The Times

Wednesday, December 22nd, 1948

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Sergeants murdered — 600 terrorists, 1000 weapons, and 500,000 bullets seized in Tel Aviv raid

Despite appeals from family members and a frantic search conducted by both British troops and local Hebrews, Zionist extremists have killed their two British hostages. Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice were kidnapped by members of the Irgun organization in June and held as hostages — Irgun demanded the release of its own captured terrorists in exchange for the safety of the sergeants. On the 19th, the execution of the captured terrorists went through after an unfruitful search effort, despite efforts by prominent members of the Hebrew community to plead for their lives.

The two men were found hanged in an orange grove near Tel Aviv, but a medical examination suggested that the two men had already died from a previous hanging. The bodies were booby-trapped by the unrepentant terrorists, causing another minor injury as Brits attempted to secure the bodies. Both Martin and Paice will be buried in Palestine at the British military cemetery.

In retaliation, on Tuesday night, British forces in the Mandate of Palestine carried out a daring raid upon the hideouts and weapons caches of the Zionist extremists hidden throughout the Hebrew-dominated city of Tel Aviv. Troops cordoned off a number of neighborhoods known to have extremist sympathies, and searched houses one-by-one to find weapons and wanted terrorists. Over 600 have been arrested for suspected ties to the Irgun and Stern Gang organizations, together with an immense supply of arms and supplies for bomb-making.

High Commissioner Alan Cunningham has declared the mission a success, stating that the operation, codenamed “Doris,” had preemptively removed a number of direct threats to British troops and captured a number of outlaws. One high-profile catch was Amichai Paglin, one of Irgun’s top commanders, adding to a growing list of Irgun personnel held in prisons across Palestine and Cyprus.

Menachem Begin, speaking from hiding through Irgun’s clandestine radio station, decried Doris as a violation of Hebrew civil liberties and dismissed the operation as a mere roadblock in the path towards the creation of a Hebrew state, claiming that Britain had damaged its own relations with the Hebrew community. On the other hand, Hebrew leaders throughout Britain itself have supported the raid and condemned far-right Zionist organizations, both for their attacks on British troops and for their killing of scientist and moderate Zionist politician Chaim Weizmann in Britain in September. The main Zionist organization, the Jewish Agency, has also condemned the attack on Weizmann and has called upon its own men to assist British forces in apprehending those responsible, including Begin.

In Britain, scattered incidents of anti-Jew violence have taken place despite the opposition of the British Jewry to the Irgun organization, while in Palestine, outraged British boys have overzealously engaged in altercations with hotheaded Jewish youths during “Doris,” leading to hundreds of injuries and a number of deaths due to an unfortunate escalation of tempers. A number of Tommies were also injured in a botched bomb-attack carried out by Irgun in retaliation for the raid.

The sordid incident has placed addition pressure upon the Government to come up with a concrete withdraw plan that will hand over authority to the United Nations-supported Palestinian State. The PM has stated his desire to comply with the guidance of the UN, which has set the end of the Palestine Mandate for 1950. Some voices on the left and the right have called for an earlier departure, citing the high costs of the Mandate and the continuing attacks on British troops, as well as the reduced British presence in the region following the withdrawal from Suez.