The Authority of the Yishuv vis-à-vis the Challenge of the Gallows Myth, Palestine-Spring-Summer 1947

Abstract

ABSTRACT: A major controversy in the Land of Israel under the British Mandate for Palestine was whether or not the leadership of the Yishuv had the authority to subject the greatest possible number of Jewish sectors to its own policies without the jurisdiction of a sovereign government. The article focuses on the spring-summer of 1947, when the British executed Zionist underground members of Etzel and Lehi, and anti-British sentiment surged in the Yishuv, challenging the earlier consensus on authority. A national myth about the fortitude and sacrifice of the martyred men "hung on the gallows" was promulgated by the Etzel as the crowning expression of "Triumph of defeat" that would end British rule. The hope of the Etzel and the fear of the Yishuv leadership was that the gallows affair would shift various groups in the direction of the "dissenters from national authority." Trials, rescue efforts, mourning over the hanged martyrs and exposure to the Etzel (and Lehi) propaganda greatly increased support for the Irgun. The struggle with Mapai leadership would be tested vis-à-vis the impact of what it regarded as the "poisonous magic" of the gallows, as well as its endeavors to create a formula of evolutionary Zionism which would prove an antidote to the myth of the "gallows martyrs."