Secret MI5 files reveal Zionist plot to kill Winston Churchill

In February 1946, a British security official in Mandate Palestine sent a secret telegram to London warning of a plot to kill “members of His Majesty's Government - especially Mr Bevin”.

Bet-Zuri was hanged in 1945 for his role in the killing of Lord Moyne in Cairo, one of the UK's top government representatives in the Middle East. Lord Moyne was a close friend of Churchill.

Before Israel was declared a state there were three main Zionist militias or armed groups representing different political views. The most moderate of these was the centre-left socialist Haganah which sometimes co-operated and even shared intelligence with the British Mandate authorities.

The Irgun, led by future Prime Minister Menachem Begin was more right wing and anti-British, while the Lehi or Stern Gang was considered by many to be a fanatical group with an almost cult-like obsession of its leader, Avraham Stern.

The MI5 files also revealed that British intelligence officers conducted a secret operation to infiltrate and control hundreds of Nazi sympathisers in the UK during the war.