| Haganah | |
|---|---|
| הַהֲגָנָה | |
| Dates of operation | 1920-1948 |
| Merged into | "Israel" Defense Force |
| Allegiance | Zionist Entity |
| Motives |
|
| Ideology | Zionism |
| Allies | Irgun Stern Gang United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (sometimes) |
| Opponents | Palestine |
| Battles and wars | Palestinian genocide |
Haganah was a Zionist terrorist organization in British-occupied Palestine established in 1920. It played a major role in the Palestinian uprisings of 1929, 1936, the Nakba and the Village Files, becoming a large part of the Israeli Occupation Force after the State of "Israel" was established in 1948, with its leader, David Ben-Gurion, later becoming prime minister of the illegal colonial entity.[1]
Formation and purpose
The Haganah, literally meaning "defense" (הֲגָנָה) in Hebrew, was established in 1920. After 1936, under the influence of Orde Charles Wingate, a British official who understood the necessity of forming a military force to take Palestine by force, it quickly became the military wing of the Jewish Agency, the embryonic Zionist government in Mandatory Palestine.[2] It was used to protect Zionist settlements bought by the JNF, Jewish National Fund, from absentee landlords and to attack, demoralize and break the Palestinian resistance.[3]
Village Files
During the Mandatory Period, Ben-Zion Luria, a young historian from the Hebrew University, proposed that the JNF conducted a program of reconnaissance on Palestinian villages, known as the "Village Files", using the Haganah for scouting missions. These files contained quite a lot of information, such as a topographic map of the village population, soil fertility, sociopolitical composition and whether the village had helped the Palestinian resistance during the 1936 uprising.[4] To make the files even more detailed and useful, aerial photos were also taken with the help of the most talented photographers in the country, often being the last remaining evidence of the existence of Palestinian villages that were completely destroyed due to ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Zionist Entity.[5]
References
- ↑ Maher Charif (2023). Roots of Zionist Terrorism.
- ↑ Ilan Pappé (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: 'Chapter 2; Military Preparations' (p. 15). [PDF] Oneworld Publications. ISBN 9781851685554 [LG]
- ↑ John Bierman; Colin Smith (1999). Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia and Zion, vol. Book 2: 'Chapter 6'. [PDF] Random House. ISBN 9780375500619 [LG]
- ↑ “The surveys include general and verbal information about the villages. For example, number of inhabitants, the land and its use, the clans, the village mukhtar and also about security issues: how many weapons the residents possessed and of what type,
whether the village assisted the gangs during the troubles and which of the villagers
joined the gangs. in the first years of the surveys project, historical information about
each village was also compiled: when it was founded, whether it was located on an
ancient site and contained antiquities, where the inhabitants came from.”
Rona Sela. "Scouting Palestinian Territory, 1940-1948: Haganah Village Files, Aerial Photos and Surveys" Archived from the original on 29 January 2024. Retrieved 8 June 2024. - ↑ “In retrospect, the Village Files (charts, sketches, drawings, maps and ground
photographs), the textual surveys and the aerial photographs in some cases constitute the only surviving/most recent testimony of the existence of Palestinian villages, just before they were forcibly emptied of their inhabitants. They are the last remaining vestiges of the villages before they were either destroyed or settled by Jewish immigrants who streamed into the country in its first years; villages which were erased from the Israeli map because of their Arab identity.”
Rona Sela. "Scouting Palestinian Territory, 1940-1948: Haganah Village Files, Aerial Photos, pand Surveys" Palestine Studies. Archived from the original on January 29 2024. Retrieved 8 June 2024.