Before and After World War I How Jewish Self Defense Developed

 Nadene Goldfoot  

                                                                

                              Our First 1909 Jewish Defense Force:  Hashomer

Our 1st Aliyah from Europe was in 1880.  The term "1st Aliyah" generally refers to the first major wave of Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine, which occurred between 1882 and 1903. This period, also known as the Agricultural Aliyah, saw an influx of approximately 25,000-35,000 Jewish immigrants, primarily from Eastern Europe and Yemen. Motivated by Zionist ideals and fleeing anti-Semitic violence, particularly the pogroms in Russia, these immigrants sought to establish a Jewish homeland. 

Hashomer (The Watchmen), founded in 1909 was a Jewish self-defense organization in Palestine, active in the early 20th century. It aimed to protect Zionist settlements and Jewish agricultural communities from attacks. Images from Getty Images show Hashomer members, often depicted with rifles, guarding settlements.    

They first were commanded by Israel Shochat.  They did 2 things;  defense of Jewish settlements and struggle for the employment of Jewish workers.  They established a few labor settlements during WWI.  After the Allies won which to themwas a British conquest, it worked with the upper Galilee police force and directed selfdefense activities during the riots of 1920-1921.  Its function was later taken over bythe Haganah.                                       

Hajj Mohammed Amin El Husseini (1893-1974) By 1921, the high commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel of the British Government, only Jew in  it, appointed Husseini as Mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Supreme Moslem Council...Little did he understand what Husseini's goals had been  

                                Great Britain in Palestine

• 1917: The Balfour Declaration pledged British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine, sparking growing Arab opposition.
• 1919: Amin al-Husseini began organizing small groups called "fedayeen" to oppose Jewish settlement in Palestine. These groups launched attacks against Jewish farms in the Jordan Valley and Galilee, according to Israel My Glory.
• April 1920: The Nabi Musa riots erupted in Jerusalem. While a British commission report (the Palin Report) blamed both sides, al-Husseini was accused of inciting the Arab crowds, according to Wikipedia. These riots caused damage to Jewish property and resulted in deaths on both sides, according to Wikipedia; and other sources. 

These significant riots and attacks on Jewish homes occurred primarily in the 1920s and later, as Arab opposition to Jewish immigration and land purchases intensified. The first significant riots, which included attacks on Jewish homes, occurred in Jerusalem on April 4, 1920. 

                                                             

                     Haganah June 15, 1920

• Establishment of Jewish Self Defense : In June 1920, the Haganah ("The Defense") was founded. Initially, it was a loosely organized network of local defense groups and continued till 1948 when Israel was declared a country.  They realized that under British administration as they held the 30 year mandate, Jews were not being protected from Arab attacks.  They worked on making it even stronger after the 1929 Arab riots which resulted in a British policy of appeasement of the Arabs.  

The Jaffa riots were a series of violent riots in Mandatory Palestine on May 1–7, 1921, which began as a confrontation between two Jewish groups but developed into an attack by Arabs on Jews and then reprisal attacks by Jews on Arabs. The rioting began in Jaffa and spread to other parts of the country. The riot resulted in the deaths of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs, with 146 Jews and 73 Arabs wounded. total dead, 95                                                  

                            

                     Meanwhile in the United States

The Roaring 20's The social and cultural features known as the Roaring Twenties began in leading metropolitan centers and spread widely in the aftermath of World War I. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of novelty associated with modernity and a break with tradition, through modern technology such as automobiles, moving pictures, and radio, bringing "modernity" to a large part of the population. Formal decorative frills were shed in favor of practicality in both daily life and architecture. At the same time, jazz and dancing rose in popularity, in opposition to the mood of World War I. As such, the period often is referred to as the Jazz Age.  Lots of anti-Semitism developing, here in classes; not allowed in gentile societies, work places, etc.  

The 1929 stock market crash, also known as the Great Crash, was a shock; an extreme sharp decline in US stock market values that took place in October of that year. It is considered a contributing factor to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many committed suicide.  

                             Back In Palestine

                                   

Joseph Vladimirovich Trumpeldor: (November 21, 1880 – March 1, 1920)  died at age 39,   was a Russian Zionist activist who helped organize the Zion Mule Corps and bring Jewish immigrants to Palestine. He was killed while defending the settlement of Tel Hai in 1920 and subsequently became a Jewish national hero

March 1, 1920:  The Battle of Tel Hai was fought on 1 March 1920 between Arab and Jewish forces at the village of Tel Hai in Northern Galilee. In the course of the event, a Shiite Arab militia, accompanied by Bedouin from a nearby village, entered a Jewish agricultural locality of Tel Hai in search of French soldiers. Confusion over the presence of the militias subsequently led to shots being fired and a firefight breaking out. In the aftermath of the fighting, 8 Jews and 5 Arabs were killed. Joseph Trumpeldor, the commander of Jewish defenders of Tel Hai, was shot in the hand and stomach, and died while being evacuated to Kfar Giladi that evening. Tel Hai was eventually abandoned by the Jews and burned by the Arab militia.  total=14 deaths.  

With a national monument in Upper Galilee, Israel commemorates the deaths of 8 Jews, 6 men and 2 women, including Joseph Trumpeldor. The memorial is best known for an emblematic statue of a roaring lion representing Trumpeldor and his comrades. The city of Kiryat Shemona, literally Town of the Eight was named after them.

The 1920 Nebi Musa riots or 1920 Jerusalem riots took place in British-controlled part of Occupied Enemy Territory Administration between Sunday, 4 April, and Wednesday, 7 April 1920 in and around the Old City of Jerusalem. Five Jews were killed and several hundred injured; four Arabs were killed, and eighteen injured; seven Britons were injured. The riots coincided with and are named after the Nebi Musa festival, which was held every year on Easter Sunday, and followed rising tensions in Arab–Jewish relations. The events came shortly after the Battle of Tel Hai and the increasing pressure on Arab nationalists in Syria in the course of the Franco-Syrian War.  9 killed.   Large numbers of Muslims traditionally gathered for a religious procession), which included slogans referencing Zionist immigration and previous confrontations around outlying Jewish villages in the Galilee. The trigger which turned the procession into a riot is not known with certainty.                               

Prince Faisal I bin Husssein would have his hands full with his future citizens.  He had made friends with Chaim Weizmann and had hoped the Jews would help his Arabs learn more from them, but as it was, they would rather be enemies.  

The Arab king of both Iraq and Syria was Faisal I bin Hussein. He first served as King of Syria in 1920, but was ousted by French forces. He then became King of Iraq in 1921, a position he held until his death in 1933. His people's attitude turned him away from the plight of the Jews.                 First Self Defense  1929.

The Faisal–Weizmann agreement was signed by Emir Faisal, the third son of Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, King of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz, and Chaim Weizmann, President of the Zionist Organization on 3 January 1919. Signed two weeks before the start of the Paris Peace Conference, it was presented by the Zionist delegation alongside a March 1919 letter written by T. E. Lawrence in Faisal's name to American Zionist leader Felix Frankfurter as two documents to argue that the Zionist plans for Palestine had prior approval of Arabs.

The Arab-Israeli conflict exploded into its modern manifestation with the Jerusalem riots of 1929, centered around the use of, access to, and ownership of, the Western Wall.

• Evolution of Defense: The 1929 Arab riots triggered a transformation in the Haganah. It expanded, encompassing most Jewish youth and adults in settlements and thousands in cities. The organization implemented training programs, established arms depots, and began underground arms production, says the Jewish Virtual Library.  
•  Jewish self-defense in Palestine began with smaller, local groups like Bar-Giora and Hashomer before the 1920s. The need for a more comprehensive defense system became clear with the Arab riots in the early 1920s, leading to the formation and subsequent expansion of the Haganah as a nationwide, organized force.                                                          
  
                                Avraham 'Yair" Stern, leader of the Irgun
• 1931-1948  The Irgun, officially the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel, was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandatory Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the older and larger Jewish Haganah. The Irgun engaged in armed conflict against both Palestinian Arabs and the British authorities during the Mandate period. 
  
• 1939-1942;  Lohame Herut Israel or   Irgun Tzevai Leumi, known to British as the "Stern Gang."  Yair Stern left the Irgun Tzevai Leumi  in 1939 which he had been leader, because of its refusal to continue anti-British activities in Palestine during World War II.  He formed an underground organization later known as Lohame Herut Israel which carried out acts of sabotage, etc.  Stern was killed by British police while being arrested.                                      
  
  Stanley Goldfoot was chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group.  Born in 1914, he made Aliyah right after high school.  He's my 2nd to 3rd cousin.  I met him at the King David Hotel which it was said he planned to blow up long ago but denied to me.  
  
•    Stanley Goldfoot with first wife and two daughters.  He was born in   May 1914  in Johannesburg, South Africa.    
• It was said he played an important part in the assassination of Count Bernadotte, an operation planned in his apartment. After the assassination he was arrested with other Lehi members and imprisoned in the Jaffa, Akko, and then Jalameh Prisons. After over five months, he was released during the general amnesty. He worked in journalism afterwards, and did business in the US two years. For seven years he co-operated with Dr. Yisrael Eldad  publishing  the Times of Israel, with a circulation of about 50,000 copies in the US and Israel. He published the international edition of Dr. Eldad’s book, The Jewish Revolution. Stanley wrote LETTER TO THE WORLD. (read below)  Stanley lives in Jerusalem with his wife Helen, née Milner. He is the father of three daughters and two sons (including those from previous marriages) and grandfather to seven.
• Resource:
• Letter to the World (in my blog ) https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2023/09/letter-to-world-from-stanley-goldfoot.html
• Letter to the World by Stanley Goldfoot:  https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-letter-to-the-world-from-jerusalem-2019/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_casualties_of_war
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Trumpeldor
• https://lehi.org.il/en/goldfoot-stanley/
• The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aliyah#:~:text=The%20First%20Aliyah%20(Hebrew:%20%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%99%D7%94,had%20grown%20to%20approximately%2055%2C000.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashomer#:~:text=Hashomer%20(Hebrew:%20%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A8%2C%20',Israel%20Giladi%20and%20Mendel%20Portugali.
• https://jewoughtaknow.com/king-faisal-i-bin-hussein#:~:text=King%20of%20Syria%2C%20King%20of,King%20of%20Iraq%20in%201921.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_riots#:~:text=Dozens%20of%20British%2C%20Arab%2C%20and,stabbed%20and%20beaten%20with%20sticks.

1947 Palestine And All The People Living There: Life Before Israel's Birth

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Last Days of the 30 Year Mandate of the British in Palestine

If you were born in 1947, you are 76 years old.  Most young people have no idea of what was going on in Palestine then.  

For the past 1,877 years, from 70 to 1947 CE, the Land was ruled by foreign governments and never by the people who lived in it. 

In a span of  400 years, from 1516 to 1917, the Land was ruled by the Ottoman Empire by dividing it into separately administered districts called Sanjaks or Vilayets.  The Ottomans had no name for the Land as a whole. 

In the past 29 years, from 1918 to 1947, the Land was ruled by the British who called the Land Palestine which had been called this after the Jewish General "Aluf" Bar Kokhba took back Jerusalem in 132 from the Romans, held it for 3 whole years at the embarrassment of the Romans, then died in 135 in the great battle.  Rome was so mad that they named the Land for the Jews' worst enemy, the Philistines.  

Originally, the 30 year British Mandate over Palestine extended to both sides of the River Jordan.  In 1922, Britain partitioned the Mandated territory into Palestine (west of the Jordan) and Transjordan (east of the Jordan.)  The Land in Hebrew is "Eretz Yisrael".  

                            Arab guerrillas

Hajj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini (1893-1974) in 1921 was a big Arab leader, called the Sherif of Jerusalem and the Grand Mufti, appointed by the British, the only Jew-Sir Herbert Samuel, who also chose Husseini for chairman of the Arab supreme Council.   (Oy gavolt!)  He was afraid of losing his high position if Jews entered the country.  So he organized the Arab riots (nicely called 'the Palestine disturbances by the Brits).  For these, he was sentenced to exile in 1937.  He fled to Lebanon, and during WWII, participated in Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup in Iraq before going to Europe where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  After 1948's Israel birth, he set up a short-lived "Palestine Government " in Gaza-which moved later to Cairo, Egypt.  

During the 2nd half of the 19th century, both communities---Arabs and Jews---began to grow.  By 1914, the population of the Land (west of the Jordan) was estimated at 680,000 of whom 85,000 were Jews.  

In 1917, in order to win Jewish support for Britain's First World War effort, the British Balfour Declaration promised the establishment of a Jewish national home in Ottoman-controlled Palestine.  However, the British had also promised Arab nationalists that a united Arab country, covering most of the Arab Middle East, would result if the Ottoman Turks were defeated.

The United Nations (October 24, 1945)  was an outgrowth of the League of Nations(January 10, 1920) . On 15 November 1920, 41 members states gathered in Geneva for the opening of the first session of the Assembly. This represented a large portion of existing states and corresponded to more than 70% of the world's population. A UN Special committee on Palestine composed for statesmen and jurists from 11 member states, recommended the partitioning of Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab States, linked in an economic union, with Jerusalem under international control.  Both times, the Nations voted for Israel to be created.  

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly approved this recommendation by more than the required 2/3 majority.  Both the USA and the Soviet Union supported the resolution. 

The decision of the United Nations was accepted by the Jewish Agency.  It was rejected by the Arab Governments and by Palestinian Arab leaders.  

The 6 months until the termination of the British 30 year Mandate were marked by Arab violence against the Jewish community.  The Arabs attacked to interrupt communications between Jewish towns and villages and, above all, to isolate and conquer Jerusalem.  

Prior to the entry of regular Arab armies into the Land in May 1948, not a single Jewish town or village was captured.  

The British authorities aided the Arabs by handing over to them military bases and equipment.  British officers led the Transjordan Arab Legion.  (The Brits were given the 30 year mandate with the command to help the Jews created their Jewish Homeland.)They saw it differently.  They kept Jews out and allowed Arabs in.                   

The main effort of the Jewish Haganah (meaning defense in Hebrew) was to maintain a corridor to Jerusalem and beat back the Arab assaults on the new western city. This was a secret organization kept from the British for Jewish self-defense because the Brits were not doing it.  It grew out of Ha-Shomer in 1920 and existed until 1948. 

Intensive efforts to strengthen the Haganah followed the 1929 Arab riots which resulted in a British policy of appeasement of the Arabs.  In 1931, the Haganah split and the minority, chiefly right-wing groups, formed a separate organization;  these reunited with the Haganah in 1936 but certain elements remained outside and formed the nucleus of the Irgun Tzevai Leumi. 

      Avraham Stern (December 23, 1907-February 12, 1942, born in Suwalki, Poland-or Lithuania where my Bubba was born. When 18 in 1925, he migrated alone to Palestine. He died at 35.    

Avraham Stern (1907-1942) left the Irgun in 1939-1940 of which he had been a leader, because of its refusal to continue anti-British activities in Palestine during World War II.  He formed an underground organization later known as Lohame Herut Israel.  The British called it the Stern Gang. My 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, was the Chief of Intelligence for it.  They carried out acts of sabotage, etc. Stanley was a writer; wrote "A Letter to the World." Stern was killed by the British police while being arrested. 

Stern spent the rest of the 1930s traveling back and forth to Eastern Europe to organize revolutionary cells in Poland and promote immigration of Jews to Palestine in defiance of British restrictions (this was therefore known as "illegal immigration").

Stern developed a plan to train 40,000 young Jews to sail for Palestine and take over the country from the British colonial authorities. He succeeded in enlisting the Polish government in this effort. The Poles began training Irgun members and arms were set aside, but then Germany invaded Poland and began the Second World War in 1939. This ended the training, and immigration routes were cut off. Stern was in Palestine at the time and was arrested the same night the war began. He was incarcerated together with the entire High Command of the Irgun in the Jerusalem Central Prison and Sarafand Detention Camp.  

The Haganah wasn't idle;  and was strengthened during the 1936-1939 disturbances by the establishment of the Supernumerary Police Force which number 20,000 in 1939.  This force was recruited by the Haganah command and operated as far as possible under its instructions.  

Major General Charles Orde Windgate In September 1936, Wingate was assigned to a staff officer position in the British Mandate of Palestine, and became an intelligence officer. From his arrival he saw the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine as being a religious duty, and immediately put himself into absolute alliance with Jewish political leaders. Palestinian Arab guerrillas had at the time of his arrival begun a campaign of attacks against both British mandate officials and Jewish communities.  Too bad Britain didn't have his outlook.  

 Yitzhak Sadeh (Hebrew: יצחק שדה, born Izaak Landoberg, August 10, 1890 – August 20, 1952), was the commander of the Palmach and one of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel.

At this period, the "special Field companies" were raised by Yitzhak Sadeh and the "Night Squads" established by Charles Orde Wingate (1903-1944). Wingate was a British soldier.  While serving during 1936-1939 in Palestine, he organized formations of Jewish volunteers, known as the Special Night Squads, to defeat Arab terrorist activity.  A keen bible student, Windgate remained an ardent supporter of Zionism to the end of his brilliant military career.  Sadeh (1890-1952) assisted Trumpeldor in founding the Russian He-Halutz movement in 1919 and the following year settled in Palestine.  He became an Israeli labor and military leader. I taught with one of his descendants-a teacher of English in Safed in 1981.

 Joseph Trumpeldor (1880-1920) was going to be a dentist, but volunteered for the Russian army and lost an arm during the fighting in 1904-1905 while a Japanese captive.  He was made an officer and settled in Palestine in 1912.  During WWI he was in Egypt working with Jabotinsky for the establishment of a Jewish unit to fight with the British against the Turks in Palestine.  He helped raise the Zion Mule Corps but this was dispatched to the Gallipoli.  As an ex-Russian officer, Trumpeldor was excluded from the Jewish Legion.  In 1917, he went to Russia to organize Jewish settlement groups for Palestine and from his activity the He-Halutz movement emerged.  In 1919, he returned to Palestine as leader of a pioneer group and unsuccessfully tried to reconcile the antagonisms between the various workers' political parties inside the country.  He organized volunteers to protect exposed Jewish settlements in Upper Galilee and was killed in defense of Tel Hai. 

      Haganah 1942  

The Haganah also executed settlement operations  (Stockade and Tower), organized "illegal" immigration, and even set up its own secret plant for manufacturing equipment. 

The ship, St. Louis, was refused landing in USA in 1939.  The more than 900 passengers of the M.S. St. Louis were denied entry by immigration authorities in multiple countries in the lead-up to the Holocaust.  As the M.S. St. Louis cruised off the coast of Miami in June 1939, its passengers could see the lights of the city glimmering. But the United States hadn’t been on the ship’s original itinerary, and its passengers didn’t have permission to disembark in Florida. As the more than 900 Jewish passengers looked longingly at the twinkling lights, they hoped against hope that they could land.

Most of the ship’s 937 passengers were Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany. Though World War II had not yet begun in the USA, the groundwork for the Holocaust was already being laid in Germany, where Jewish people faced harassment, discrimination and political persecution. But though the danger faced by the passengers was clear, they were turned down by immigration authorities, first by Cuba, then the United States and Canada. For many on the St. Louis, that rejection was a death sentence.

The world’s refusal of the St. Louis’ desperate refugees was a death sentence for 254 refugees—approximately half of the number who had returned to the European continent in 1939. Many who did not die were interned in concentration camps, like Max Korman, who built on lessons learned on the ship to help organize inmates of the Westerbork concentration camp in the Netherlands.

      Haganah 1946-1947:  The ship, Exodus 1947 was formerly the "President Warfield" which carried 4,554 Jewish refugees to Palestine under Haganah auspices.  It was seized by the British in the Mediterranean after a battle in which 3 Jews were killed in July 1947.  The refugees, returned forcibly from Haifa to Port de Bouc, France, refused to land there;  in spite of their resistance they were disembarked at Hamburg, Germany by British soldiers.  The incident did much to swing world opinion against Britain's Palestine policy. 

In 10 months, Israel was born-May 14, 1948.  They died short of 10 months more and then they would have been in Israel.                                                     

      Haganah 1947 

In these conditions, Britain withdrew its last forces from Palestine on May 15, 1948. This ended the spell of more than 1,800 years during which the Land had been governed by aliens.  

1947 was the last year under such dictatorship.   

   Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/film/british-soldiers-deport-exodus-1947-passengers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Sadeh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orde_Wingate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

https://www.history.com/news/wwii-jewish-refugee-ship-st-louis-1939

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/conflict-Palestine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avraham_Stern

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Trumpeldor