Haganah

Based on Wikipedia: Haganah

In a Warsaw warehouse, abandoned in haste, sat five hundred Mauser rifles. Their intended recipient—a clandestine Jewish army operating in British Palestine—would never receive them. The man who'd arranged their purchase, Yehuda Arazi, had fled to France just ahead of British pressure on the Polish government to shut down the entire operation. Those rifles represented just a fraction of what Poland had secretly funneled to Jewish paramilitaries: thousands of guns, ten thousand grenades, two million bullets, even two airplanes and two gliders.

Why was Poland arming Jews in Palestine? And how did a ragtag collection of farmers guarding kibbutzim become, in less than three decades, what British intelligence considered the most powerful military force in the Middle East after the British Army itself?

This is the story of the Haganah.

From Watchmen to Warriors

The Haganah—Hebrew for "The Defense"—wasn't created from nothing. It evolved through a chain of predecessors, each slightly larger and more sophisticated than the last, like a series of nested Russian dolls stretching back to the early 1900s.

First came Bar-Giora, founded in September 1907. It was barely an organization at all—just a handful of Jewish immigrants in Ottoman Palestine who guarded settlements for an annual fee. Think of them as a very small, very ethnic security company.

Bar-Giora transformed into Hashomer (literally "The Watchman") in April 1909. Hashomer was deliberately elitist; it never had more than a hundred members. These weren't conscripts or volunteers—they were ideologically committed Zionists who saw themselves as the tip of the spear for Jewish self-defense in a hostile land.

Then came World War One, and everything changed.

For the first time, Jews fought as identifiable Jewish units in a modern army. The Zion Mule Corps and the Jewish Legion served under British command—a development that would prove both blessing and curse in the decades to come. Jews gained military experience and legitimacy. They also learned exactly how unreliable imperial powers could be as protectors.

The Birth of the Haganah

The lesson came brutally home in April 1920.

The Nebi Musa riots—named after a Muslim pilgrimage festival—saw Arab mobs attack Jewish residents of Jerusalem's Old City. Five Jews died, over two hundred were wounded. The British authorities, who had just received a League of Nations mandate to govern Palestine, seemed unwilling or unable to protect the Jewish community.

The Yishuv's leadership—Yishuv being the term for Palestine's Jewish community—drew the obvious conclusion. In June 1920, they founded the Haganah.

Its first commander was a twenty-eight-year-old named Yosef Hecht, a veteran of the Jewish Legion. The organization he led was barely worthy of the name "military." Haganah "units" were local, poorly coordinated, and laughably underequipped. They consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms and kibbutzim with whatever weapons they could scrounge.

For nearly a decade, the Haganah remained in this primitive state—more neighborhood watch than army.

The 1929 Transformation

Then came the 1929 Palestine riots.

The violence was catastrophic. In Hebron alone, sixty-seven Jews were massacred. The ancient Jewish community there—which had existed for centuries—was essentially destroyed. Across Palestine, one hundred thirty-three Jews died and three hundred thirty-nine were injured.

The Haganah's response was dramatic expansion. What had been a loose network of local guards became something approaching a real military organization. Nearly all youth and adults in Jewish settlements joined, along with thousands from the cities. The organization began acquiring foreign weapons—no longer just scavenged hunting rifles but actual military hardware. They set up workshops to manufacture grenades and simple military equipment.

An untrained militia was becoming an underground army.

The Doctrine of Restraint—and Those Who Rejected It

With growth came politics. The Jewish Agency—the quasi-governmental body representing Palestine's Jews—increasingly controlled the Haganah. And the Jewish Agency had a policy: havlagah.

Havlagah means "self-restraint." In practice, it meant the Haganah would only defend Jewish communities. No counterattacks against Arab villages. No preemptive strikes. No offensive operations of any kind.

Many Haganah fighters despised this doctrine. They saw it as defeatism, a failure to understand that sometimes the best defense is a good offense. To them, havlagah meant absorbing punch after punch while refusing to hit back.

In 1931, the more militant elements couldn't take it anymore. They split off to form the Irgun Tsva'i-Leumi—the National Military Organization, usually just called the Irgun. The Irgun rejected havlagah completely. They would attack, not just defend.

This split created a pattern that would define Jewish paramilitary activity for the next seventeen years: the mainstream Haganah pursuing relatively moderate tactics under political control, while breakaway groups—the Irgun and later the even more radical Lehi—conducted their own campaigns. Sometimes the groups cooperated. Sometimes they tried to destroy each other. Eventually, they would all merge into the Israel Defense Forces, but that reconciliation would come only after bitter internal conflicts, including something that looked a lot like a civil war.

The Arab Revolt and Polish Guns

Between 1936 and 1939, the Haganah faced its first sustained military challenge: the Arab revolt in Palestine. Arab guerrillas attacked Jewish settlements, British installations, and infrastructure across the territory.

The Haganah's response showed how far it had come. By this point, the organization could field ten thousand mobilized fighters with forty thousand reservists. The British, who officially didn't recognize the Haganah's existence, found it convenient to cooperate anyway. They created the Jewish Settlement Police and Jewish Supernumerary Police—basically giving legal cover to Haganah members. They also allowed a remarkable British officer named Orde Wingate to form and train Special Night Squads, mixed units of British soldiers and Haganah fighters who conducted counterinsurgency operations against Arab guerrillas.

The battle experience was invaluable. Wingate, an eccentric Christian Zionist who would later become famous for unconventional warfare in Burma, taught the Haganah tactics they would use for decades.

But the Haganah was getting help from another source too—one that seems wildly improbable until you understand the reasoning behind it.

Poland, in the 1930s, had roughly three million Jews—the largest Jewish population in Europe. The Polish government, animated by a mixture of nationalism and antisemitism, wanted most of them gone. A Jewish state in Palestine, they reasoned, would give Polish Jews somewhere to emigrate. So the Second Polish Republic, as a matter of state policy, secretly armed and trained Zionist paramilitaries.

The scale was significant. Haganah envoys received dozens of shipments: 2,750 Mauser rifles, 225 RKM machine guns, ten thousand grenades, and two million rounds of ammunition. Between 1931 and 1937, an estimated eight to ten thousand Haganah and Betar members trained at a Polish military camp in Rembertów, near Warsaw.

The British eventually pressured Poland to stop. But by then, the Haganah had acquired both weapons and, more importantly, the knowledge of how to use them.

The White Paper and the Birth of the Palmach

In 1939, with war approaching in Europe, the British government issued what became known as the White Paper. It was a political document with devastating implications for Zionist hopes.

The White Paper severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine—capping it at seventy-five thousand over five years, then making any further immigration subject to Arab consent. For Jews desperately trying to flee Nazi-controlled Europe, Palestine was one of the few potential refuges. Now Britain was closing the door.

David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency and the most powerful figure in Yishuv politics, formulated the response: "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."

It was a masterpiece of political ambiguity. The Haganah would cooperate with Britain against the Nazis. But it would also systematically violate British law to bring Jews to Palestine.

This illegal immigration—known as Aliyah Bet—became one of the Haganah's core missions. Over the following decade, they brought approximately one hundred thousand Jews to Palestine on more than one hundred ships, evading the Royal Navy's patrols and running the British blockade.

At the same time, anticipating that the British might eventually withdraw or be pushed out, the Haganah created a new elite unit. On May 14, 1941, the Palmach was born.

Palmach was an acronym for Plugot Mahatz—"strike companies." Its members, young men and women, received intensive training in guerrilla tactics, sabotage, and commando operations. They were the Haganah's special forces.

The Palmach had an unusual economic model. Its members spent half of each month working as kibbutz volunteers—essentially agricultural labor—and the other half training. This allowed the Haganah to maintain an elite fighting force without the massive expense of a full-time military. By 1947, the Palmach had grown to about two thousand fighters organized into five battalions—small, but exceptionally well-trained and highly motivated.

The War, the Brigade, and the Aftermath

During World War Two, some thirty thousand Palestinian Jews served in the British Army. The most significant unit was the Jewish Brigade Group, finally authorized in 1943 after years of lobbying. It was the first time an exclusively Jewish military unit served under its own flag—the blue and white Star of David that would become Israel's national symbol.

The five-thousand-strong Brigade fought in North Africa and Italy. Its members gained invaluable experience in conventional military operations. And they established contacts throughout Europe that would later prove crucial for weapons acquisition and smuggling Holocaust survivors to Palestine.

When the war ended, the Haganah expected the British to lift the White Paper restrictions. Six million Jews had just been murdered. Surely now Britain would open Palestine to the survivors.

Britain refused.

The restrictions stayed in place. Holocaust survivors who tried to reach Palestine were intercepted by the Royal Navy and deported—sometimes to detention camps in Cyprus, sometimes back to Europe. The Haganah, which had cooperated with Britain throughout the war, now turned its weapons against its former ally.

The Jewish Resistance Movement

In 1945, the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi formed an unprecedented coalition: the Jewish Resistance Movement. The three organizations, which had spent years at each other's throats, agreed to operate under joint command against the British.

The campaign that followed combined terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and civil resistance. The Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing ninety-one people—the deadliest attack of the entire conflict. The Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State for the Middle East. The Palmach blew up bridges on the Night of the Bridges and raided the Atlit detention camp to free over two hundred illegal immigrants.

But the Haganah's most sophisticated contribution operated almost entirely in secret.

Beneath a kibbutz called Ayalon, Haganah engineers had built an underground bullet factory. The kibbutz itself was established specifically to provide cover for the facility. Above ground, settlers worked the land and hosted British inspectors who never suspected what lay beneath their feet. Underground, workers produced millions of rounds of ammunition for the coming war.

By this point, British intelligence estimated the Haganah's strength at seventy-five thousand men and women on paper, with an effective fighting strength of thirty thousand. Its budget had grown from four hundred thousand pounds in 1946 to 3.3 million pounds by October 1947—a massive sum representing about seven percent of the entire Jewish population of Palestine as contributing members.

The Saison: Jews Against Jews

Not everything the Haganah did during this period was directed at the British. In one of the most controversial episodes in pre-state history, the Haganah turned against its own people.

After Lord Moyne's assassination in 1944, the Jewish Agency decided the Lehi and Irgun had become liabilities. Their terrorism was alienating British sympathy at exactly the wrong moment. The Haganah was ordered to take action.

What followed was called the Saison—Hebrew for "hunting season." Haganah operatives kidnapped Irgun members, interrogated them, and in some cases turned them over to the British authorities. The future Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek was later revealed as a liaison officer who passed information to the British leading to numerous Irgun arrests.

The Irgun could have fought back. Its members were furious. But their commander, Menachem Begin—who would later become Prime Minister of Israel—ordered restraint. He refused to let the conflict between Jewish factions become a full civil war. His members obeyed, though many resented it bitterly.

The Saison eventually ended when the futility of cooperation with Britain became obvious even to the Jewish Agency. The three organizations formed the Jewish Resistance Movement shortly afterward. But the wounds took years to heal, and the political rivalry between their successor movements—the Haganah's descendants becoming the Israeli Labour Party, the Irgun's becoming Likud—would define Israeli politics for generations.

From Underground Army to National Defense

In November 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Arabs rejected the plan. Civil war erupted immediately.

The Haganah came into the open for the first time, no longer pretending to be anything other than what it was: the military force of the Jewish community in Palestine. In the months that followed, it fought and largely defeated the Arab militias opposing the partition.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel. The very next day, armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded.

The Haganah had been preparing for this moment for nearly thirty years. Within weeks, it was reorganized and merged with the Irgun and Lehi to form the Israel Defense Forces—the IDF. The underground army had become a national one.

The evolution was complete: from Bar-Giora's handful of guards, to Hashomer's elite hundred, to the Haganah's tens of thousands, to the IDF. What started as a few immigrants protecting farms had become the military of a sovereign nation.

Legacy and Lessons

The Haganah's history illuminates several uncomfortable truths about nation-building.

First, self-defense organizations in conflict zones rarely stay defensive for long. The Haganah was founded to protect Jewish settlements from attack. It ended up conducting offensive operations, running an illegal immigration network, and fighting both Arabs and British. The line between defense and offense, protection and aggression, proved impossible to maintain.

Second, imperial powers make unreliable protectors. The Jewish community in Palestine learned this lesson repeatedly—in 1920, in 1929, in 1936, and most devastatingly during the Holocaust when Britain refused to open Palestine's doors. The Haganah's entire existence was premised on the idea that Jews could only rely on themselves for protection.

Third, underground movements are almost impossible to control once started. The Jewish Agency tried to keep the Haganah on a moderate course. It partially succeeded—but the price was constant splits and the emergence of more radical groups. Those groups eventually had to be reabsorbed, but the process was bloody and the scars lasted for decades.

Finally, the Haganah demonstrates how sophisticated clandestine organizations can grow from almost nothing given sufficient motivation and time. In 1920, it was farmers with hunting rifles. By 1948, it was an army with an industrial base, foreign weapons supplies, trained commanders, and a coherent doctrine. The transformation took twenty-eight years—a single generation.

Whether you view the Haganah as freedom fighters or as a paramilitary organization that helped displace another people depends largely on your perspective on the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But its effectiveness is undeniable. It accomplished what it set out to do: it defended the Yishuv long enough for that community to become a state, and then it became that state's army.

Those five hundred rifles abandoned in Warsaw never reached their destination. But the movement they were meant to serve didn't need them in the end. The Haganah found other sources, built its own capacity, and ultimately prevailed. The underground army became the army—and the rest is history.