Irgun

Irgun (ארגון), shorthand for Irgun Tsvai Leumi (ארגון צבאי לאומי, also spelled Irgun Zvai Leumi), Hebrew for "National Military Organization", was a militant Zionist group that operated in the British Mandate of Palestine from 1931 to 1948. In Israel, this group is always referred to as Etzel (אצ"ל), an acronym of the Hebrew initials. It was classified by British authorities as a terrorist organization and regularly described as such by many, but others considered it to be a liberation movement. Its political association with Revisionist Zionism rendered it a predecessor movement to modern Israel's right-wing Likud party/coalition.

Legacy of Irgun

Leaders within the mainstream Jewish Agency, Haganah, and Histadrut, as well as British authorities, routinely condemned Irgun operations as "terrorist" and branded it as an "illegal organization". In their defense, former Irgun leaders assert that:

Related Topics:
Jewish Agency - Haganah - Histadrut - Terrorist

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• The premises for their founding and strategy were vindicated by subsequent events. Arab violence against Jews in the mandate of Palestine could only be deterred through retaliation; the British authorities only ended their restrictions on Jewish immigration when pressured by force; and unrestricted Jewish immigration was a matter of saving lives, both during the Shoah and during post-World War II pogroms in Poland and Ukraine.
• Operations that are usually characterized as "terrorist" had another character. The King David Hotel bombing was considered a legitimate military target, being the British military headquarters; the attack on Deir Yassin was part of a campaign to control the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv; the attack on the Acre prison was to release prisoners the British intended to hang.

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