Night of the Beatings

The Night of the Beating (Hebrew: ליל ההלקאות‎‎) refers to an action taken by the Irgun on December 29, 1946 in the British Mandate of Palestine, in which several British soldiers were flogged in response to a similar punishment inflicted upon an Irgun member.

On December 13, 1946 the Irgun robbed a bank in Jaffa. Three of the perpetrators - Benjamin Nes, Eliezer Sudit and seventeen years old Benjamin Kimkhi - were caught and tried a few days later. Nes and Sudit were convicted of robbery and illegal possession of firearms and were given long sentences, while Kimkhi was also convicted of discharging a firearm with intent to endanger life. He refused to recognize the British courts jurisdiction and was sentenced to an eighteen-year imprisonment and eighteen lashes. Twelve lashes was also the punishment given to another Irgun member, Aharon Katz, for possession of propaganda material.

Upon notification about the punishment, the Irgun headquarters convened and decided that such a "humiliating" punishment was not to be tolerated. It published a warning, in Hebrew and English, to the British authorities not to carry out the flogging, threatening to do the same to British officers.

On Saturday, December 28, Kimkhi was lashed eighteen times.

After Kimkhi's sentence was carried out, armed Irgun squads were sent into the streets of Jewish cities throughout Palestine, with orders to abduct and flog British soldiers.

In Netanya, armed Irgun men broke into the Hotel Metropole where they found Major Paddy Brett sitting with his wife in the lounge. He was whisked away from the hotel, led to a eucalyptus grove, where he was stripped to his underwear, had his "sentence" read out to him, and was given eighteen lashes. His trousers were confiscated for future use by the Irgun, and he was returned to the hotel still in his underwear. At Cafe Theresa in Rishon LeZion, Irgun fighters seized a British sergeant-major who had been dancing with a local girl, and flogged him the street. In Tel Aviv, two sergeants were kidnapped in front of a hotel, tied to a tree in a public park, and lashed eighteen times each. Two other soldiers were caught in northern part of the city and suffered eighteen lashes as well.

The unprecedented incident caused an outrage in Britain and prompted a strong hand policy. The flogging punishment was later abolished, but capital punishment was introduced.

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Wikipedia