Posted on 09/30/2010 5:43:43 AM PDT by SJackson
After the attempt last spring to break the Israeli security blockade off the coast of the Gaza Strip, the British government denounced the Israeli navy’s forceful seizure of the blockade-runners as “completely unacceptable.” Long forgotten is Britain’s disgraceful history as a blockader of the Zionist Jews, and as a violent enforcer of that blockade. A brief account of this travesty would be instructive:
Following the end of WWI, the Jewish survivors of Hitler’s Holocaust were desperate to leave the European killing grounds for a new life in Jewish Palestine. Knowing that the Palestinian Arabs were in the habit of launching an intifada against any new wave of Jewish immigrants, the British Mandate authorities imposed a dense and costly Royal Navy blockade on the Palestine coast against the Zionist refugee flotilla (code-named “Aliyah Bet”) — a fleet of over sixty barely seaworthy crafts. But the blockade, backed up by long-range patrol planes, a squadron of destroyers, a thick network of coastal radar stations, and 100,000 troops, was too formidable to break, and the refugees ended up in British prison camps in Palestine, Cyprus, and in Kenya.
I sailed on two blockade-runners, and can give an eyewitness account of British tactics against our ships. After we were spotted, a Brit destroyer overtook our boat, announced by loud hailer that our captain would be held responsible for any casualties, and then struck a glancing blow, hull to hull, as it pulled alongside. At the moment of contact, armed Royal Marines swarmed aboard and attempt, usually against opposition from young survivors, to seize the bridge and engine room.
The Brits were right to warn us. They were mounting a very dangerous operation: colliding with our very frail “rust-buckets,” ships whose corroded hulls could easily tear and buckle from the force of a ship-to-ship collision. The stricken ship could flood and sink in minutes with her massed human cargo, including many women and children, still aboard.
But a recent book reveals that the Brits employed even more dangerous tactics. In “The Secret History of MI6,” Keith Jeffery reviews the history of the Brit Intelligence Services, including their hitherto secret role in subverting the Aliyah Bet. Operation Embarrass was launched after a meeting held in early 1947 between officials from MI6, the armed services, the Colonial Office, and the Foreign Office.
Among the sabotage measures contemplated were: tampering with a ship’s fresh water supplies or the crew’s rations, lighting a fire on board a ship in port, interfering with fuel supplies, and using frog-men to attach Limpet mines to the hulls of docked immigrant vessels.
During the summer of 1947 and early 1948, five attacks were launched against ships in Italian ports; leaving one “a total loss,” while two others were damaged. Two more Limpet mines were discovered before they went off. Operation Embarrass also considered blowing up the “President Warfield,” which later became famous in Israeli history as “Exodus 47”– the ship that launched a nation.
There is irrefutable evidence of a sabotage attempt against one of my ships, the Abril, and I suspect there were at least two more. The “Abril” was an Irgun (i.e., “terrorist”) ship, therefore of special concern to the Brits. A raging dockside fire next to her berth in New York’s Gowanus Canal could have been the work of Operation Embarrass. Luckily, the blaze was extinguished by a fireboat before the Abril caught fire. A large dockside fire in Varna, Bulgaria also threatened my second ship, the “Paducah.”
These fires could have been incidental, but there was no ambiguity regarding the sabotage attempt against the Abril in Port-Du-Bouc, France. We were leaving the French coast on the way to Palestine with 650 refugees aboard, when our starboard diesel engine suddenly broke down. Inspection revealed that a fuel pump connecting rod had been almost completely hack sawed through in the shipyard, puncturing the engine sump as it broke. Motor oil poured into the bilges, leaving the engine without lubrication. The damage also left the Abril afloat on the mine-thick waters of the post-war Mediterranean with only one unreliable engine.
Presumably, the Brits assumed that we would have to turn back. But we didn’t. Instead, Lilleby and Sorenson, our two Norwegian diesel engineers, worked three days straight, fabricating from deck plates a patch for the sump – a repair that got us to our rendezvous with the Royal Navy off Palestine. That patch was still in place when the Abril eventually joined the new Israeli navy.
The Brits closed the gates to Palestine, thereby helping Hitler trap the Jews of Europe. Despite bearing much indirect responsibility for the Holocaust, the Brits did not relent: they penned up the post-war survivors in stinking prison camps. And now, the Brits continue to evade responsibility by accusing the Jews of committing their sins – mounting a punitive blockade against a captive population. They are beginning to adopt the manners and rhetoric of their terrorist enemies.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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WW2-Sneaking in Jews to avoid being killed....BLOCKADE!!!
2010-Sneaking in weapons to kill Jews....NO BLOCKADE!!
I think about 50% of Jews would even today if told to march into the death chambers would ask, ¨Wbich way?¨
I believe the reference above to WWI should be to WWII.
This “Operation Embarrass” looks like it turned out to be more “shame on Britain.” Granted that Britain didn’t want to attract more attention from Nazis until they were vanquished, that was still a craven, cowardly thing to do to the ships of refugees who had committed no worse crime than to have been born Jewish (not that the USA didn’t also do this kind of thing from time to time during WWII).
“I think about 50% of Jews would even today if told to march into the death chambers would ask, ¨Wbich way?¨”
Sort of like “Christian” America today, when told we must be tolerant of other religions and allow Mosques to be built, we answer, “How many would you like”?”.
Justice is sure. The Brits delivered Jews to Hitler and the gas chambers. Now they are delivering themselves to the new Hitler of Islamic Sharia in their own land. The UK will be majority Muslim within 50 years.
I recommend that everybody read the book “Exodus” by Leon Uris. It’s not great literature but it is excellent history. The Brits come off terribly in the book.
We could START with the wars of Henry II and Richard Le Clare against the native Irish in the 1100’s and go on to the wars of Edward “Longshanks” I against the Scots under Wallace, or the Wars of Edward II against the Scot sunder Robert Bruce. We shouldn't omit the brutal wars of oppression against the Welsh under the Edwards.
We could CONTINUE with the savage war waged by the “Independent Companies” against the French and the 100 years wars there.
We could on to the more savage expeditions under Elizabeth I against the native Irish, more of the same under the Stewarts and Cromwell and the “Wee German Laddie” (William III).
You could expand on that with the wars against the Scots under Stinking Billie (The Duke of Cumberland of the House of Hanover) in the early 1700’s.
Right here in America, Americans were treated to the use of scalping and burning and killing parties of native Americans against American colonists, directed by and encouraged by British in the 1770’s and 1780’s.
There was, of course, the Potato Famine, engineered by the Brits in an early example of Ethnic Cleansing in Ireland.
We can, of course, recall their highhanded tactics of impressment on the high seas which led in part to the War of 1812, or their assistance to the Confederacy in the American Civil War.
We can point out the first use of Concentration Camps by the Brits in the Boer War in which over 27,000 Boer women and children died of disease or starvation.
The numerous wars of expansion and military aggression against the Zulus and other tribes in south Africa or support of the Brutal Turks in the Sudan against the Mahdi should be pointed out.
The Treatment of Native Indians in the Indian Subcontinent during the time of Gandhi, as well as the customary murders and butchery in Ireland, one of the favorite training grounds for British aggression in the early 1900’s ALL make it MOST REMARKABLE that the Brits referred to the GERMANS as the “Bloody Hun”.
AND, of course, we have the much more recent cases of the Brits separating Aborigine Children from their parents in Australia to raise them as proper “civilized” people.
America has much to thank the Brits for in our political institutions and certain principles of self government other nations have lacked.
But at the same time, we should keep things in perspective and recognize that the people who ran the British Government throughout most of its history have much to answer for with respect to crimes against humanity.
Although the British people are our friends, the people who ran, and STILL RUN the British Government most certainly are not, nor are they now, or ever were they, friends of their own people.
And so, what the Brits did to the Jews in WW2 is hardly surprising.
Remarkably offensive and idiotic statement.
Not to mention particularly absurd in a piece describing how the Jews took on one of the World’s three superpowers (ruthless, merciless Britain) in the post war years......and by the way, WON.
Isn’t it ironic that just in this period when it was unmercifully attacking the remnants of the Jewish people, who were just seeking to return to their promised ancestoral home, did mighty Britain begin a decline from which it has never recovered?
Okay. ~49%.
“I think about 50% of Jews would even today if told to march into the death chambers would ask, ¨Wbich way?¨”
Your ignorance of history is astounding.
Okay. I´ve been a little cranky this morning. But you haven´t been to a ¨conservative¨ synagogue lately, it seems.
My only issue is with his chronology. The British blockade did not start after WW II. It was ongoing throughout the 1930’s and ‘40’s, and was often carried out in international waters, and the ships were often scuttled with all on board drowned (read Ben Hecht’s Perfidy on that subject). The British knew what was going on in Europe, as Menachem Begin attests in Hamered (Revolt!), I forget which chapter, and actively prevented refugees in danger of their lives from reaching safe haven. Now enforcing the blockade of Aza is “completely unacceptable,” is it?! My answer is a gesture with one finger, and some completely unacceptable @##$@$@#$@$@#$@#$@$@#$@$@$#$@%$#$%#$%#!@@#!#!#!#!#!@#!#!.
Everyone comes to New York in September and Abullah 2 shows up on Jon Stewart!
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-september-23-2010-king-abdullah-ii-of-jordan
Yes, that's true. When they captured ships, they sank them, though I question whether they were sunk with refugees on board.
Right, it's in their genes. That's why there were no Christians killed in the camps.
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