Editing Irgun (section)

===Accusations of fascism===
''[[Ha'aretz]]'' columnist and Israeli historian [[Tom Segev]] wrote of the Irgun: "In the second half of 1940, a few members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) &ndash; the anti-British terrorist group sponsored by the Revisionists and known by its acronym Etzel, and to the British simply as the Irgun &ndash; made contact with representatives of Fascist Italy, offering to cooperate against the British."<ref name=segev/>

[[Clare Hollingworth]], the ''[[Daily Telegraph]]'' and ''[[The Scotsman]]'' correspondent in Jerusalem during 1948 wrote several outspoken reports after spending several weeks in [[West Jerusalem]]:

{{blockquote|
Irgun is in fact rapidly becoming the 'SS' of the new state. There is also a strong 'Gestapo' – but no-one knows who is in it.

'The shopkeepers are afraid not so much of shells as of raids by Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang. These young toughs, who are beyond whatever law there is have cleaned out most private houses of the richer classes & started to prey upon the shopkeepers.'
|[[Clare Hollingworth]] reporting on West Jerusalem June 2, 1948<ref>See also Pauline Rose 'The Siege of Jerusalem', Patmos Publishers, London. Introduction dated June, 1949. "The dark places in Israel are being swept clean. The prison house where my friends and I had been tortured – where women had been shot without trial – is no longer a prison house".[note plural]</ref>}}