Jerusalem mayor spied on terrorists for MI5

Teddy Kollek, famous as Jerusalem's mayor for almost 25 years, actively helped the British crack down on right-wing Jewish underground groups in the 1940s, recently released MI5 documents reveal.

Mr Kollek, who died three months ago, supplied British intelligence with vital information about the Irgun, led by the future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the documents show.

The revelation that the mayor was among those assisting the British to contain the right-wing groups - described by their Jewish opponents as well as the British authorities at the time as "terrorists" - came in yesterday's issue of the daily Yedhiot Ahronot.

The documents show that Mr Kollek, who was an intelligence officer in the Jewish Agency, part of the apparatus of David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, gave the British vital information which enabled them to identify and raid a secret training camp near Binyamina in which they arrested 27 Irgun members including a handful of the most wanted underground commanders.

According to the documents the raid followed a meeting which took place on 10 August 1945. While it was known that the Jewish Agency had given Irgun names to the British, this is the first time that Mr Kollek's name has been disclosed as being directly involved.

The documents relate to a period often known as the saison in which conflict erupted between Haganah and the more extreme right-wing groups. It began after the assassination of Churchill's Middle East minister, Lord Moyne, by the Stern Gang.

One of the documents quotes Mr Kollek as telling his British contacts that "terrorism is fatal to Zionism" and that the Jewish Agency did not agree with its methods.

Ronen Bergman, the journalist and intelligence specialist who broke the story, unearthed the documents from the National Archive in Kew, London in co-operation with Calder Walton, a Cambridge intelligence expert

Mr Bergman says that Mr Kollek tried - in vain - to help the British capture Menachem Begin, one of their most wanted men, who would sweep to political power in the spectacular Likud election victory of 1977.

Mr Bergman said the father of the Israeli minister Zeev Boim was among those arrested in the raid and that the father of the current Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, who was also an Irgun activist, had almost been arrested. It was Mr Olmert who finally beat Mr Kollek in a Likud-Labour fight for the mayoralty of Jerusalem in 1993.

The Yedhiot report said Mr Kollek was "instrumental in leading to the arrests of dozens of Irgun and Stern Gang members, the confiscation of arms, and the thwarting of numerous attacks against British interests."

It points out that mainstream Jewish leaders were still keen at the time to build bridges with the British Government to secure its approval for the transfer of European refugees to Palestine.