Talk:Moshe Kelman

Later career.

Shabtai Teveth, "The Tanks of Tammuz", 1970, mentions a Lt.-Col. Kalman, Operations Chief of Armoured Corps. Same person? Padres Hana (talk) 09:02, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

No. This was Lt-Col Kalman Magen. Moshe Kelman left the I.D.F. in 1951.

Avi1111 (talk) 15:19, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Assassination: not supported by sources quoted

@Padres Hana, 72.49.242.65, and Zero0000: The article quotes two sources:

• Kurzman, Don (1970) Genesis 1948. The First Arab-Israeli War. An Nal Book, New York. Library of Congress number 77-96925. pp.479,480
• Nachman Ben-Yehuda. "Political Assassinations by Jews: A Rhetorical Device for Justice." SUNY Press, 1992, pp 215-216. SUNY Series in Israeli Studies, ISBN 9780791411667

Of the first one, offered by editor Padres Hana, the quoted pages are not available online. There is no mention of the name of the executed/assassinated man, nor anything about the circumstances.
The second one, offered by anonymous editor 72.49.242.65, seems to be a mistake altogether. It describes the execution/assassination of Benjamin Kurfirst, who had been arrested by the British after committing a few criminal acts and had accepted to act as an agent provocateur against the Haganah in exchange for his freedom. Only, the source does not mention Kelman and gives a different date for the affair, Jan-March 1946, well over a year before "summer 1947".

Padres Hana, considering that the whole episode is sourced on just one book which is not available to most WP readers, would you please add the appropriate quote from the book? Just the relevant bits, of course. Less important: "An Nal Book" is actually less anal than I suspected, it means New American Library (NAL), New York. Considering this glitch, I'm even more eager to read the exact quote. Thank you.
The editor who set in the (wrong) source, 72.49.242.65, must have been very much aware of his/her "shaky", to put it mildly, source, since he/she only mentioned the URL, the pages, and added the comment "Confirmed?" instead of a title and so on. The answer is: no, it is not confirmed - not by what we have here. Considering the nature and seriousness of the claim made here, in this case the presumption of good faith extended a priori to WP editors simply cannot be granted. "Always expect the worse from a Haganah/Palmach fighter" is not a WP guideline.
Here is the "quote" as it was (I have now removed it):
Arminden (talk) 21:30, 21 January 2016 (UTC)ArmindenArminden (talk) 21:30, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Kurzman page 479:

"Kelman had once before had to kill a fellow Jew, about a year earlier. But that had been a formal - though secret - execution. The man was a traitor and there was no question of his guilt. He had been observed behaving suspiciously at Kibbutz Ayelet Hasachar (Palmach headquarters for eastern Galilee)) and was arrested and persuaded to confess that he was a British agent. His story was that the British police had charged him with some petty crime, and a "Sergeant Keeley" had then offered him a deal. If he would go Ayelet Hasachar, his old settlement, and arrange for the Jews to buy arms, he would receive a ticket to Australia and £100. The British, the man asserted, wanted to capture the Jews in the act of buying arms - a crime punishable by death - and use this "crime" as an excuse to raid the settlement and search for weapons they believed to be hidden there.

"How were you to maintain contact with the British?"

"Well, there's a certain coffeehouse in Tiberias . . ."

Haganah agents checked and confirmed the information.

The full Haganah High Command then deliberated the case and finally ordered the captive executed. The method was left to Kelman, Palmach commander in the area to decide.

Kelman decided that the "operation" would take place at Kibbutz Dafna in the north, for the earth was soft there, unlike many parts of rocky Galilee, and an unmarked grave would be difficult to detect. But he told the Dafna commander, since he knew he would object to submitting the settlement to possible involvement in a "murder" charge, that some arms being smuggled from Lebanon would be buried in the grounds. Several handpicked gravediggers then dug a grave, carefully placing samples of dirt from each level on a piece of canvas to make sure that the same shades would be returned to the proper strata when the grave was filled in. Nothing could be left to chance.

When the prisoner arrived, he was fitted out with brand-new khaki shorts - the clothes he had worn were burned - and guarded by the gravediggers under a plum tree in the kibbutz orchard. Having no idea what was in store for him, he waited paitiently. Toward midnight, Kelman guided the prisoner to a spot near the gaping hole. While his platoon commander stood beside the man, Sten in hand, Kelman, facing them, started reading by the moonlight. He read slowly, in jerkey phrases, as he strained to see:

"The High Command has considered the case of the accused . . . and has found him to be a traitor to the Zionist cause . . ."

Kelman paused and looked at the man, who stood listening indifferently. He breathed in the fragrance of the freshly turned earth, choked slightly and continued in a shaky voice:

"It is our decision that the accused be executed immediately."

"No! No! . . . "

The platoon commander lifted his Sten, and a single bullet fired directly at the head cut off the piercing scream.

The gravediggers then buried the body, making sure that the earth was meticulously replaced almost grain for grain as before. A tractor evened out the ground, and a missing Jew had disappeared without trace . . . [reference 6]

Now, more than a year later, Kelman wondered if his second Jew would be any easier . . ."[context the Altalena]

reference 6: "From interview with Kelman." p.723

Padres Hana (talk) 21:55, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

I see copies of the Kurzman book are easy to get via Bookfinder - I got my copy in East Jerusalem. Padres Hana (talk) 22:00, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

References