| Shubaki family assassination | |
|---|---|
| Part of theIntercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine, theJewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine andJewish extremist terrorism | |
| Location | Arab al-Shubaki,Palestine |
| Date | 19 November 1947 4:30 am |
| Target | Family of suspected informants |
Attack type | Reprisal operation,summary execution |
| Weapon | Submachine guns |
| Deaths | 5 unarmed adult men of the Shubaki family |
| Perpetrators | Lehi |
| 10 militants | |
| Motive | Collective punishment,deterrence of Palestinians |
| Charges | None |
TheShubaki family assassination was thesummary execution of five adult members of the Shubaki family in the village of Arab al-Shubaki,Mandatory Palestine on 19 November 1947 byLehi, aZionistparamilitary andmilitant organization, on suspicions that members of that family had acted asinformants for theBritish police.[1]
The attack followed a period of relative calm for several months, during whichZionist violence was almost exclusively directed at theBritish presence rather than Palestinians, raising fears of retaliation against theYishuv.[2] Eleven days later there was indeed a retaliatory attack killing seven of them.[3]
On 11 November 1947, in the final stages of theJewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, British intelligence were made aware that the Lehi was holding a firearms course for young members inRa'anana, and surrounded the building. The British respondents shot dead five members of Lehi, with no British deaths or injuries,[1] in what is known as theLehi Children Affair [he]. According to eyewitness testimonies and the Lehi account, four unarmed teenage members aged 15–18 were fatally shot along with their 19-year-old instructor as they tried to run away from the house, and two teenagers aged 16–17 years were left severely wounded. This is in contrast to the account given by the British police, which maintained that the victims were shot because they were armed and the officers under "immediate danger." Police files that were released to the public later in 2021 indicated that the order to raid the house had been approved directly from the British government inLondon. While the police records do state that the British were under danger, it does not mention at what moment the officers started shooting. It also confirms that the victims were already running out the building before they were killed.[4][5][6]
Lehi retaliated with terrorist attacks against the British:[7]
Lehi leaderNathan Yellin-Mor led an investigation into how the British knew about the meeting on 11 November. The Lehi investigation concluded that members of the Palestinian Arab Shubaki family, which lived close to the Lehi house in Ra'anana, had informed the British authorities about the site's location. Lehi decided to kill members of the family in order to punish the family and to warn Arabs throughout Palestine not to help the British.[7]
At 4:30am on 19 November 1947, ten Lehi members armed withsubmachine guns entered the village of Arab al-Shubaki (Arabic:عرب الشباكي), situated between the Jewish towns ofHerzeliya andRa'anana (with whom they are thought to have had good relations).[7]
The Lehi militants weredressed as police, and told themukhtar (village head) to gather all the men in the village and select five of them. They took the unarmed men to a nearby field andexecuted them.[7]
The victims were:[7]
On 21 November, Lehi issued a statement in which they assumed responsibility for the assassinations. The statement, directed at "our Arab brothers", stressed that the "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel" committed these murders because they suspected Shubaki family members to have tipped off thePalestine Police Force, claiming it had nothing to do with them being Muslim Arabs. Lehi published the names of further residents who they accused of supporting British rule, threatening to kill every one of them who doesn't cease their government support.[7]
In retaliation to this massacre, sevenYishuv were shot and killed on 30 November 1947 on two busses nearFajja, with flyers appearing shortly after explaining the killings with the Shubaki family massacre.[9][10][11][12][13]
A British raid on a Lehi training exercise (after an Arab had informed the British about the exercise) resulted in several Jewish dead... Lehi retaliated by executing five members of the beduin Shubaki clan near Herzliya...; and the Arabs retaliated by attacking the buses on 30 November.
In November they again strove to cool tempers, following an attack on a Jewish bus on its way to Holon, in retaliation against the killing of five young men of the Shubaki family by LEHI gunmen (who were in turn taking revenge because one of the members of the family had informed to the British about LEHI activities).
…the majority view in the HIS—supported by an anonymous Arab flyer posted almost immediately on walls in Jaffa—was that the attackers were driven primarily by a desire to avenge an LHI raid ten days before on a house near Raganana belonging to the Abu Kishk bedouin tribe.