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The Sergeants affair (Template:Lang-he) was an incident that took place in the British Mandate of Palestine in July 1947 in which the Irgun kidnapped two British Royal Military PoliceNCOs, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice, and threatened to kill them if Irgun members then held by the British were executed. Irgun fulfilled the threat, and it hung their bodies in a grove near Netanya. This act was widely condemned by Jewish groups in both Palestine and Britain, who viewed it as murder of innocent soldiers. The event led to reprisals by British troops in which five Jews were murdered as well as antisemitic violence in Britain.

Background

In the late 1940s, as the third decade of British Mandate was drawing to a close, many within and outside of Britain were calling to end the Mandate. They were led by opposition leader Winston Churchill, who denounced Britain’s costly maintenance of Palestine, with a force three or four times the size of the one kept in India and for no feasible benefit.

Trying to maintain their control, the British began executing some of those convicted of acts of political violence. While the first member of a Jewish underground movement, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, was executed in 1938 for his part in an attack of an Arab bus, no further executions of Jews for political violance were held in Palestine until the late 1940s. The sentences were particularly directed at the dissident undergrounds, Irgun and Lehi. The sentences were for various crimes including murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to murder.

During one of The Jewish Resistance Movement operations, Irgun men Michael Eshbal and Yosef Simchon were arrested and sentenced to capital punishment on June 13, 1946. There were many pleas and petitions for clemency by various institutes and Jewish leaders, which were not effective. Irgun decided to threaten to carry out its own “gallows regime”, declaring a policy of reprisal killings. Five days later, Irgun kidnapped five British officers in Tel Aviv, and another one the following day in Jerusalem. Two weeks later, perhaps due to the kidnappings, Eshbal and Simchon’s sentences were mitigated to life imprisonment. The officers were released the next day.

In January 1947 another Irgun fighter, Dov Gruner, was sentenced to death after being caught during an Irgun raid on a British police station in Ramat Gan. On January 26, two days before Gruner’s scheduled execution, Irgun kidnapped a British intelligence officer in Jerusalem. The next day, on January 27, Irgun men also kidnapped the British President of the district court of Tel Aviv. Sixteen hours before the scheduled execution the British forces commander announced an “unlimited delay” of the sentence, and Irgun released its hostages.

Meanwhile in Britain, Winston Churchill, now the leader of the Opposition, demanded a special meeting on the subject, and on January 31, a four hour discussion in the British Parliament took place, with Churchill demanding the suppression of the “terrorists in Palestine”. On April 16, 1947, Gruner and three other Irgun members—Yehiel Dresner, Mordechai Alkahi, Eliezer Kashani—were executed. Five days later, on April 21, two other underground men, Meir Feinstein of Irgun and Moshe Barazani of Lehi were about to be executed for the attack on the Jerusalem Railroad station and an attempt to kill a senior British officer. However, a few hours before the time of execution they committed suicide using grenades smuggled to them by their colleagues. May 4, 1947 saw the Acre Prison break: Forty-one prisoners were released, albeit six of the freed were killed and seven others were returned to jail. Among the perpetrators of the prison break, three were killed and five were arrested. Those arrested included Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss and Meir Nakar. All of the arrested Irgun members refused to accept British judicial authority. However they were tried by a military court and three of the five - those named above - were sentenced to death.

In an attempt to forestall the likely death sentences, the Irgun kidnapped two British military policemen, a sergeant and a private, at a swimming pool in Ramat Gan on June 9. However, the attempt to use them as hostages failed, as 19 hours later British troops aided by the Haganah found the hiding place and rescued them. Two days later the three Irgun men were sentenced to death. All that was needed for the sentences to be carried out was an approval from the chief commander. Irgun resumed, with increased urgency, its kidnapping attempts. Several attempts were thwarted. On July 8, three weeks after the sentences were given, they were approved by the commander. However, due to the concurrent UNSCOP visit to the region (an appeal was made to the committee to intervene on the convicted men's behalf ), they were postponed. This delay, intended not to anger the committee, gave Irgun extra time to accomplish the kidnapping of hostages.

The Kidnapping

Several weeks earlier, Irgun learned about a Jewish refugee from Vienna by the name of Aaron Weinberg, who worked in a British military resort camp in north Netanya. This information was already known to the local SHAI (the intelligence arm of the Haganah) commander, Yehoshua Bar-Ziv, who entrusted him with striking up a relationship with two British sergeants, Clifford Martin and Marvin Paice, who used to spend a lot of time in the camp.

The sergeants were of interest to SHAI since they belonged to the field security unit and worked with the Tulkarm police, which was in charge of the Sharon district. Weinberg was very successful in his task, and occasionally got the sergeants to go out to the Netanya beach, in plain clothes. During the tense days of the summer of 1947, such excursions were very risky, and were probably unknown to their commanders.

On one of those visits, on the night of Saturday, July 4, they were discovered by a young Irgun member who was sitting at the “Gan Vered” cafe and noticed them speaking English. He saw the opportunity and decided to follow them as they turned back to the camp. According to his report a week later, Irgun made arrangements hoping they would return to the cafe.

On July 11, 1947, the guns, chloroform, cloths and ropes were once again taken out of the hidden cache. After the recent failures, the Irgun members in Netanya were skeptical regarding the chances of this kidnapping attempt. That is why they did not go through the extreme preparations appropriate for such a complicated crime: they skipped the procedures of borrowing or stealing a taxi from another city and using nonlocal members. Furthermore, when the instigator of the kidnapping was looking for a driver Yossef Meller, a longtime Netanya resident and a newly recruited Irgun member, volunteered to use his black taxi cab, which was well known around town, for the kidnapping. At nightfall the taxi’s license plates were changed and it was ready for action.

The unexpected indeed happened—Weinberg and the sergeants showed up once again at “Gan Vered”. Kaplan spread his men around the coffee shop and along the road leading north to the camp. As one of the prisoners released in the Acre Prison break, he was determined to kidnap the sergeants in order to save the ones who were caught trying to free him. The trio only left the coffee shop after midnight. Meller’s cab, with Kaplan and three others, set out to catch them. It silently pulled over and the four men came out veiled and holding their guns. After slight resistance by one of the victims, they were forced into the car and Meller drove off. Weinberg was left in an orchard in north Netanya under guard, and then later taken to another orchard where he was released. The hostages were brought to an underground bunker that had been prepared in the cellar of the inactive “Feldman” diamond polishing plant in the industrial area in the south side of town.

The Search for Paice and Martin

Weinberg, who remained in the orchard until daybreak, reported to the camp about the kidnapping. Shortly afterward he was taken to the Tulkarm police for investigation, where he gave the details. The reports also reached the Haganah in Netanya. Oved Ben-Ami, head of the Netanya council, called an emergency council meeting. He did not invite the revisionist party members, who were identified with Irgun. The decision was made in accordance with the Yishuv’s position, which was published the next day, calling the kidnapping a provocation that might jeopardize what hope was left for clemency for those condemned to death. It pleaded for every decent civilian to give a hand in the search.

Meanwhile, Haganah set out to find and release the kidnapped men, by force if necessary. The SHAI commander in the region arrived in order to personally oversee the search. Bar-Ziv, who had resigned as SHAI commander in Netanya in the meantime, provided him with information about a recently built underground bunker under the house of Irgun member Haim Banai in Ramat Tiomkin. They were convinced that was where the hostages were kept, and passed that information to Haganah.

All the while, Ben-Ami was desperately trying to pacify the British authorities and promise them the Yishuv would do anything to find the sergeants. However, after his conversation with Netanya council members of the Revisionist party, he published an announcement in a newspaper saying that he had been told by Irgun that the sergeants would not be returned until the condemned Irgun members’ fate was made clear. Subsequently, the British army placed a cordon around Netanya and the surrounding area of Emek Hefer, and on July 13 they began an extensive search of the settlements.

All the while Haganah counted on what they believed to be reliable information regarding the whereabouts of the sergeants. The information made it all the way up to the Haganah chief of staff, Yisrael Galili who passed it on to the Haganah high commander and chairman of the Jewish Agency, David Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion was conducting the "Little Saison" against Irgun and Lehi, and was determined to cooperate with the authorities. Galili, on the other hand, opposed any collaboration with the British, and had already ordered the preparations for a forceful release by the Haganah. Ben Gurion thought that a forceful release, no matter by whom, would lead to the hanging of the condemned in Acre, and Irgun's finger would be pointed at the Agency, Haganah and SHAI. He therefore made two decisions: First, the sergeants were to be released by force, but not by Haganah, as Galili suggested, but by the British; Second, the information regarding the location of the bunker was to be given secretly, and the information was to be given anonymously to Ben-Ami as well. Thus, he hoped, the blame would fall on Ben Ami. Ben Gurion was relying on Ben Ami’s call to the Netanya residents "to leave no stone unturned" to attract blame from Irgun if the hostages were rescued.

Leak of Information to Irgun

Ben Gurion’s plan didn’t work. Ben Ami did not lose his head and late at night he met with Revisionist party member Yaakov Chinsky, and told him the Haganah knew they were kept under Banai’s house. Chinsky, who knew the information was wrong, passed the information to the Irgun district commander, Avraham Assaf. Assaf knew the bunker was not holding the sergeants, but it did contain the equipment used in the kidnapping, and he thought its discovery might assist the British in finding the kidnappers or their hostages. Thanks to Ben Gurion’s disclosure to Ben Ami, the equipment was taken elsewhere.

The next day, during the extension given by the British to the Haganah to the Yishuv to conduct its own search, approximately 15,000 Netanya residents were placed under curfew. The British, acting on the information from Haganah, decided to search Banai’s house. In the late afternoon the neighbourhood was surrounded by military vehicles, including tanks and armored cars. Banai and his neighbours were arrested as searches began. However, as the equipment had already been removed, nothing was found.

All the while the sergeants were kept in the polishing plant. They were placed there under the influence of chloroform and when they came to, Kaplan told them they had been taken as hostages. On the advice of Amihai Paglin, Irgun’s operations officer who arrived from Tel Aviv on the day of the kidnapping, a decoy was arranged: a pickup truck was loaded with kidnapping equipment and sent to Herzlia, where it was left at the beach, leaving clear traces. Paglin also arranged for oxygen tanks to be brought to the bunker, before returning to Tel Aviv.

Near Discovery of Hostages by Police

A few hours after he left, an occurrence took place that could have led to the release of the hostages: the two lookouts posted on the plant noticed a British police car patrolling the area. Fearing it was heading towards the plant, they hid themselves. The police car was on routine patrol and went its way, but the guard in the nearby plant noticed them slipping through the window, assumed they were burglars, and called the police.

On an ordinary day, the police might not have taken his report seriously, but this time a strong force was sent to investigate, accompanied by a plain-clothes police officer. They broke into the plant and began an extensive search. One of the owners, who did not know about the Irgun’s use of his property, naively convinced them there was nothing in there of their concern. Having found nothing, the policemen left the scene.

The Hangings

The Execution of Haviv, Weiss and Nakar

On Thursday, after three days, the curfew around Netanya was lifted, although the town itself remained isolated. The search continued unsuccessfully, but the cordon was lifted after two weeks, on July 26. Ben Ami assessed that the British had resolved to hang the condemned men despite the risk to the hostages.

Ben Ami’s assessment was correct. On July 27 an official radio announcement said the High Commissioner, Alan Cunningham had given the order to hang the condemned. On July 29, at the break of dawn, while singing Hatikvah, Haviv, Weiss and Nakar were taken to the gallows and executed, thereby becoming the last of the group known as the Olei Hagardom.

The Murders of Paice and Martin

That morning, eighteen days after the kidnapping, the Irgun chief of staff, Haim Landau, told Assaf that the hostages were to be hanged. Initially Assaf and Paglin looked for a suitable grove, but given the large military and police presence they decided to kill the hostages at the plant itself. Since the hangings were meant as a lesson for all to see, they still wanted to hang the bodies in public. That was so clear that the mayor of Tel Aviv, Yisrael Rokah, feared Irgun would hang them in the city’s main square, while in Netanya it was feared that they would be hanged on local lamp posts. Haganah increased its patrols around the city centers, which made the transfers even more difficult. In the afternoon Paglin and four others arrived at the bunker. Paice and Martin were blindfolded and their hands and feet were tied. As no gallows was available nooses were attached to the ceiling; the hostages were stood on chairs beneath them and the nooses looped round their necks. At around 18:00 the chairs beneath their feet were removed, and they were killed by a short-drop hanging.

Hanging the bodies

The next day, early in the morning of July 30, a taxi brought from Tel Aviv, so as not to be recognized, arrived at the plant. Meanwhile Meller was looking for a safe route to move the bodies. After several hours such a route was finally found, and at 9:00 the order was given to move the bodies into the cab. The Irgun lookouts had to take the body bags out of the plant in broad daylight, astonishing the workers of the neighboring plants.

Many of those were Haganah members, and a few of them asked about the bags. They were told they were Irgun guns, and some of them suggested they should be confiscated. The Irgun men threatened to kill them if they tried, so they went away. From that point time was critical for the Irgun group; It was clearly a matter of time before SHAI—and the British—were informed that Irgun were moving possible bodies. They drove east and arrived at a eucalyptus grove near the village of Even Yehuda, about four km from Netanya. They hung the bodies from two adjacent trees and set an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) under them to target anyone attempting to recover the bodies. Notes pinned to the victims’ bodies read:

'Two British spies held in underground captivity since July 12 have been tried after the completion of the investigations of their "criminal anti-Hebrew activities" on the following charges:

1. Illegal entry into the Hebrew homeland. 2. Membership of a British criminal terrorist organisation known as the Army of Occupation which was responsible for the torture, murder, deportation, and denying the Hebrew people the right to live. 3. Illegal possession of arms. 4. Anti-Jewish spying in civilian clothes. 5. Premeditated hostile designs against the underground.

Found guilty of these charges they have been sentenced to hang and their appeal for clemency dismissed. This is not a reprisal for the execution of three Jews but a "routine judicial fact."'

Reactions in Palestine

At 11:00 Irgun made a public announcement regarding the murders, but due to the wide area of the search, the bodies were only discovered the next day, at 7:00. The bodies were discovered by Jewish Settlement Policemen who avoided drawing near, having been warned about possible mining. Soon British soldiers, Yishuv representatives and reporters arrived at the scene. They observed that the bodies had been partly stripped, their shirts wrapped around their heads and that the bodies appeared "blackened, bloodied." The officer in command immediately began cutting down the body of Clifford Martin, but when the body fell the IED went off, wounding him.

As news regarding the bodies became known throughout Netanya, the residents, fearing reprisals, began stocking food and some even left the city. The council called upon the residents not to believe false rumors and Haganah men stood in the central bus station to prevent people from leaving the city. Irgun boasted about the murders and a response was delivered in the Irgun press:

We recognize no one-sided laws of war. If the British are determined that their way out of the country should be lined by an avenue of gallows and of weeping fathers, mothers, wives, and sweethearts, we shall see to it that in this there is no racial discrimination. The gallows will not be all of one color...Their price will be paid in full.

Irgun also received a belated request from Paice’s father, asking for clemency for his son. This was disregarded, and Kol Zion Halohemet, the station of the Irgun, aired a reply saying that his request should have been addressed to the British government.

The first response came from Ben-Ami, who said that “of all the crimes committed to this day in this country this is the most despicable one, defiling our war of liberation… I testify that most of our population made desperate efforts to free the kidnapped and prevent this disgrace.”

The Yishuv’s official institutions gave similar responses, condemning the perpetrators as murderers of two innocent persons and who took upon themselves the authority to decide in life and death issues. Jamal al-Husayni, head of the Arab Higher Committee compared it with the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, saying that the Arabs had not performed such actions.

Reprisals by British Troops

British troops were outraged by the murder of their fellow soldiers. That night, in Tel Aviv, discipline among some units broke down and troops attacked Jewish civilians. They smashed windows, beat Jews, and fired Sten guns into a crowded bus. Five Jews were murdered and 15 wounded. The next day, Paice and Martin were buried in the Ramleh Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery, while at the funeral for the five dead Jews, mourners and police clashed again; 33 Jews were injured.

Reactions in Britain

Public and Media Reaction

Condemnations of the Irgun's 'bestialities' came from all sections of British society and media. Under the headline 'Murder in Palestine' The Times commented that: 'it is difficult to estimate the damage that will be done to the Jewish cause not only in this country but throughout the world by the cold-blooded murder of the two British soldiers..’. The Manchester Guardian, while urging the government that it was 'time to go' from Palestine, similarly noted that the hangings were 'a greater blow to the Jewish nation than to the British government.'

Condemnation of Irgun by British Jews

The Board of Deputies of British Jews voiced Anglo-Jewry's 'detestation and horror at the appalling crime committed against innocent British soldiers' and the Anglo-Jewish Association branded the Irgun action as 'a barbarous act of a kind peculiarly repugnant to civilised man.' Similar criticism poured in from all sections of Anglo-Jewry, including the Association of Jewish Ex-Service Men and Women who condemned outright the murder by terrorists of the two Army sergeants.

As so often the case before, the editorial of the Jewish Chronicle captured the grave and foreboding mood of the moment. In one particularly poignant passage the JC expressed Anglo-Jewry's shame at the Irgun murders: 'Although the general public in Britain recognise that Jewry in this country are powerless to prevent the outrages, British Jewry cannot but feel a deep sense of shame that these murders have been committed.'

Editor John Shaftesley's carefully chosen words, while clearly articulating Anglo-Jewry's abhorrence at the Irgun's crime, can also be interpreted as a plea to British society not to blame Anglo-Jewry for the 'cold-blooded murder of the two British sergeants,' or to seek revenge against the community. Shaftesley's plea was ignored by some, and during the bank holiday weekend, which began on August 1, 1947, and throughout the following week, British Jews across the country felt the powerful impact of the Irgun murders, facing a torrent of hatred, abuse and ultimately rioting.

Riots

On summer bank holiday weekend, Friday August 1, 1947, antisemitic violence and rioting began. News of the "cold blooded Irgun murders" spread across Britain through extensive coverage in the British media. The tabloid press reported the "Irgun murders" in graphic detail and in a provocative manner. The Daily Express carried a large picture on the front page, showing the victims as they were found with hands tied behind their backs, shirts wrapped round their heads and hung from eucalyptus trees under the headline: "Hanged Britons: picture that will shock the world". The rioting started in Liverpool and subsequently spread across Britain's urban centers from London to Glasgow.

Incidents were reported in West Derby, where a wooden synagogue was burnt down, in Glasgow, where "bricks were thrown through the windows of Jewish shops", and in Liverpool, where "over a hundred windows belonging to Jewish owners were shattered". The rioting was most intensive and long lasting in Liverpool: For over five days the city saw violence and looting, and Lord Mayor issued an appeal to the city "to assist the police in the prevention of attacks on property and shops supposedly owned by Jews". In total over 300 Jewish properties were affected by the rioting in Liverpool, and the police made 88 arrests.

Synagogues and easily recognizable Jewish properties and symbols throughout Britain were targeted by vigilantes. In Hendon, London, windows of the Raleigh Close synagogue were smashed and a piece of paper was found with the words "Jews are sin". Blackpool and St John's Wood synagogues received telephone calls threatening that they would be blown up, and the walls of Plymouth Synagogue were attacked and marked with fascist signs and slogans: "Hang all Jews" and "Destroy Judah". In other attacks on Jewish targets, gravestones in a Jewish cemetery were uprooted in Birmingham, "Hitler was right" was daubed on properties in North Wales, and Jewish property in Halifax, Pendleton, Lancashire, Bolton, Holyhead and Southend were also attacked. In a further incident, the back door of the JC's representative's home in Cardiff was marked "Jews—good old Hitler". On August 5, 1947, The Times and JC reported that in Eccles, Manchester, a crowd of 700 people "cheered each hit" as missiles pelted Jewish properties smashing their windows.

Denunciations of Anti-Semitic Violence

Denunciation of the rioting was expressed from within and without of Anglo-Jewry. In a clear indicator of the severity of the disturbances, Home Secretary James Chuter Ede gave a written statement to Parliament regarding the matter. Under the headline 'a disgrace', The Manchester Guardian commented that:

The anti-Jewish demonstrations which have marred the week-end in Manchester, Liverpool, and other towns are clearly the work of the most irresponsible and hooligan elements in our population. But that does not make these outbreaks less menacing or less disgraceful... The man who condemns the Zionists in Palestine on account of the crimes of the Irgun gangsters is only a degree better than the youth who expresses his hatred by mobbing the innocent men and women of Cheetham Hill or Wavertree. There is no political fault so common or so dangerous as this primitive confusion between many and few. The murder of the British sergeants in Palestine was a brutal crime, the act of crazed fanatics. But...to answer terrorism in Palestine with terrorism in England is sheer Hitlerism. We must be desperately careful to see that we do not let ourselves be infected with the poison of the disease we had thought to eradicate.

The JC, which since Shaftesley's appointment as editor had assiduously followed a restrained and sensitive editorial line regarding Anglo-Jewry's position in society, was provoked by the rioting to explicitly express its anger and disillusionment with Anglo-Jewry's treatment by its compatriots:

Passion and fanaticism have, alas, spread to Britain itself and Britain's reputation suffers in consequence. The anti-Jewish riots which have occurred in several towns, on the pretext of the Palestine murders, are shameful in the extreme, both for themselves and for the fact that they represent the newest extension of the evil principle of holding the innocent to blame for the guilty.

It was, however, the Association of Jewish ex-Servicemen who gave the most informative and telling Anglo-Jewish reaction to the dual tragedies of the Irgun executions and the anti-Jewish rioting in Britain. In an unequivocal display of Anglo-Jewish loyalty to Britain, even in the face of the animosity that the anti-Jewish rioting presented, the Association placed a wreath at the plinth of the Cenotaph with the inscription: 'In memory of Sergeant Martin and Sergeant Paice, who died doing their duty in Palestine. From the Jewish ex-Service comrades of the British forces.'

Aftermath

The UNSCOP committee, which operated in Palestine at that time, could not have ignored the incident. However, it was soon overshadowed by a new crisis over 'the Exodus,' a Haganah-operated ship laden with 4,500 Jewish displaced persons, which set sail from France and was refused entry to Palestine, instead being sent back to Port-de-Bouc.

Begin writes in his book "The Revolt" that the "cruel act" was one of the events which tipped the balance in the British withdrawal from Palestine. He gave as evidence that Colonel Archer Cust, one of the senior British Mandatory officials, said in a lecture in 1949 that "the hanging of the sergeants did more than anything else to get us out of Palestine."

In a November 1948 letter regarding an entrance visa to the United States for Menachem Begin, Robert A. Lovett wrote that it might spark a conflict with Britain, due to the Irgun operations against it.

Ironically, in 1981 it was discovered that Clifford Martin was a Jew according to the Halachah, since his mother came from a Jewish family from Cairo.

References

1. "פרשת הסרג'נטים בנתניה". Retrieved 2008-02-01.Template:He iconTemplate:En icon
2. Segev, Tom (2001). One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate. London: Abacus. p. 401. ISBN 9780349112862.
3. ^ "The Gallows". etzel. Retrieved 2008-01-17.
4. UNSCOP REPORT TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
5. ^ "The Role of Jewish Defense Organizations in Palestine". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
6. ^ "תליית הסרג'נטים הבריטיים בנתניה". Irus. Retrieved 2008-02-01.Template:He icon
7. ^ Eshel, Aryeh (1990). The Breaking of the Gallows. Zmora Beitan. pp. 307–312. Template:He icon
8. ^ Bagon, Paul (2003). "The Impact of the Jewish Underground upon Anglo Jewry: 1945-1947". St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Retrieved 2008-01-15. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
9. ^ "Eye for an Eye for an Eye". Time Magazine. 1947. ISSN 0040-718X. Retrieved 2008-01-24. {{cite news}}: Check |issn= value (help)

Further reading

• Bell, Bowyer J (1977). Terror out of Zion : Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine underground, 1929-1949. New York: Avon Books. ISBN 9780380393961.
• Begin, Menachem (1977). The Revolt.
• Zadka, Saul (1995). Blood in Zion : how the Jewish guerrillas drove the British out of Palestine (1st English ed. ed.). London ;;Washington: Brassey's. ISBN 9781857531367. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)

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