Irgun

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Irgun (Irgun Zvai Leumi, or National Military Organization). Jewish organization, also called Etzel, which was formed in Palestine in 1937 by extremist elements of Haganah B to undertake reprisals for Arab attacks. After May 1939 it also carried out sabotage and bomb attacks against British targets to show its dislike of British immigration policies. But once the war started it declared a truce and its leader, David Razi'el, was killed in Iraq while on a mission for the British. This, and the formation of the Stern gang, which split its ranks, left it temporarily immobilized. But in the USA, after the Bermuda conference of April 1943, members founded the Emergency Committee for the Rescue of European Jews which drew wide publicity. In December 1943 Menachem Begin, a member of Anders' Army temporarily stationed in Palestine, assumed the leadership of Irgun. He cut all ties with the Haganah and, in a campaign for an independent Jewish state, resumed attacks on British installations and police stations, obtaining funds by extortion and intimidation. The Jewish Agency eventually neutralized the Irgun, but a post-war revival of its activities included blowing up part of Jerusalem's King David Hotel in July 1946.

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