Like Begin’s The Revolt, many of the books chronicling the Yishuv’s struggle to oust the Jewish home-strangling British go on to cover the same fighters’ role in throwing back the immediately succeeding Arab invasion. I’ve classed them based on where the author’s primary interest lay. There are also moving books focusing on specific events during the underground days, and although the Altalena sinking occurred after independence, it’s a culmination of the tragic relationship between the Irgun and Haganah, eventually government, so I’ve included it here.
Begin’s The Revolt, on the Irgun’s role in the Yishuv’s struggle against the British and then in reborn Israel’s War of Independence against the instant Arab invaders is standard reading for homeland natives revolting against foreign rule and ought to be for American Jews.
The sensational events – the assassinations of Moyne and Bernadotte and bombing of the King David Hotel – are all here, but this book, based on extensive interviews with the Irgun and LEHI’s survivors conveys a vivid sense of underground life, days filled with evading the British and “nights of despair.” Movingly written.
.If the name “Dov Gruner” is unknown to you, and the deeds of him and his fellow young men who gave their lives, in battle with or at the end of a British rope, or if you seek a moving account of the Irgun, here is a moving book for you.
The British thought the Acre fortress impregnable. Most other people thought so too, Gitlin calls it “the most exciting chapter in the history of Irgun.” It was an accomplishment of great planning and courage. Well worth the read.
Understand this. The wing of the King David Hotel the Irgun blew up on July 22, 1946, was not housing tourists. It was the headquarters of the British attempt to stifle, in defiance of its Mandate to reestablish our Jewish national home, by blockading Holocaust survivors from leaving European DP camps and coming home. And the Irgun gave warnings of imminent explosion, which the British ignored. Here’s the tale.
This auto-bio by a high member of the Irgun High Command is a stirring account of action and courage throughout, but it climax’s with Lankin’s role as commander of the Altalena, a ship bringing desperately needed arms during the War of Independence by Ben-Gurion’s forces. Here is Lankin’s assignment of blame on the government. In our armchair lookback today, we can only lament that both Jewish history giants, Ben-Gurion and Begin, didn’t come to agreement.
