Although there has been much academic interest in assorted aspects of the history of the Haganah, the paramilitary organization of the Jewish community in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. "Old Yishuv" refers to the Jewish community prior to 1882; "New Yishuv" to that following 1882.Yishuv, the subject of women in that organization has not yet merited an in-depth study, despite the considerable contribution of women in the Haganah during the struggle to establish the State of Israel. The present article is based on interviews conducted with some 30 women from various sectors of the population, who were active in the Haganah. The overall treatment of the various orientations among the women stems from, among other things, the information that emerged from these interviews.

The role of the women members of the Haganah evolved in accordance with the changing nature of the organization as it adapted to the shifting demands of reality. From an emphasis on individual service by selected volunteers, the group metamorphosed into a popular, broad-based organization. The women as well shifted from safeguarding the property and security of local communities to preserving inter-community networks, escorting convoys, and securing transportation routes. The women of the Haganah took part in the struggle against the British Mandatory authorities and the organization of the Lit. "ascent." A "calling up" to the Torah during its reading in the synagogue.Aliyah Bet “illegal” immigration in Palestine and abroad. They joined in the fight against the Germans in World War II and also participated in the War of Independence. They were frequently forced to confront physiological limitations, preconceived notions and human difficulties, for the most part simply because they were women. But they received no special concessions. In order to expand their spheres of activity, they were compelled to convince commanders of their worth, to constantly prove themselves, to display determination and stamina. It was only after strenuous effort and much hardship that they succeeded in carving out new areas for themselves, including those considered to be strictly masculine domains: firefighting; overseeing the secret weapons caches (slikim); engaging in combat, and so forth. It should be noted that even when the women managed to gain a foothold in masculine areas of involvement, they were still obliged to fulfill their traditional roles; their new roles did not come at the expense of the old, but rather in addition to them. Such was the dual function of the women: to hold a rifle or fireman’s hose in one hand, and a pot or broom in the other.

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A sizeable number of women members joined the Haganah in a circuitous manner, by way of other organizations; from there, it was only a short road to the Haganah. As Zvia Fine recounts: “I joined the Haganah while I was still in Karkur, in 1933. When I moved to Rishon le-Zion, I joined a communications unit of the Haganah. I got my start in a first-aid group. The group was set up as part of Ha-Po’el [sports organization] under the guise of first aid for sporting activities” (Peleg, 733). Other ways of joining the Haganah were through the Civil Guard; through recruitment in schools, for example the Alliance school; and through Elizur, a sports organization for religious young people that operated in a number of cities (girls in the organization also asked to volunteer for patriotic missions).

Another major source of Haganah recruits was Hagam (an acronym for Expanded Physical Education). The idea for the program first took shape at the Reali School in Haifa, on the initiative of the school’s principal, Dr. Arthur Biram. The riots of 1936 prompted an expansion of activities. In 1937 Hagam training became compulsory for girls in the upper grades (until then, only the boys had been required to participate). For the boys, mandatory classes were added in field exercises and other forms of defensive sports. Male and female students at the Reali School took part in guard duty, attended to the wounded and assisted in the work of firemen and auxiliary police. With the help of Reali graduate Ya’akov Dori (the Haganah commander in Haifa and with the establishment of the State the first chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces), the Reali School unit—consisting of male and female students together with their commanders—was incorporated as a separate platoon within the Haganah. A special program was formulated for the students, their curriculum and activities being determined in consultation with the school. In May 1939, with the massive awakening of the Yishuv in response to the British White Paper, the Zionist General Council of the Yishuv decided, at its session of June 8, 1939, “to implement an expanded program of physical education in all schools, starting with the 1939/40 school year” (Halperin, 246).

In late 1940 the Haganah High Command decided to establish youth battalions also in the form of Field Units (Heil ha-Sadeh, or Hish). The purpose was to absorb young people, both male and female, students and workers, who would receive training in preparation for entering active duty in the Field Units at age eighteen. The Gadna (Hebrew acronym for “youth battalions”) program itself, which had already been in existence since 1936, consisted of units between the ages of fourteen to seventeen where young men and women were trained in communications, signaling, etc.

Acceptance into the Haganah depended largely on personal impressions, but there were also various objective criteria. In the organization’s early days there was a tendency not to accept members under the age of twenty. At a meeting of the city commanders in 1927, it was decided that membership should be limited to those aged eighteen and above and that no more than twenty-five percent of the total membership should be under the age of twenty. This decision was never implemented. Young people always constituted the majority of Haganah members. The primary method of recruitment was through personal acquaintance with the candidate. In the early days of the organization, when there was not yet any formalized acceptance procedure, it was simpler and more convenient to rely on the recommendations of members who had already proven themselves. An additional precondition was the ability of the candidate to adhere to the Haganah’s strict code of secrecy. The candidate’s family background was also a factor; the young woman’s family was observed and its political/underground activities were “graded”; any Communist leanings, even on the part of a relative, were considered a definite shortcoming.

Motivations for joining the Haganah were identification with the nation and the homeland, family norms, social norms, the Arab riots, personal factors and feminine motives.

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Until 1929 the women members nationwide were organized in separate groups without any clearly defined plan. After that date, they continued to provide first aid, serve as couriers, receive weapons training and assist in transporting weapons to their destination—a situation that persisted until World War II. As stated, the entire issue of women’s participation in the Haganah was wrapped in uncertainty. The women gradually worked their way into an active role without any guidelines from Haganah headquarters. In addition to transporting arms and providing first aid, they engaged in assorted domestic tasks and kitchen work to which women were tied “by tradition.” Many of the women members felt that it was their job to send the men out into action and greet them upon their return, in the meantime managing to cook and clean for the exhausted “boys” coming home from the battlefield. This may explain the connection between the image of the women in their own eyes and those of the men—as mothers and caregivers seeing to their every need—and their negligible representation in the senior command posts, even in the spheres of activity in which they constituted the majority.

The women of the Haganah can be divided into two groups: the first (which included the bulk of the women) consisted of those who were satisfied with the auxiliary duties they performed. They internalized the masculine perception that designated them for service roles while simultaneously expecting them to keep up the young men’s spirits and the general morale—a function that the women readily accepted. By serving as mother figures, they instilled a feeling of warmth and hominess in the military camps: they insisted that the men wear clean clothes, made sure to turn down the bed when the men returned from combat, placed a chocolate under their pillow and welcomed the men home from battle with a steaming cup of tea or coffee, a smile and a hot meal. They encouraged the men when they went into battle and when they came back, and helped them return to a state of normalcy, of sanity. The women valued their own work and even if they sometimes felt left out, they believed that their contribution was important.

The second group consisted of the small number of women who did not resign themselves to the traditional roles and who demanded more combat missions. Nyuta Halperin, the commander of the women’s battalion in Tel Aviv, recounted that there were female commanders who were fighters by nature, like Hemdah Osio. Osio argued that the women needed to constantly demand and insist, and not content themselves with being treated nicely by central command or Tel Aviv headquarters. She believed it was necessary to initiate assignments and demand training rather than relying on what was decided for the women by others. In her view, this approach proved effective.

The few women who were not satisfied with service roles were forced to fight for the right to take part in combat. They demanded the right to full participation in all training exercises with all types of weapons, in addition to being included in military operations. In some cases the women fulfilled their goal, proving their worth as fighters and later as commanders. The majority of them passed through all the stages of training, displaying an impressive willpower that helped them overcome the obstacles of the grueling training process. But this was still insufficient to convince their male counterparts that they were suited to be full partners on the battlefield. The fears for their fate should they fall into the hands of the ruthless Arab enemy; the belief of Ben-Gurion, Yisrael Galili and others, that these were the mothers of the next generation; the lack of cooperation on the part of commanders who demeaned their abilities—and perhaps also the masculine need for the glory of victory, the incessant praise for their sacrifice, the constant encouragement of the women—combined to prevent women from realizing themselves in a field where they felt they had much to offer: the battlefield. The exclusion of women from combat roles was frustrating and painful, especially after they had gone through so much training and were in a state of advanced combat readiness.

Even the few women fighters who were “granted” a male assignment—that is, a combat role—understood that their post was only temporary and that when the crisis was over they would return to being ordinary women, with all that that entailed. In time of battle, their womanliness was obscured: their similarity to the male warrior was manifest not only in their outward appearance, i.e., the military uniform, but in their adoption of a lower speaking voice and other male practices. This led to a loss of their feminine identity in the eyes of the men. In general, the women made a point of dressing in a sloppy, careless manner, without fuss or attention to their appearance (another reason for this was that one of their primary functions was to conceal weapons under their clothing). But the women of the Haganah and the Palmah also made use of their femininity when necessary; in fact, this was their primary role in some cases: to be “ordinary” women in the eyes of the British, women who would not be suspected of involvement in questionable activities. True, there were some who disguised themselves as men so as not to be separated from their comrades-in-arms, but this phenomenon was not widespread. On the contrary, most women of the period used their womanliness as a tool for advancing the cause of the Haganah.

In terms of the male assessment of woman’s role, the preference was for women to engage in service rather than combat roles. The men were much more appreciative of a woman who held a cup of tea in her hand than of one who scrambled from peak to peak holding a STEN gun. The presence of women on the battlefield was problematic not only because the members of the Haganah and the Palmah were unenthusiastic about such a move but because of its potential impact on the Arab enemy, who would supposedly be inflamed at the sight of a woman fighter, as Yona Golani, a member of the Palmah, attested. Women were sent into battle at the discretion of the local field commander. Whether or not they made it to the front was determined by their degree of success in convincing the commander that they were worthy and capable of taking part in, and contributing to, the fighting. In the view of the women, the later decision to keep them off the battlefield led to their exclusion from combat tasks and the preservation of their inferior status on the home front, in service occupations. This decision in fact substantiates the assessment that the acceptance of women in combat roles at an earlier point was only a temporary emergency measure.

Many of the women made great efforts to prove that they were physically fit for battle and could carry out all the men’s duties. It was clear to the women that any failure on their part would gradually affect their right to continue their service in the Haganah and Palmah and would prove to the opponents of women’s inclusion in the Haganah that their opinion was justified. For this reason, the women made super-human efforts not to fail or break down. As Hadassah Avigdori relates: “I was the only woman among twenty men and in addition to my weapon I had to drag along a first-aid pack, canteens and a stretcher. … I exert the last of my strength not to fall behind the boys. Rushing up this steep incline is beyond my powers, but I must make sure that no one notices my weakness because afterwards there’ll be talk and complaints about the girls. … Musa politely offers his help, which I decline with exaggerated pride. I must not provide a pretext [for criticism] against the girls.”

“I swear that in the next war married women will not serve—at least not on the same battlefields as their husbands,” Yigal Allon remarked to Rina Dotan, when the latter recounted the difficulties of a woman on the battlefield along with her husband, whose life was in constant danger. His comment proves that there was no unequivocal decision to remove women from the front during the War of Independence. While there was a directive from Ben-Gurion on the subject, it was not always enforced and the matter was frequently subject to the discretion of individual commanders. If the commanders were opposed to women in masculine roles, they would obviously not agree to include women in combat activities. If, on the other hand, they (like Yizhak Sadeh, David Elazar [Dado], Rehavam Ze’evi [“Gandhi”] and others) did not support the approach that women were better off in the kitchen or solely in service occupations—or even if they were simply aware of the desperate need for manpower—the women had a chance of serving in a male role, on the battlefield.

It should be noted that many commanders later underwent a major change of heart on the subject of women’s involvement in combat. The opinion of such commanders as Uri Ben-Ari, Jimmy (Aharon Shemi) and others shifted from one extreme to the other after they witnessed the devotion of the women and their contributions on the battlefield. The decision to totally remove women from the battlefield became an established fact only after the War of Independence. Yigal Allon was unaware when he made his remark that in the next war not only married women but also women in general would not go into battle. Thus the attitude toward women in combat can be reduced to the following principles: Motherhood took priority over security needs; it was just as important as active participation in the war effort because of the lofty goal of survival of the nation. If women were being mobilized in any event (since not all of them were mothers), they were generally directed towards rearguard positions so as to free the men for the battlefield. In times of emergency, there was a greater openness and flexibility regarding the placement of women in masculine positions, in accordance with the opinion of the individual commander.

Did the ideology of equality of the Second Aliyah pioneers find expression in women’s inclusion in the Haganah and the Palmah? The answer to this question is that not only the women of Ha-Shomer (an earlier Jewish self-defense force, founded in 1909) were surprised to discover that the promised equality was only pretty words on paper; the women of the Haganah and the Palmah also came to realize that equality was an important principle—but not a realistic one.

One must, however, be wary of applying the concepts of present-day feminism to the Palmah generation. The very fact that the women were there at the battle positions and command posts, where they combined their traditional roles with combat duties, symbolized, for them, the ideal of equality. The sense of inclusion and camaraderie, of personal contribution to the best of their ability—sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice—gave the women the feeling that they had carried out their mission to the fullest. Even those who held that the equality being offered them was imperfect, and that there existed a gap between reality and the expressed commitment to equality between the sexes, avoided engaging in criticism. Amid the storm of battle and the need for full-scale national involvement, they did not preoccupy themselves with questions of equality and did not protest the traditional roles allocated to them. At the same time, there were individual women who were interested specifically in being included in military operations; when they encountered male opposition, they were left with the bitter taste of the mythical equality.

The psychologist Erik Erikson stated that one of the primary hallmarks of ideology is “The tendency at a given time is to make facts amenable to ideas, and ideas to facts, in order to create a world image convincing enough to support the collective and individual sense of identity” (Hazelton, 22). In other words, although the women proved themselves daily, the men’s opinion regarding the role of women did not change; they continued to believe that women should fill service positions only. And since the bulk of the women engaged in these occupations, they have been neglected by researchers and their contribution virtually ignored by the history books. For since when do people write of the unsung heroes who toil behind the scenes? Nor has much been documented about the women fighters themselves. “People generally speak of the male fighters; the role of the women is not referred to. They were truly few in number—maybe one per division, on average. But perhaps that is why the story of the women fighters has not been told” (Savorai, 116). While the myth of the woman on the battlefield in 1948 is known to every child in Israel, no one can say what they actually did there.

In addition to the fact that history has not devoted much space to such trifles as the service occupations filled by women in the Haganah, the women themselves did not seek publicity. As Nyuta Halperin, commander of the women’s brigade in Tel Aviv, puts it: “We did not know how to make ourselves stand out. In general, the work did not involve earthshaking events, and we were raised on the value of privacy, on the notion that some things are better left unsaid” (Davar, 1984).

But despite their silence, the women’s role in the Haganah was nonetheless not marginal. They took part in all spheres of activity, from transporting and cleaning weapons, giving training courses, tending to the fighters and engaging in active combat when the occasion arose, to the more monotonous tasks of cooking and cleaning, raising morale through song and encouragement and bringing warmth and interest to the dreary routine of the fighters. It was not only a matter of: “How could we forgo anyone who could bear arms?,” as described by the editor of the Palmah Book, Zerubavel Gilad. The importance of the women went beyond their filling the ranks of the Haganah, which were greatly diminished in battle. Their contribution lay in the fact that they brought a different spirit to the Haganah and the Palmah—a spirit of devotion and sacrifice, courage, willingness to fulfill any task, warmth and gentleness, an attentive ear and the desire to prove themselves and excel at everything. There is no question that without the added impact of the women, the defensive force of the Yishuv would not have succeeded in carrying out its missions with the same degree of success, given the complex reality of the times.

The myth of the fighting women of the Palmah persists to this day. As stated, the number of women fighters in the Haganah and the Palmah was actually very small, and for the most part, their fight was for the right to take part in actual combat; as a result, they could not really have participated in all operations. This myth is fed by yet another myth that still exists, namely, the myth of equality between the sexes in the State of Israel. Those who have contributed to the creation of this myth include historians, sociologists, women themselves, the labor movement and so on. In and of itself, the military role of women in the pre-State period was limited; but it was also merely a way station along the road to their true destiny—tending to the next generation. From this standpoint, Israeli culture is no different from other cultures or, as Lilly Rattok put it so well: “What makes [Israeli culture] unique is only the gap between the flaunting of equality and the insistence that women fulfill their patriotic duty in the fighting forces, on the one hand, and their exclusion in reality from the domain in which the myth of the creation of the state was forged” (Rattok, 298). This myth can have great educational value, especially for those young people unfamiliar with the Palmah generation; but we must nonetheless take pains to ensure historical accuracy and keep the myth in perspective.