The fact is that the extreme organizations in Israel were the absolute minority and when push came to shove, they were subdued and integrated.
Hence the state has successfully enforced its monopoly on violence.
When the same thing could have happened in the 1990s with the Palestinians, the exact opposite result happened. A huge mistake from the Palestinian side which left them way worse off (and only getting worse)
Subdued by having your organization dismantled and effectively disappears, becoming a political party, this did not even happen to the Fatah which is the terror organization behind the Palestinian Authority, the moderate faction among the Palestinians
In Israel 40 years passed before he was elected as prime minister, by the way
You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state".
If in the 70 years that passed there was no longer Lehi or Etzel, then these organizations disappeared.
If they became part of a nation army, divided across the different units, and most of their men discharged after the war, then these organizations disappeared
Had the IDF adopted the Etzel tactics of bombing the British as you suggest that would probably cause immense issues in the next desert tank war fought in 1956
You are deliberately playing a semantic game with the word "disappear" because you know the truth is damning.
The Irgun didn't "vanish." Its violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology succeeded. It then took over the "state", making the old brand name redundant. Why would Menachem Begin need a private terrorist gang when he could one day command the entire military to achieve his goals?
And your argument about tactics is a pathetic diversion. The state adopted the Irgun's core ethos, a readiness to use extreme, disproportionate violence and terrorism for political ends. This is the "state" whose military ruthlessly attacked[0] its own "greatest Ally", an American naval intelligence ship, the USS Liberty including its crew, and later formalized its terrorist strategy of collective punishment into an explicit military policy, the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. The violence wasn't abandoned. It was industrialized. Instead of a terrorist bombing a hotel, Prime Minister Begin used the full force of the air force to carpet-bomb Lebanon and Gaza.
The Irgun didn't disappear. It just took over the "state" and evolved its terrorism by trading its primitive zionist bombs for high-tech fighter jets.
You seem to somehow say I am misconstruing the word disappear, but everyone that was part of the Etzel/Lehi is either dead or dying. The organization itself does not exist for so many decades in no meaningful way, that I really feel I am repeating myself.
Your arguments have been reduced to changing the Irgun to some metaphor or what you don't like about Israel actions.
This doesn't change the fact that Israel had handled it terrorist problem in the transition to a state, while the Palestinians never succeeded in doing so, which had led them to be controlled by such an entity, culminating in that entity taking them on a national suicide in 2023
You are missing the point on purpose because the reality is indefensible. You talk about dead bodies because you can't talk about the ideology that outlived them.
That's not a "metaphor", but a direct and documented political bloodline. The Irgun's violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology was channeled directly into the Herut party[0], which became the Likud party, which put the Irgun's commander, Menachem Begin, in the Prime Minister's office. The Dahiya Doctrine isn't a metaphor, but Irgun's philosophy of collective punishment aka terrorism written down as official state policy.
And let's put down this already debunked lie you keep repeating. Israel did not "handle" its terrorist problem. It institutionalized it. It promoted it. It didn't have a version of Altalena to crush its extremists. It had an Altalena to consolidate power, and then it put the terrorist leader of the Altalena in charge of the entire "state". You didn't solve your terrorism problem. You made terrorism your state policy, which now manifested itself in the inevitable conclusion of Genocide.
[0] The same Herut party btw about whom Einstein said: "a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties." - https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2014-12-04/ty-article/.premiu...
You call his analysis "shallow," but you are the one cherry-picking isolated facts from a deep and bloody history of Zionist terrorism. Let's look at the supposedly "complex" reality you're trying to whitewash.
You mention Begin's peace with Egypt. That was not about "peace" but a cynical, strategic move that took the biggest Arab army off the board so Zionists could invade Lebanon and accelerate the violent colonization of the West Bank.
Then you mention the Likud removing settlements from Gaza. That was Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to turn Gaza into an open-air prison and, in the documented words of his own top advisor, "freeze the peace process indefinitely."[0]
These are not rejections of the Irgun's ideology. They are its most cunning applications.
And your claim that the Dahiya Doctrine is "anachronistic" is nonsense, even Biden had the honesty to admit it when he recognized it.[1] It is the modern, state-sanctioned culmination of the Irgun's terrorist philosophy of collective punishment. Their ideology didn't vanish, it just became Israeli state policy. The only complexity in that is your attempt to whitewash it. It's a straight line, and you are deliberately trying to obscure it.
Reading your post and other posts, and similarly other posters here, it seems that getting to a shared truth, or even new understanding is hardly the goal.
Rather it is only trying to put everything in a childish context of good vs bad. Where the "evil" was predetermined. I don't subscribe to the evil vs good analysis of the world events, which in my opinion is a bit childish.
I therefore let you and the three other users keep copy pasting "Dahiya Doctrine" which I would never ever think of connecting to the Irgun, and I still struggle to see the connection. So although I am intrigued how you all got to this shared deeply anachronistic idea, I'll let that curiosity pass this time
After having your cherry-picked "facts" dismantled, your last resort is to feign intellectual superiority and pretend to be above the conversation. It's not a "childish" story of good versus evil. It's an analysis of cause and effect, which you are desperately trying to whitewash.
You claim you "struggle to see the connection" between the Irgun and the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. Let me make it simple for you, since you find reality so "complex." The Irgun's philosophy was to use terrorism against a civilian population to achieve a political goal. The Dahiya Doctrine is the state-sanctioned military policy of using disproportionate force against a civilian population to achieve a political goal.
It's the same ideology. It just evolved from primitive bombs to a state-funded air force. Your refusal to see this direct, documented line is not a sign of intellectual curiosity, but a Zionist's attempt at upholding an impossible cognitive dissonance.
That's an interesting claim to make three years ago, but because we saw the actual Dahiya doctrine play out in the Dahiya, this is a bit of a reach.
The end result was not some massive terror bombing, but warnings before bombing which gave enough time for civilian evacuations and the targets themselves were indeed civilian buildings, but those that either stored massive amount of munitions, as can clearly be seen in secondary explosion videos or bunkers of Hezbollah leaders such as Nasrallah, as confirmed by Hezbollah confirmation of casualties.
All of these make the above valid military targets, and makes your claim the primary reason was to cause terror as a bit dubious.
Actually the reverse had happened, as weapons that were used against Israeli civilian population as terror weapons (non-precise artillery rockets) were destroyed
In any case you still haven't shown how the IDF planners behind these were all part of the Irgun Forever secret society, so in any case the connection is a huge logical leap
That's a complete misreading of history and a dishonest attempt to deflect from the point by invoking a false equivalence.
First you claim the Zionist extremists were an "absolute minority." The Revisionist Zionism of the Irgun was never a fringe belief, it was a powerful and central pillar of the Zionist movement. And in the end, their ideology won. They weren't just "integrated", they took over.
Furthermore, the idea that they were "subdued" is laughable. You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state".
Finally, your comparison to the Palestinians in the 1990s is a disgusting and intellectually bankrupt false equivalence. You are comparing an internal power struggle between factions of a ruthless colonizing power with the struggle of an occupied people living under a brutal military occupation. There is no parallel. It's a classic victim-blaming tactic designed to absolve the occupier of its responsibility and guilt https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
That's completely incorrect by the way, most of Israel of that time was socialist (or communist) and supported the left wing parties behind Haganah and the Palmach. You can easily see it in the size of the political parties and relevant militant organizations.
Regarding my comparison, I think it's very valid. The Palestinians had a huge leadership problem which led them here.
Among many things such as rejecting peace offers, most stem from bowing down to extremists, lying to their own people and never being able to have their own version of Altalena
The expected Zionist modus operandi, whitewash Zionist crimes, then blame the victim for responding.
Your "socialist" argument is a weak attempt to hide behind a political label. It doesn't matter what they called themselves. The "socialist"[1] Haganah and Palmach were the main engines of the Nakba. The distinction between them and the Irgun was a public relations strategy, a "good cop, bad cop" routine for the same unified colonial project of dispossessing Palestinians.
The Altalena was a colonizing force consolidating its monopoly on violence to better oppress and dispossess the Palestinians. You cannot compare that to a occupied population struggling under a foreign military boot. Palestinian "leadership problems" and disunity are a direct result of decades of Israeli assassinations, imprisonment, and engineered fragmentation.[2]
I am merely stating a fact, the poster above tried to say that the Irgun had popular support, that is false. The population was socialist, that is a fact
While your representation of what happened in Altalena is so overly post-colonialist it almost reads like satire.
You keep failing to address my original argument, while trying to show any keyword I write is some part of a post-colonial masterplan straight out of the first paper of a humanities bachelor dorm room.
Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem, currently? Do you think they can do something about it?
If Irgun and the Stern gang didn't have popular support it would have been trivial for the Haganah to disarm them at any point in the 1940's. Instead, the Haganah frequently cooperated with the irredentist groups. The "good cop, bad cop" analogy is exactly right. The groups were useful for handling sensitive tasks that jeopardized international Jewry's support for the Yishuv. Irgun coordinated the attack on Deir Yassin with Haganah liasons. After the fact, the Yishuv leadership denied that and wrung their hands. How could they have know that they would commit a massacre against civilians? What an unforeseen tragedy...
Haganah only cooperated with the Irgun for a short while during the Jewish Resistance Movement which fell apart shortly when the Irgun went too extreme for their tastes.
To understand more You might want to read about the Saison where the Haganah cooperated with the British authorities against the Lehi and Etzel which had hundreds of members arrested.
Regarding popular support, due to management of immigration by the Jewish Agency and the facts of life in Israel at the time, the population was overly Socialist as I mentioned before, which can be seen in the respective parties sizes, this meant the politically they were completely on the other side of the political map.
It was also common for mainstream opinion to describe the Etzel and Lehi as terrorists, as can be seen for example in the 1946 World Zionist Congress
That is patently false. Publicly, the Yishuv was against underground organizations. Privately, there was much cooperation and coordination.
For example, Haganah handed Deir Yassin as a target to Irgun because they knew their fighters were ill-equipped to take on well-defended objectives. Indeed, they almost failed to capture the village so the Palmach had to come and help them quell the Arab resistance. The humiliated fighters took a bloody revenge on the Arab villagers. Afterwards, the Yishuv feigned outrage over the terrorist groups barbarism.
Later that year, Lehi murdered Folke Bernadotte. The Yishuv, again, feigned outrage and had many members arrested:
"Subsequently, many Stern members were disarmed and arrested, but nobody was charged with the killings, and the case, which was barely investigated, was closed. Stern suspects were detained after the assassination, but they were not treated like other prisoners. As Time magazine reported, these prisoners at Jaffa made their own rules, ripped bars from the windows and tore down the steel doors connecting their cells: “The Sternists threw open the door of the jail, disarmed the guards, directed traffic in the square where a great crowd had gathered. Some prisoners strolled off to the beach for a swim. Others relaxed with prison guards over coffee in a nearby café.”"
You're trying to change the subject to a 1948 popularity contest because you can't refute the fact that the Irgun's extremist terrorist ideology won and became Israel's "state" policy. You resort to mocking the analysis with academic jargon because you're terrified of admitting that you're defending a colonial project that is currently in its final phase of exterminating the natives it couldn't get rid of in 1948.
Your last question is an amusing piece of Zionist projection. "Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem?" - That's rich, coming from an apologist of a colonial project founded by terrorists, led by terrorists, and whose state terrorism has culminated in genocide. The very group you're pointing at was propped up with cash by your own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, as a deliberate strategy to divide Palestinians. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
The core problem Palestinians have is a Zionist occupation problem. What they also have is an internationally recognized right to armed resistance against a foreign military occupier. Zionism, from the King David Hotel to the Dahiya Doctrine, is the one with the "terrorist problem." You just call it your "state" https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
I disagree. The palestinians refuse to take any responsibility for any of the acts that takes place in their name. On the other hand they never condemn or disown them either. The target of their violence is often their fellow Arabs but usually it's Jews. But always the people who suffer the most from their actions are their own. Yet their behaviour is rarely condemned and often implictly and explicitly encouraged. With such a mindset how can there be a reasonable prospect for peace?
That is a disgustingly cynical and dishonest argument, a masterclass in colonial propaganda.
You demand the people being crushed under a boot "take responsibility," while giving a pass to Zionists who have all the power and are the perpetrators responsible for it all. It's a sick moral inversion. You cry about a lack of peace while defending the Zionist entity that has demonstrated for a century that it is not interested in peace, only in surrender and domination. Also, the audacity to speak of a "prospect for peace" when Zionists has systematically sabotaged it at every turn, even murdering diplomats during negotiations.[0]
Another classic Zionist deflection is to make it about "Jews" so you can deflect from the racist[1], European colonial project that they are resisting. This is not a religious war. It is an anti-colonial struggle against Zionism. The only people who insist on making it about "Jews" are the Zionists themselves, because it's their most effective propaganda shield.
The violence you clutch your pearls over is the inevitable, desperate product of a hundred years of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. You are blaming the oppressed for the consequences of their own oppression. It is the oldest and most pathetic trick in the colonial playbook.
[1] "The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.
You might call it a cynical colonial propaganda. However, I believe that someone who is so insistent on removing any agency from the Palestinians is actually someone who echos colonial propaganda.
One of the historical motivations for colonialism is seeing the 'natives' as merely children without agency that need the benevolent west's help, which is the exact dehumanizing vibe applied whenever someone suggests Palestinians may also have the concept of responsibility
That is such an intellectually dishonest attempt to flip the script, accusing him of the very colonial racism your entire project is built on.
You are dishonestly confusing explaining the context of oppression with denying agency. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is a direct response to a century of your violence is the ultimate sign of respecting their agency. It is treating them as human beings who fight back. Demanding they politely submit to their own ethnic-cleansing and extermination is what treats them like objects.
And let's be clear about who is actually echoing colonial propaganda. The ideology that sees natives as less than human is yours. It's the ideology of Weizmann, who called the Palestinians "kushim" of "no value." Don't you dare project your project's inherent, documented racism onto others while you are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state.
I am not confusing anything, you (or the other poster that shares your exact same style) wrote three paragraphs previously about how it is disallowed to attribute responsibility to the Palestinians.
That seems very racist to me, why would you think a people capable of conducting an attack such as was done on October 7, is incapable of choosing more peaceful leadership? Why even the mere thought of the Palestinians being able to affect their future amounts to heresy?
Removing agency from natives is the mark of colonial thought, and it is no surprise that western thought that is stuck in colonial times (post-colonialism) kept the old colonial racist stereotypes
Another blatant reversal of reality. You are deliberately twisting my words. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is the direct, inevitable consequence of your century of colonial violence is not "removing agency." It is the ultimate respect for their agency. It treats them as human beings who refuse to be objects of your ethnic cleansing. The real colonial mindset is your demand that they must politely submit to their own extermination.
And your question about choosing "peaceful leadership" is nauseatingly cynical as it is ironic. You are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state whose own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, admitted on record that his strategy was to fund Hamas precisely to ensure Palestinians would never have a unified leadership capable of negotiating for a state.[1] You assassinate their diplomats, jail their leaders, and prop up Hamas, and then you have the audacity to blame them for how they resist your genocidal colonization campaign.
Don't you dare project your colonial project's inherent, documented racism onto others. Your rhetoric is nothing but manipulative deflection and projection.
When the same thing could have happened in the 1990s with the Palestinians, the exact opposite result happened. A huge mistake from the Palestinian side which left them way worse off (and only getting worse)