The Sergeants affair (Hebrew: פרשת הסרג'נטים) was an incident that took place in July 1947 during Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, in which the Jewish underground group Irgun kidnapped two British Army Intelligence Corps NCOs, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice, and threatened to hang them if the death sentences passed on three Irgun militants—Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, and Yaakov Weiss—were carried out. The three had been captured by the British during the Acre Prison break, tried, and convicted on charges of illegal possession of arms, and with 'intent to kill or cause other harm to a large number of people'. When the three men were executed by hanging, the Irgun killed the two sergeants and hung their booby-trapped bodies in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya. When the bodies were found, the booby trap injured a British officer as they were cut down.
The crime was widely condemned in both Mandatory Palestine and the United Kingdom. After news of the deaths became widely known, enraged British security forces rampaged in Tel Aviv. Five Jews were killed...
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