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| יום הזיכרון התש"ף: 100 שנה לארגון ההגנה Memorial Day 2020: Haganah Organization Centennial |
The Haganah -- Haganah is Hebrew for "defense" -- was founded in June 1920 as the military wing of Ahdut HaAvoda, the Zionist-socialist labor party, and in 1930 came under the control of the Jewish National Institutions. It was the largest Jewish underground paramilitary organization during the British Mandate period and constituted the basis upon which the Israel Defense Forces was formed after Israel declared independence in 1948. The raison d'etre of the Haganah and its tricky relationship with the British government are summed up in the minisheet's release notes, written by historian Mordecai Naor:
The main objective of the Haganah was to safeguard the life and property of every Jew living in Eretz Israel. Its troops were trained clandestinely, preparing them for the struggles of the day with the Arabs and (at times) the British, as well as for the purpose of serving as a defensive shield for the future Jewish State.1As the Jewish population in British Mandatory Palestine grew and spread, increasingly frequent and deadly confrontations with various Arab communities made it clear to the Jews that a coordinated and centralized defense force was needed. In particular, Arab attacks on Tel Hai in January and March 1920 and an attack by a Muslim mob against Jews in Jerusalem in April demonstrated that the British could not be counted on to maintain order. As for the British, they at times supported, at times were indifferent to, and at times cracked down on the Haganah's activities.
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| בול שבעים לארגון ההגנה 1990 "Hagana 70th Anniversary" stamp |
The images featured in the minisheet's three stamps are colorized adaptations of the following archival photographs:
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| Haganah fighters in Jezreel Valley, 1948 |
The British government's 1939 White Paper, which the Jewish population in Mandatory Palestine saw as a betrayal of commitments articulated in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, accelerated the Haganah's development into a full-fledged de-facto army. By the mid-1940s, the Haganah had all the structural components of a national armed forces, including a clear command hierarchy, specialized training programs for new recruits and officers, and a homegrown weapons manufacture industry. One of the Haganah branches that would go on to play a crucial role in Israel's War of Independence was the Field Corps (Hebrew: חיל השדה), whose assignments included patrols, ambushes, raids, and securing vital transport routes. The Golani and Givati infantry brigades familiar from today's IDF have their origins in Haganah Field Corps units of the same name.
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| Erecting a guard tower at Kibbutz Masada, 1937 |
The Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, whose aim was to abolish the British Mandate and establish an Arab state in its stead, effected a profound change both in British policy toward the Mandate's Jewish population and in the strategy adopted by the Jews in pursuit of their own state. While the British came down hard on the Arabs in quashing the revolt, the 1939 White Paper issued by the British government in the revolt's aftermath was largely a capitulation to Arab demands. The Jews, who had some idea of where the revolt was leading, were faced with a choice: respond to Arab aggression by going on the offensive, which would further antagonize an already overburdened British administration, or let the British and Arabs have at it and hope that staying out of the revolt's way would yield them political dividends later. Rather than fight fire with fire, the Haganah was instructed by the Zionist leadership to follow the second approach and exercise self-restraint. With reports of imminent territorial partition intensifying, the Haganah's orders were to direct its resources to laying claim to as much land as possible. Some fifty new settlements were established by the Haganah during the revolt, followed by some ninety more between 1939 and 1947. The British had already declared the establishment of new Jewish settlements illegal, but a holdover law from the Ottoman years stipulating that structures with a roof could not be destroyed without formal legal proceedings spared the settlements demolition. A plan to partition the Palestine Mandate was ultimately adopted by the United Nations in 1947, by which time the Jews were in possession of substantially more land than they would have been were it not for the Haganah's efforts.
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| SS United Nations arrives in Nahariya, 1 January 1948 |
Jewish immigration to the Holy Land during the British Mandate period occurred on two contemporaneous levels: legally, i.e. within the parameters set by the British administration, and illegally, i.e. without official documentation and without having obtained prior consent. The socialist-led Zionist establishment was initially opposed to the arrival of Jewish immigrants whose entry was not coordinated in advance, fearing they would disrupt the economy and culture of the local Jewish society and undermine the establishment's authority vis-a-vis Britain. Owing to British restrictions, the number of immigration certificates the Zionist leadership could allocate to Jews seeking resettlement in the Holy Land was limited, and that bred a system of prioritization that some Jewish groups felt was unfairly selective and preferential to the detriment of their communities overseas. The Revisionist movement was one such group. It championed the cause of illegal immigration and organized transport for Jews first through Lebanon and Syria and later via sea. Even as the situation of Jews in Europe deteriorated with Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the mainline Zionist leadership would not waver in its opposition to illegal immigration. The turning point came with the events of 1938's Kristallnacht, at which time the urgency of rescuing Jews could no longer be reconciled with the British restrictions -- especially as no comparable restrictions were ever placed on Arabs migrating to the Mandate. In 1938-1939 the Mossad LeAliyah Bet was formed as a branch of the Haganah and tasked with facilitating the illegal immigration of as many imperiled Jews as possible, not only from Europe but from Arab countries where Jewish communities were also under threat. In Europe, this task involved arranging transport vessels, gathering Jews at designated ports, supplying them with basic necessities for the voyage, and taking measures to minimize the risk of detection by British forces upon approaching Palestine. Ships intercepted by British forces were either fired upon, sent back to sea, or had their passengers deported or interned locally.
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| HaHagana St. in Jerusalem Photo: Amir Afsai (19 April 2020) |
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