Le Monde: Menahem Begin and ‘Blind Terrorism’
A Jerusalem researcher rebuked a French historian for portraying Israel's pre-state Irgun as terrorists while ignoring that Menachem Begin redirected the group in 1943 to fight British colonial rule.
According to Causeur, Yoël Haddad, a researcher at the Menachem Begin Center in Jerusalem, published a detailed response after Jean-Pierre Filiu wrote an article in Le Monde on July 19 titled “Netanyahu still considers the bombers of the King David Hotel in 1946 Jerusalem as heroes.” Filiu’s piece reduced the actions of the Irgun resistance organization to what he called blind terrorism.
Haddad’s rebuttal challenges this characterization point by point, beginning with Filiu’s failure to provide essential historical context. While acknowledging that the Irgun did carry out attacks targeting Arab populations for several years, Haddad notes that Filiu omits that these operations were direct responses to attacks and pogroms perpetrated against Jewish communities resettled in Palestine.
Strategic Shift Under Begin’s Leadership
More significantly, the French historian failed to mention that this strategy was radically abandoned when Menachem Begin took command of the organization at the end of 1943. Begin replaced intercommunal confrontations with an entirely different approach: attacking the prestige and structures of the British Empire to force the mandatory power’s departure and enable proclamation of a Jewish state.
In Begin’s vision and that of revisionist leaders, Israel’s war of independence was to be waged primarily against British imperialism, not against Arab populations. Arab residents were actually invited to join this anticolonial struggle. Following this doctrine, Begin redirected the Irgun’s course. After the organization had suspended direct actions during the early part of World War II to collaborate with the British against Nazi Germany, he declared “The Revolt” against the British mandate in February 1944.
Ethical Limits on Military Operations
From that point forward under Begin’s command, the Irgun made consistent efforts to minimize human casualties, whether Arab civilians or British soldiers and officials, expressly rejecting the targeted assassination methods advocated by the Lehi group, also known as the Stern Gang. Begin believed that the ethical value of a cause is measured by the means its fighters employ.
As Haddad points out, Begin wrote in his memoirs “The Revolt” that if a cause is just, the fighter will impose limits on himself, fruits of humanity’s long civilizational journey, to reduce as much as possible the inevitable suffering linked to the use of arms. Conversely, if the objective carries injustice within it, man will behave as if he had never left the cave or forest.
The King David Hotel Operation
The attack on the King David Hotel in July 1946 represents the most emblematic action of this period. Contrary to popular belief, this operation did not aim to take human lives but to strike at the nerve center of British administration. The targeted south wing did not house hotel rooms but rather the headquarters of military command and the mandatory government.
Even Filiu acknowledges, Haddad notes, that the Irgun issued multiple repeated telephone warnings to evacuate the building. These warnings were tragically ignored by the British official on site. Furthermore, contrary to Filiu’s assertions, the attack was decided and commissioned within the unified command structure of the Hebrew Resistance, associating the Irgun and the Haganah. The Haganah only disassociated itself after the fact in response to the scale of casualties.
Commemorative Plaque Defended
Haddad insists that the plaque affixed to the King David Hotel does not celebrate a terrorist act aimed at blindly spilling blood. Rather, it commemorates an operation targeting the seat of mandatory authority, preceded by repeated warnings to evacuate the premises. This approach illustrates Begin’s explicit intention to separate anticolonial political struggle from attacks on civilian populations, making it fundamentally different from glorification of terrorism.
The researcher also takes issue with Filiu’s claim that the revisionist movement wanted to extend the future Jewish state to both banks of the Jordan River, noting the French historian failed to specify that this was precisely the perimeter on which the original British Mandate had been established for creating a Jewish national home in accordance with international law.
With information from Causeur
