Predictive History

Zionist Paramilitary Organizations

6 min read

Zionist Paramilitary Organizations

Core idea: The ethnic cleansing of Palestine was executed by four interconnected paramilitary organizations — the Haganah, the Palmach, the Irgun, and the Stern Gang — whose ideological spectrum ranged from pseudo-socialist Labor Zionism to openly fascist revisionism that sought alliance with Nazi Germany, yet all converged on the same operational goal: the forcible removal of the indigenous population to create an exclusively Jewish state.

The Haganah

Established in 1920, the Haganah (Hebrew for “defence”) was the principal paramilitary organization of the Jewish community in Palestine. Ostensibly created to protect Jewish colonies, it was in reality the military arm of the Jewish Agency and the Zionist governing body in Palestine. Under the influence of British officer Orde Wingate, who taught aggressive combat tactics during the 1936 revolt, the Haganah transformed from a defensive militia into an offensive military force capable of executing plan-dalet.

The Haganah had an intelligence unit founded in 1933, which supervised the preparation of the village-files and established a network of spies and collaborators inside Palestinian communities. By 1948, the Haganah had approximately 30,000 fighting troops out of a total force of 50,000, supported by a small air force, navy, and units of tanks and armored cars. It received a large shipment of heavy arms from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, giving it artillery unmatched by all the Arab armies combined.

During the ethnic cleansing, the Haganah, Palmach, and Irgun were unified into a single military force that became the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) after the state’s declaration.

The Palmach

Founded in 1941 as the Haganah’s elite commando unit, the Palmach was originally created to assist the British army against the Nazis. Its members quickly directed their zeal against the Palestinian rural areas. From 1944 onwards, the Palmach was also the main pioneering force in building new Jewish settlements. Its members were highly active in the ethnic cleansing operations in the north and centre of the country before being dismantled in the autumn of 1948.

The Palmach was commanded by Yigal Allon, who became one of the most aggressive voices in the-consultancy, pushing for collective punishment “even if there are children living in the attacked houses.”

The Irgun (Etzel)

The Irgun split from the Haganah in 1931 because its members considered the Haganah’s methods insufficiently aggressive. Organized by adherents of revisionist Zionism — the right-wing current that demanded the Jewish state encompass both Palestine and Trans-Jordan — the Irgun’s emblem showed a map including both territories. Led by Menachem Begin in the 1940s, the Irgun developed its own aggressive policies toward both the British presence and the local Palestinian population.

A prominent revisionist Zionist newspaper in the 1930s assessed Nazism as having “both a shell and a kernel. The anti-Semitic shell is to be discarded, but not the anti-Marxist kernel.” When Hitler rose to power in 1933, the same newspaper celebrated him among “shining names” alongside Kemal Ataturk and Benito Mussolini, claiming “Hitler has still not caused as much evil as Stalin has.”

The Irgun was responsible for the deir-yassin-massacre and was later absorbed into the newly founded Israeli army, where its units were sent to complete operations the Haganah considered questionable. Israeli military commanders described the Irgun’s Qiryati Brigade as consisting of “lesser quality soldiers” — a reference to its predominantly Mizrahi Jewish composition.

The Stern Gang (Lehi)

The Stern Gang was an offshoot of the Irgun, splitting from it in 1940. It went further than any other Zionist organization in its pursuit of alliances with fascist powers. The Stern Gang sought an alliance with Nazi Germany more than once, proposing to create a Jewish state based on “Nationalist and totalitarian principles” that would be linked to the German Reich. The offer included providing military cooperation in exchange for Nazi support for Jewish emigration to Palestine.

The Stern Gang assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator, in September 1948 for demanding the unconditional return of Palestinian refugees. Together with the Haganah and the Irgun, the three organizations were united into one military army during the Nakba, although they did not always act in coordination.

The Haganah-Nazi Connection

The connections between Zionist organizations and Nazi Germany extended beyond the Stern Gang. The Jewish Agency struck a deal with the Nazis known as the Transfer Agreement (Haavara), circumventing a Jewish boycott of Germany. A Haganah representative met with German intelligence agent Adolf Eichmann — later an architect of the Holocaust. In exchange for providing information about alleged “Jewish plots against prominent Nazis,” the SS would help push German Jews toward Palestine exclusively, blocking their emigration elsewhere. The Haganah representative reportedly thanked Eichmann for supplying the Haganah with guns and ammunition that were used against Palestinians during the 1936-arab-revolt.

The Field Guard (Hish)

After the Haganah, Palmach, and Irgun occupied villages, they were often transferred into the hands of the Field Guard (Hish), the logistics arm of the Jewish forces established in 1939. Some of the worst atrocities accompanying the cleansing operations were committed by these auxiliary units during the post-occupation phase.

United in Purpose

Despite their ideological differences — Labor Zionism vs. revisionist Zionism, pseudo-socialism vs. open fascism — all four organizations converged on the same operational imperative. The distinction between “left” and “right” within Zionism was, as Pappe demonstrates, primarily a difference of tactics and speed rather than goals. operation-nachshon was the first operation where all Jewish military organizations acted together as a single army, providing the operational basis for the future IDF.

Key Insight

The spectrum of Zionist paramilitary organizations — from the “socialist” Haganah that met with Eichmann to the Stern Gang that offered alliance with Nazi Germany — proves that the ethnic cleansing was not the project of one faction but the consensus of the entire Zionist political spectrum, with every organization, regardless of ideology, converging on the same goal of removing the indigenous population.

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