05-24-2003, 07:38 AM
Terrorists plotted death of Bevin
Plan to assassinate foreign secretary
Jamie Wilson
Thursday May 22, 2003
The Guardian
MI5 feared that Zionist "terrorists" were plotting to assassinate the then British foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, and set up IRA-style cells in London during the war for an Israeli state, papers released today by the national archives reveal.
In an ironic twist on the current situation in Israel, a 1946 MI5 briefing document, called Present Trends in Zionism, said that the Stern Group, which in 1944 assassinated Lord Moyne, the British military governor in the Middle East, had been steadily recruiting and was believed to number as many as 600 followers "most of whom are desperate men and women who count their own lives cheap".
The note continued: "In recent months it has been reported that they have been training selected members for the purpose of proceeding overseas and assassinating a prominent British personality - special reference having been made several times to Mr [Ernest] Bevin in this connection."
Another document in the files, prepared for the prime minister, Clement Attlee, which a handwritten note records he read on August 28 1946, deals with the setting up of IRA-style cells in the UK.
The paper, called Threatened Jewish Activity in United Kingdom, Palestine and Elsewhere, had a note in red ink appended to the bottom of the first page.
It read: "Our Jerusalem representative has since received information that the Irgun and Stern Group have decided to send 5 'cells' to London to work along IRA lines. To use their own words, the terrorists intend to 'beat the dog in his own kennel'. If the 18 Sternists are executed the Irgun have agreed to cooperate with the Stern group." The files do not say what the Sternists referred to are supposed to have done, but say that their sentences had been commuted to life imprisonment.
The briefing note said that the Stern group had broken away from Irgun - a Jewish guerrilla group founded in 1937 - at the outbreak of the second world war, in disgust at Irgun's decision to temporarily cooperate with the British government in Palestine.
The files said that Irgun was being led ostensibly by Menachem Begin - who became the Israeli prime minister in 1977 - who was then described by MI5 as a 37-year-old Polish Jew, on whose head a reward of £2,000 had been placed by the Palestine police.
According to the files Irgun's speciality was sabotage, but the group was equally capable of assassinations, and had been "responsible in the past for the liquidation of members of police and the military whose activities have been judged especially worthy of Jewish resentment in Palestine".
The prime minister's briefing note, which was prepared by MI5 before a meeting he had with its director general, Percy Sillitoe, also included a list of precautionary measures taken against the terror threats.
These included tightening visa restrictions and ordering passport control officers at ports to take down the details of all Jews arriving in the country so they could be checked with security service records.
The files also suggest a certain amount of infiltration by MI5, which, it claimed, was keeping a close eye "through its own sources" on UK Zionist groups who were known to have expressed sympathy with terrorist groups in Palestine.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/politicspas...,961081,00.html