Haganah - World War II participation, After the war

The Jewish underground militia in Palestine, founded during the period of the British Mandate in the 1920s. After the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, the Haganah became the official Israeli army, fielding some 100 000 troops during the war of that year.

The Haganah (Hebrew: "The Defense", ההגנה) was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate for Palestine from 1920 to 1948.

After the Arab riots of 1920 and 1921, the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British, whom the League of Nations had given the Mandate of Palestine in 1920, had no desire to confront the Arabs about attacks on the Palestinian Jews, and created the Haganah to protect their farmers and settlements. The role of the Haganah was to guard the Jewish Kibbutzim and farms, and to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinian Arabs. Haganah "units" were very localized and poorly armed: they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim. Following the Arab 1929 Hebron massacre that led to the ethnic cleansing by the British authorities of all Jews from the city of Hebron, the Haganah's role changed dramatically. During the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, it participated actively to protect British interests and to quell Arab rebellion. Although the British administration did not officially recognize the Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police, Jewish Auxiliary Forces and Special Night Squads.

In 1931, the most right-wing elements of Haganah branched off and formed Irgun Tsva'i-Leumi (the National Military Organization), better known as "Irgun" (or by its Hebrew acronym, pronounced "HaEtsel"). Irgun later split as well in 1940, and their off-shoot became known as the "Lehi" (Hebrew acronym of Lochamei Herut Israel, standing for Freedom Fighters of Israel, and also known by the British as the "Stern Gang" after its leader, Abraham Stern).

The British severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine by 1939. In response, the Haganah created the Palmach — the Haganah's strike force, which also organized illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine.

In 1944, in response to the assassination of Lord Moyne (the British Minister of State for the Middle East) by members of the Jewish Lehi underground, the Haganah worked with the British to round up, interrogate, and, in some cases, deport Irgun members. The three groups had different functions, which served to move the British out of Palestine, and to make Palestine a Jewish state (versus creating a Jewish home in Palestine).

World War II participation

Despite the 1939 White Paper which deeply angered the Zionist leadership in Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, then chairman of the Jewish 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. The Irgun, however took a more extreme stance starting in 1944 and began bombing British installations.

In the first years of World War II, the British authorities asked Haganah for cooperation again, due to the fear for an Axis breakthrough in North Africa. After Rommel was defeated at El Alamein in 1942, the British stepped back from their all-out support for Haganah. In 1943, after a long series of requests and negotiations, the British Army announced the creation of the Jewish 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.

All in all, more than 30,000 Palestinian Jews served in the British army during the war.

After the war

After the war, the Haganah carried out anti-British operations in Palestine, such as the liberation of interned immigrants from the Atlit camp, the bombing of the country's railroad network, sabotage raids on radar installations and bases of the British police.

On May 28, 1948, less than two weeks after the creation of the state of Israel on May 15, the provisional government created the Israeli Defense Forces which would succeed the Haganah.