British Casualties of Jewish Terrorism

Few people remember it, but in the summer of 1947, a terrible heat wave swept across Europe, not quite as intense as that of 2003, but spread over a substantially longer period.

But it’s not the only event that’s been almost completely forgotten about this summer, or, when it’s mentioned again, we are presented with a rather suspicious introduction, already heard elsewhere, every time it comes to excuse or exonerate the same old “international community”, in this case, that’s what we get:[1]

In 1947 a washed-out summer had followed a harsh winter, and Britain was in the grip of recession as it struggled to restart its economy after the Second World War. On the August bank holiday weekend, the weather in Manchester had turned hot and stuffy. Trade in the shops was poor, rationing was in full swing and many workers had opted to stay in the city for the long weekend.

The only original aspect of this introduction is to add a meteorological touch to explain anti-Semitism. Only then, having skewed our reading, do we begin to broach the subject:

In cinema queues and on street corners, one topic dominated the conversation: the murder of two British army sergeants by Irgun paramilitaries in Mandate Palestine. The Irgun was one of several Zionist groups fighting a guerrilla war to force British troops out of the territory and establish the state of Israel. It had kidnapped the two sergeants in retaliation for death sentences passed on three of its own fighters. The three men were executed by British forces on 29 July, and two days later the bodies of the soldiers were discovered amid the trees of a eucalyptus grove near Netanya. They had been hanged and the ground beneath them booby-trapped with a landmine.

It was just one incident of many in a vicious conflict. Militants had bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem a year previously, and even set off small bombs in London. But the “sergeants affair”, as it came to be known, caused public outrage in mainland Britain.

On 1 August, a Friday, the Daily Express reported the story on its front page, prominently displaying a photograph of the bodies which, it promised its readers, would be a “picture that will shock the world”. British Jewish leaders condemned the killings, but more lurid details followed in the next day’s papers. That weekend, as Walter Lever, a working-class Jewish resident of Manchester recalled: “There was nothing to do but walk the streets… discussing the newspaper,” the story of the hanged sergeants “taking precedence over the week’s murders and rapes”.

There were already signs that a backlash was imminent. In Birkenhead, near Liverpool, slaughterhouse workers had refused to process any more meat for Jewish consumption until the attacks on British soldiers in Palestine stopped. Around Merseyside, the anger was starting to spill on to the streets as crowds of angry young men gathered in Jewish areas.

On Sunday afternoon the trouble reached Manchester. Small groups of men began breaking the windows of shops in Cheetham Hill, an area just north of the city center which had been home to a Jewish community since the early 19th century. The pubs closed early that day because there was a shortage of beer, and by the evening the mob’s numbers had swelled to several hundred. Most were on foot but others drove through the area, throwing bricks from moving cars.

Soon the streets were covered in broken glass and stones and the crowd moved on to bigger targets, tearing down the canopy of the Great Synagogue on Cheetham Hill Road and surrounding a Jewish wedding party at the Assembly Hall. They shouted abuse at the terrified guests until one in the morning.

The next day, Lever said:

“Cheetham Hill Road looked much as it had looked seven years before, when the German bombers had pounded the city for 12 hours. All premises belonging to Jews for the length of a mile down the street had gaping windows and the pavements were littered with glass.”

By the end of the bank holiday weekend, anti-Jewish riots had also taken place in Glasgow and Liverpool. There were minor disturbances, too, in Bristol, Hull, London and Warrington, as well as scores of attacks on Jewish property across the country. A solicitor in Liverpool and a Glasgow shopkeeper were beaten up. Nobody was killed, but this was the most widespread anti-Jewish violence the UK had ever seen. In Salford, the day after a crowd of several thousand had thrown stones at shop windows, signs appeared that read:

“Hold your fire. These premises are British.”

Arsonists in West Derby set fire to a wooden synagogue; workers at Canada Dock in Liverpool returned from the holidays to find “Death to all Jews” painted above the entrance. And in Eccles, a former sergeant major named John Regan was fined £15 for telling a crowd of 700:

“Hitler was right. Exterminate every Jew – every man, woman and child. What are you afraid of? There’s only a handful of police.”

As for the events in Palestine in 1947, some might argue that a people oppressed on a land from which it has been robbed has a legitimate right to resort to armed struggle, including terrorism, to oust the colonial power, but more likely, nothing will be uttered, I guess it would be deemed more suitable to forget this period altogether and avoid unfortunate parallels with the present situation in the region. (Yet, the startling Bristol Mirror headline Jewish terrorists urge total war on Britain could be seen as still relevant today – only, adding the US).

To conclude, the outbreak of simultaneous unrest in several British cities in 1947 shows that it’s not necessary for the political regime in power to organize, instigate or condone it. Clearly, Clement Attlee’s government had nothing to do with it, but on the contrary, it also shows that the direct responsibility of the National Socialist hierarchy at the highest level is not automatically evident in the Kristallnacht of 1938 either. It has to be proven.

The 1947 riots are well known among British nationalists. We reproduce below an article by Francis Carr Begbie, “Commemorating British Casualties of Jewish Terrorism, 1944–1948,” The Occidental Observer, August 6, 2015 (https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/08/06/british-palestine-mandate/).

Normally, a gathering of British nationalists in central London, proudly bearing English banners and Union Flags, would be met with a horde of screaming demonstrators bussed in from far and wide. But no disturbance took place last weekend when such a group of patriots assembled near Trafalgar Square and the reason is not hard to discern. For such interference would have meant drawing attention to a historic episode the British government and the Jewish community leaders would most likely wish forgotten – the killing of 784 British police officers, servicemen, Crown servants and civilian staff by Jewish terrorists in the Palestine Mandate crisis between 1944–48.

So that is why, although every broadcast and print outlet and every political party was circulated with a press release, there was a total media blackout. It was a far cry from the anti-Shomrim demonstration against the establishment of a sectarian Jewish police force a month ago.[2]

All par for the course. The British government’s attempt to “forget” the sacrifice of these servicemen and dump them down the memory hole is very reminiscent of another similarly embarrassing episode, the murderous Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967.[3]

The British servicemen and police were a peacekeeping force serving in what was known as the British Palestine Mandate enclave just after the war. This Mandate was agreed as part of the Balfour Declaration and it was due to elapse in May, 1948.

It was a time of great tension. The Arabs were beginning to realize that the promises and assurances they had been given at Balfour counted for nothing and their homeland was being given away. The Jewish settlers were being reinforced by the illegal immigration of thousands of Jews from war-devastated Europe and reinforced by armaments from the Soviet Union and financial support from the USA.

Holding the line between them were young British servicemen and police, many of whom had come straight from the war in Europe and had taken part in the liberation of such camps as Bergen-Belsen, only to find themselves shot at and blown up by Jewish terrorists. Their deaths left a lasting bitterness among the veterans and their families.

The deaths included the hanging by piano wire of two 20-year-old British Army sergeants, Mervyn Paice and Clifford Martin, who in 1947 were kidnapped by Irgun and held hostage for three weeks. Their bodies were left hanging in a eucalyptus grove and were booby trapped with land mines.

Also the 100 British Army personnel, Crown servants and civilians who were murdered by means of a huge bomb planted by the Irgun in the basement of the King David Hotel, Jerusalem in July 1946. Another 28 British soldiers died in the bombing of the Haifa Cairo train.

It is not widely known that the terrorism spread to Britain. Last weekend’s wreath-laying ceremony near Trafalgar Square took place at the site of the British Colonies Club, which was bombed by members of the Irgun terrorist group on 7th March 1947 when numerous people were injured and maimed.

In Britain, another victim was Rex Farran, brother of the intended target, Captain Roy Farran DSO, MC – an SAS anti-terrorism specialist.[4] Rex opened a parcel bomb addressed to “R. Farran” at the Farran family home in Staffordshire. A total of 20 letter bombs were sent in mainland Britain.

Many attacks took place while the war was still going. These include the murder of Lord Moyne, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and his British Army driver, Corporal Fuller, on 6th November 1944 while British forces were still fighting in France. The hand-gun assassinations were carried out in Cairo by the Stern Gang.

It was the same terrorists, from the Irgun and Stern Gang, who collaborated on a massacre of at least 100 Arab civilian villagers at the village of Deir Yassin, on 10th April 1948.

As with the murder of the two young sergeants, the Deir Yassin operation was organised by Menachem Begin, later a prime minister of Israel. He also received a Nobel Peace Prize.

On May 19, 1947 the British government protested to the United States against American fund-raising drives for Palestine terrorist groups. The complaint referred to a “Letter to the Terrorists of Palestine” by playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht, American League for a Free Palestine co-chairman, first published in the New York Post on May 15.[5] The ad said, “We are out to raise millions for you.” This letter included the infamous phrase that every time British soldiers were shot or blown up “the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.” During that period Hecht wrote under a pseudonym to avoid the British boycott of his work in effect until the early 1950s.[6]

Hecht also wrote a Broadway play to raise money. In A Flag is Born, the role of a Holocaust survivor was played by Marlon Brando. The London Evening Standard called it “the most virulent anti-British play ever staged in the United States.” However, Jewish syndicated columnist Walter Winchell, whose column appeared in over 2000 newspapers worldwide, said it was “worth seeing, worth hearing, and worth remembering. … It will wring your heart and eyes dry. … Bring at least 11 handkerchiefs.”

The deaths of British servicemen and the murderous ingratitude of the Jewish community caused a huge shock in post-war Britain. It is not widely known that the two young sergeants affair led to the last widespread anti-Jewish riots in Britain.¹ Shop windows were smashed across Britain but especially in Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester.

Despite the anger among the British, up until 2001 there was no memorial and it was only after 60 years that the Ministry of Defence agreed that the conflict merited its own campaign medal.

The Forgotten British Heroes meeting at Trafalgar Square heard a demand from Peter Rushton of Heritage & Destiny Magazine that one of the men responsible for the London bombing be brought to justice.

Today Robert Misrahi is one of those peculiarly French creations – the popular TV philosopher.[7] The Sorbonne-trained academic enjoys a

reputation as a media figure and a professor of ethical philosophy. But back in 1947 he was part of the Irgun gang which planted the bomb in the Colonies Club. He has never even been questioned over his part in the bombing.

Another of the culprits responsible for the King David Hotel went onto to enjoy a long life in Britain and boasted freely about her exploits without fear of any legal impediment.

Miriam Abramoff lived openly in the London suburbs and was giving interviews about her infamous past as recently as 2012.[8] She died last year at the age of 88. She frequently returned to Israel and always took tea at the King David Hotel “It is so beautiful there now” she said.

Veteran nationalist Martin Webster was one of the organizers of the Forgotten British Heroes campaign. He was scathing about how they are not even allowed to take their place among all the other units of the British armed services to lay their wreaths at The Cenotaph in Whitehall on Remembrance Sunday[9]:

No explanation for this exceptional ban on brave men and women at the national ceremony of remembrance has ever been given by official sources – but all know the ban has been imposed at the behest of the Jewish community’s sundry lobby organizations and their billionaire backers who donated millions of pounds every year to the main political parties.

The Establishment and the Jews can’t wait until the remnant of these brave men who served in Palestine (and their Old Comrades Associations) have died-off and no longer represent an ‘embarrassment’!

After the commemoration, the Israeli Ambassador in London, Daniel Taub, received a letter from the Campaign recollecting the details of the above Zionist atrocities. It makes several rather pointed demands given the highly successful history of Jewish post-WWII activism: that Israel pay compensation to the victims of Zionist terrorism and their families, build a ‘Museum of Zionist Terrorism’ in Jerusalem and institute courses about Zionist terrorism in Israel’s schools as a warning to future generations.

The letter is signed by Martin Webster, Richard Edmonds, Jeremy Turner, Lady Michèle Renouf, and Peter Rushton.

Endnotes