logic of political Zionism”.
The Zionist military enterprise has its logic in the ideology and mythology of justification that accompanies it. The emphasis is laid not only on the myth of race but also and more particularly on the Biblical myth of a “promise”, This is interpreted in a pure tribal sense not the spiritual sense of the mission of Kingdom of God but the materialist, territorial sense of the “land”. The verse in the Bible where the Jewish God promised Abraham “On that day, the L-rd formed a covenant with Abraham, saying: “To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt, until the great river, the Euphrates River.” (Genesis 15:18) The terrorism practiced nowadays by Zionists gangs like Lahava (the flame), Paying the Price, Youths upon the Hills, and the Jewish Fighting Organization cannot be divorced from the terrorism practiced during the British Mandate over Palestine by Zionist gangs which began to form at the beginning of the Twenties of the last century, becoming very active especially in the Thirties and Forties. However, what distinguishes the current Zionist terrorist gangs is that their acts of murder, arson, expulsion, sacrilege and cutting of trees being carried out against the Palestinians on the West Bank take place with the full support, and sometimes the active participation, of the soldiers of the Zionist army and the full knowledge and support of the Government. Thus ,they are in the nature of pogroms.
The terms “Jewish terrorism” and “Zionist terrorism” were both used prior to 1948 to refer to terrorist acts committed by armed Zionist gangs which targeted the Arab inhabitants of Palestine as well as the British Mandate authorities. Since the Great Palestine Revolt of 1936-39 and right until the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionist terrorism was used as a strategic military weapon to hasten the founding of an independent Zionist state. Numerous attacks were mounted against Palestinians to terrorize them and drive them out of their ancestral land, and against British army and police outposts. Many assassinations were carried out as well as bombs planted in markets, ships and hotels. Heading these Zionist gangs were men who, in later years, became prime ministers of Israel, such as David Ben-Gurion, Menahem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.
During the British mandate:
Zionist terrorism before the creation of the State were activities of four principal gangs: the Haganah, the Irgun (ETZEL), the Stern and the LEHI.
The Haganah gang:
In 1909, an organization called Hashomer (the Guardian) was founded by Yitzhak Ben Zvi and David Ben-Gurion as the first paramilitary formation which raised the slogan “Judaea was lost by blood and fire and will rise again by blood and fire.” It began its activities by assuming security functions for the settlements in the Galilee, then turned into a fighting force. In June 1920, and at the conference of Ahdut Ha Avoda, the formation of the Haganah (Defence) was announced, as an extension of Hashomer. In 1924, it issued its “constitution”, declaring itself to be a secret military formation whose object was to protect the Jewish community in Palestine, the Yishuv. The Haganah was linked to the Jewish Labor Unions (the Histadrut), and trained its members in the use of firearms in the Zionist settlements, before some of them enlisted in the British police force in Palestine. This gang also struck deals to buy weapons from outside Palestine which it then smuggled into the country and manufactured some weapons in small workshops founded in kibbutzim.
in 1938, Captain (later Major General) Orde Wingate organized the Special Night Squads from British soldiers and Zionist police to terrorize the Palestinians during the Arab revolt.
In 1939, a leadership structure was created for the Haganah, and was headed by Yacov Dori, later to become the first chief of staff of the Israeli army.
During World War II, hundreds of Haganah members enlisted in the British army to help Britain in its war against Nazi Germany and her allies. This gave them military experience and enabled them to amass large number of weapons. At war’s end, and in order to hasten the creation of a Jewish state, members of the Haganah and their elite units, called the Palmach, numbering some 60 thousand male and female fighters and 700 officers, began to carry out terrorist operations against British military and civilians throughout Palestine. Their intelligence outfits then began to gather a lot of information on the Arabs, their towns and places of residence which they made use of in the years 1947 and 1948 in mounting military operations against Palestinian Arabs to drive them out of their towns and villages. Following the establishment of Israel, the Haganah was the base upon which was built the Zionist army and many of its leaders took part in leading that army as well as in occupying political posts in successive Israeli governments.
The Israeli massacres against Palestinians began before the declaration of the State of Israel by about 11 years. During this period, Palestine was under British mandate, responsible for protecting Palestinian citizens. Zionist gangs such as Etzel, Lehi, Haganah, Palmach, and Stern committed over 57 massacres, claiming the lives of over 5,000 Palestinians and injuring thousands.
The initial massacres by these gangs occurred in Haifa on 06-03-1937, where 18 Palestinians died after a bomb explosion in the city’s market. A year later, Zionist gangs escalated their criminal methods, using booby-trapped cars. In another Haifa incident, two booby-trapped cars caused the death of 21 Palestinians and injured others.
Later stages witnessed terrorist gangs using advanced weapons like artillery shells, mortars, and mortars to attack innocent Palestinians in their towns and villages. These gangs targeted public buildings and hotels. Often, they ambushed them at night, indiscriminately shooting, not sparing children, women, or the elderly. This indicated their aim to eliminate Palestinian citizens, evident in massacres like Deir Yassin, where 254 died, Beit Daras with 260 deaths, and the village of Abu Zurayq in Haifa, where most residents were killed in one night, similar to what happened in Ramla in 1948.
These gangs resorted to disguising as British forces in some massacres, using British military vehicles. They often staged scenes, such as in the Deir Yassin massacre, where Zionists threw bodies into the village well. They sometimes raped women and girls in front of village men before shooting everyone, as in the Safsaf village in Safed in 1948.
The Israeli army’s role in massacres became evident on 14-05-1948, a day before the declaration of the State of Israel. The Givati Brigade, part of the Israeli army, besieged and attacked the Arab village of Abu Shusha using bullets and mortar shells, resulting in the death of 60 Palestinians and injuries.
One of the heroes of the left Zionists was Rabin. During “operation Dany” which took place from 9-13 July 1948 aimed to control the region extending from Latrun to Ramallah, which were still part of the Palestinian Arab territory. Lydd and Ramle were occupied as part of the plan to expand the territory of the new “Jewish state” territory beyond the lines established by the UN Partition Plan. As instructed by Yigal Alon and his deputy Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli air force began bombing Lydd on 10 July. Lydd was the first Palestinian city to be air bombed by the Zionist militias that later directly attacked the city center.
On 11 July, the Israeli warplanes launched intensive raids on Lydd and Ramle while the people broke their fast during the holy month of Ramadan. The Zionists militias seized control of both cities on 12 July. Several testimonies [confirmed that the Israelis detained, shot, and killed dozens of civilians, and the males were called on to gather in the Great Mosque, the Dahmash Mosque, and the churches. It was also confirmed that the Israelis shot and killed dozens of those who took shelter in the Dahmash Mosque. In support of these testimonies, and according to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, the Israeli forces killed 426 men, women, and children in a local mosque and nearby streets. In total, 176 bodies were found inside the mosque, and the rest were found outside.
On what happened after the expulsion of Lydd and Ramle, Benny Morris quoted Yitzhak Rabin saying: “What would they do with the 50,000 civilians living in the two cities ….. Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution…. and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he [Ben-Gurion] remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda’s] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward.” He added: “Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population? waving his hand in a gesture that said: Drive them out! [garush otam in Hebrew]. ‘Driving out’ is a term with a harsh ring … Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook”.
On 13 July, the Israeli soldiers forced approximately 70,000 residents of Lydd and Ramle to leave within half an hour and drive to Ramallah on a bumpy road, where hundreds died due to thirst, drought, and fatigue. While the Palestinians lined up on the path to death, a small Israeli military plane hovered overhead at a low altitude, forcing them to keep moving. A Palestinian boy’s testimony, Raja’i Bseileh, from Lydd reinforces this testimony, recalling that “Jews were everywhere with rifles and loudspeakers”. To avoid what happened at the mosque, the loudspeaker kept warning them to get out as soon as possible when they had no idea where to go. The boy added that they primarily used their rifles to fire and stole a great deal of cash, gold, jewelry, and timepieces. A related poem by Natan Alterman, which Haaretz reprinted, also described the perpetrated mass killings and war crimes in Lydd and the Hebron village of Al-Dawayima. Haaretz noted that “other such testimonies were made to disappear.”
The Irgun (Etzel) Gang:
In 1923, the head of Revisionist Zionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky, founded in Riga, capital of Latvia, the youth movement called Bitar. In 1931, and following the military principles propagated by Jabotinsky among Bitar members, the Irgun gang was formed in Palestine as the military wing of Revisionist Zionism, following a rift among members of the Haganah gang. Irgun was known as the “National Military Organization” headed first by Avraham Tehomi, who declared that “ political violence and terrorism” were “legitimate means in the Jewish national struggle for the land of Israel.” Beginning in 1938, this gang became active in organizing secret Jewish immigration into Palestine.
Following his arrival in Palestine in 1942, Menahem Begin, a Bitar leader in Poland, succeeded in rearranging and reforming the ranks of this gang and declared a revolt against the British mandate regime in Palestine. He then led a series of terrorist attacks against British and Palestinian Arab targets. The British government declared him a wanted individual and announced a prize for his arrest. Following the creation of Israel, Begin at first announced that Israel had come into existence but that “the entire homeland has not been liberated.” This was because his project entailed that Greater Israel would include all the lands between the Nile and the Euphrates but thereafter came to an agreement with the Provisional Government in Tel Aviv to disarm the Irgun gang and turn it into a political movement called Herut (Freedom) which, in 1973, participated in the creation of the Likud party.
The Stern Gang:
This gang, a breakaway from the Irgun, was founded in 1940 by Avraham Stern, whose code name was “Yair.” This followed a dispute which started as a result of this gang’s intention to continue terrorist activities against the British Mandate without regard to the ongoing world war, its opposition to Jews enlisting in the British army, and its intention to cooperate on a tactical basis with any movement that supported fighting the British in Palestine or obstructed Jewish institutions and organizations created during the Mandate. To that effect, Stern wrote: “Our current leaders haver learnt to say ‘No’ to the British. They are ghetto Jews, whose mentality has not changed. It is up to us, a small minority, to declare this war in the name of the people, and the masses will follow us, willy-nilly.” Stern called for a state extending from the Nile to the Euphrates and contacted Italian Fascists with a view to weakening British power in the Middle East. Under his leadership, this gang carried out operations of robbery and attempted assassinations targeting British officials and Jewish police officers, labelled “collaborators” with the British.
The Lehi Gang
On February 12, 1942, the British police killed Avraham Stern while he was hiding out in Tel Aviv. His followers then formed a new and secret movement called Lehi, an acronym for “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.” Lehi became notorious for using assassinations as terrorist weapons, carrying out some 42 assassinations, amounting to double the number of assassinations committed by both the Irgun and the Haganah. The Israeli government, seizing the chance of the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte in September 1948, dismantled Lehi’s military structure and a military court sentenced its leaders, Natan Yellin-Mor and Matityahu Shmuel Vitz, to long prison terms, later commuted through a general pardon. From among its ranks, Yitzhak Shamir was prominent, becoming Israel’s Prime Minister in 1983
Newly declassified documents from the Zionist army and Israeli state archive that verify that Lehi was either trying to establish contact or had a connection with Nazi Germany. It was trying to stir up a rebellion against the British Mandate of Palestine. It argued that the Zionist militia did not believe that the British would ever fulfill its promise of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, whereas Germany, which was trying to cleanse Europe of Jewish could simply transfer them to their supposed “homeland”.
“According to the information, there is a man who contacted the Germans. This man is known; his name is S. “S” was Avraham “Yair” Stern, leader of Lehi.
Stern believed that he could persuade the Germans to reach an agreement where the European Jewish would be “recruited into a special army that would fight its way to Palestine and conquer it from the British”. He argued that the Germans would be happy to help them get rid of the British from the East.
According to Stern, German officials believed that strengthening the Jewish community in Palestine, as it would later assist them. “We will manage somehow with the Germans after they conquer the land, just as the Soviets managed with them when necessary”. Another such document in a similar file show that Stern believed he was considering becoming a ‘Jewish Quisling,’ with the help of a foreign power.
The documents reveal that the contact was not merely theoretical; there was historical evidence of the proposal of an “active partnership” based on “shared interests between German policy and Jewish national aspirations,” that a Jewish state would form an alliance with the German Reich.
Zalman Shazar, who would later become the Minister of Education and the President of the State, was also present in the closed forum. “The Nazis are indeed against the Jews, but their hatred is directed at the Jews of the diaspora. There is no opposition in the Nazi program to a Judenstaat (a Jewish state).” said Shazar, quoting the ideological pamphlet of Lehi.
The file also quotes Naftali Lubenchik, someone who met the Nazis, and rejected the idea that the Nazis wanted to exterminate Jewish, “the Axis does not seek the physical destruction of the Jewish people, but rather their expulsion from Europe and their concentration in one place.”
According to the documents, Natan Friedman (Natan Yellin-Mor), another leader of Lehi, who later became a member of the Knesset, wrote, “Germany has not yet been defeated and may still become our ally.”
It is easy for the left Zionists to condemn Lehu but they do not deal with the connection of the Labor Zionists with the Nazis .For example “The Transfer” and the sabotage of the boycott on Nazi Germany., or the connection with Leopold Itz, Edler von Mildenstein (30 November 1902 – November 1968) who was an SS officer who is remembered as a leading supporter in the Nazi Party of some of the aims of Zionism during the 1930s and wrote 1 articles in support of the Zionist in the main Nazi newspaper Der Angriff.
Not only this but most Zionist supported the British imperialism against German imperialism.
The most infamous terrorist acts committed by these gangs
These gangs carried out numerous terrorist acts against the Palestinian Arab population, especially during the Great Palestinian Revolt, and these included:
–On March 17, 1937, a member of the Irgun terrorist gang, and for the first time, tossed a hand grenade into a café frequented by Palestinians in Jerusalem, causing numerous casualties.
–On July 6, 1938, members of the Irgun gang detonated time bombs in a crowded Haifa market, killing 21 Palestinians and wounding 52.
–In June 1939, the village of Balad al-Shaykh, in Haifa province, was attacked by a unit of the Haganah. Five villagers were abducted then murdered.
–On the morning of November 25, 1940, a huge explosion shook the city of Haifa. The explosion, it was later determined, took place on the SS Patria, a French ship which had docked in the city’s harbor. On board were 1800 male and female Jews whom the British authorities wanted to deport to the island of Mauritius, since they did not have the necessary residence permits to enter Palestine. This the Haganah rejected and so decided to blow up the ship to prevent their deportation. As a result, 252 Jews and 12 British policemen were killed and 172 passengers were wounded. Palestinian workers in Haifa harbor managed to save the rest of the passengers. Following that incident, the British authorities decided to allow survivors to reside in Palestine.
As World War II was coming to an end, and in its immediate aftermath, these Zionist gangs intensified their anti-British operations. These included:
–On August 8, 1944, Lehi attempted to assassinate Sir Harold McMichael, the British High Commissioner in Palestine.
–On November 6, 1944, two members of the Lehi gang assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo. Lord Moyne was then the highest-ranking representative of the British government in the Middle East. He was targeted for advocating the creation of an Arab federation in the Middle East. The two assassins, Eliyahu Bet-Zuri and Eliyahu Hakim, were arrested, tried by a military court, and hanged on March 23, 1945.
–On 18 June 1946, hostages were abducted in Tel Aviv to pressure the British authorities, the first time this terrorist strategy was used.
–On 29 June 1946, the British mandate police force carried out a wave of arrests in the offices of the Jewish Agency. The Irgun gang, led by Menahem Begin, decided to retaliate by targeting the British army’s HQ in Jerusalem, located in the King David Hotel, dynamiting it on July 22, 1946. As a result, 28 Britons, 17 Jews, 41 Palestinians and 5 others were killed, a total of 91 dead.
–On October 31, 1946, the British Embassy in Rome was bombed.
–On December 5, 1946, and for the first time, a car parked near some buildings in Sarafand was detonated.
–From June 4 to 6, 1947, twenty letter bombs were sent from Italy to British politicians in London.
–On July 29, 1947, members of that same gang kidnapped and killed some British soldiers in the Netanya region.
–But the most important operation carried out by Lehi was the assassination of Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte (1895-1948) who had been Vice-President of the Swedish Red Cross before being appointed by UN Secretary General, the Norwegian Trygve Halvdan Lie, as “mediator” in Palestine in May 1948. On September 17, 1948. Bernadotte actively sought to amend the map that partitioned Palestine in an attempt to reach a compromise between Arabs and Jews. This led the Lehi leadership to decide to assassinate him and four of its members, wearing Israeli army uniforms, blocked his car on September 17, 1948, in the Jerusalem sector controlled by Israel, and shot him along with French Colonel Andre Serot, head of the UN Observers in the city, who accompanied Bernadotte. Both men were killed instantly. To obscure the identity of the assassins, a movement called the “Patriotic Front” announced its responsibility, but this did not succeed as a cover-up for the true assassins. Bernadotte’s assassination was widely condemned, and a minute of silence was observed in his memory at the UN General Assembly then in session.
–On April 9, 1948, units from the Irgun and Lehi committed a massacre in the village of Dayr Yasin, with a population of some 700. More than a hundred of them were murdered in cold blood.
At a meeting of Haganah leaders in Tel Aviv in March 1948, and with Ben-Gurion present, it was decided to draw up a comprehensive plan for ethnic cleansing, known as “Plan Dalet”, according to which numerous massacres were carried out to terrorize the Palestinian civilian population and to drive them out of their homeland. Some massacres were carried out before the creation of the Israeli army, as in the Tantura massacre, a village south of Haifa, on 22 and 23 May 1948, which resulted in the killing of more than 200 Palestinian men and women. Others were committed after that army was formed, as in the village of al-Dawaymah in the al-Khalil (Hebron) district, on October 29, 1948, where hundreds of Palestinian men and women were killed.
Of the 57 massacres before the State of Israel’s declaration, 37 occurred in 1948. Sometimes, several massacres happened on the same day, while in other instances, only a day or two separated them
The terror against the Palestinians did not end after the establishment of the Zionist state, first of all, it was applied to Palestinian refugees who tried to return to their homes, fields and orchards, and they were shot in cold blood. The Jewish Underground is a name given to a number of different Jewish organizations that carried out terrorist acts against Palestinians in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which they murdered three random students with gunfire and grenades, wounded dozens of others, and planted explosive devices in order to harm three Palestinian mayors, which led to the serious injury and amputation of two of their legs, and the blinding of a Border Police sapper who tried to dismantle a third bomb. Members of the underground also planned to blow up the Dome of the Rock, and were caught trying to blow up five buses with their passengers in East Jerusalem. Twenty-nine people were indicted for belonging to the organization, and 15 of them were convicted and sentenced to prison, including Hagai Segal. But they were pardoned
The background to the establishment of the network was a series of Palestinian resistance to the settlers and the undermining of the settlers’ sense of security. On May 2, 1980, Palestinian fighters attacked a group of yeshiva students from Kiryat Arba who were on their way to Beit Hadassah in Hebron with grenades and automatic weapons. Six were killed and 16 were wounded. The settlers claimed that this proved the incompetence of the soft hand policy towards the Palestinians. The Israeli government responded to the attack by deporting three Palestinian public figures to Jordan (Hebron mayor Fahd Qawasmeh, Hebron Qadi Sheikh Youd al-Tamimi, and Halhul mayor Muhammad Milhem). An internal organization of settlers from Hebron and a number of supporters from other parts of the country have begun preparations to attack Palestinian leaders.
The first terrorist attack by the Jewish underground was carried out on June 2, 1980, in which they booby-trapped the cars of three mayors and PLO members. The third mayor, Ibrahim Tawil from al-Bira, called the military government following the events, which sent soldiers to his home, including Border Police sapper Suleiman Hirbawi. When Khirbawi opened the door of Tawil’s garage, the explosive device exploded. Khirbawi was injured in both eyes and went blind. Two of the Military Government officers who were present at the incident, Aharon Gilo and Shlomo Levitan, received information from members of the underground about the presence of the explosive, but did not disclose it, as they thought it had been hidden in a car, when in fact the bomb was hidden in the garage door.
Another attack by the organization was carried out on July 26, 1983, at the Islamic College in Hebron, in which several members of the underground attacked the site with gunfire and grenades, murdering three students and wounding 30 others. The operation followed the murder of yeshiva student Aharon Gross in Hebron that same month.
Some of the members of the underground planned to blow up the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, in order to try to prevent the withdrawal from Sinai and bring about a messianic process of redemption. This plan was not carried out.
Baruch Goldstein was active in the Kach movement, and among other things, appeared in third place on its list ahead of the elections for the 11th Knesset. The party received only one seat, and only the head of the movement, Meir Kahane, entered the Knesset. 1] He also appeared on its list ahead of the elections for the 12th Knesset, in which the party was disqualified from running by the Central Elections Committee due to its racist platform. Goldstein ran and was elected on its behalf to the Kiryat Arba council, and after Kahane’s murder he established a garden in Kiryat Arba in his memory. Following the massacre, the State of Israel declared the Kach movement a terrorist organization. Subsequently, Canada, the United States, and the European Union also included the movement in the lists of terrorist organizations.
Goldstein opposed the Oslo Accords, which were signed in September 1993, and used to walk around with a yellow star on his clothes in protest after the agreements were signed. When asked how his extremist views reconcile with his practice of medicine, he replied with a quote from Ecclesiastes: “A time to kill and a time to heal” (Ecclesiastes 3:3).
The Tomb of the Patriarchs Massacre
On the morning of February 25, 1994, Goldstein arrived at the Cave of the Patriarchs wearing an IDF uniform and holding the rank of captain. At around 5:30 A.M., Goldstein moved from the Abraham Hall, where 13 Jews were praying, to the Yitzhak Hall, where about 800 Muslims were praying the Friday prayers before the start of the Ramadan fast, and with the Galilee rifle he had in his possession, he murdered and wounded 29 Muslim worshippers 125 of them. While he was trying to exchange a magazine, one of the worshippers pounced on him and disarmed him. Other worshippers then attacked him, beat him and killed him
The State Commission of Inquiry that investigated the massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs reached the false conclusion that Goldstein acted alone, without the support or assistance of other parties. There were cameras in the cave, but they didn’t work that day. There were soldiers, but they claimed they slept under guard.
Ben Gvir the minister of police was an admirer of Goldstein.
The ancestors of today’s Jewish settlers, who currently terrorize the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, committed horrific terrorist acts in the Thirties and Forties of last century. Members of these Zionist gangs, especially the Irgun and Stern gangs, took the lead in employing terror as a political weapon in the Middle East. After the creation of Israel, they were the pioneers of what often became Israeli state policy of terror as evidenced in the numerous massacres committed by the Israeli army and the violence perpetrated against the Palestinian people under the official sanction of ruling political parties, such as the Likud, founded by former prominent members of Zionist terrorist gangs like the Irgun and Lehi. If Zionist terrorism in Palestine contributed to determining the course of events during the British Mandate, it is Israel’s state terrorism which determines today’s course of events and it is pushing for a new Intifada..
Endnotes:
[i] S. Shamir Hassan and S. Shamir Hasan ZIONISM AND TERROR: THE CREATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL