| The Defense | |
|---|---|
| הַהֲגָנָה | |
 | |
| Dates of operation | 1920–1948 |
| Dissolved | May 28, 1948; 77 years ago (1948-05-28) |
| Merged into | Israel Defense Forces |
| Country |  Israel (14–28 May 1948) |
| Allegiance |  Yishuv (1920–1948)Jewish Agency for Israel |
| Motives | Defense ofPalestinian Jews throughout theBritish Mandate |
| Status | Paramilitary |
| Size | 21,000 (average)[1] |
| Battles and wars | |
Haganah (Hebrew:הַהֲגָנָהha-Haganah,lit. 'The Defense')[a] was the mainZionist paramilitary organization that operated for theYishuv in theBritish Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the region, and was formally disbanded in 1948, when it became the core force integrated into theIsrael Defense Forces shortly after theIsraeli Declaration of Independence.
Formed out of previous existing militias, Haganah's original purpose was todefend Jewish settlements against Arab attacks; this was the case during the1921 Jaffa riots, the1929 Palestine riots, the1936 Jaffa riots, and the1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, among others. The paramilitary was under the control of theJewish Agency, the official governmental body in charge of Palestine's Jewish community during the British era. Until the end ofWorld War II, Haganah's activities were moderate, in accordance with the strategic policy ofhavlagah (lit. 'self-restraint'), which caused the breakaway of the more radical paramilitaries:Irgun andLehi. Haganah militants received clandestine military support fromPoland and sought cooperation with theUnited Kingdom in the event of anAxis-led invasion of Palestine throughNorth Africa, prompting the creation of thePalmach, their elite fighting force, in 1941.
Following the end of World War II, the British refused to lift the restrictions on Jewish immigration that they had imposed with the1939 White Paper. This resulted in Haganah leading aJewish insurgency against the British authorities in Palestine; the campaign included the paramilitaries' bombing of bridges, railways, and ships used to deportillegal Jewish immigrants, as well as assisting in bringing morediaspora Jews to Palestine in defiance of British policies. After the adoption of theUnited Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, Haganah came into the open as the biggest fighting force among thePalestinian Jews, successfully overcoming Arab militias during thePalestinian civil war. After theDeclaration of Independence of theState of Israel, the Haganah became the new nation's military force. Shortly after Israeli independence and the beginning of the1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Haganah was merged with other paramilitary groups and reorganized into theIsrael Defense Forces (IDF).
The evolution of Jewish defense organizations in Palestine and later Israel went from small self-defense groups active duringOttoman rule, to ever-larger and more sophisticated ones during theBritish Mandate, leading through the Haganah to the national army of Israel, the IDF. The evolution went step by step fromBar-Giora, toHashomer, to Haganah, to IDF.[citation needed]
The Jewish paramilitary organizations in theNew Yishuv (the Zionist enterprise in Palestine) started with theSecond Aliyah (1904 to 1914).[citation needed] The first such organization wasBar-Giora, founded in September 1907. It consisted of a small group of Jewish immigrants who guarded settlements for an annual fee.[citation needed] It was converted to Hashomer (Hebrew:השומר; "The Watchman") in April 1909, which operated until the British Mandate of Palestine came into being in 1920. Hashomer was an elitist organization which never had more than 100 members.[2] DuringWorld War I, the forerunners of the Haganah/IDF were theZion Mule Corps and theJewish Legion, both of which were part of the British Army. After theArab riots against Jews in April 1920, the Yishuv's leadership saw the need to create a nationwide underground defense organization, and the Haganah was founded in June of the same year. The Haganah became a full-scale defense force after the1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine with an organized structure, consisting of three main units—theField Corps,Guard Corps, and thePalmach strike force. During World War II the successor to the Jewish Legion of World War I was theJewish Brigade, which was joined by many Haganah fighters. During the 1947–48 civil war between the Arab and Jewish communities in what was still Mandatory Palestine, a reorganized Haganah managed to defend or wrestle most of the territory it was ordered to hold or capture. At the beginning of the ensuing 1948–49 full-scale conventional war against regular Arab armies, the Haganah was reorganized to become the core of the new Israel Defense Forces.[citation needed]
After the1920 Nebi Musa riots, the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British, to whom theLeague of Nations had given a mandate over Palestine in 1920, had no desire to confront local Arab groups that frequently attacked Palestinian Jews.[3] Believing that they could not rely on the British administration for protection from these gangs, the Jewish leadership created the Haganah to protect Jewish farms andkibbutzim. The first head of the Haganah was a 28-year-old namedYosef Hecht [he], a veteran of theJewish Legion.[4]
In addition to guarding Jewish communities, the role of the Haganah was to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinians. In the period between 1920 and 1929, the Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination. Haganah "units" were very localized and poorly armed: they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim.[citation needed]
Following the1929 Palestine riots, the Haganah's role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from the cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to creategrenades and simple military equipment, transforming from an untrainedmilitia to a capable underground army.[citation needed]
Many Haganah fighters objected to the official policy ofhavlagah (restraint) that Jewish political leaders (who had become increasingly controlling of the Haganah) had imposed on the militia.[citation needed] Fighters had been instructed to only defend communities and not initiate counterattacks against Arab gangs or their communities. This policy appeareddefeatist to many who believed thatthe best defense is a good offense. In 1931, the more militant elements of the Haganah splintered off and formed theIrgun Tsva'i-Leumi (National Military Organization), better known as "Irgun" (or by its Hebrew acronym, pronounced "Etzel").[citation needed]
During the1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, the Haganah worked to protect British interests and to quell the rebellion using thePosh and then theHish units. At that time, the Haganah fielded 10,000 mobilized men along with 40,000 reservists. Although the British administration did not officially recognize the Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming theJewish Settlement Police,Jewish Supernumerary Police andSpecial Night Squads, which were trained and led by ColonelOrde Wingate. The battle experience gained during the training was useful in the1948 Arab–Israeli War.[5]
During the interwar period, as part of its policy of supporting a Jewish state in Palestine in order to facilitate mass Jewish emigration from its territory, theSecond Polish Republic provided military training and weapons to Zionist paramilitary groups, including Haganah.[6] Envoys from Haganah headed byYehuda Arazi received dozens of shipments with military supplies, including 2,750 Mauser rifles, 225 RKM machine guns, 10,000 hand grenades, two million bullets for rifles and machine guns, and a large number of pistols with ammunition. The British exerted heavy pressure on the Polish government to stop these deliveries. One of the last purchases of Arazi were two airplanes and two gliders. When he fled Poland to France, around 500 rifles were abandoned in a Warsaw warehouse.[7] Members of the Haganah were also trained in a military camp inRembertow along withBetar members between 1931 and 1937; it is estimated that training courses at the camp were attended by around 8,000 to 10,000 participants during their existence.[8]
By 1939, the British had issued theWhite Paper, which severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, deeply angering the Zionist leadership.David Ben-Gurion, then chairman of theJewish Agency, set the policy for the Zionist relationship with the British: "We shall fight the war against Hitler as if there were no White Paper, and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war."[9]
In reaction to the White Paper, the Haganah built up thePalmach as the Haganah's elite strike force and organized illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine. Approximately 100,000 Jews were brought to Palestine in over one hundred ships during the final decade of what became known asAliyah Bet. The Haganah also organized demonstrations against British immigration quotas.[citation needed]
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In 1940 the Haganah sabotaged thePatria, an ocean liner being used by the British to deport 1,800 Jews to Mauritius, with a bomb intended to cripple the ship. However, the ship sank, killing 267 people and injuring 172.[10][11]
In the first years ofWorld War II, the British authorities asked Haganah for cooperation again, due to the fear of anAxis breakthrough in North Africa.[citation needed] AfterRommel was defeated atEl Alamein in 1942, the British stepped back from their all-out support for Haganah.[citation needed] In 1943, after a long series of requests and negotiations, the British Army announced the creation of theJewish Brigade Group. While Palestinian Jews had been permitted to enlist in the British army since 1940, this was the first time an exclusively Jewish military unit served in the war under a Jewish flag. The Jewish Brigade Group consisted of 5,000 soldiers and was initially deployed with the 8th Army in North Africa and later inItaly in September 1944. The brigade was disbanded in 1946.[citation needed] All in all, some 30,000 Palestinian Jews served in the British army during the war.[12]
On May 14, 1941, the Haganah created thePalmach (an acronym forPlugot Mahatz—strike companies), an elite commando section, in preparation against the possibility of a British withdrawal andAxis invasion of Palestine. Its members, young men and women, received specialist training in guerrilla tactics and sabotage.[13] During 1942 the British gave assistance in the training of Palmach volunteers but in early 1943 they withdrew their support and attempted to disarm them.[14] The Palmach, then numbering over 1,000, continued as an underground organization with its members working half of each month askibbutz volunteers, the rest of the month spent training.[15] It was never large—by 1947 it amounted to merely five battalions (about 2,000 men)—but its members had not only received physical and military training, but also acquired leadership skills that would subsequently enable them to take up command positions in Israel's army.[citation needed]
In 1944, after the assassination ofLord Moyne (the British Minister of State for the Middle East) by members of theLehi, the Haganah worked with the British to kidnap, interrogate, and, in some cases, deport Irgun members. This action, which lasted from November 1944 to February 1945, was called theSaison, or the Hunting Season, and was directed against the Irgun and not the Lehi.[citation needed] FutureJerusalem mayorTeddy Kollek was later revealed to be aJewish Agency liaison officer working with the British authorities who had passed on information that led to the arrest of many Irgun activists.[16]
Many Jewish youth, who had joined the Haganah in order to defend the Jewish people, were greatly demoralized by operations against their own people.[17] The Irgun, paralyzed by the Saison, were ordered by their commander,Menachem Begin, not to retaliate in an effort to avoid a full blown civil war. Although many Irgunists objected to these orders, they obeyed Begin and refrained from fighting back. The Saison eventually ended due to perceived British betrayal of the Yishuv becoming more obvious to the public and increased opposition from Haganah members.[17]
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The Saison officially ended when the Haganah, Irgun and the Lehi formed theJewish Resistance Movement, in 1945. Within this new framework, the three groups agreed to operate under a joint command. They had different functions, which served to drive the British out of Palestine and create aJewish state.
The Haganah was less active in theJewish Rebellion than the other two groups, but the Palmach did carry out anti-British operations, including a raid on theAtlit detainee camp that released 208 illegal immigrants, theNight of the Trains, theNight of the Bridges, and attacks onPalestine Police bases.[18] The Haganah withdrew on 1 July 1946, but "remained permanently unco-operative" with the British authorities.[19] It continued to organize illegal Jewish immigration as part of theAliyah Bet program, in which ships carrying illegal immigrants attempted to breach the British blockade of Palestine and land illegal immigrants on the shore (most were intercepted by theRoyal Navy), and the Palmach performed operations against the British to support the illegal immigration program. The Palmach repeatedly bombed British radar stations being used to track illegal immigrant ships, and sabotaged British ships being used to deport illegal immigrants, as well as two British landing and patrol craft.[20] The Palmach performed a single assassination operation in which a British official who had been judged to be excessively cruel to Jewish prisoners was shot dead.[21] The Haganah also organized theBirya affair. Following the expulsion of the residents of the Jewish settlement of Birya for illegal weapons possession, thousands of Jewish youth organized by the Haganah marched to the site and rebuilt the settlement. They were expelled by British shortly afterward while showingpassive resistance, but after they returned a third time, the British backed off and allowed them to remain.[22]
In addition to its operations, the Haganah continued to secretly prepare for a war with the Arabs once the British left by building up its arms and munitions stocks. It maintained a secret arms industry, with the most significant facility being an underground bullet factory underneath Ayalon, a kibbutz that had been established specifically to cover it up.[23]
British estimates of the Haganah's strength at this time were apaper strength of 75,000 men and women with an effective strength of 30,000.[24] After the British army, the Haganah was considered the most powerful military force in the Middle East.[25]Research by Amos Perlmutter estimated that the Haganah budget in 1946 was £400,000, and by October 1947 its budget had reached £3.3 million. The same source estimated that the membership of the Haganah was 7% of the Jewish population in Palestine.[26]
In July 1947, eager to maintain order with the visit ofUNSCOP to Palestine and under heavy pressure from the British authorities to resume collaboration, the Jewish Agency reluctantly came into brief conflict with the Irgun and Lehi, and ordered the Haganah to put a stop to the operations of the other two groups for the time being. As Palmach members refused to participate, a unit of about 200 men from regular Haganah units was mobilized, and foiled several operations against the British, including a potentially devastating attack on the British military headquarters at Citrus House in Tel Aviv, in which a Haganah member was killed by an Irgun bomb. The Haganah also joined the search for two British sergeants abducted by the Irgun as hostages against the death sentences of three Irgun members in what became known asthe Sergeants affair. The Jewish Agency leadership feared the damage this act would do to the Jewish cause, and also believed that holding the hostages would only jeopardize the fates of the three condemned Irgun members. The attempts to free the sergeants failed, and following the executions of the three Irgun members, the two sergeants were killed and hanged in a eucalyptus grove. However, the campaign soon disintegrated into a series of retaliatory abductions and beatings of each other's members by the Haganah and Irgun, and eventually petered out. The campaign was dubbed the "Little Season" by the Irgun.[17][27]
After "having gotten the Jews of Palestine and of elsewhere to do everything that they could, personally and financially, to helpYishuv," Ben-Gurion's second-greatest achievement was his having successfully transformed Haganah from being a clandestine paramilitary organization into a true army.[28] Ben-Gurion appointedIsrael Galili to the position of head of the High Command counsel of Haganah and divided Haganah into sixinfantry brigades, numbered 1 to 6, allotting a precise theatre of operation to each one.Yaakov Dori was named Chief of Staff, but it wasYigael Yadin who assumed the responsibility on the ground as chief of Operations. Palmach, commanded byYigal Allon, was divided into three elite brigades, numbered 10–12, and constituted the mobile force of Haganah.[29] Ben-Gurion's attempts to retain personal control over the newly formedIDF culminated withThe Generals' Revolt.[citation needed]
On 19 November 1947, obligatoryconscription was instituted for all men and women aged between 17 and 25. By end of March 21,000 people had been conscripted.[30][31] On 30 March the call-up was extended to men and single women aged between 26 and 35. Five days later a General Mobilization order was issued for all men under 40.[32]
"From November 1947, the Haganah, (...) began to change from a territorial militia into a regular army. (...) Few of the units had been well trained by December. (...) By March–April, it fielded still under-equipped battalion and brigades. By April–May, the Haganah was conducting brigade size offensive.[33]
The brigades of the Haganah which merged into the IDF once this was created on 26 May 1948:
The northernLevanoni Brigade, located in the Galilee, was split on February 22, 1948 into the 1st and 2nd Brigades.
_-_TRAINING_FOR_THE_HAGANA.jpg)
To the initial six brigades, three were added later during the war:
The Palmach brigades which merged into the IDF:
After the British announced they would withdraw from Palestine, and the United Nations approved the partition of Palestine, the1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine broke out. The Haganah played the leading role in the Yishuv's war with the Palestinian Arabs. Initially, it concentrated on defending Jewish areas from Arab raids, but after the danger of British intervention subsided as the British withdrew, the Haganah went on the offensive and seized more territory. Following theIsraeli Declaration of Independence and the start of the1948 Arab–Israeli War on May 15, 1948, the Haganah, now the army of the new state, engaged the invading armies of the surrounding Arab states.[17]
On May 28, 1948, less than two weeks after the creation of the state of Israel on May 15, the provisional government created theIsrael Defense Forces, merging the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi, although the other two groups continued to operate independently in Jerusalem and abroad for some time after.[17] The reorganization led to several conflicts between Ben-Gurion and the Haganah leadership, including what was known asThe Generals' Revolt and the dismantling of the Palmach.
Famous members of the Haganah includedYitzhak Rabin,Ariel Sharon,Rehavam Ze'evi,Dov Hoz,Moshe Dayan,Yigal Allon and Dr.Ruth Westheimer.
TheMuseum of Underground Prisoners in Jerusalem commemorates the activity of the underground groups in the pre-state period, recreating the everyday life of those imprisoned there.
SomeBedouins had longstanding ties with nearbyJewish communities. They helped defend these communities in the1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. During the1948 Arab–Israeli War, some Bedouins ofTuba formed an alliance with the Haganah defending Jewish communities in theUpper Galilee againstSyria. Some were part of a Pal-Heib unit of the Haganah. Sheik Hussein Mohammed Ali Abu Yussef of Tuba was quoted in 1948 as saying, "Is it not written in theKoran that the ties of neighbors are as dear as those of relations? Our friendship with the Jews goes back for many years. We felt we could trust them and they learned from us too".[36]
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