(Mar) Jabotinsky arrived in South Africa for a campaign for the New Zionist Organisation.  "The Eleventh Hour" weekly newspaper was launched: its theme the imminence of catastrophe in Europe and the parallel lengthening of the shadows in Palestine.

Jewish military defense splits into Haganah and Irgun Zvai Leumi, led by David Raziel, due to "havlaga" issue versus offensive battle in Arab riots.

(Jul) Peel Commission to study "Palestine Problem":
        *Suggested Palestine be partitioned;
        *50,000 square miles of Holy Land reduced to 2,000 square miles for Jews;
        *Jerusalem would remain an international city.

The publication of the report of the British Royal Commission in Palestine headed by Lord Peel lit up the Palestine scene with piercing clarity and cast into deep relief both the realities of British policy and the involved skein of Zionist psychology.  The document itself, like so much else of 1936 vintage, cast a long shadow into the future.

Only Jabotinsky comes out against Peel Commission Proposal

Ben Gurion - "A State," he announced with characteristic vehemence, "was politically unnecessary, morally undesirable, potentially even adverse to the Jewish interest.  We did not need it for the solution of the Jewish problem.  We did not want to dominate the Arabs.  A State might well one day decide to prevent Jews from immigrating!"

*In Palestine that year the Irgun purposefully attacked British targets, usually Government offices.  The attacks were small, they were little more than symbolic but they gave warning in lucid accents of the inevitable logic of events.

Haganah intensified its organization - FOSH units organized

National Arms levy tax started to build weaponry

Rosh Pinah incident - five Jewish car passengers assaulted, raped, and murdered by Arabs

Jabotinsky gives his full approval to the Irgun for armed resistance:

"The worst of all horrors known to history is galuth, dispersion.   The blackest of all the charascteristics of galuth is the tradition of the cheapness of Jewish blood: hadam hamutar, the permitted blood, the spilling of which is not prohibited and for which you do not pay.  To this an end has been made in Palestine.  Amen."

Jabotinsky: Therefore cursed be all war ... and if you do not want to touch the innocent - die.  And if you do not want to die - shoot and stop chattering."

A campaign for funds to aid Aliyah B was launched and pursued with great energy throughout the country.

Orde Wingate trains "night squads" for Haganah: secrecy and surprise tactics

(Aug) Dr. Weizmann, as leader of World Zionism, addressed a Zionist convention in London. Hitler at the time was sowing their new mission into German souls, the extermination of the Jews of Europe. This new factor in "Jewish affairs" did not alter Weizmann's blueprint for a selective Jewish homeland; neither did it move him to urge the six million Jews of Europe to save themselves by coming to Palestine. Dr. Weizmann remained loyal to his "idealistic" concept of the Promised Land - that it was no place to crowd up with Jews. When he died he left an illusion in the world that he personally had created the new State of Israel.

Jabotinsky gives warning to European Jews to evacuate - Zionist leadership jeers and mocks his warning and work to defeat his purpose of helping Jewish immigration into Palestine

Uri Zvi Greenberg goes on speaking tour in Europe to warn Jews to immediately immigrate as threats of Nazis regime increase in violence and power

Yair Stern, with Jabotinsky and Greenberg, were burdened by a deep apprehension and prescience of the approaching tragedy.

Aryeh Kotzer: I am convinced that European Jewry will be annihilated if we don't reach an agreement with Germany.  It is clear to me that the enemy is Britain.  It had the power to save millions of my brethren but obviously it will do nothing of the kind.  On the contrary, the British want their (the Jews) destruction, made necessary in order to perpetuate Arab rule in Palestine, which is synonymous with British rule.  The help we can give the allies is small and it will benefit us less than nothing.  The only alternative we have is to reach some agreement with the Germans by means of which European Jews can be saved.  They can "purge" Europe of Jews by transferring them here (into Palestine) and this they might be persuaded to do.

*The events following WWII proved this hypothesis true about the Allies ... no nation came to the rescue of the Jewish people, only material interests, most notably, Arab oil manipulated world policies.

Aharoni blows Shofar at Wall despite British and Arab blockade at Yom Kippur

Another split in the Underground movement brings about an "underground within the underground" led by Nissim Cohen ... Tehomi returns to the Haganah ... Rosenberg takes command of the IZL

The combined influence of Weizmann and Ben Gurion, applied with crusading fervour, won the day of partition at the Zionist Congress that summer.  Overcoming fierce opposition, and even the threat of possible seccesions, they achieved a majority for accepting the plan in principle.  Of the forty-two countries represented at the Congress, elections were held in sixteen.  In the remaining twenty-six, the parties made an agreement on the distribution of the seats without bothering the voters.

Briefed by Jabotinsky, Winston Churchill, in one of his many acts of revolt against his party, proposed a delaying amendment to the Government's proposal in Parliament.  Its acceptance dealt the partition scheme a crippling blow.

The next wave of Arab terror was marked by better organisation, by a greater diversity of tactics and by an even more systematic liquidation of Arab nonconformists.

David Stern

Eliahu Lankin

Bat Zion Neeman (Kremin) (16 year old Underground member)

Esther Raziel

Shoshana Raziel

Shoshana Stern

Jacob Kotik

Mrs. Nissim Cohen - transported weapons for Underground members

(Sep) Rabbi Eliezer Hacohen Gerstein shot by Arab leaving Western Wall

Two Jews murdered in Yavniel

One Jew murdered in Rosh Pina

Jewish shepherds murdered

Bombing of Jerusalem-Jaffa road

Yazur café murders

Zeroni/Ahimeir/Segal organize "schiels" demonstration of taking of Jewish census - arrested and sentenced to Jerusalem Central Prison ... again

Altman and David Niv patrol roads of Jerusalem

Altman forms Betar unit to escort those in prayer at the Wall

When the Haganah not only failed to take action, but the Jewish Agency imposed self-restraint as a policy and a philosophy, differences developed within the leadership of the "Haganah B." 

The Haganah B in practice tailed after Haganah A - until, nearly a year after the Arab outbreak, the upheaval came.
The Arab "revolt" zig-zagged now, and got out of hand. 
The British District Commissioner in Galilee was assassinated. 
The British pounced on the members of the Arab Higher Committee and deported them to the Seychelles Islands. 
All except the Mufti. 
It was know that he was in the Old City of Jerusalem and British forces were said to be watching all the exits. 
The Mufti left the Old City, made his way to the coast and traveled by boat to Lebanon. 
There, at Bludan, he set up his headquarters and resumed the political leadership of the "revolt." 
A number of important Arab voices were now raised blame of British for the situation and urging peace with the Jews. 
These had to be silenced or intimidated.
The large scale murder campaign against the Mufti's opponents now conducted by Kawkji's bands created new tensions.

(Nov 14) The Irgun launched its campaign of large-scale reprisals, which was to continue intermittently until the outbreak of the World War.

(later years of the 1930s):
In the late 1930's, the Germans began to test "world defensiveness of Jews." The SS started beating up Jews in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, and other towns. Then they tried killing a few hundred here and there.

Their hunch was upheld. The killing of Jews, openly and brutally, produced no moral thunder or even noticeable objection - not from the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia. And not even from world Jewry. The Jewish Agency and World Zionism were officially silent.

Josiah Wedgwood said bluntly in the House of Commons: "If people want their grievances remedied, they must do it themselves.  British officials will respect them more when they complain less and act more.  It is idle to appeal to justice.  An appeal to force is the only way."

Sincere as the Jewish Agency leaders may have been in their original naïve belief that, by some strange chemistry, "self-restraint" would gain friends and finally victory for Zionism, they certainly did not believe it after the 1937 resumption of the Arab terror.