On 23 April 1946, about 20–30 Zionist militants raided the Ramat Gan police station near Jerusalem, stealing 30 automatic weapons and 7,000 bullets.
Irgun gunmen killed an Arab constable and wounded a British officer.
British forces reported killing two Irgun members and capturing Dov Gruner, a 28-year-old Hungarian Jew who had likely entered Palestine illegally.
Days later, the stolen weapons reappeared in Lehi attacks near Tel Aviv–Jaffa, killing seven British soldiers. Just a day before the Ramat Gan raid, Irgun and Lehi had bombed a passenger train, killing eight and injuring 27.
Gruner was tried by a British military court and sentenced to death on terrorism charges. In retort, Zionist terror groups began kidnapping civilians off the streets across Palestine to hang if the British were to execute Gruner.
Today, Gruner is described as an “activist” on his Wikipedia page.
First Round of Hostage-Taking
26 January 1947: A young Jewish woman knocked on the door of Major (R) H. A. I. Collins, a British civilian businessman. His colleague, nurse Bella Ferguson, answered.
The damsel-in-distress ruse worked, and three armed men barged into Mr Collin’s home. The victim, Mr Collins, was struck twice with an axe handle on the temple and arm, and then chloroformed.
A sack was placed over his head as the abductors dragged him down the stairs and into the night.
Later that night, British Military Police lit flares in the night sky in an extensive sweep to recover the kidnapped civilian, with little result.
Watch the re-enactment of Mr Collins’ abduction in this archival footage by Gaumont-British News (Reuters), played by Miss Bella Ferguson. Here.
Eighteen hours later, armed Irgun militants walked into the Rehov Yehuda Hotel in Tel Aviv and took Judge Ralph Windham hostage at gunpoint.
The two men were later released after the British Government submitted to Irgun’s demand to stay the execution of the convicted terrorist, Dov Gruner.
Second Round of Hostage-Taking
But the stay was temporary. Dov Gruner was hanged in Acre Prison on 16 April 1947. Gruner’s hanging led Irgun’s leader, Menachem Begin (who later became Israel’s 6th Prime Minister and won a Nobel Peace Prize), to promise retaliatory hangings of the British forces.
21 April 1947: Local police in Tel Aviv-Jaffa found two ropes tied into nooses, two grenades, a flash bomb, and printing dies to forge civilian identities.
They also discovered 30 rounds of ammunition, grenade-training instruction manuals, and two detonators. Three arrests were made in connection with this discovery.
Irgun was out for blood.
24 April 1947: A group of Jewish British Police officers, secretly working with the banned Irgun, roamed the streets of Tel Aviv-Jaffa to find a British hostage to hang and murder.
Armed with submachine guns and pistols, they found an Englishman in the bar of the Park Hotel and took him hostage.
The hostage, M. M. Collins, was driven into an orange grove, and a hangman’s noose was presented to him. Collins was allowed to live after proving his Jewish identity.
Third Round of Hostage-Taking
On 4 May 1947, Zionist terror groups Irgun and Lehi jointly raided the Acre Prison in Northern Palestine. The mass breakout allowed 131 Arab and 120 Jewish convicts to escape (including rank-and-file militants of Irgun, Lehi and Haganah).
The British captured three Irgun militants in this raid: Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, and Yaakov Weiss.
All three militants were tried under military law and sentenced to death by British military courts. This was unacceptable for the Zionists, who restarted kidnappings across Palestine.
June 22, 1947: Assistant Superintendent of Police C. J. C. Pound barely escaped a kidnapping attempt by Lehi militants in Jerusalem.
Mr Pound was browsing a local Jordanian bookshop shortly after 4 PM when he was attacked by a gang of four men and a girl. He was struck over the head by an iron rebar.
The Lehi kidnappers threatened the bookstore owner who tried to intervene. Another gang of Jewish youth blocked the store entrance from locals wanting to rescue the hurt policeman.
Mr Pound’s bleeding body was dragged up the second floor, presumably to be hanged from the store’s balcony.
The attack was foiled after a Jewish civilian raised the attention of a passing British military patrol. The terrorists escaped, leaving behind four pistols, rope, an iron rebar, bandages, and a bottle of chloroform.
Fourth Round of Hostage-Taking
June 25, 1947: Only two days later, another British officer was attacked by Lehi.
Mr Alan Major, a liaison officer attached to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), was attacked along with his wife outside the flat where he lived on King George Avenue.
Lehi militants drew revolvers and seized Mr Major and his wife. He was struck over the head with a hammer, and the assailants tried to chloroform him.
A British military car stopped at the screams of Mr Major’s wife, leading the militants to open fire on the driver, injuring him. The kidnappers fled the scene.
Later, British authorities found a stolen car that was to be used to transport the kidnapped couple.
A Wave of Terror Attacks
Frustrated by the failed attempts, the Israeli Lehi resorted to direct public shootings and the assassination of British officers.
28 June 1947: A British military patrol was fired upon by Lehi terrorists near Allenby Cinema in Tel-Aviv Jaffa, killing 2 soldiers and injuring two more.
Around the same time in Haifa, a drive-by shooting at Astoria Cafe in Hadar Hacarmel left three British officers and a civilian injured. Lehi was declared the assailant.
29 June 1947: Three British military officers, including an Army Lieutenant, and two local girls were gunned down by Lehi terrorists at a beach refreshment kiosk in Herzlia.
Fifth Round of Hostage-Taking
12 July 1947: After six months of failed kidnappings and terror attacks, Irgun and Lehi were finally successful.
Two British Intelligence officers, Sgt. Clifford Martin and Sgt. Mervyn Paice, were abducted in Natanya while they were escorting a government clerk home on foot.
A black sedan filled with Irgun militants pulled up, and the British Sergeants were assaulted, shoved into the car, and chloroformed.
The Sergeants were tortured in a sealed bunker with no light or air, and made to survive on two bottles of oxygen. They were given a week’s food ration and a bucket.
Refusing to give in to terrorism, the British Government went ahead with the hanging of three convicted Irgun terrorists for their involvement in the Acre Prison break in 1947.
Upon hearing of the hangings, Irgun hanged the Sergeants who had been tortured for 19 days in an airless, lightless bunker. Their bodies were moved to a secondary grove, booby-trapped, and hanged again to ambush British rescuers.
Takeaway
The brutal kidnappings, tortures, hangings, and booby trapping of the British, if it had been done by a non-Israeli group, would be called a ‘massacre’ or ‘atrocity’ by the West today.
But because Israel was the abductor (Irgun’s leader Menachem Begin became Israel’s Prime Minister, and today its successor, Likud, is led by Benjamin Netanyahu), the Wikipedia article is called “The Sergeants Affair“.
An affair. As if to imply that the hangings were just a ‘scandal,’ a minor misunderstanding, a diplomatic oversight. Some would think the entry is even about extramarital affairs some Sergeants had. The dead are not respected.
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