How three terrorist groups formed the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) | The Big Picture
Middle East Eye
2,311,363 views Oct 23, 2024 The Big Picture Podcast
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Before the formation of the Israel Defense Forces in 1948, there were three underground Zionist militias - The Haganah, the Irgun and the Lehi.
They differed in tactics and beliefs, and at times fought with each other - but together they terrorised Palestinian villages and executed attacks and bombings against the British to force them to give up control of the land.
They blew up hotels in Jerusalem, embassies in Europe and assassinated a UN mediator.
After Israel was officiated as a state - the three militias would create the IDF - and their leaders would go on to form Israel’s government, become politicians, ambassadors and Prime Ministers.
And their dark history would be forgotten.
This week on The Big Picture, we unpack that history.
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Transcript
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The Israeli Defense Force, Israel's well-unded and high-tech army, is the
most moral army in the world. That is, if you believe the branding,
the most moral army in the world. IDF is a moral army. The most moralist.
The IDF does more to safeguard the rights of civilians [music] than any other army in the history of warfare.
But apart from the allegations of war [music] crimes in Ghaza, the attempts to paint it as an animal-friendly, queer
friendly, religiously tolerant military institution, the history of the IDF says
more about it than its social media image. Before the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 and before there was
an Israeli army, there were three underground Zionist militias. The Hagana, the Ergun, and the Lei.
They were comprised of mainly Jewish migrants to the British [music] mandate of Palestine with the aim of helping
usher in the Jewish state by any means necessary. They differed in their tactics and beliefs and at times fought
with each other. But together they terrorized Palestinian villages, committed acts of violence, terrorism
[music] and ethnic cleansing and executed bombings and assassinations against the British to force them to
give up control of the land. They blew up hotels in Jerusalem, embassies in Europe, and assassinated a UN mediator.
All of this happened before 1948 because after Israel was officiated as a state,
[music] these three groups will be brought together to create the IDF and their militia leaders would go on to
form Israel's government, become politicians, ambassadors, and prime ministers, [music] and their dark history would be
forgotten. So, let's talk about it. [music]
Let's begin at the turn of the 20th century. Europe was embroiled in revolution, [music] war, and great social upheaval.
Anti-semitism had been rife for centuries in Europe, but attacks against Jewish communities had become
widespread, [music] particularly in Russia. While most attempted to flee to the United States,
around 30,000 Russian Jews migrated to Palestine from 1882 to 1904, then under
the rule of the Ottoman Empire. These communities were known as the new Yeshu,
and they built small self-reliant settlements independent of the old Yeshu, who consisted mostly of Arab Jews
who' migrated to Jerusalem over centuries, mostly for religious practice. Unlike the old Yeshu, the new
Yeshu were driven by a new ideology that was growing popular among European Jews
as well as some influential Christian figures, Zionism. And the basis of
Zionism was the belief that the Jewish question as it was called in Europe uh
in other words a place of Jews uh given the rising anti-semitism could only be
solved territorially that is by establishing a state of their
own and from very early on uh that state had to be in Palestine
because that way you could use religious legitimacy to justify what was settled colonialism.
The new Yeshu were ambitious. They built farms, formed trade unions and councils to purchase land from Palestinians. They
also began to form small militias, seeking to replace hired Arab watchmen
with [music] Jewish guards to protect the new outposts. Some of these militias, like Barora, had bigger
[music] plans. Its members wanted to create the beginnings of an underground army, one that would one day serve
[music] a future Jewish state and fight for one if need be. One of its founders
was a young Polish laborer called David Grun, who migrated [music] to Palestine in 1906.
He was shocked at how many Palestinian [music] Arabs worked in the new settler colonies as farmers and guards and set
about trying to build connections between migrants and fund [music] raise to ensure the Yeshu would become
completely self-reliant. This included more money to buy weapons. Like many other Jewish migrants, he later adopted
a Hebrew last name and would hence be known as David Bengorian.
We'll come back to him. By 1909, militias like Barora began to evolve
into larger networks. The most prominent being Hashimmer or the Watchmen. Despite
only having a few dozen members, Hashimmer began to think of itself as guarding not only the colonies and
property set up by the new Yeshu, but as a vigilante force that would respond to disputes. If a Jewish person was
attacked by a Palestinian, Hashimmer would send its armed members to [music] seek revenge. They were inspired by
Ukrainian Cosaks and interestingly Palestinian Bedawins. They rode on
horseback and even dressed in kufias. Weird, right? In his book, Orientalism
and the Hebrew Imagination, [music] historian Yeron Pelleg says the young Zionists wanted to recreate the image of
the Jewish men and reject the anti-Semitic tropes of Jews as weak and passive. In the new Yeshu, they focused
on farming and fighting as ways to build stronger, more self-reliant men. What Zionist leader Max Nordau described as
muscular Judaism. And while they drew inspiration from the agricultural Arabs they saw around them, they no longer
wanted to rely [music] on Palestinian laborers and guards in their settlements. The Jewish state of the
future had to rely on a Jewish workforce and eventually a Jewish army. At this
point, the total Jewish population of Palestine was around 60,000 and accounted for only about 7% of the
population with many of the earlier Russian migrants going back home once the situation had eased. But by the end
of World War I, everything had changed. The Ottoman Empire collapsed and Palestine was taken over by the British
army. Lord Arthur Belelffor, himself a Christian Zionist and foreign secretary,
signed the Belffor declaration, promising to create a Jewish state in mandatory Palestine. This led to a
bigger wave of migration to the new Yeshu, and up to 100,000 Jewish migrants
arrived [music] from Eastern Europe in the decade following the war. [music]
[music] By now, the local Palestinian Arab population were starting to feel like
something was a miss, were outraged at the Balffor Declaration, and many of
them saw it as a European plot to colonize Arab land. House purchases in Jerusalem and Hebrron were increasing,
as were the construction of Jewish kabutz and settlements. But what pushed tensions to the brink was the increased
religious activity around the Western Wall and Ala compound, which some radical voices were arguing should be
under total Jewish control. This spilled over into riots and general strikes targeting British and Jewish outposts,
which escalated into communal fighting in 1920 and 1921. For the Zionist leaders, it proved that
the local paramilitary groups [music] needed to be better organized and better equipped to protect the new Yeshu. This
led to the establishment of the Hagana or the defense, which formed from the
Hashima recruits as well as an influx of soldiers who had served in Jewish regiments in the British army during
World War I. They smuggled in more advanced weapons from abroad and by the 1930s the majority of Jewish settlers
were enlisted and the paramilitary group became the foundation of the new Yeshu.
The Hagana now resembled what the Barora had once dreamt up, an underground army
fighting for the promise of a Jewish state. Initially they coordinated and at times fought alongside the British
against Palestinian Arab riers in small skirmishes. The worst of these happened in 1929 when a rumor spread to Hebrron
that two Palestinians had been killed in the holy city of Jerusalem and that a plot was underway to take Al Axa. A riot
ensued targeting Jewish homes and synagogues. There were only 700 Jews in
Hebrron at the time and many were sheltered by Palestinian families until the fighting ended, but by that time at
least 50 Jewish settlers had been killed. The militants began to feel that the small British military presence was
reluctant to fight the Palestinians and resentment began to grow [music] within their ranks. Some still looked to the
British for protection, but others saw them as merely an obstacle to statehood
that needed to move out of the way by force if necessary. Remember David Bengorian? He'd now become the de facto
leader of the new Yeshu as the president of the Jewish Agency, working with the British to protect Jewish interests and
to shut down calls for unity with Palestinians. But Bengurian didn't want to confront
the Arabs headon. Not at this stage at least. He also didn't want to create problems with his British allies and
instituted a policy of Hav Laga, restraint. Under his watch, the Hagen
forces would only be deployed to protect Jewish settlements, not launch offenses against Palestinian villages, at least
not for another few years. In a letter he would later write to his son in 1937,
Bengurian made his intentions pretty clear. Quote, "We must expel the Arabs and take their places. And if we have to
use force, not to dispossess the Arabs of the negative and the Trans Jordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle
in those places, then we have force at our disposal. Benorian's focus was back on Europe,
where the tides of anti-semitism were rising to unprecedented levels. With the emergence of Adolf Hitler and the Third
Reich, it became clear that more efforts were needed to transfer as many Jews to Palestine as possible. Over the next
[music] decade, a quarter of a million European Jews would flee to Palestine, pushing existing tensions to a boiling
point. The divisions within the Hagana were growing as well between those who
followed Bengurian's lead and another group of revisionist Zionists who not only felt that the British were getting
in the way of the dream of creating a greater Israel over the whole of the mandate of Palestine, but who also
believed that this greater Israel should [music] extend to all of Jordan and parts of Lebanon and Syria. But to make
this dream a reality, they needed to put an end to Palestinian resistance on their own terms without waiting for
orders from the British or even Benorian whose policy of restraint failed to convince the most hardline young
Zionists. So they took matters into their own hands, splintering from the Hagana and formed their own paramilitary
group, the Argon. The Argon was led by a number of defected Hagana senior
commanders including most significantly the writer Zev Jebatinsky.
Jebatinsky was the founder of revisionist Zionism and had been active in Jewish defense efforts [music] in the
Russian Federation before going on to found one of the Jewish regiments in the British army with the aim of fighting
against the Ottomans in Palestine. In a paper he published in 1923 entitled The
Iron Wall, Jebatinsky outlined his fundamental disagreements with Bengurian and the other moderate Zionists who he
called vegetarians and peacemongers. Quote, "Our peacemongers are trying to
persuade us that the Arabs are either fools whom we can deceive by masking our real aims or that they are corrupt and
can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine. We may
tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims, watering them down and sweetening them with honeyed
words to make them more palatable, but they know what we want. Jebatinsky believed that all native
populations resist colonists and that the only way to deal with them was by creating an iron wall of force that
couldn't be penetrated. With his ideas, the new militia began to grow from dozens to thousands with an emblem that
represented their ambitions to expand to all of historic Palestine as well as Trans Jordan. They initially fought
strategically alongside the Hagana and the British, but that would change in 1936 when a Palestinian uprising would
push them to take matters into their own hands. [music]
Unrest in Palestine. Suspecting that the higher committee had incited Arab leaders to start a holy war against the
British government, police swooped on the secret headquarters of assassins and rebels. Many arrests were made. It was
called the Great Revolt. Furious at Britain's support for Zionism, the growing population of armed
settlers, and the crippling economic impact of the Great Depression, the Palestinians attempted to overthrow
British occupation. and with it end the attempts of dividing their land.
It began with a series of general strikes from mostly farmers, [music] but soon the rebellion began to take
structure with armed rebels forming platoon and appointing [music] leaders. But they were up against two British
regiments making up around 20,000 soldiers as well as an armed and trained Jewish guard force and Hagana and Igun
forces that together made up tens of thousands of armed militia men. In short, they were outnumbered and
certainly outgunned. The uprising lasted for 3 years, ultimately failed with
British forces, the Hagana and Erun, often fighting alongside each other to crush the Arab revolt, killing thousands
and raising entire villages. Ergon militants planted explosives and landmines in public spaces and engaged
in shootouts with Arab guards. Seeing the situation spiraling out of its control and with another war brewing in
Europe, Britain passed the white paper in 1939 which implemented for the first
time strict limits on Jewish migration, allowing for only 75,000 new migrants
over [music] 5 years. This was the final straw for Japinsky and the revisionists.
They saw it as a betrayal. Proof that the best way to protect Jewish interests in Palestine was to go on the offensive
and that their biggest threat wasn't the Palestinians. It was the British, who they now regarded as an occupying force
that needed to be expelled. By this time, Jabatinsky himself had [music] been exiled back to Europe by the
British, who were concerned about his growing influence. There he began to formulate a plan, recruiting and
training small underground cells in Poland that would first help evacuate as many as 1.5 million European Jews and
sneak them and [music] himself into Palestine illegally, bypassing the white papers restrictions. Together with one
of the Urggon's leaders back in Palestine, a Polish Zionist named Alraham Stern, they recruited 40,000
Jewish militants and began smuggling handguns, [music] rifles, explosives, and ammunition with the intention of
launching their own revolt against the British. Stern even penned an anthem for the Orgon called Unknown Soldiers, a
song that called on Jews to join the underground militias and die for their cause.
Harmony.
[music and singing]
But the outbreak of World War II would put the Urggon's plans of a great Jewish revolt on hold. Seeing the rise of
Hitler and the systemic persecution of Jews in Poland, Germany, and later France, Jabatinsky offered to lend the
British his trained Jewish militants to fight against the Nazis [music] the same way he'd done during World War I. A year
later, he died of a heart attack while visiting a training camp in New York. But that decision to assist the British
in the war would divide the Argon and its remaining leaders, who were now in British detention camps, [music] over
what direction to take the militia. Abraham Stern decided to split from the group and form his own militia, the Ley
or Stern gang, and tried to raise funds by robbing British banks, which [music] were almost never successful. Stern's
ideas were even more radical than Jebatinsky's. He advocated for [music] the expulsion or complete annihilation
of Palestinians, describing Jews as a master race and Arabs as a slave race.
He and his group of small but [music] fevered followers referred to themselves as terrorists who believed that acts of
terror were justified to reach their aims. Stern was [music] so obsessed with fighting the British that in 1941 he
wrote to Nazi authorities [music] pledging to fight alongside Hitler against the British if he agreed to help
establish a Jewish state in [music] Palestine. He wanted to fight the British in order
to gain independence. stern in his utter naivity [music] believed he could form an alliance with
Hitler against the British. He wanted to make an agreement with the Nazis so that the Nazis will send or let
the Jews from Europe come here to Israel and be safe [music] and in in addition
the Lei will will help the Germans by fighting the British. But the Nazis
never wrote back. Eventually, Stern was killed while attempting to flee an arrest warrant by British police. And
while his group never gained the dominance he wished, it would continue to wield a significant impact on the
events over the next few years. Meanwhile, as the horrors of World War II unfolded, David Bengorian became
engaged in the efforts to continue the illegal immigration of Jewish refugees to Palestine. Taking advantage of a
distracted Britain, he employed the Hagana to organize a continuous fleet of vessels across the Mediterranean to
sneak in thousands to the new Yeshu communities. By this point, there were close to 450,000
Jewish migrants in Palestine. Though the British continued to restrict further official avenues for migration and as
the realities of the extent of the Holocaust were coming into light, the Zionists in the Argon who'd put aside
their differences to fight alongside the British were outraged and determined to take control of Palestine once and for
all. By 1944, a young devout follower of Z Jebatinsky had taken control of the
militia. His name was Manakahimi and in 1944 declared an open rebellion against
the British mandate orchestrating a series of bombings on immigration officers in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and
Hifa. He then went after the tax officers, then the police stations. The Lei joined
in, taking part in a series of increasingly brazen attacks on British [music] police officers, which
eventually led to the assassination of Britain's Minister of State for the Middle East. On the 6th of November,
Walter Edward Guinness, also known as Lord Moine, was shot by two Ley operatives outside his home in Cairo.
His death sent shock waves throughout the region and put the Zionist fight for control of Palestine on the world stage.
Lei Inner accused Lord Moine of being one of the architects of the white paper
and used his death to send a message to Winston Churchill. One of Lee's leaders
and the brains behind the assassination Shamir later explained this in an interview.
He was against any Jewish aliyah, any Jewish immigration. He didn't believe that there exists such a thing like a
Jewish nation or a Jewish people. And therefore, we decided to make this operation. It would not be Shamir's last
assassination. Britain, still embroiled in the war, leaned on Bengurian and Zionist leaders to quell the attacks,
and the Hagen began going after Ergon and Leki members, killing or detaining thousands of them in a period that would
later be referred to as the hunting season. Fearing an outbreak of civil war, Manak
and Bean instructed his militants to stand down. Knowing that their actions
had proven popular among the Jewish population in the Yeshu, and his plan paid off. Within months, [music] anger
at the Hagen's continued collaboration with the British forced the Zionist leaders to back down and join forces
with Bean and the Stern gang to launch a united Jewish resistance movement. The
alliance between the three paramilitary groups escalated the attacks against the British and began to target vital
infrastructure around Palestine, railroads, bridges, prisons, and police stations. It was now widely believed
among the Yeshu that the British had betrayed their promise of a Jewish state, and that immigration restrictions
had to be overturned to accommodate for the large population of refugees fleeing the end of World War II.
But the alliance had to remain secret to protect the standing of Zionist [music] leaders in Europe. A secret that was
exposed in 1946 during Operation Agatha, sometimes referred to as Black Sabbath.
The British conducted sweeping raids of Jewish settlements, [music] arresting thousands of Zionist activists and
militants and obtaining a trove of documents [music] that proved the Jewish agency, including David Bengurian and
the Hagana, were now working with the Lei and the Ergun, both of whom were considered terrorist [music]
organizations. The raid infuriated the militants and threatened the fragile alliance. In
retaliation, Minaken Bean ordered the Urun to carry out an operation [music] on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem,
which was the base of the British Secretariat and where the confiscated documents were [music] kept. 3 months
later, they blew up the British embassy building in Italy. Then, in January 1947, Lei operatives drove a truck full
of explosives into a British police station in Hifa. It was called the world's first truck bomb.
Then in March of that year, they blew up a British colonial club in London.
Weary from the aftermath of World War II and struggling to control fighting in most of its colonies, Britain appealed
to [music] the newly formed United Nations to find a solution to the situation in Palestine. The UN, then
made up of only 57 member states, voted to divide the British mandate into three states with 55% of the land allocated
[music] to Jews, who only made up a third of the population. The state outline for Jews itself had a big
demographic problem. Half of its residents were Palestinian, who rejected the proposal and sought help from
another new organization, the Arab League. The British, feeling like the situation was no longer their
responsibility, [music] announced they were ending their occupation of Palestine on the 15th of May, 1948. I
have been instructed by his majesty's government to announce with all somnity
that they have consequently decided that in the absence of a settlement they must
plan for an early withdrawal of British forces and of the British administration
from Palestine. But this announcement only further escalated the tensions and almost immediately a civil war broke out
between Palestinians and the Yeshua. [music]
[music] By January 1948, an estimated 1,500
Palestinians and 400 Jews were killed in the fighting. Bengurian fearing a
retaliation from the neighboring Arab states began to reshape the Hagana from a paramilitary group into the beginnings
of a structured army implementing mandatory conscription for all Jewish men and women aged between 17 and 25.
With the clock racing towards the 15th of May, Bengurian and the Zionist leaders saw the war as an opportunity to
cleanse the Palestinian population from the areas mapped out by the UN partition plan. On the 10th of March, they met in
Tel Aviv and outlined plan deleting Palestinian population centers in the
Jewish partition state and enacting a policy of force depopulation and destruction. That plan was effectively
already underway, but over the next few months, it would escalate [music] into a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing
across Palestine. On the 5th of January 1948, Hagana soldiers blew up the
Samiramese [music] hotel in Jerusalem, reportedly killing 26 Christian Palestinians as well as the Spanish vice
console. On the 14th of February, Hagenas special forces the Palm Mar attacked the
northern [music] Palestinian village of Satsa in the middle of the night, blowing up 16 houses and killing 60
villagers. On April 9th, Erdun and Lei militants jointly committed the infamous Dear
Yasine massacre, where at least 107 Palestinian [music] residents of the village, including women and children,
were shot dead. Then the bodies were piled up on top of each other and burned.
On April 25th, Hagana forces entered the Jaffa town of Saka, killing 14 [music]
people. An eyewitness says the rest of the villagers left their homes and ran towards the nearest [music] town. He saw
two women who couldn't run, so they were shot. On May 22nd, after the residents of Tonura village near Hifa surrendered
to the Hagana, between 40 and 200 men were rounded up, shot dead, and buried
in a communal grave. Today, that grave has been paved over to build a parking
lot.
Israel. Israel. By the time Israel unilaterally declared
[music] itself a state on the 14th of May 1948, more than 200 Palestinian villages had been emptied. its people
fleeing at gunpoint or in fear [music] from the stories of massacres that happened in towns nearby. By the 15th of
May, more than 750,000 Palestinians had been made refugees, [music] never to
return to their homes again. The testimonies from those who survived would [music] be passed down from
generation to generation. Their descendants still holding onto the keys of the homes their grandparents had to
flee. The testimonies of the Jewish militants who took part in the massacres that unfolded would take decades to come to
light. And when they finally did, [music] would be hard for Israeli society to stomach.
The 15th of May is what [music] Palestinians refer to as the nekba, the catastrophe. For Israelis, this day is
celebrated as their independence day. Two weeks later, David Bengurian, now the first prime minister of the new
Jewish state, announced the formation of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force,
combining the Hagana and the Ergon with the majority of Lei members joining its ranks, they immediately turned their
attention to fighting [music] off the Arab coalition that had responded to Israel's creation and the displacement
of Palestinians. The United Nations appointed folk Bernardot as the UN mediator in Palestine in an attempt to
reach a diplomatic solution to the unfolding Arab-Israeli [music] war. On the 16th of September, he outlined his
proposal, a single union between Palestine and Jordan with two sovereign members, one Jewish and one Arab. It
would also allow for displaced Palestinians to return to their homes in the now Jewish controlled cities and villages. In a letter to the UN
Secretary General, Bernardet wrote, quote, "It would be an offense against the principles of elemental justice if
these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into
Palestine and indeed at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the
Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries." That letter was published on the 18th of
September, 2 days after he had outlined his proposal, but by that time he was
already dead. The day before, while driving through
Jerusalem, four Ley operatives ambushed his motorcade and opened fire, killing
him and another French military [music] officer. The newly formed Israeli government arrested 200 of Lee's
remaining members and put them on trial for terrorism and disbanding the group. Its leaders, including Yetsak Shamir,
were sentenced to prison, but their sentences would quickly be suspended and they were eventually [music] pardoned. A
few years later, Shamir would join a new political party formed by Urggon leader
Miniman around the revisionist Zionist ideals of their predecessor Jebatinsky.
It would be called Harut or freedom. In a letter published in the New York [music] Times in December 1948, some of
the world's most prominent Jewish thinkers, including Albert Einstein and Hannah Erant, described Minahim Begin
and the Urggon as a terrorist [music] right-wing chauvinist organization and compared the Harude party in its
organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and fascist parties. The Israeli
Defense Force would become the foundation of the state of Israel and its history of terror, assassinations,
and ethnic cleansing would be wiped clean. The militant leaders who helped shape its bloody origins would go on to
shape the country for decades to come. David Bengurian's message of purity and
restraint [music] would become the narrative embedded in the army's propaganda, repeated to the world
[music] in response to growing criticism of its tactics. The historical voices who challenged this narrative from
inside Israel would be outcast and ridiculed into silence. The karut party
would remain on the fringes of Israel's parliament for the next two decades, but its ideas would slowly dominate the
mainstream. In 1973, Miniman would join forces with a former Hagana commander
Ariel [music] Chaon and expand karut into a wider right-wing coalition called
Lakud. Four years later, Began would be elected Israel's prime minister. He'd be
succeeded by former Lei leader Ysak [music] Shamir, who would serve as Prime Minister from 1983 to 1984 and again
from 1986 to 1992. By this time, Lakud [music] and its revisionist Zionism roots had
become an undeniable wing of Israeli politics as well as its expansionist ambitions. And just four years after the
end of Shamir's [music] term, Lakud would return to office under the stewardship and vision of a [music]
young, highly ambitious and quietly ruthless prime minister. His name was
Benjamin Netanyahu. [music]
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<세 테러 조직은 어떻게 이스라엘 국방군(IDF)이 되었는가> 요약
1. 시온주의 밀리시아의 형성과 배경
19세기 말과 20세기 초, 유럽 내 반유대주의와 포그롬을 피해 다수의 유대인이 오스만 제국 지배 하의 팔레스타인으로 이주하였다
제1차 세계대전 이후 영국이 팔레스타인을 위임통치하게 되고 발포어 선언을 통해 유대인 국가 건설을 약속하자, 유대인 이주가 급증하였다
2. 세 주요 민병대의 분열과 극단화
1930년대 이후 영국의 정책 변화 및 아랍인의 저항에 대응하는 방식에 따라 민병대는 세 갈래로 갈라졌다
하가나 (Haganah): 다비드 벤구리온이 이끈 주류 조직으로, 영국의 통치 하에서 유대인 정착촌을 보호하며 온건한 절제 정책(Havlagah)을 취하였으나, 이후 국가 수립을 위한 군사적 기반을 다졌다
. 이르군 (Irgun): 제브 자보틴스키의 수정 시온主义의 영향을 받아 하가나에서 분리된 조직이다
. 이들은 무력 통합과 강경 대응을 주장하며 아랍인과 영국 통치 기관을 향해 폭탄 테러 및 게릴라 공격을 감행하였다 . 레히 (Lehi / 스턴건): 아브라함 스턴이 이르군에서 다시 분리해 나간 극단주의 조직이다
. 영국의 퇴출을 최우선 목표로 삼아 은행 강도, 고위 인사 암살, 정치적 테러를 서슴지 않았으며, 심지어 영국에 맞서기 위해 나치 독일과의 동맹까지 시도하였다 .
3. 영국 및 팔레스타인 대상의 테러와 잔혹 행위
이들 세 조직은 목표 달성을 위해 대대적인 무력행사를 벌였다
영국 표적 공격: 이르군은 1946년 영국 행정 본부였던 킹 데이비드 호텔을 폭파하였고, 레히는 영국 중동 담당 장관 로드 모인을 암살하였다
. 팔레스타인 민간인 살해 및 인종청소: 1948년 이스라엘 독립 선언 전후, 이들은 플랜 D(Plan Dalet) 등을 실행하며 데이르 야신(Deir Yassin) 마을 학살을 비롯해 수많은 팔레스타인 마을을 공격하고 민간인을 살해 및 퇴거시켰다
. 이로 인해 75만 명 이상의 팔레스타인 난민이 발생한 <나크바(Nakba, 대재앙)>가 초래되었다 .
4. IDF로의 통합과 역사적 세탁
1948년 5월 이스라엘 국가가 선언된 후, 다비드 벤구리온 총리는 하가나, 이르군, 레히를 하나로 통합하여 이스라엘 국방군(IDF)을 창설하였다
과거 불법 테러와 학살을 주도했던 각 민병대의 리더들(메나헴 베긴, 이츠하크 샤밀 등)은 이후 이스라엘의 총리, 정치인, 외교관 등 국가 지도자로 승화하였으며, IDF의 초기 테러 역사와 잔혹 행위는 이스라엘 국가 서사 뒤로 은폐되거나 잊혀졌다
평론: 국가 폭력의 정당화와 도덕적 신화의 해체
본 영상 기록물은 이스라엘 국방군(IDF)이 스스로를 포장하는 <세계에서 가장 도덕적인 군대>라는 프레임의 허구성을 역사적 기원을 통해 파헤친다
첫째, 테러리즘과 국가 군대의 연속성을 선명하게 보여준다
둘째, 역사의 승자 편향적 세탁 과정에 대한 비판이다
셋째, 시온주의 내부의 폭력적 폭주를 조명한다
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