![]() British leaders, some openly anti-Semitic, vacillated as terrorists fulfilled their mission to make Palestine ungovernable. “We fight, therefore we are!” he exclaimed. Of more than 90 protagonists in this teeming drama, Menachem Begin emerges as one of the most violent, the mastermind behind the horrific bombing of the King David Hotel in 1939. In 1938 alone, 5,708 terrorist incidents occurred. With British soldiers fighting the war, the police force was inadequate and demoralized. And it worsened: In the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazis pressed for permission to immigrate, incensed over Britain’s quota Arabs, threatened by an increase in population, formed marauding guerrilla bands. “The situation was…like the Wild West,” one British commander remarked. By 1929, despite improvements to infrastructure and standard of living, both Arabs and Jews were seething with resentment. Britain’s presence had been authorized by the Mandate of Palestine, a consequence of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Terrorism, carried out by two rival groups-Irgun and the more extreme Lehi-resulted, after 30 years of violence, in British withdrawal and the creation of Israel. Inside Terrorism, 2006, etc.) draws on British, Israeli and American archives, uncovering much new material, in this history of Zionists’ determination to oust the British from Palestine. Terrorism scholar Hoffman (Security Studies/Georgetown Univ. ![]() ![]() How Jewish terrorists defeated British rule. ![]()
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