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Haganah

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Haganah
הַהֲגָנָה
Dates of operation1920-1948
Merged into"Israel" Defense Force
AllegianceZionist Entity
Motives
  • Establishment of a Zionist ethnostate in Palestine
  • Ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population
IdeologyZionism
AlliesIrgun
Stern Gang
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (sometimes)
OpponentsPalestine
Battles and warsPalestinian 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 and attack missions, as per Plan Dalet.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6]

References

  1. Maher Charif (2023). Roots of Zionist Terrorism.
  2. Ilan Pappé (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: 'Chapter 2; Military Preparations' (p. 15). [PDF] Oneworld Publications. ISBN 9781851685554 [LG]
  3. 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]
  4. “Deir Yassin was a small, pastoral village west of Jerusalem. The village was determined to remain neutral, and as such refused to have Arab soldiers stationed there. Not only were they neutral, they also had a non-aggression pact signed with the Haganah. This, however, did not save it from its fate, as it was in the territory of the Jewish state lined out in Plan D.

    This meant that not only was it to be destroyed and have its population ethnically cleansed, an example needed to be made of it as to inspire terror in the surrounding villages. As a result this massacre was particularly monstrous.

    On April 9th 1948, Zionist forces attacked the village of Deir Yassin under the cover of darkness. The Zionist forces shot indiscriminately and killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in their own homes. The number of those murdered ranges from roughly 100 to over 150, depending on estimation.”

    "Myth: The ethnic cleansing of Palestine was an accident of war". Decolonize Palestine. Archived from the original on May 21 2024. Retrieved 9 June 2024.
  5. “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.
  6. “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.