KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
(an acronym for Lochame Cherut Israel, Israel’s Freedom Fight- ers), which was also known as the Stern Gang after leader Avraham Yair Stern. Shortly after the end of World War II, the Haganah, Etzel, and Lechi formed the United Front of the Revolt, with the Haganah handling most of the organizational work and Etzel and Lechi handling most of the actions. All three groups were united in their commitment never to target women and children. In mid-June 1946, the Jewish resistance attacked and destroyed ten of the Mandate’s eleven bridges across its borders, virtually cutting off all traffic in and out, including the Arab Legion’s ac - cess from Transjordan. Abraham Shapira recalled that the British commander in Palestine sent an urgent letter to London saying he needed at least two additional divisions of soldiers to fight the Ha - ganah, Lechi, and Etzel. In response, they were told, “Make a list, go into the kibbutzim, and arrest those people.” The British had until then “refrained from striking back at Jewish sabotage with quite the harshness they had demonstrated in their repression of Kenyan or Malaysian rebels; they were by no means impervious to the tragedy of European Jewry. But the destruction of the bridges ended the last of [their] restraints.” 2 British authorities reacted on June 29 with Operation Agatha, later referred to as Black Sabbath or Black Saturday, a two-week, country-wide sweep for Jewish leaders and weapons. The British had gotten their hands on a list of Palmach members, but it was writ- ten in a code they were unable to decipher and, thanks to a warning from the Haganah’s intelligence service, many of the listed men and women were able to hide within the civilian population. The British found and arrested nearly three thousand organizers, and held most of them at a camp in Latrun, twenty miles west of Jerusa- lem. They subjected about 200,000 Jews to invasive searches, and were so thorough in their search for weapons that they broke and inspected the casts of patients in hospitals. Settlements suspected of hiding Palmach members, arms, or shlichim (messengers and emissaries) were treated with particular harshness.
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