Posted on 04/01/2007 4:02:03 PM PDT by Nachum
JERUSALEM – Teddy Kollek, the legendary mayor of Jerusalem and one of Israel's most re-elected politicians, ratted out fellow Jews to the British occupiers of pre-State Israel, even once trying to have former prime minister Menachem Begin arrested.
The information was provided by recently declassified British intelligence documents held back from the public at the request of the Israeli government as long as Kollek was alive, prompting some here to wander whether other Israeli politicians currently living, such as former prime minister Shimon Peres, who worked closely with Kollek, were also moles against Jews. Kollek died three months ago.
The British MI5 documents reveal Kollek had spent much of the 1940s passing information to British authorities that helped them crack down on underground Jewish fighters. Kolleck was Jerusalem's longest-serving mayor and is largely regarded here as an Israeli hero.
According to the documents, Kollek was one of the most important informers. He used his position as head of intelligence for the Jewish Agency, a precursor to the Israeli government, for ratting out Jewish fighters against British occupation and Arab terror attacks. The Jewish Agency reportedly collected information on the Jewish underground, parts of which went on to become the Israeli Defense Forces.
Kollek mostly ratted out the Irgun, a paramilitary and activist group that carried out retaliatory attacks against Arab terror and was considered by some to be politically conservative. The Irgun broke away from the Haganah, another Zionist activist group, out of protest for the Haganah's socialist leanings and policy of restraint in the face of Arab attacks.
According to Yediot Aharonot, Israel's leading daily newspaper, the declassified British documents revealed that during a meeting with an MI5 officer on Aug. 10, 1945, Kollek disclosed the location of a secret Irgun training camp in an abandoned building near Jerusalem.
British forces raided the camp soon after, arresting 27 Irgun members, including three women and a handful of commanders who topped Britain's list of most wanted underground figures.
"It will be a great idea to raid the place," Kollek is quoted as telling his British contact during one of their meetings.
The British contact wrote in one of his briefings that success against "Zionist terror" depended on Kollek and his men.
According to the British intelligence documents, Kollek tried to help the British capture one of their most wanted men: Menachem Begin, who commanded the Irgun from 1944 until he helped found the Jewish state and served as its first prime minister in 1948.
The British documents were made public three months after Kollek's death in January at age 95. The story made top national news this weekend in Israel, with many expecting the furor to radically alter Kolleck's place in Israeli history.
The Israeli government reportedly urged Britain to keep the Kollek documents classified until after the Israeli politician's death. About a year ago, the British Foreign Office advised the Israeli embassy in London that it was about to declassify hundreds of thousands of documents from the 1940s. Among them was portfolio No. 66968, the file dealing with Kollek's ties with British intelligence. According to Yediot Aharonot, Israel asked Britain not to declassify the Kollek documents while he was living.
Kollek served as Jerusalem mayor from 1965 to 1993. He was mayor in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War during which Israel recaptured the eastern sections of Jerusalem, including the Old City and the Temple Mount. Kollek regularly advocated for the rights of Arabs and was reportedly instrumental in petitioning for the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – to be administered by a Muslim trust, the Waqf, which maintains the site today and refuses non-Muslim prayer at the Mount.
Some national commentators here accused Israel this weekend of conniving to suppress the Kollek information, and wondered whether other leading Israeli politicians served as agents against Jews prior to Israel's establishment. One television commentator asked about the history of Peres, Israel's longest serving Knesset member, who worked closely with Kollek in the 1940's.
Along with a lot of other trash on some of the backstabbers who gained power. Wonder what other tidbits about the left in Israel will come out.
By any reasonable definition, the Irgun was a terrorist group. I see nothing wrong with him ratting out terrorists.
This is the same mentality of the left-wing Jews in the US Congress, they will sell us out for their left-wing agenda. They worship liberalism, socialism or communism. G-d don't exist for many of them. Joe Lieberman, a religious man, domestically maybe liberal but he hasn't sold us out like some of my co-religionists he is unpopular with.
Ann Coulter was right in saying the Church of Liberalism or Socialism.
Tired of those JINOS in Congress, College Campuses and Hollywood.
Lotsa people informed on Begin 1945-47. I'm not surprised that Kolleck was one.
The first widely known acts of the Sons took place on August 14, 1765, when an effigy of Andrew Oliver (who was to be commissioned Distributor of Stamps for Massachusetts) was found hanging in a tree on Newbury street, ... The sheriffs were told to remove the display but protested in fear of their lives, for a large crowd had formed at the scene. Before the evening a mob burned Oliver's property on Kilby street, then moved on to his house. There they beheaded the effigy and stoned the house as its occupants looked out in horror. ... then under cover of darkness, ransacked Oliver's abandoned home until midnight. On that evening it became very clear who ruled Boston. The British Militia, the Sheriffs and Justices, kept a low profile. No one dared respond to such violent force.By the end of that year the Sons of Liberty existed in every colony. Their most popular objective was to force Stamp Distributors throughout the colonies to resign. The groups also applied pressure to any Merchants who did not comply with the non-importation associations. Wherever these groups existed they were either directed in secret by leading men in the community or actually lead by them. ...
... Nearly every newspaper in the colonies carried daily reports of the activities of the Sons. Accounts of the most dramatic escapades spread throughout the colonies.
In the early months of 1766 there was such chaos that many of the royal governors had gone into hiding.
When three Irgun members were hanged by the British for specific criminal acts they had committed, the Irgun kidnapped and hanged three random British soldiers in retaliation.
I find it difficult to see any criteria for the definition of a terrorist organization that would include the IRA and today's insurgents in Iraq but exclude the Irgun. Except the classic criterion that nobody on "my side" can be a terrorist.
BTW, the Sons of Liberty killed few, if any, people.
And how many did the Irgun kill?
They're very defensive. God forbid they should ever go to a pro baseball game and listen to the fans heckling the players. Why it would make them break out their submachine guns and spray the crowd while crying.
doesn't particularly surprise me. Underground movements generally spend a lot of time jockeying for position among themselves, with an eye toward the day when they eventually take power. It also wouldn't surprise me if the other factions(s) were playing the same game. It's the nature of the beast.
On December 31, 1947 the Irgun claimed to have killed 347 British and Arabs that year.
Do you have a source for that number?
Kollek was Labor?
Politics as a career generally attracts weasels. It's that simple. To me, the stature of just about any position one can hold in politics is significantly less than pretty much anything else one can do to make an honest living. Regarding US political positions, you don't have to be exceptionally bright to be a Senator, Congressperson, or even President. You do have to be driven, and unfortunately, many of these people are driven either by a huge ego, greed, or a Messiah complex.
It is possible I'm misunderstanding this passage, but Israel's first PM was David BenGurion. As for the main issue, it will shock anyone who's under the impression that Israel was founded by Smurfs.
Yeah. But I'm not too happy with it.
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/May-June_2006/0605014.html
I'm aware the WRMEA is hardly an unbiased source, and I view their statements with appropriate skepticism. I tried to find a confirming relatively unbiased source, but it seems that very few people are interested in documenting what actually happened in 1947/48, while a great many on all sides are interested in using selective "facts" from the period to promote their own agendas. There are very few "unbiased sources" out there. The list of incidents on the wrmea page during the year gives some credibility to their claim.
It appears to be accepted as a fact, however, that Jewish terrorists associated with Irgun assassinated both Lord Moyne and Count Bernadotte at about this time.
The Zionist left cooperated with British and even went so far as to use artillary against members of the Irgun.
The Irgun Zvi Leumi/Etzel, the National Military Organization, was no more a terrorist group than the Hagganah. The only difference is that it was run by Revisionist Zionists instead of Socialist Zionists.
Agreed. On page 74 of the work "Israel's Secret Wars," the author Benny Morris points out that Kolleck began helping the British after Ingrun began blowing away British civillians such as Lord Moyne. Sorry, these were terrorists who deserved to be ratted out.
They were no more terrorists than the IRA.
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