867N.01/10–3144
Memorandum by the Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs (Murray) to the Acting Secretary of State
You will undoubtedly have noted the news flash which came over the ticker this morning to the effect that the assassins of Lord Moyne50 in Cairo have confessed that they were members of the Stern Gang and that they came to Egypt from Palestine for the specific purpose of killing him.
This incident, of course, is bound to have the most serious repercussions not only in Palestine, but throughout the Near East, since it serves to point up once again the underlying instability in the Palestine situation and the potential threat which is thereby presented to the security of the entire region. In the face of these developments it is difficult to see how the Secretary of War can claim, as he recently did, that the military situation in the Near East has eased to such an extent that the ventilation of the Palestine issue, for example by the reintroduction of the Congressional resolutions, would no longer interfere with the war effort.
On the contrary, I am more and more of the opinion that the question of security in Palestine is a very serious one and that ill-considered statements in this country for political purposes have indirectly contributed to the present insecurity by giving encouragement, albeit unwittingly, to the more extreme Zionist elements such as the assassins of Lord Moyne represent.
For your background, the Stern Gang (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) is one of the two principal secret, illegal Jewish military organizations in Palestine, the other being the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization). Both of these groups are made up of fanatical young Jews who are completely unscrupulous and who, as recent events have shown, will stop at nothing in what they consider to be a just battle for freedom from “oppression”, i.e., from the British administration. These groups are offshoots of the extreme right-wing of the Zionist movement, the Revisionists or New Zionists, and their training and methods are essentially totalitarian.
Information about the two organizations is hard to get because of their secret nature, but a British official told us recently that the Stem Gang had from one hundred to two hundred members and the Irgun about four thousand. The Stern Gang was formed about three years ago by one Abraham Stern, who was subsequently killed by the police. It is difficult to say today wherein the difference between the two [Page 635] groups lies, and, in fact, we have reason to believe that they are no longer distinct organizations, but rather are two parts of one secret terroristic organization which seeks the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine through the overthrow by violent means of the present administration there. It was the Stern Gang, you will recall, that boasted openly that they had tried (unsuccessfully) to assassinate the High Commissioner.51
- Lord Moyne, British Minister of State in the Middle East, resident at Cairo, was assassinated in Cairo on November 5, 1944.↩
- On August 8, 1944, an attempt had been made on the life of Sir Harold A. MacMichael, the retiring High Commissioner; Field Marshal Lord Gort’s appointment had been announced on July 19, 1944.↩