IRON GATES• 265quarters in Jaffa in May 1945. The Irgun was behind the bombing of
theKing David Hotelin 1946.
Begin was never caught because he rarely moved from Tel Aviv,
where he was disguised as a rabbi, and his organization was much
feared by British Intelligence. On one occasion, when two of his ter-
rorists were sentenced to death, Begin arranged for the abduction of
five British officers, including Major H. B. Chadwick of Security In-
telligence Middle East, and threatened to kill them if the Irgun men
were executed. Their sentences were commuted to imprisonment and
the hostages were freed.
The Palestine Police reacted to the Irgun withcounter-gangsuntil
the abduction of an Irgun suspect, Alexander Rubinowitz. In Austria,
the Irgun attempted to blow up Vienna’s Sacher Hotel, but an investi-
gation conducted at the localCombined Services Detailed Interro-
gation Centre assisted in the identification of the terrorists
responsible.IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY (IRA).The principal Irish nationalist
organization committed to the unification of a Socialist republic of
Eire, the IRA has conducted terrorist operations in Ireland and the
mainland of Britain. In 1972 the Marxist wing split away to form the
Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), which in turn spawned a
Trotskyite faction, the Irish National Liberation Army. When the
peace process began in 1994 the rejectionist members of PIRA
formed the Real IRA and later Continuity IRA.
IRON GATES.The first sabotage plan of World War II undertaken by
Section Dwas the blocking of the Danube at the narrows known as
the Iron Gates. The Goeland Shipping Company, run by William
Burland-Harris, began to buy up or charter the Danube’s barges so
as to deny them to the Germans. These were then manned by Austra-
lian and British naval volunteers and moved to Sulina, at the river’s
mouth, to rendezvous with the S.S.Ardinian, which carried a cargo
of weapons, explosives, and more ratings led by Merlin Minshall.
The intention, according toDavid Walker, was to transfer the illicit
cargo, documented as oil equipment, onto lighters and then tow them
up river toward Budapest in 94 barges towed by five tugs. However,
one shipment, on theTormonde, was discovered by the Romanians to