Palmach

Today's topic is the Jewish underground before Israel.

Hagenah, Palmach, Ergun, and Lehi.

Before we begin, a tiny apology.

My Hebrew pronunciation may occasionally sound like a confused GPS trying to navigate Jerusalem during construction.

They reflected competing visions about ethics, politics, diplomacy, and nation-building.

Think of family members arguing passionately over Thanksgiving dinner, except everyone happened to be carrying concealed weapons, and history itself seemed hanging in the balance.

One elite branch of the Haganah became famous around the world, the Palmach.

Created in 1941 during the Second World War, the Palmach served as an elite striking force trained for difficult missions requiring exceptional physical endurance, leadership, and initiative.

The Irgun fellas...

And some Palmach people who were in the area, along with some local civilians, began assisting the disembarking procedure.

Right.

So the government instructions hadn't yet come.

matched the reality on the ground because the idf didn't have control of the area yet okay so first off of the ship are all the new immigrants we mentioned last week that there's about 930 new immigrants on the altalena so they basically all disembarked and they're out of the picture they're not part of the story as far as we're concerned um and from now on right all the immigrants are safe they got into israel they're good all the new new immigrants many survivors they all get off right away and they're in israel safe and sound okay we um so they then came the military equipment a significant portion of that was taken off as well but then began a dispute of who is going to control it once it was taken off.

At this point, the Palmach people and the Israeli civilians pulled back and stopped taking ammo off of the El Telena.

It was just the Irgun people doing it.

As we mentioned, the IDF did not initially have many troops in the area, and that the main outcome of the cabinet meeting that evening was to establish a military presence in the area of Kfar Vitkin Beach, where the Alta Lena was then unloading.

You know, if they say you're gonna spare these people and, and, and just cast them out into the desert, you know, to burden Arab forces, you know, with a desperate and now de-housed civilian population, you're gonna do that.

But what you will not do is refuse orders and question orders, uh, um, you know, related to the operational implementation of, of Plan D. Um, the Palmach, um, they were the special operations element of Haganah.

Um, their orders, um, their, uh, the Palmach consultancy, sort of like their general staff, they met at Ben-Gurion's home to finalize directives, um, personally.

Their orders were more clear and less euphemistic.

Quote, "The principal objective of the operation is the destruction of Arab villages and the eviction of the villagers, that they would become an economic liability for the general Arab forces." Um, and finally, the operation was novel because it's, uh, it was the first operation in which all the various Jewish military organizations like, you know, those constituted of indigenous Oriental Jewry, those constituted of the Ashkenazim, you know, those, uh, um, of Haganah, of Irgun, you know, those of, you know, the Stern Gang and what have you.

So look where we've come, everyone, from 1917, when Lord Balfour, people like him, people like Ord Wingate, I don't know if you know that name, Ord Wingate, he was a British officer, who was a Christian who loved the Bible and he loved the Jewish people.

He actually taught himself Hebrew, from even biblical Hebrew, and he trained up a lot of Jewish groups like the Palmach, like the Lehi, like the Stern Gang.

who actually were under the ground during the British Mandate period from 1917 to 1947.

Jewish people had to go under the ground.

Before we even relate the entire story from beginning to end, it's worth mentioning that that part of the story is made up and never happened.

Um, what was Rabin's role in the Altalena story? We'll see as we develop the story, because he was in Tel Aviv that day, and he was the senior officer of the Palmach, but he certainly was not the one who gave the order to blow up the Altalena or to shoot at members of the Irgun.

So what did he do and what did he not do? We'll have to see later on.

But I just wanted to say that at the outset, because I think that's a very entrenched myth as part of the story.

The main and largest of these militias was the Haganah.

The Haganah was the, was the mainstream, we'll call it, the largest, the best armed, the best trained, I guess.

The Haganah had an elite commando strike force called the Palmach.

That was essentially an independent fighting force from the Haganah.

And it basically is a legal, it's a classification that provides a certain kind of legal toolkit that allows the state to do as it wishes with these fighters.

We have to understand that if we look at Zionist history, then Lehi, Etzel, Haganah, Palmach, they're all unlawful combatants, okay? They're all unlawful combatants.

And of course, the Palestinians that were fighting in the 1936-39 rebellion were unlawful combatants.

The unlawful combatants is the one that's not fighting at the behest of a state.

It had a government, the Jewish Agency, and Va'ad Leumi.

It had a military, the Haganah and Palmach.

It had an economy, a banking system, a labor federation that controlled a huge share of economic activity.

It had schools, hospitals, courts, a university.

A civil service.

The Jewish Agency had departments for immigration, settlement, finance, foreign affairs, education, a military.

The Haganah, with the Palmach as its elite strike force.

A labor federation, the Histadrut, which wasn't just a union but an employer, a health provider, a construction company, a food distributor.

And I'll show you what I mean, but let's first look at the Alta Lena story and try to understand why the ship was fired upon.

We're talking about the war of independence, the 1948 war of independence, when the battle-worn Palmach and the Irgun are standing in the hills of Jerusalem holding off the Arabs, and they have almost no arms or ammunition.

As a matter of fact, if you read the book of Ezra Yechin, El Nakam, when he describes the battle for Yerushalayim, they had to take into account every bullet that they shot.

They didn't have any ammunition.

Now, I could tell you that Ben-Gurion invented this fear, if it was only around the Altalena Affair.

But shortly after the Altalena Affair, Ben-Gurion decided to dismantle the Palmach.

The Palmach was the best unit of the Haganah.

Because they were associated with the other, uh, stream of ideology, the, let's say, the more socialist or even communist part of the political, uh, spectrum in Israel.

The Palmach was associated with the Mapam and Ahdut HaAvoda.

Those parties were, uh, in line with the Soviet Union.

So Ben-Gurion said, "I don't want the Palmach," and he dismantled the Palmach also.

So I would say that in the eyes of Ben-Gurion, it was important, I believe, I truly believe, that it was important to set a lesson that in the new state, especially because, you know, the newcomers came from all corners of, of Earth, yeah? From Iraq, Yemen, Poland.