tration, with increasing justification, of going back on their word, putting mounting obstacles in the way of Zionist fulfillment. Indeed, in May, 1939, the British restricted Jewish immigration to the barest minimum, forbidding outright the buying up of Arab land by the Jews in many parts of Palestine.
Great Britain had become uneasy at the sight of a white community growing up in Palestine, governing itself, keeping a well-organized underground army that posed a new threat to the dominance of Great Britain in the country. Extreme Jewish terrorists began attacking British installations. Their leader, Jabotinsky, an Anglophile to the core, still supported British imperialism; he sought to convince the British, by force of arms, that the Jews of Palestine would be a stronger and more capable ally for them than the Arabs. Only in 1940 did Abraham Stern, alias Yair, break away from Jabotinsky's Irgun group, create his own underground organization and proclaim the new revolutionary idea of fighting British imperialism as such.
Stern was captured and shot in the back by British police officers on the roof of an old building in Tel Aviv, but his ideas continued to gain ground. The Irgun, and later the official Zionist Haganah, joined the fight against the British mandate, until the British, in disgust or despair, shrewdly decided to leave the country, possibly with the idea that Palestine would be invaded and conquered by friendly Arab armies. This hope, if it ever existed, was confounded by the newly emerging army of Israel, which astounded the world by its military strength and agility.
The Jewish underground fight against the British colonial regime in Palestine was the first successful war of liberation in the Middle East. It makes a mockery of the idea that Zionism, or the State of Israel, was a puppet of imperialism and colonialism.
It also made a deep impression on the minds of the young generation of the Arab world, which saw that Brit¬