A fresh look at how the Jews drove the British out of Palestine
“There can no longer be an armistice between the Jewish Nation and its youth and a British administration in the Land of Israel which has been delivering our brethren to Hitler,” Menachem Begin’s February 1944 declaration of revolt announced. “Our nation is at war with this regime and it is a fight to the finish.”
With just a few hundred combat-ready fighters and a pitifully small weapons arsenal, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (Etzel), the pre-state underground militia led by Begin, probably did not seem like much of a threat to the British administration in Mandatory Palestine. Yet just over four years later, 80,000 battered and demoralized British troops withdrew from the Holy Land and the State of Israel arose. Bruce Hoffman, in “Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947,” presents a detailed chronicle of the guerrilla war waged by the Irgun, the Stern gang (also known as Lehi) and occasionally the Haganah against the British authorities.
Source: www.haaretz.com