The Sergeants affair

The Sergeants affair (Hebrew: פרשת הסרג'נטים‎‎) was an incident that took place in Mandate Palestine in July 1947 during Jewish insurgency in Palestine, in which the Jewish underground group Irgun kidnapped two British Army Intelligence Corps NCOs, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice and threatened to hang them if the death sentences passed on three Irgun militants: Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, and Yaakov Weiss, were carried out. The three had been captured by the British during the Acre Prison break, tried, and convicted on charges of illegal possession of arms, and with 'intent to kill or cause other harm to a large number of people'. When the three men were executed by hanging, the Irgun killed the two sergeants and hung their booby-trapped bodies in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya. This act was widely condemned in both Palestine and the UK. After hearing of the deaths some British troops and policemen attacked Jews in Tel Aviv, killing five and injuring others. The killings also sparked off rioting in some British cities.

In the late 1940s, as the third decade of British Mandate over Palestine was drawing to a close, many within and outside of Britain were calling to end the Mandate. They were led by opposition leader Winston Churchill, who denounced Britain's costly occupation of Palestine for no economic benefit.

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