Topic: WorldNetDaily
An April 1 WorldNetDaily article by Aaron Klein reported on claims that former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek "ratted out fellow Jews to the British occupiers of pre-State Israel, even once trying to have former prime minister Menachem Begin arrested." But Klein was vague about what was going on in pre-state Israel at the time.
Klein noted that "Kollek mostly ratted out the Irgun," a group he described only as "a paramilitary and activist group that carried out retaliatory attacks against Arab terror and was considered by some to be politically conservative," adding: "The Irgun broke away from the Haganah, another Zionist activist group, out of protest for the Haganah's socialist leanings and policy of restraint in the face of Arab attacks." Begin was head of the Irgun for several years.
What Klein doesn't note is that the Irgun was more than "a paramilitary and activist group" that was "politically conservative": it was, arguably, a terrorist group. Most notoriously, Irgun was responsible for a 1946 attack on the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 people died.
We're not taking sides here, just pointing out that once again, Klein is whitewashing the record of right-wing extremists. His failure to tell the whole story of the Irgun and its violent history leaves out a key component of Kollek's possible motivation for "ratting out" the group to the British and, thus, is doing his readers a disservice. But, of course, Klein has been guilty of this same disservice all through his tenure at WND.
