Irgun Organization

The Irgun, officially the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel, often abbreviated as Etzel or IZL, was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandatory Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was part of the older Zionist paramilitary organization Haganah before it split in 1937.

The Irgun policy was based on what was then called Revisionist Zionism, founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. It was responsible for perpetrating two of the most notorious military operations: the bombing of the British administrative headquarters for Mandatory Palestine in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre that killed at least 107 Palestinian Arab villagers, including women and children, carried out with Lehi on 9 April 1948.

The organization committed acts of terrorism against both the British authorities, who were regarded as illegal occupiers, and Palestinian Arabs, and acts of robbery. The United Nations, British, and United States governments described the Irgun as a terrorist organization. The New York Times newspaper published a letter by Albert Einstein in 1948, compared Irgun and its successor Herut party to “Nazi and Fascist parties” and described it as a “terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization”.

After May 15, 1948, the Irgun was integrated into the Israeli Defense Forces.