Editing Irgun (section)

===Further struggle against the British===
[[File:Menahem Begin during his "Rabbi Sassover" period with wife Aliza and son Benyamin-Zeev in Tel Aviv.jpg|thumb|[[Menachem Begin]] as "Rabbi Sassover", with wife Aliza and son Benyamin-Zeev, Tel Aviv, December 1946]]

The King David Hotel bombing and the arrest of Jewish Agency and other Yishuv leaders as part of [[Operation Agatha]] caused the Haganah to cease their armed activity against the British. Yishuv and Jewish Agency leaders were released from prison. From then until the end of the British mandate, resistance activities were led by the Irgun and Lehi. In early September 1946 the Irgun renewed its attacks against civil structures, railroads, communication lines and bridges. One operation was the attack on the train station in Jerusalem, in which [[Meir Feinstein]] was arrested and later committed suicide awaiting execution. According to the Irgun these sort of armed attacks were legitimate, since the trains primarily served the British, for redeployment of their forces. The Irgun also publicized leaflets, in three languages, not to use specific trains in danger of being attacked. For a while, the British stopped train traffic at night. The Irgun also carried out repeated attacks against military and police traffic using disguised, electronically detonated roadside mines which could be detonated by an operator hiding nearby as a vehicle passed, carried out arms raids against military bases and police stations (often disguised as British soldiers), launched bombing, shooting, and mortar attacks against military and police installations and checkpoints, and robbed banks to gain funds as a result of losing access to Haganah funding following the collapse of the Jewish Resistance Movement.<ref name=Hoffman/>

On October 31, 1946, in response to the British barring entry of Jews from Palestine, the Irgun [[1946 British Embassy bombing|blew up the British Embassy]] in [[Rome]], a center of British efforts to monitor and stop Jewish immigration. The Irgun also carried out a few other operations in Europe: a British troop train was derailed and an attempt against another troop train failed. An attack on a British officers club in [[Vienna]] took place in 1947, and an attack on another British officer's club in Vienna and a sergeant's club in [[Germany]] took place in 1948.<ref name=Bell/>

In December 1946 a sentence of 18 years and 18 beatings was handed down to a young Irgun member for robbing a bank. The Irgun made good on a threat they made<ref>{{cite news|title=Flogging Sentence |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2703695|access-date=26 May 2018|work=[[The Canberra Times]]|date=25 December 1946|quote=He was convicted following a bank hold-up In September. Irgun Zvai Leumi broadcast a threat that if the sentence were confirmed, British Army officers would be flogged in retaliation.}}</ref> and after the detainee was whipped, Irgun members kidnapped British officers and beat them in public. The operation, known as the "[[Night of the Beatings]]" brought an end to British punitive beatings. The British, taking these acts seriously, moved many British families in Palestine into the confines of military bases, and some moved home.

[[File:Bombe Irgoun 29 dec 1947.jpg|thumb|left|Arab bus after a bomb attack by the Irgun, 29 December 1947]]
On February 14, 1947, [[Ernest Bevin]] announced that the Jews and Arabs would not be able to agree on any British proposed solution for the land, and therefore the issue must be brought to the [[United Nations]] (UN) for a final decision. The Yishuv thought of the idea to transfer the issue to the UN as a British attempt to achieve delay while a UN inquiry commission would be established, and its ideas discussed, and all the while the Yishuv would weaken. [[Mossad Le'aliyah Bet|Foundation for Immigration B]] increased the number of ships bringing in Jewish refugees. The British still strictly enforced the policy of limited Jewish immigration and illegal immigrants were placed in detention camps in [[Cyprus]], which increased the anger of the Jewish community towards the mandate government.

The Irgun stepped up its activity and from February 19 until March 3 it attacked 18 British military camps, convoy routes, vehicles, and other facilities. The most notable of these attacks was the bombing of a British officer's club located in Goldsmith House in Jerusalem, which was in a heavily guarded security zone. Covered by machine-gun fire, an Irgun assault team in a truck penetrated the security zone and lobbed explosives into the building.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.etzel.org.il/english/ac12.htm |title=The Raid On The Jerusalem Officers Club |publisher=Etzel.org.il |access-date=2013-08-12 |archive-date=2013-09-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130925235031/http://www.etzel.org.il/english/ac12.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> Thirteen people, including two officers, were killed.<ref name=Hoffman/> As a result, martial law was imposed over much of the country, enforced by approximately 20,000 British soldiers. Despite this, attacks continued throughout the martial law period. The most notable one was an Irgun attack against the Royal Army Pay Corps base at the [[Schneller Orphanage]], in which a British soldier was killed.<ref name=Hoffman/>

Throughout its struggle against the British, the Irgun sought to publicize its cause around the world. By humiliating the British, it attempted to focus global attention on Palestine, hoping that any British overreaction would be widely reported, and thus result in more political pressure against the British. Begin described this strategy as turning Palestine into a "glass house". The Irgun also re-established many representative offices internationally, and by 1948 operated in 23 states. In these countries, the Irgun sometimes acted against the local British representatives or led public relations campaigns against Britain. According to [[Bruce Hoffman]]: "''In an era long before the advent of 24/7 global news coverage and instantaneous satellite-transmitted broadcasts, the Irgun deliberately attempted to appeal to a worldwide audience far beyond the immediate confines of its local struggle, and beyond even the ruling regime's own homeland''."<ref name=Bell/><ref name=Hoffman/>

{| class="wikitable floatright" style="width:22em; font-size:88%"
! style="background: lavender; font-size:110%;" | [[Olei Hagardom|Executed Members of the Irgun]]
|-
|
*[[Shlomo Ben-Yosef]]
*[[Dov Gruner]]
*[[Mordechai Alkahi]]
*[[Yehiel Dresner]]
*[[Eliezer Kashani]]
*[[Yaakov Weiss]]
*[[Avshalom Haviv]]
*[[Meir Nakar]]
|}