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84 3 Saving the Jews from Themselves Operation Agatha On Saturday June 29, 1946, the Mandatory administration sent the army into action to carry out the largest operation mounted against the Yishuv during the British period of rule in Palestine. The operation , which ended on July 11, was aimed at the legal and semilegal institutions of the organized Yishuv, which functioned under the auspices of the British authorities and in coordination with them. The Yishuv was stunned by the scale of the offensive. The first day of the operation, with its shock of surprise, would be engraved in the collective memory of the Jewish community, which dubbed it Black Sabbath. The British, more mundanely, code-named it Operation Agatha, without any special known reason. For Cunningham, the operation was a tool in the service of his policy. It was launched with his consent, but more important, under conditions he laid down. Limited in scope, the operation had a broader political aim: to help the Jewish Agency help itself, for the agency’s own best interests, as the high commissioner viewed them, and for the sake of the British interest . The Jewish Agency would avoid becoming embroiled in a hopeless war against the British and would return to the road leading to partition and a state. Britain would gain quiet and the prospect of steering the Mandate to a termination desirable both for itself and for the West as a whole, in the light of the Cold War: two states, Jewish and Arab, that would remain in the West’s sphere of influence. Cunningham also needed these results—suppression of the violence and a political solution beneficial to Britain—for his struggle to restore his image. Everyone would see that the so-called “defensive” general was advancing his policy by means of a saliently offensive move. The British cabinet’s decision of June 20, 1946—to take action against the Jewish Agency in a controlled manner and with limited responsibility, and with a timetable set by the high commissioner—was Cunningham’s first victory in the intra-British arena and confirmation that the stage of adjustment to his new mission had ended. London was no less critical an arena than Palestine itself. After the Colonial Office and the high commis- 85 Saving the Jews from Themselves sioner retracted their demand in late 1945 for action to be taken against the Jewish Agency, the army led the call for an offensive. Now, with Cunningham ’s original proposal up for discussion, and no new ideas put forward by the army, the cabinet approved the high commissioner’s plan.1 In the meeting, the ministers were asked to consider a memorandum submitted by Colonial Secretary Hall, who led the discussion. Hall took verbatim Cunningham’s ideas as they appeared in the cable he had drafted on the evening of June 18 and sent in the predawn hours of June 19. He did, however, delete the hesitations Cunningham expressed. The high commissioner wished to defer the discussion about the entry of 100,000 Jewish refugees into Palestine until the officers abducted by Etzel were released. He requested authorization to take action against the illegal Jewish organizations and against the Jewish Agency according to a plan whose principles had been articulated in mid-April with the army. Special emphasis was placed on the necessity of demonstrating a connection between the Jewish Agency and the rampant terrorism. On June 29, in the very first hours of the operation, Hall had Cunningham send him an interim summation of the findings of the searches (particularly of the documents seized in the Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem) and a situation assessment ahead of a statement that the prime minister was to make in the House of Commons on July 1. Hall was especially interested in findings proving that the Haganah had taken illegal action, which would thereby convict the Jewish Agency, to which the Haganah was accountable.2 The cabinet took a broader view than that of the high commissioner. This was a useful lesson to the latter, who was a novice in the field of statesmanship. Thus, the cabinet rejected his request to postpone the discussions about the 100,000 refugees until the return of the abducted British officers, because the British government could not allow itself to act under the threat of Etzel (however significant the threat might be in terms of public opinion). Indeed, from the government’s perspective the question of the abducted soldiers was far...

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