Shubaki family assassination

The Shubaki family assassination on 19 November 1947 was the assassination by the Lehi, a Zionist paramilitary and terrorist organization, of five members of the Shubaki family in Mandatory Palestine, as a reaction to allegations that the family had acted as informants for the British police.[1]

Shubaki family assassination
Part of the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine
LocationArab al-Shubaki, Palestine
Date19 November 1947
4:30 am
TargetShubaki family
Attack type
assassination
WeaponSubmachine gun
Deaths5 men of the Shubaki family
PerpetratorsLehi
No. of participants
10 militants
MotivePunish suspected British informants, send a warning to Palestinian Arabs
ChargesNone

It was the first violence involving Palestinian Arabs for three months (the violence during the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine had primarily been between Jewish and British forces); two days after the attacks the New York Herald Tribune reported that both sides feared that the killings might spark retaliation by Arabs against Jews.[2]

Buildup to the assassination

"Lehi Children" incident and the Lehi insurgency against the British

On 11 November 1947, in the final stages of the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, British intelligence were made aware that the Lehi was holding a firearms course for young members in Ra'anana, and surrounded the building. The British respondents shot dead five members of Lehi, with no British deaths or injuries,[1] in what is known as the Lehi Children Affair. According to eyewitness testimonies and the Lehi account, four unarmed teenage members aged 15-18 were fatally shot along with their 19-year-old instructor as they tried to run away from the house, and two teenagers aged 16-17 years were left severely wounded. This is in contrast to the account given by the British police, which maintained that the victims were shot because they were armed and the officers under "immediate danger." Police files that were released to the public later in 2021 indicated that the order to raid the house had been approved directly from the British government in London. While the police records do state that the British were under danger, it does not mention at what moment the officers started shooting. It also confirms that the victims were already running out the building before they were killed.[3][4][5]

Lehi retaliated with terrorist attacks against the British:[6]

  • On 12 November 1947, Lehi members killed one British soldier and wounded three near Haifa
  • On 13 November 1947, Lehi members attacked patrons at the Ritz coffee shop in Jerusalem, injuring 28 people
  • On 15 November 1947, Lehi members killed two British policemen in Jerusalem

Planning of the assassination

Lehi leader Nathan Yellin-Mor led an investigation into how the British knew about the meeting on 11 November. The Lehi investigation concluded that members of the Palestinian Arab Shubaki family, which lived close to the Lehi house in Ra'anana, had informed the British authorities about the site's location. Lehi decided to kill members of the family in order to punish the family and to warn Arabs throughout Palestine not to help the British.[6]

The assassination

At 4:30am on 19 November 1947, ten Lehi members armed with submachine guns entered the village of Arab al-Shubaki (Arabic: عرب الشباكي), situated between the Jewish towns of Herzeliya and Ra'anana (with whom they are thought to have had good relations).[6]

The Lehi militants were dressed as police, and told the mukhtar (village head) to gather all the men in the village and select five of them. They took the unarmed men to a nearby field and executed them.[6]

The victims were:[6]

  • Ahmed Salameh Shubaki (50 years old)
  • Wadia Shubaki (25 years old)
  • Sammy Shubaki (23 years old)
  • Sami Shubaki (23 years old) (cousin)
  • Sabar Ahmed Shubaki (27 years old, a cousin))[7]

Aftermath

On 21 November, the Lehi issued a statement in which they accepted responsibility for the attack. The statement, which was written "for our Arab brothers", stressed that the shootings were not done because the victims were Arab or Muslim but because they suspected the Shubaki family to have assisted the British police. The Lehi published names of Arabs and Jews who they believed were helping the British administration, warning the listed individuals to cease all support for the British lest they become the next targets.[6]

On 30 November,[8] after the United Nations General Assembly recommended the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine on 29 November 1947,[9] an eight-man Arab gang from Jaffa retaliated with terrorist attacks on Jewish civilians. They stormed two buses and shot multiple people. Seven were killed and others injured.[10][11][12] After the bus attacks a flyer was posted on walls in Jaffa explaining that the bus attacks were revenge for the Shubaki assassinations.[13] Shots were also fired at Jewish buses in Jerusalem and Haifa and the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine broke out.[14]

References
  1. Ben-Yehuda, N. (2012). Political Assassinations by Jews: A Rhetorical Device for Justice. SUNY series in Deviance and Social Control. State University of New York Press. p. 250. ISBN 978-0-7914-9637-4. Retrieved 17 April 2022.
  2. Terrorist Jews Execute 4 in Arab Family, NY Herald Tribune, Nov. 21, 1947: "The shootings were the first since August involving Arabs and although there were no signs of it tonight people on both sides feared they might bring an attack by Arabs on Jews somewhere in the country to avenge the Arab deaths."
  3. "Police covered up deaths in Mandatory Palestine, new documents show". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
  4. Radice, Orlando (29 July 2021). "British Mandate forces 'covered up' the killing of Jewish children". The Jewish Chronicle. Archived from the original on 22 May 2023. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
  5. Eichner, Itamar (16 April 2021). "Revealed: How UK covered up killings of Jews in pre-state Palestine". Ynetnews. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
  6. Ben-Yehuda, N. (2012). Political Assassinations by Jews: A Rhetorical Device for Justice. SUNY series in Deviance and Social Control. State University of New York Press. p. 251. ISBN 978-0-7914-9637-4. Retrieved 17 April 2022.
  7. Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Political Assassinations by Jews: A Rhetorical Device for Justice, State University of New York Press, 2012 ISBN 978-0-791-49637-4 pp.249-250.
  8. "This Day in Jewish History / Civil War Breaks Out in Palestine". Haaretz. Retrieved 24 October 2021.
  9. Resolution 181 (II). Future government of Palestine A/RES/181(II)(A+B) 29 November 1947 Archived 17 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  10. Times, Sam Pope Brewerspecial To the New York (1 December 1947). "PALESTINE'S ARABS KILL SEVEN JEWS, CALL 3-DAY STRIKE; Buses Fired On From Ambush -- Higher Committee Adopts Plans Against Partition MOSLEM WORLD INDIGNANT Flag Torn Down as Mob Attacks U.S. Legation in Damascus -- Holy War Threatened PALESTINE'S ARABS KILL SEVEN JEWS TROUBLE ERUPTS IN PALESTINE AND SYRIA". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 17 April 2022.
  11. Rotberg, Robert I. (2006). Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21857-5.
  12. Radai, Itamar (2015). Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa, 1948: A Tale of Two Cities. Routledge Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Taylor & Francis. p. 237. ISBN 978-1-317-36805-2. Retrieved 17 April 2022. In November they again strove to cool tempers, following an attack on a Jewish bus on its way to Holon, in retaliation against the killing of five young men of the Shubaki family by LEHI gunmen (who were in turn taking revenge because one of the members of the family had informed to the British about LEHI activities).
  13. Morris, B. (2009). 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. Yale University Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-300-15112-1. Retrieved 17 April 2022. …the majority view in the HIS—supported by an anonymous Arab flyer posted almost immediately on walls in Jaffa—was that the attackers were driven primarily by a desire to avenge an LHI raid ten days before on a house near Raganana belonging to the Abu Kishk bedouin tribe.
  14. Morris, R.F.T.I.B.; Morris, B.; Clancy-Smith, J.A.; Benny, M.; Gershoni, I.; Owen, R.; Tripp, C.; Sayigh, Y.; Tucker, J.E. (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge Middle East Studies. Cambridge University Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-521-00967-6. Traditionally, Zionist historiography has cited these attacks as the first acts of Palestinian violence against the partition resolution. But it is probable that the attacks were not directly linked to the resolution – and were a product either of a desire to rob Jews... or of a retaliatory cycle that had begun with a British raid on a LHI training exercise (after an Arab had informed the British about the exercise), that resulted in several Jewish dead... The LHI retaliated by executing five members of the beduin Shubaki clan near Herzliya...; and the Arabs retaliated by attacking the buses on 30 Nov....
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.