Historical Background and Interviews
III. A New Beginning A New Beginning
Using metal detectors and destroying buildings, crops, and even graves, the British soldiers searched for and found most of the weapons hidden at Yagur. According to one account, they seized 500 guns, 96 small mortars, 12 large mortars, and 500,000 bullets. Another account puts it at 325 rifles, 100 mortars, 10,000 hand grenades, and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition. Ei- ther way, it was a disaster that was felt severely during the War of Independence two years later. Ezra Sherman remarked, “We were living on the kibbutz during Black Sabbath when the British surrounded the kibbutz and searched for weapons. We were in the dining room and put up some resistance. We threw chairs and whatever we had. We held them off for a couple of hours, but eventually they got in. They took us out, put us in a truck, and took us one and a half miles away to a military camp. After a day or so, they let us go back to the kibbutz. A lot of things had been broken, and they had dug all around and found a lot of weapons and taken them. We were a main cache for the storage of weapons. The mood was sad because we knew we needed the weapons to fight the Arabs later and because people were arrested and taken away.” “I was in a state of shock. I had a high fever, my stomach hurt. It was a painful experience, very traumatic,” said Zakay. Because so many of the kibbutz’s members were imprisoned after Black Sabbath, volunteer workers streamed to Yagur from northern Palestine. The Haganah had suspended action, but three weeks later, on July 22, Etzel used concealed weapons to demolish a section of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that housed the British Criminal Investigation Division and other government offices. Ninety-one people were killed and forty-five injured in the attack. Britain re - taliated. Curfews were established in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and Jewish homes on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem were blown up, killing forty-eight civilians. In addition, British troops were banned from Jewish shops and homes.
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