LOHAMEY HERUTH ISRAEL (LEHI, a.k.a. THE STERN GANG). For Justice, Freedom and Peace ... (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) to the United Special Committee on Palestine. From Underground [Palestine]: June 1947.

Extremely rare surviving example of Lehi's English language edition of their submission to the United Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP).

Folio (335 x 215 mm.), [i], 55pp. Cyclostyled text in English. (Occasional faint spotting, vertical creasefold.) Original green printed card wrappers, punch-holed and stitched with a filing tag (vertical creasefold, edges of covers unevenly faded, rubbed and with nicks and creases to extremities, some occasional soiling).
Provenance:
Captain R. Gardiner, 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (ink inscription on front cover).

Lehi's assassination of Lord Moyne, British minister of state in the Middle East, in Cairo in 1944, effectively meant the abandonment of Churchill's plans for partition, and the 1939 White Paper - detested by the Jews with its restrictions on immigration - remained in force. Although the British Labour party had promised before its election to allow mass Jewish migration into Palestine, once in office in 1945 they prevaricated while they tried to create a new policy for Palestine. The Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, actively tried to get the Americans on board, and established the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (AAC). The AAC's recommendation, published in April 1946, that the British should continue to hold Mandatory powers in Palestine satisfied no party.

With this failure, the British requested the General Assembly of the United Nations to form a special committee to investigate the Palestine problem. The UN agreed, composing the committee of representatives from 'neutral' countries, and excluding the five permanent members of the Security Council, including Britain. UNSCOP arrived in Palestine on 15 June 1947. The Arab Higher Committee believed UNSCOP to be pro-Zionist, and so boycotted proceedings, although some members of the AHC did meet the committee in a private capacity.

On the Jewish side, both proscribed terrorist organisations Lehi and Irgun made representations to UNSCOP, with the present lot being the former's English language publication (there was a simultaneous Hebrew edition, which is slightly more common in commerce and institutional holdings).

While UNSCOP was in Palestine, the SS Exodus arrived in Haifa with Jewish Displaced Persons seeking to illegally immigrate to Palestine, and some have stated that this positively changed the UN's outlook to support the creation of the state of Israel.

UNSCOP's final recommendations delivered on 3 September 1947 at Geneva, supported the termination of the Mandate, with a majority of committee members recommending the partition of Palestine into two separate states, and a minority favouring a federal union with Jerusalem as its capital. On 29 November 1947 the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, based on the UNSCOP majority plan (with only slight modifications to the proposed recommendations).

EXTREMELY RARE; ONLY TWO COPIES CAN BE TRACED IN INSTITUTIONS (Yale and University of Auckland).

SOLD WITH A RARE PIECE OF IRGUN PROPAGANDA with Capt. Gardiner's note on verso that it was removed from a wall by 2 members of C Coy 1st Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders.

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Please note that this lot is the property of a private collector.