British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 71

CHAPTER II.
(e) The resolution on Palestine passed by the Conference of Arab States in Alexandria in October.

(fl And, in the following year, the statements made by the British Labour Party in favour of a Jewish State in the Parliamentary election campaign of June, l!l45.

The following were the outstanding local political features and events of 1944 : -

In January, 1944 considerable publicity was given in the Jewish press and in speeches to the formation of Jewish rescue squads to operate in Europe in the wake of the liberating Allied forces. Jewish organizations made arrangements for the recruiting and training of personnel for these parties, and no secret was made of the fact that their duties would comprise Zionist political propaganda.

Following the escapes from Latrun in November, 1943, the Stern group came into action again and effected a gradually increasing measure of co-operation with the Irgun Zvai Leumi. These two bodies were together responsible for most of the outrages of Hl44 and for a stream of subversive literature, often distributed in the form of pamphlet bombs. The attitude of the bulk of the Jewish public was of strong disapproval of the methods employed by the terrorists, accompanied by determined refusal, inspired partly by fear but mainly by a feeling of national solidarity and of sympathy with ultimate objectives, to co-operate in Government counter-measures or give information which might lead to the arrest and conviction of the culprits. The Jewish official bodies heartily deplored the outrages as being ill timed and calculated to harm the Zionist cause at a critical moment; in public, however, there was put forward a plea that these were the inevitable result of exasperation caused by Government's attitude towards the Yishuv. Although no open assistance was given to Government to bring the guilty to justice, pressure was brought to bear on the terrorist groups and the Revisionist party by the Jewish leaders through use of the Hagana ; a number of Revisionists were abducted, and towards the end of the year the terrorist activities of the Stern group and the Irgun ~ere curbed by threat of open warfare. The Arabs took every opportunity to condemn the Jewish acts of violence against Government, to whom they offered their active assistance, though knowing well that this could not be accepted; they were critical that Government action was not sufficiently drastic, compared it with extreme Government measures taken at the time of the Arab rebellion, and argued that the Jewish leaders, having incited these acts by public speeches, should be treated with no greater leniency

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