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Black and white photo of pallbearers carrying a coffin into a white building with pillars. Clergy and other figures await the coffin at the entrance. A soldier salutes as the coffin passes.

The Spark of a Universal Uprising? Echoes of the Murder of Lord Moyne, 1944–5

Murder on Jabalya Street

Multiple shots were fired at Walter Guinness, better known as Lord Moyne, as his car was parking at his residence on Jabalya Street in Cairo. Later that day, on 6 November 1944, the British Minister Resident for the Middle East succumbed to his wounds. After a shoot-out with the Egyptian police, the two assassins, who had also killed Moyne’s driver, were apprehended. During their interrogation, they revealed their identity to be Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Beit Tzuri, Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in their early twenties. They declared themselves members of the militant underground organization Lehi—the Hebrew acronym for Loḥamey Ḥerut Isra’el or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.

Lehi was an offshoot of Etzel—acronym for Irgun Zva’i Le’umi or National Military Organization—a Zionist militant group that emerged in Palestine in the early 1930s. Both organizations fought for Jewish statehood in Palestine and were willing to use brutal violence for their cause—be it against the Arab population, the British Mandate authorities, or alleged Jewish traitors. Yet while Etzel agreed to suspend its fight and support the Allies during their war against Nazi Germany, the more radical Lehi refused to lay down its arms. By sending Hakim and Beit Tzuri to Cairo in autumn 1944, it sought to strike the largest British imperial stronghold in the Middle East—the very stronghold that had, just two years earlier, blocked the Wehrmacht’s advance towards Palestine and spared it from Nazi occupation.1

Lord Moyne’s death marked a low point in the already bitter relations between the Zionist movement, which sought to create a Jewish state in Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel), and the British Empire, which controlled that land under a UN mandate. It is mostly against this backdrop that historians have approached the assassination. Had Lehi not murdered Moyne and further upset Zionist–British relations, it has been speculated that the road to Jewish statehood in Palestine might have been shorter.2

Eighty years after Hakim and Beit Tzuri were executed by the Egyptian authorities on 22 March 1945, their crime may serve as a starting point for telling another history. The discourses surrounding the assassination—by observers, sympathizers, and the assassins themselves—evoke broader contexts that go beyond the narrow struggle in Palestine. It is these global contexts that my research project seeks to explore. By pursuing Lehi’s and Etzel’s entanglements abroad, outside of Palestine, it aims to uncover forgotten connections to other movements which we might not associate with Zionism today.

Black and white photomontage of Eliyahu Hakim talking and gesturing (pointing upwards) and Eliyahu Beit Tzuri lying back and looking upwards. Both men have dark hair and moustaches and are wearing light-coloured clothing.
Fig. 1: Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Beit Tzuri after their arrest (montage). Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Worldwide Reactions

The National Archives in Kew hold lots of material about Lord Moyne’s murder, the interrogation of the gunmen, the proceedings of the trial, and the diplomatic crisis with the Zionist movement. The documents also record reactions from around the world to the events in Cairo.

Among the reactions, which overwhelmingly deplored the use of violence for political ends, were numerous pleas to grant the assassins clemency. These calls came not only from Jewish communities worldwide but also from unexpected directions. In one letter, an Indian nationalist who identified as a follower of Gandhi appealed to the British to show leniency towards the two assassins. Clemency, he wrote, would meet with the ‘warm approval of the people of India and Islam.’3

Much to the frustration of the British, such expressions of empathy with the assassins repeatedly pointed to British policy in Palestine and the fate of the Jews in Europe as extenuating circumstances to the vile act. One prominent Jewish American correspondent pleaded for mercy for those ‘misguided idealists’ who had allegedly followed the same tradition as John Brown—the famous American abolitionist—and the Irish Republican Army (IRA).4

The latter comparison especially infuriated British officials. The British ambassador in Cairo, Miles Lampson, wrote in response that a Jewish militant who had killed an Englishman in Palestine was in no way comparable with an Irish militant, who was at least indigenous to Ireland. In his eyes, the Jews had come to Palestine from elsewhere and were thus just as foreign as the British.5

Nevertheless, supporters of Lehi repeatedly drew comparisons with the Irish cause.6 This analogy had particular resonance in the United States, which was founded on an anti-British ethos and home to a large Irish community. In New York, sympathizers with the Zionist underground launched an aggressive propaganda campaign that played on American and Irish sentiments by evoking notions of freedom from, and resistance to, ‘Perfidious Albion’. This campaign was coordinated by Peter Bergson (alias of Hillel Kook), whose letters condemning Moyne’s assassination are likewise held at the National Archives. Despite his public condemnation, however, British authorities noted that Bergson’s press organs had shown indirect support for Hakim and Beit Tzuri.7

Reverberations in Egypt

The evocations of Gandhi, John Brown, and the IRA point to a broader anti-colonial discourse that surrounded the assassination in Cairo. They remind us that Lehi’s struggle over Palestine was only one front of the struggle against European imperialism that had spread across the colonial world. This impression is reinforced by the statements made by the assassins after their arrest. Their act, they testified, was not only meant to further the Jewish cause in Palestine but to spark a ‘universal uprising’ against colonial oppression.8

The assassins appear to have aimed this rhetoric specifically at the Egyptian public. In court, they repeatedly made flattering statements about Egypt and its people, presumably to inspire Egyptian nationalists to rise against the British. In pursuit of this aim, perhaps, Hakim and Beit Tzuri requested that books dealing with the ‘revolutionary history of Egypt’ be brought to their prison cell.

In its publications, Lehi claimed that Egyptian nationalists did indeed take to the streets in mass demonstrations of solidarity with Hakim and Beit Tzuri. However, while the archives document nationalist unrest throughout Egypt, they remain silent about such alleged support. That Egyptian nationalists were in fact rather averse to Zionism was confirmed a few months later when, on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in November 1945, anti-Jewish riots broke out in Cairo and Alexandria, leaving hundreds of Jewish properties looted and at least five Jews dead.

Three paragraphs on page 3 of a typed letter headed 'British Embassy, Cairo'. The quote comes towards the end of the page. The previous paragraph reads: 'I do devoutly pray that something [underlined] will be done—and done quickly [underlined]—to extirpate these brutes and their loathesome organisation. if it is not, I have little doubt that we shall be faced with further outrages.'
Fig. 2: TNA, FO 954/5D/655, Miles Lampson, British Embassy, Cairo, to Anthony Eden, Foreign Office, London, 19 November 1944: ‘one can foresee a time, not so far ahead, when thwarted nationalistic elements might be tempted to consider similar terroristic methods.’ Courtesy of the National Archives.

Yet Lord Moyne’s assassination did leave an impression on the Egyptian national movement. While they could never endorse the Zionist cause, some Egyptian ultranationalists drew a practical lesson from Hakim and Beit Tzuri. Lampson warned shortly after the murder that there could be copycat attacks by Egyptian extremists (see Fig. 2 above). He was soon proved right when Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Maher was assassinated by nationalists in February 1945.

In subsequent years, Egyptian nationalists increasingly committed political violence against their opponents. While assassinations had a long history in Egypt and needed no external stimulus, the events of 1944–5 may have served as inspiration. The young Egyptian soldier Gamal Abdel Nasser is said to have been particularly influenced by Moyne’s Jewish assassins. ‘Here were men ready to die for their cause, who hold up an example to us’, he was quoted as saying.9 Almost seven years later, in January 1952, Nasser himself would try his hand at political assassination, attempting to kill the Egyptian royalist Hussein Sirri Amer.

Cropped black and white official photo of army troop. Nasser is seated in the centre with two comrades either side and the lower bodies of soldiers in the line behind also visible. All are in uniform: collarless, khaki, button-front jacket, broad belt and buckle, shorts , white leg-wraps up to the knee, black boots. Their rifles stand upright between their knees.
Fig. 3: Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Egyptian army, 1940s. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Global Lenses

From the inspiration drawn by Egyptian nationalists to comparisons with the IRA, the trial of Lord Moyne’s assassins thus points to discourses that went beyond Zionist–British relations. Geographically, too, the assassination in Cairo in November 1944—Lehi’s first strike outside Palestine—stands for the organization’s attempt to globalize its campaign. Shortly after the murder in Cairo, British intelligence reported plans to set up terrorist cells across the Middle East and Europe. In subsequent years, Lehi and Etzel sought to strike the British wherever they could—in Rome, Paris, Vienna, London, and even Shanghai.

This worldwide terrorist campaign, with its aim of triggering a ‘universal uprising’, opens up new avenues for research. By removing the focus from Palestine and the local Zionist–British–Arab imbroglio, global contexts become visible that might complicate common assumptions about the bloody history of Palestine and Israel. As the case of Lord Moyne’s assassination illustrates, this global history entwines both the colonial and anti-colonial strands of militant Zionism.


Featured image: Funeral service for Lord Moyne and his driver Arthur Fuller, Cairo, November 1944. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

  1. Dan Diner, Ein anderer Krieg: Das jüdische Palästina und der Zweite Weltkrieg, 1935–1942 (Munich, 2021). []
  2. Bernard Wasserstein, ‘The Assassination of Lord Moyne’, Transactions & Miscellanies, 27 (1978–80), 72–83. []
  3. The National Archives (hereafter TNA), FO 371/46110, Dr Syud Hossain to Ahmed Maher Pasha, Prime Minister, Cairo, 22 Jan. 1934. []
  4. C. L. Sulzberger, ‘Scholarly Jewish Idealists Kill to Drive British from Palestine’, New York Times, 14 Jan. 1945, 21. []
  5. TNA, FO 141/1006, Drafts by Lampson (Lord Killearn), 13 Jan. 1945 and 6 Feb. 1945. []
  6. On Irish and other sources of inspiration see James A. S. Sunderland, ‘A Bomb in the Archive: Lehi and Their Practical Role Models’, Mimeo, 29 Mar. 2024. []
  7. TNA, CO 537/1738, Commissioner of Palestine to Secretary of State [for the Colonies], 9 Jan. 1945. []
  8. TNA, FO 141/1001, Interrogation, 8 Nov. 1944. []
  9. Jean Lacouture, Nasser: A Biography (New York, 1973), 365. []

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Shaul Marmari (October 6, 2025). The Spark of a Universal Uprising? Echoes of the Murder of Lord Moyne, 1944–5. German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved November 6, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/14uws


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Shaul Marmari

Shaul Marmari is a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture—Simon Dubnow in Leipzig. His postdoctoral project takes a global perspective on the history of the Zionist militant organizations outside Palestine from 1944 to 1949.

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