4 ms·

The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF, claiming dead and almost triggering a civil war. Something the Palestinians could never muster, and one of the

by breppp 1y ago

The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF, claiming dead and almost triggering a civil war. Something the Palestinians could never muster, and one of the reasons they are still in this position, stateless under the control of Hamas

jedimind 1y ago
The claim that "The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF" is a classic piece of Zionist propaganda because it uses a technically true event, the Altalena Affair, to paint a profoundly false picture. It's a self-serving myth designed to launder the history of the Irgun and create a clean break between the "respectable" new "state" of Israel and its terrorist antecedents, a break that never truly happened. The Altalena incident was not a moral battle against terrorism, it was a cynical power struggle. Ben-Gurion needed to establish the state's monopoly on force and could not tolerate Menachem Begin's private terrorist gang. After the confrontation, Irgun fighters were not punished. They were absorbed into the IDF, where their terrorist skills became state assets. This move whitewashes what the Irgun actually was. Long before "Israel" absorbed them, they were internationally recognized as terrorists (even by the US AND UK!) for terrorism e.g. like the King-David Hotel bombing. In a famous letter, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt called Begin's organization terrorists and "closely akin in its organization, methods, [and] political philosophy to the Nazi and Fascist parties." The ultimate proof that Israel never rejected its terrorist ideology is the career of the Irgun commander himself, Menachem Begin. He was never tried as a traitor or a terrorist. He founded the party that would become Likud and was later elected Prime Minister. Israel didn't purge its terrorist founders, it eventually put one in charge of Israel.
- breppp 1y ago
  The fact is that the extreme organizations in Israel were the absolute minority and when push came to shove, they were subdued and integrated. Hence the state has successfully enforced its monopoly on violence. When the same thing could have happened in the 1990s with the Palestinians, the exact opposite result happened. A huge mistake from the Palestinian side which left them way worse off (and only getting worse)
  - inigoalonso 1y ago
    How are you subdued if you become the prime minister?
    - breppp 1y ago
      Subdued by having your organization dismantled and effectively disappears, becoming a political party, this did not even happen to the Fatah which is the terror organization behind the Palestinian Authority, the moderate faction among the Palestinians In Israel 40 years passed before he was elected as prime minister, by the way
      - jedimind 1y ago
        You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45300708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45300708
        breppp 1y ago
        If in the 70 years that passed there was no longer Lehi or Etzel, then these organizations disappeared. If they became part of a nation army, divided across the different units, and most of their men discharged after the war, then these organizations disappeared Had the IDF adopted the Etzel tactics of bombing the British as you suggest that would probably cause immense issues in the next desert tank war fought in 1956
        jedimind 1y ago
        You are deliberately playing a semantic game with the word "disappear" because you know the truth is damning. The Irgun didn't "vanish." Its violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology succeeded. It then took over the "state", making the old brand name redundant. Why would Menachem Begin need a private terrorist gang when he could one day command the entire military to achieve his goals? And your argument about tactics is a pathetic diversion. The state adopted the Irgun's core ethos, a readiness to use extreme, disproportionate violence and terrorism for political ends. This is the "state" whose military ruthlessly attacked[0] its own "greatest Ally", an American naval intelligence ship, the USS Liberty including its crew, and later formalized its terrorist strategy of collective punishment into an explicit military policy, the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. The violence wasn't abandoned. It was industrialized. Instead of a terrorist bombing a hotel, Prime Minister Begin used the full force of the air force to carpet-bomb Lebanon and Gaza. The Irgun didn't disappear. It just took over the "state" and evolved its terrorism by trading its primitive zionist bombs for high-tech fighter jets. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
- FridayoLeary 1y ago
  I agree with lots of that actually! The altalena affair is a shameful stain on ben gurions legacy although he might have been justified in distrusting Begin considering how much the irgun had been relentlessly persecuted. But Begins decision not to descend into civil war over it speaks volumes about his moral fortitude and clarity. For Begin violence and terrorism was a means to an end not a way of life. When peace was an option he took that path. It was Begin who made peace with Israels mortal enemies - Egypt and he did the unthinkable, gave back the sinai peninsula. Shamir too, saw no further use for violence after 1948 and eventually took to politics and only in that theater did he engage with his mortal enemies on the left. I can't help but contrast that with the actions of Yasser Arafat who unleashed the second intifada on Israel after signing the Oslo Accords or hamas who used the de facto palestinian state of gaza as a base to launch attacks and missiles at Israel.
  - jedimind 1y ago
    It is truly incredible to see those Zionist terrorist's pragmatic calculation rebranded as "moral fortitude." Begin avoided a civil war because he knew his extremist ideology would eventually conquer the state from within, and he was proven right. The idea that violence for him and Shamir was just a "means to an end" that stopped in 1948 is a complete fantasy. They simply nationalized their terrorism. Begin didn't find peace. He swapped his Irgun uniform for a state uniform to launch the brutal 1982 invasion of Lebanon and to oversee a massive, violent expansion of illegal settlements. His "peace" with Egypt was a strategic masterstroke. It neutralized his biggest military threat, freeing him up to colonize Palestine with impunity. This continuous, state-sanctioned violence was never just random. It was the implementation of an ideology that sees Palestinians as subhuman obstacles. And now, that project has reached its logical and horrifying conclusion. It has culminated in what leading human rights organizations like Amnesty International and hundreds of the world's foremost genocide scholars explicitly call it: the crime of genocide.[1][2] So your attempt to contrast this with Palestinian leaders is a disgusting exercise in victim-blaming. You are defending the architects of a political project that resulted in genocide, while slandering its victims for resisting their own extermination. It is a morally bankrupt position that rests on a complete inversion of reality. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-worlds-top-scholars-on-the-say https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committ... [2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...
rdtsc 1y ago
> The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF, claiming dead and almost triggering a civil war. So that means the terrorists, especially the leaders, were tried and punished for their crimes?
- breppp 1y ago
  No, but it means twenty people died in the process of forcing them to disintegrate
  - bjourne 1y ago
    That proves nothing. 100 times as many Palestinians have been killed in Fatah-Hamas skirmishes. Yet you still think the PA supports terrorism.
ylabidi 1y ago
The context from the Palestinian side is quite different and comparing the two is flawed for many reasons: There was never a consensus on the Oslo accords from both sides. While the Israeli Labor pushed for the process, the Likud and the rest of right wingers worked thoroughly to undermine it. And on the Palestinian side, the OLP, essentially Fatah, went on to accept terms every other Palestinian faction refused to adhere to (demilitarized state, practically land-locked on a mozaic of patches that amounts to a fraction of the country's total area and surrounded everywhere with ever-increasing Israeli settlement projects. That effectively weakened Fatah's position which essentially morphed into a caretaker on behalf of the Israelis for the day-to-day. And the resistance weight shifted from secular factions to the Hamas.
- breppp 1y ago
  There was consensus in the Israeli public which fell apart gradually during Hamas suicide bombing campaign in the 1990s, while many Israelis naively believed in peace and refused to come to terms with Arafat actually leading the Second Intifada a few years into the Intifada. Regarding a landlocked mosaic, that was the reality of the interim agreement but was far from the situation offered to the Palestinians in multiple subsequent peace plans, which were all rejected or effectively rejected through introducing terms that were untenable. For example this map, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g0dv7rxxvo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g0dv7rxxvo. The issue was a combination of lack of popular support in the Palestine side, refusal to explain the terms of reality to their population and preferring to lean on the ethos of "resistance" which is an easier sale and cowardice in their leadership. This of course does not talk about the Israeli leadership issues which are also numerous, but the issues I mentioned above go back to the forties and before, and Israeli leadership did achieve statehood, while the Palestinian one had always tried the all-or-nothing approach and were left with nothing.
  - bjourne 1y ago
    Such ridiculous Hasbara. There was never an Israeli public consensus. That Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist tells you as much. Moreover, the Hebron mosque massacre preceded Hamas's suicide bombings. Jewish terrorism is as much to blame for derailing the peace process as Palestinian irredentism is. Then you have Benjamin Netanyahu, elected prime minister of Israel in 1997 who in 2001 boasted: "I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords" All while Israel was rapidly expanding its settlements on the West Bank. States generally don't build settlements on territory they intend to relinquish.

by breppp 1y ago

jedimind 1y ago

The claim that "The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF" is a classic piece of Zionist propaganda because it uses a technically true event, the Altalena Affair, to paint a profoundly false picture. It's a self-serving myth designed to launder the history of the Irgun and create a clean break between the "respectable" new "state" of Israel and its terrorist antecedents, a break that never truly happened. The Altalena incident was not a moral battle against terrorism, it was a cynical power struggle. Ben-Gurion needed to establish the state's monopoly on force and could not tolerate Menachem Begin's private terrorist gang. After the confrontation, Irgun fighters were not punished. They were absorbed into the IDF, where their terrorist skills became state assets. This move whitewashes what the Irgun actually was. Long before "Israel" absorbed them, they were internationally recognized as terrorists (even by the US AND UK!) for terrorism e.g. like the King-David Hotel bombing. In a famous letter, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt called Begin's organization terrorists and "closely akin in its organization, methods, [and] political philosophy to the Nazi and Fascist parties." The ultimate proof that Israel never rejected its terrorist ideology is the career of the Irgun commander himself, Menachem Begin. He was never tried as a traitor or a terrorist. He founded the party that would become Likud and was later elected Prime Minister. Israel didn't purge its terrorist founders, it eventually put one in charge of Israel.

breppp 1y ago
The fact is that the extreme organizations in Israel were the absolute minority and when push came to shove, they were subdued and integrated. Hence the state has successfully enforced its monopoly on violence. When the same thing could have happened in the 1990s with the Palestinians, the exact opposite result happened. A huge mistake from the Palestinian side which left them way worse off (and only getting worse)
- inigoalonso 1y ago
  How are you subdued if you become the prime minister?
  - breppp 1y ago
    Subdued by having your organization dismantled and effectively disappears, becoming a political party, this did not even happen to the Fatah which is the terror organization behind the Palestinian Authority, the moderate faction among the Palestinians In Israel 40 years passed before he was elected as prime minister, by the way
    - jedimind 1y ago
      You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45300708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45300708
      - breppp 1y ago
        If in the 70 years that passed there was no longer Lehi or Etzel, then these organizations disappeared. If they became part of a nation army, divided across the different units, and most of their men discharged after the war, then these organizations disappeared Had the IDF adopted the Etzel tactics of bombing the British as you suggest that would probably cause immense issues in the next desert tank war fought in 1956
        jedimind 1y ago
        You are deliberately playing a semantic game with the word "disappear" because you know the truth is damning. The Irgun didn't "vanish." Its violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology succeeded. It then took over the "state", making the old brand name redundant. Why would Menachem Begin need a private terrorist gang when he could one day command the entire military to achieve his goals? And your argument about tactics is a pathetic diversion. The state adopted the Irgun's core ethos, a readiness to use extreme, disproportionate violence and terrorism for political ends. This is the "state" whose military ruthlessly attacked[0] its own "greatest Ally", an American naval intelligence ship, the USS Liberty including its crew, and later formalized its terrorist strategy of collective punishment into an explicit military policy, the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. The violence wasn't abandoned. It was industrialized. Instead of a terrorist bombing a hotel, Prime Minister Begin used the full force of the air force to carpet-bomb Lebanon and Gaza. The Irgun didn't disappear. It just took over the "state" and evolved its terrorism by trading its primitive zionist bombs for high-tech fighter jets. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
FridayoLeary 1y ago
I agree with lots of that actually! The altalena affair is a shameful stain on ben gurions legacy although he might have been justified in distrusting Begin considering how much the irgun had been relentlessly persecuted. But Begins decision not to descend into civil war over it speaks volumes about his moral fortitude and clarity. For Begin violence and terrorism was a means to an end not a way of life. When peace was an option he took that path. It was Begin who made peace with Israels mortal enemies - Egypt and he did the unthinkable, gave back the sinai peninsula. Shamir too, saw no further use for violence after 1948 and eventually took to politics and only in that theater did he engage with his mortal enemies on the left. I can't help but contrast that with the actions of Yasser Arafat who unleashed the second intifada on Israel after signing the Oslo Accords or hamas who used the de facto palestinian state of gaza as a base to launch attacks and missiles at Israel.
- jedimind 1y ago
  It is truly incredible to see those Zionist terrorist's pragmatic calculation rebranded as "moral fortitude." Begin avoided a civil war because he knew his extremist ideology would eventually conquer the state from within, and he was proven right. The idea that violence for him and Shamir was just a "means to an end" that stopped in 1948 is a complete fantasy. They simply nationalized their terrorism. Begin didn't find peace. He swapped his Irgun uniform for a state uniform to launch the brutal 1982 invasion of Lebanon and to oversee a massive, violent expansion of illegal settlements. His "peace" with Egypt was a strategic masterstroke. It neutralized his biggest military threat, freeing him up to colonize Palestine with impunity. This continuous, state-sanctioned violence was never just random. It was the implementation of an ideology that sees Palestinians as subhuman obstacles. And now, that project has reached its logical and horrifying conclusion. It has culminated in what leading human rights organizations like Amnesty International and hundreds of the world's foremost genocide scholars explicitly call it: the crime of genocide.[1][2] So your attempt to contrast this with Palestinian leaders is a disgusting exercise in victim-blaming. You are defending the architects of a political project that resulted in genocide, while slandering its victims for resisting their own extermination. It is a morally bankrupt position that rests on a complete inversion of reality. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-worlds-top-scholars-on-the-say https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committ... [2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...

rdtsc 1y ago

> The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF, claiming dead and almost triggering a civil war. So that means the terrorists, especially the leaders, were tried and punished for their crimes?

breppp 1y ago
No, but it means twenty people died in the process of forcing them to disintegrate
- bjourne 1y ago
  That proves nothing. 100 times as many Palestinians have been killed in Fatah-Hamas skirmishes. Yet you still think the PA supports terrorism.

ylabidi 1y ago

The context from the Palestinian side is quite different and comparing the two is flawed for many reasons: There was never a consensus on the Oslo accords from both sides. While the Israeli Labor pushed for the process, the Likud and the rest of right wingers worked thoroughly to undermine it. And on the Palestinian side, the OLP, essentially Fatah, went on to accept terms every other Palestinian faction refused to adhere to (demilitarized state, practically land-locked on a mozaic of patches that amounts to a fraction of the country's total area and surrounded everywhere with ever-increasing Israeli settlement projects. That effectively weakened Fatah's position which essentially morphed into a caretaker on behalf of the Israelis for the day-to-day. And the resistance weight shifted from secular factions to the Hamas.

breppp 1y ago
There was consensus in the Israeli public which fell apart gradually during Hamas suicide bombing campaign in the 1990s, while many Israelis naively believed in peace and refused to come to terms with Arafat actually leading the Second Intifada a few years into the Intifada. Regarding a landlocked mosaic, that was the reality of the interim agreement but was far from the situation offered to the Palestinians in multiple subsequent peace plans, which were all rejected or effectively rejected through introducing terms that were untenable. For example this map, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g0dv7rxxvo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g0dv7rxxvo. The issue was a combination of lack of popular support in the Palestine side, refusal to explain the terms of reality to their population and preferring to lean on the ethos of "resistance" which is an easier sale and cowardice in their leadership. This of course does not talk about the Israeli leadership issues which are also numerous, but the issues I mentioned above go back to the forties and before, and Israeli leadership did achieve statehood, while the Palestinian one had always tried the all-or-nothing approach and were left with nothing.
- bjourne 1y ago
  Such ridiculous Hasbara. There was never an Israeli public consensus. That Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist tells you as much. Moreover, the Hebron mosque massacre preceded Hamas's suicide bombings. Jewish terrorism is as much to blame for derailing the peace process as Palestinian irredentism is. Then you have Benjamin Netanyahu, elected prime minister of Israel in 1997 who in 2001 boasted: "I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords" All while Israel was rapidly expanding its settlements on the West Bank. States generally don't build settlements on territory they intend to relinquish.