A pamphlet warning Britons to leave the Middle East or face death has come to light in a stash of illicit propaganda.
The document does not hail from Basra or Baghdad, nor was it penned by the Islamists of al-Qaeda or the al-Mahdi Army. It was found in
Haifa, about 60 years ago, and it was issued by the underground group led by Menachem Begin -- the future Prime Minister of Israel
and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
The document, which surfaced at an auction house this week, is addressed to "the soldiers of the occupation army" and aimed at
British soldiers serving in Palestine, then under the British Mandate, preceding the establishment of Israel in 1948. The print has
faded and the paper has discoloured since it was unearthed from a grove of trees in Haifa in the summer of 1947. Yet the language and
the concerns remain current.
Bombings and murders by underground groups, such as Begin’s Irgun, hastened the British withdrawal and the United Nations declaration
that led to the founding of modern Israel.
I remember how back when the Oslo peace process had just gotten underway and the Israelis were getting stroppy again about not dealing with terrorists,
the Palestinians produced a wanted poster of Begin, in which the British authorities asked for his arrests for acts of terrorism. It was a smarting
reminder to the Israelis that the mighty heroes who had given them their country had been just as criminal as they always accused the Palestinian
resistance groups of being, just as willing to kill civilians kin terror bombings if that would get the British out of Palestine. In the sixtieth
year of its existence, it's high time Israel was reminded again.
At the same time, we should not judge those acts of terrorism harsher than we judge or own sanitised methods of killing a great many people at once.
How many wedding parties have been murdered by bombs dropped from US or allied planes In Afghanistan or Iraq now? Something like a million people have
died in Iraq as a consequence of the war and occupation there. How many have been killed in air raids or precision bombardment, how many in suicide
bombings?
This is just a place for me to jot down some random thoughts and reactions to the news so I don't have to yell at the television or radio, or mutter to myself whilst reading the news.
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