The assassination of Walter Edward Guinness -Lord Moyne – 1944
Lord Moyne and Palestine
British troops enter Jerusalem in 1917.
British forces had conquered much of the middle east, taking it from the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, including the new states of Iraq, Jordan and Palestine.
The mandate issued by the League of Nations after the First World War gave Britain full administrative control over the region[20] and included provisions for establishing a homeland for the Jews in Palestine (in accordance with the Balfour declaration of 1917) which went into effect in 1923.
However, there was, as yet no rush of eager Jewish volunteers to build up the ‘’national homeland’’; on the contrary, an average of only eight or nine thousand Jewish immigrants a year came to Palestine between 1920 and 1932. Yet from 1933 onwards, however, this changed dramatically, with the Nazis in control in Berlin.[21]
The Arab population of Palestine, alarmed at the influx of Jewish immigrants, revolted en masse, in 1936 and this ushered in three years of strife as they tried to end British rule while endeavouring to establish Arab independence and an end to Jewish immigration. The British put the revolt down harshly, but also decided thereafter to limit Jewish immigration in order to try to prevent further conflict.
Nevertheless, the Second World War found the three protagonists, the British, the Arabs, and the Zionists unreconciled. Furthermore, the most militant Zionist organisations now began a campaign of political violence against the British authorities, who, though they had overseen the establishment of Jewish settlement in Palestine, they now viewed as blocking their dream for a Jewish state there.
Yitzhak Shamir, a leading member of Stern gang and later Prime Minister of Israel (and according to Dr. Shavit, the chief planner of the murder of Lord Moyne) noted that the relations between their mandatory authorities and our ‘state within a state’, ‘tended to be schizophrenic at best’.
Meanwhile, the Arabs viewed the Jewish influx as part of a European colonial movement, and the period was marred by violence on all sides. The Irish Examiner, for instance, reported an incident in June of 1939 in which Jews raced through the streets in fast cars like American screen gangsters pouring out a stream of led that killed twelve Arabs, wounded four others and one Jew.
It was this complex, three-sided conflict that Lord Moyne came to preside over in Palestine as resident minister of state in 1942 and British ‘Minister-Resident’ in the Middle East 1944.
The Stern Gang
By 1941 Lord Moyne had served in various posts which included Kenya and as acting secretary of the Polish Relief Fund. He celebrated Empire Day (24th of May) by speaking on the colonies, protectorates, and mandated territories that the world war had given a new strength and power to Empire Unity.[26]
Not everyone agreed and especially on the question of Palestine. An Irish Jew named Gerald Goldberg writing in the journal, The Bell noted that …’’it was time that the British stopped their nefarious policy of divide and rule and get out of Palestine.’’[27]
This concept was nothing new and it had parallels with Irish nationalism and like the extremists of that country, who made similar arguments with regard to sectarian divisions within the north of Ireland. Stern’s followers, the Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), also called ‘Stern Gang’, conducted an unrelenting campaign of terror against the British authorities.
The ferocity of their actions was designed to force the British to relinquish control of the Palestine mandate. To implement these objectives, Stern unsuccessfully attempted to establish contacts with German representatives in Istanbul and forge an anti-British alliance with Arab nations[29].
This was similar to the manner in which Irish Republican Army (IRA) member Sean Russell (who also saw himself as an anti-colonial rebel) displayed an anti-British fanaticism that sought the assistance of the German army in securing Irish independence. The plans were aborted when Russell died of a perforated ulcer on board a U-boat destined for the Dingle peninsula.[30]
Stern’s movement, which numbered no more than a few hundred, continued to commit acts of terror after he was shot and killed by the British in 1942, In fact, both the Stern Gang and the extremist Zionist group National Military Organisation or ‘Irgun’, rejected the policy of restraint. ‘’Strike the British and Arab murderers, ‘’ one pamphlet declared. ‘’End the passive self-defence! We shall go to the nests of murderers and destroy them’.[31]
Minister resident in the Middle East
Moyne and Churchill, the two were personal friends.
This was the volatile situation which 63-year-old Lord Moyne inherited in 1944, when he succeeded Mr. G. R Casey as Minister resident in the Middle East, responsibility for an area that stretched from Tripoli to eastern Persia. [32]
In the early part of the war Lord Moyne made a speech suggesting Jews be brought out of Nazi control to anywhere in the world. Michele Guinness claimed that this memory lingered on as a festering sore that re-opened when he was appointed to oversee the British policy of limited Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Lord Moyne inherited in 1944, when he succeeded Mr. G. R Casey as Minister resident in the Middle East, responsibility for an area that stretched from Tripoli to eastern Persia.
Moyne’s son, Bryan Guinness (Later Lord Moyne II) was convinced of his father’s sympathy towards the Jews and had a vivid recollection of the intense anger felt by his father at the indignities and atrocities inflicted on the Jews in Austria after the Anschluss, before the onset of the genocide. Lord Moyne’s sympathies, however, may have been based more on general political principles than genuine affection. He was interested in the rights of peoples, in the preservation of racial identity, and in that context, made certain comments about Jewish racial characteristics which appeared patronising at the least, downright anti-Semitic at worst.[33]
This was a period of dramatic upheaval and the time of the notorious ‘saison’ or ‘hunting season’ in Palestine was getting underway, in which Zionist organisations, divided over the correct attitude towards the British authorities in Palestine, came to blows with each other. This brought relationships between the Haganah, the main paramilitary Jewish organisation and Irgun almost to the point of civil war, when the Haganah agreed to collaborate with the British authorities and began to hand over Irgun members to the police.[34]
The situation was further antagonised by the assassination attempts on the High Commissioner, Sir Harold McMichael by Stern’s followers in August of 1944, which reminds the Irish reader of the failed assassination of Lord French, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by the IRA in 1919. McMichael’s injuries had not been life threatening. Not so fortunate were two Jewish detectives and a much hated British Sgt. W, who were also shot by Stern in the same month.[35]
Lesser men may have been dismayed by the turn of events. However, Lord Moyne remained resolute in his belief in compromise between Jews and Arabs. He dismissed his Egyptian police escort and a police guard that was stationed at his house day and night.[36] Yet, he did recognise the mounting pressure on the British in Palestine and he wrote that ‘the [attempted] murder of the High Commissioner was for political motives and by agents of a definite extremist political group or groups in Palestine, encouraged by statements ‘amounting in effect to incite violence by high Jewish circles in Palestine.’[37]
However, the idea of murdering the British Minister in the Middle East had originated in the mind of Stern as according to Nathan Friedmann-Yellin. Stern felt that such an attack would be a lesson to the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine) that the fight was not against the British Administration in Palestine but against Britain herself.
In November 1944, Moyne was assassinated near his office in Cairo by two members of Lehi or the ‘Stern gang’. They were later hanged.
Therefore, it was not motivated by revenge but by thedesire for independence. It is interesting to note that they dismissed the plot against the previous minister R. G Casey (who was of Irish descent) as he was an Australian and his death would not make required impression on the world. However, the death of an Irish born figure appeared to be valid.[38]
In November 1944 (just three months after the attempt on High Commissioner Mac Michael’s life) two Stern Gang members, Eliahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet-Zuri waited for Lord Moyne near his Cairo residence when he was shot in the neck, chest and abdomen as he stepped into his automobile in front of his home. His chauffer was killed instantly. Lord Moyne had once survived the gun. This time the overseer of limited Jewish immigration expired in a British military hospital in Cairo -several hours after the event.[39] The murderers themselves narrowly escaped lynching at the hands of Egyptian passers-by and they were apprehended soon after.[40]
The aftermath
The assassins, Eliahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet-Zuri
By the next week a forensic examination had established that the pistols wielded by the killers had been used in a string of murders of British police officers by the Stern gang. Nevertheless, the decision had already been made not to concentrate too much on the ‘masters’ of the assassins last in doing so, ‘drastic action …should be directed against the whole Jewish community in Palestine’. Instead, all attention was to be concentrated on the two killers.[41]
The gunmen, Hakim and Bet-Zuri, had their final say before being hanged, following in the footsteps of many Irish ‘martyrs’ from Robert Emmet to that of the Fenians – boldly using their trial to proclaim their aspirant nation’s cause.
The gunmen, Hakim and Bet-Zuri, made a defiant speech before being hanged, like Irish martyr Robert Emmet and others.
The killing was condemned by Jewish leaders and newspapers in Britain and Palestine, but significant damage had been done to the Zionist cause. By a twist of fate, the assassination, preceded by only a few days the scheduled cabinet discussion on the Cabinet Committee recommendation to partition Palestine. Prime Minister Winston Churchill irritated that ‘Jewish terrorists’ had killed his own personal friend at a time when Churchill had been fighting a lonely struggle on behalf of the Zionist cause. Disappointed, he cancelled the item and it was never revisited by his Cabinet.[42]
There were further repercussions off the back of the assassination. In June of 1945 Churchill stated that the Palestine question would have to wait until the allies were seated around the peace table.
The only concession made to the Jews thereafter (by the new labour government in Britain) was the continuation of the White Paper quota of 1,500 Jewish immigrants a month.[43] Inevitably, the British failed to control the violence, and in 1947 the United Nations voted to split the land into two countries. Arab leaders vigorously reject Zionist offer for a two-state solution in Palestine.
What was achieved by the assassination?
The assassination was headline news all around the world. If it did nothing else, it highlighted the cause of militant Zionism, just as the Invincibles’ 1882 assassination of the Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland illuminated their cause. This argument is highlighted by an interview conducted by Ernest Evans in 1975 of Yallin -Mor (a leading member of the Stern gang) who noted that because of censorship, the plight of Jewish refugees was not receiving any publicity that this policy would be ‘’forced into the open’’ by coverage of the death of a prominent British official.[44]
Moyne was killed not because of his own views but simply the office that he held.
In the end, the character and political views of Lord Moyne were irrelevant. As Bernard Wasserstein has pointed out, he was killed merely because of his office. In fact, the murder had been planned even before he had taken office. It was only in the face of strong indictment that propaganda covering Lord Moyne’s wrongs against the Jewish people really came to the fore. Interestingly, Lord Moyne’s attitude towards the Jews was more favourable in the latter stages of his life.[45]
In a twist of events in 1975, Egypt returned the bodies of Ben Zuri and Hakim to Israel in exchange for 20 prisoners from Gaza and Sinai.
The remains of the gunmen, which had been returned from Cairo after 30 years, were buried with full military honours on Mount Herzl, final resting place of Israel’s Prime Ministers. This contrasted with the Irish Invincibles who had assassinated British political figures in Ireland, who remained buried in the prison grounds of where they were hung, and it is highly unlikely that An Post (the Irish Postal Service) will issue a stamp in their memory as was done in Israel for the assassins of Lord Moyne.
The Irish Press noted that thousands of Israelis had gathered to make an emotional farewell in Jerusalem. Speakers at the funeral emphasised the fact that Lord Moyne’s assassination was carried out just as the Jewish people were undergoing the Nazi holocaust in Europe. Its aim was, they argued, to arouse world public opinion and the conscience of British mandatory authorities who had closed the doors to Jewish immigration.