field_section_text_value

field_section_text_value

The first “official” conscription of women to the Palmah was in May 1942. The first six companies, totaling 600 fighters, included 60 women, one patrol per company. Henceforth, women were recruited to the Palmah, first only on an individual basis and later also as part of the Hakhsharot ha-Meguyassot. At the time of the War of Independence, when its numbers reached their peak, the Palmah had 6,000 recruits, of whom 1,000 were women. As was the case for all the organizations and bodies of the Yishuv, membership in the Palmah was voluntary. In 1988, a meeting of veteran women members was entitled “I went because a voice called.” Nevertheless, it is worth detailing just what that voice said to the individual members, and not just to the group as a whole.

What emerges from a series of interviews conducted by Ayah Savorai in 1984 and 1985 is a variety of motives, the chief among which was indeed a response to the call. Others were the spirit of voluntarism, a desire to defend the homeland, a desire to rescue European Jewry (through serving in the Yishuv units of the British forces fighting Nazi Germany), impatience with an imposed passivity, and a search for adventure. One distinct group among the Palmah women was that of members of the Hakhsharot ha-Meguyassot, for whom “togetherness” was an important element in their participation. Just as in the case of the male members of the hakhsharah (“preparation,” name for agricultural programs and training centers that prepared young Jews for Lit. "ascent." A "calling up" to the Torah during its reading in the synagogue.aliyah), their joining the Palmah had been a collective decision, which involved a certain degree of “acceptance of the collective” rather than personal choice. They stressed the strong connection to the group and their order of priorities—first the kibbutz and then the Palmah, and obedience to the movement’s decisions. Young women from religious families, as well as Holocaust survivors, also joined the Palmah.

All the motives have certain elements in common in that they reflect the yearnings and inclinations of both young men and women to pursue a great vision, one which instills a sense of importance and maturity; to experience adventures; to court danger; to be part of a group; or to escape from an authoritarian and protective home.

Things were far more complex for two other groups of recruits: those young women who sought to realize their desire for equality and to prove to themselves and to those around them, especially the men, their abilities and talents, not necessarily just on the battlefield; and those who joined the Palmah in order to engage in combat, just like the men, on the grounds of total equality between the sexes and out of a readiness to undergo the most stringent of tests in order to achieve that goal.

Some of the women argued that equality did not necessarily involve sameness; women could, as on the kibbutz, perform equally important but different tasks, although some might well be capable of joining the men in combat. Thus women could be trained in topography and the use of small arms. The fact that they were not involved in combat should not relegate them to an inferior status.

Most of the individual women who joined the Palmah in 1942 and 1943 did so in order to train for combat alongside the men. Their physical and emotional investment, their high expectations both of themselves and of their surroundings are evident in their memories, even many years later, when some of them recall those times with pride and satisfaction, while for others the memories are tinged with frustration, disappointment, and pain.

In later years, similar goals motivated some of the members of the Hakhsharot ha-Meguyassot, who rejected both the “feminine” image that their male colleagues sought to impose on them and the traditional division of labor in times of war, when men went to the front while women stayed, helpless, in the rear. This differentiation may have been unacceptable because of the experience of World War II, in which the civilian population was severely affected and the distinction between battlefront and the home front, between combatants and the protected, became irrelevant. Or perhaps it was the struggle of women to be involved in guard duties during the riots of 1936–1939, when they refused to accept their role as the protected and the passivity imposed on them by the men. However, the prime—and most recent—influence was that of the women who had volunteered in the British army and who now, in 1946, had returned home with accounts of their experiences in wartime, even if these did not include combat duty.

Gradually, the notion of women’s participation in fighting became normative. One justification given for this by some women was the need to protect the home and the family, but others spoke specifically of a desire to participate in the main battle itself, as combatants and in no other role. For most of the women their choice of the Palmah stemmed from two sources: one was the feeling that they were joining a body that was fulfilling an important national function, highly esteemed by the Yishuv leadership, while the other was the sense of distinctiveness they felt in serving there as women. The resulting tension between consensus and non-conformity invested their choice with special value.

field_section_text_value

When the Hakhsharot ha-Meguyassot joined the Palmah in 1943, the proportion of women rose from ten to approximately 30 percent and a completely new non-selective sector was introduced, who joined not as “individuals” but as a group, not necessarily out of a desire to serve in the Palmah but simply because this was the result of their decision to join a hakhsharah. Their impact on women’s status and duties proved considerable.

While Ha-Mahanot ha-female/sing.; individual(s) who immigrates to Israel, i.e., "makes aliyah."Olim youth movement was the first to discuss joining the Palmah, the first movement to do so was the No’ar Oved, four groups of which joined between March and July 1943. Their entrance into this elite Palmah framework was not a success; the young women, in particular, were distressed by their inferior status. In 1943 the Palmah approved the proposal of the Kibbutz ha-Meuhad leadership to accept each hakhsharah in its entirety as a group composed of both men and women, without removing anyone or adding other recruits.

Composed of equal numbers of men and women, these groups posed a problem for the Palmah, which preferred a ratio of one-third women to two-thirds men in its companies. Nevertheless, the Palmah acceded to the demands of the hakhsharot, and the predominant element in the memoirs of the hakhsharah women is that of the life “together,” the common background of the youth movement. What was most significant for them was precisely this joint recruitment as a hakhsharah, rather than their joining the Palmah, which was altogether secondary in their estimation. Perhaps it was precisely because the Palmah was less important than joining a kibbutz, that these women were less concerned with participation in training and combat than with being together with their male comrades. They thus fared better socially and so far as morale was concerned even during the War of Independence, accepting women’s non-participation in combat and deriving the most from maintaining contact with their group, being near the fighting men and caring for them.

In the first and third battalions from which the Yiftah brigade was formed in the War of Independence it had so high a proportion of members from the hakhsharot that, in the words of its commander Yigal Alon, “It could have been nicknamed the Blue Shirts Brigade. The significant number of women not only contributed to the physical attractiveness of the brigade but also to improving its morale, strengthening its structure and improving its services. The women even participated in the combat units.” Yet although women constituted forty percent of the brigade, the book dedicated to the brigade which appeared in 1970 had not a single woman among its editors. Only the illustrations bear witness to their presence, yet the very few women contributors to the book stress that they experienced a true fellowship with the men in the war effort and did not perceive themselves as merely an attractive element contributing to maintaining the men’s morale.

In fact, most of the women in the Yiftah brigade largely fulfilled a maternal role, washing and ironing the men’s clothes, preparing the beds for their return, placing a bar of chocolate and a vase of flowers alongside. “They served as fighters, radio operators, clerks, medics, quartermasters, but they were also ‘mothers.’” Every squad had two such “mothers.” The headquarters company was composed primarily of women.

In the entire Yiftah Brigade there were only three women officers—a women’s officer, a welfare officer, and, in the third battalion, a communications officer—and this despite the significant number of women in the battalions who worked in administration, communications, quartermaster’s stores, education, and culture.

The War of Independence brought out most clearly the seemingly insoluble conflict engendered by the intake of the hakhsharot in their entirety: on the one hand, establishing the Palmah as an elite unit and, on the other, including women and physically less able men. The Palmah urgently needed the men, not only because they were the major source of manpower at the time (1943–1944), but also because they were a select group, intelligent and highly motivated. But the men came with their female fellow members and to this problem the Palmah at first had no solution.

The years that elapsed between the first recruitment of the hakhsharot and the War of Independence enabled the transformation of the Palmah into a “recruited youth movement.” The members spent most of their time together in the work camps and training in the kibbutzim in which they were posted. Here the military aspects of their training did not predominate, both because of its underground, partisan, and informal nature and because of the everyday, civilian environment. Although this environment of the kibbutz was inconsistent with the norms and demands of a military unit, it served as a successful breeding ground for the unique social experience of the recruited youth movement.

As for the young women, these years developed within them a great degree of identification with the group of which they were a part—both the close, intimate hakhsharah and the larger Palmah. Thus, when the war broke out, revealing the difference between the expectations and what actually occurred, they were not only unable but also unwilling to engage in open disagreement.

field_section_text_value

field_section_text_value

Regardless of whether or not they had previously served on an equal basis with men, the status of women in the Palmah changed completely during the War of Independence: they were excluded from combat and confined to supporting roles. The Palmah Book contains an admission of the dimensions of the problem: since no attempt was made to exploit the women’s abilities, their very participation in the brigade became questionable. Many of the women found themselves with nothing at all to do. This was especially culpable given the shortage of manpower, which could have been supplied by the women. It was not so much the feelings and responses of the women that concerned the commanders as the shortage of manpower should they leave the Palmah completely.

Some of the women responded by proposing different, less “aggressive” roles for themselves: defense duties, communications, guard duty, accompanying convoys, training, and administration, all of which could easily be transferred to the women without making them feel that they had no role to play or that they were somehow inferior to the men. In fact, women had been accompanying convoys to Jerusalem since December 1947, apparently at the initiative of individual companies rather than because of official policy. There was also a difference between the Yiftah Brigade, in which most of the women were from the hakhsharah, and the Harel Brigade, where most were “individuals.” In the latter, women did engage in more active combat duty, including clearing the road to Jerusalem.

Only in August 1948 was more serious attention given to the women’s role in war and the need for special training for their tasks as adjuncts in supplying services rather than in combat. However, women still received military training, in order to maintain their enthusiasm, while greater stress was laid on the importance and value of work of any kind. To the women of the hakhsharot and others who had joined the Palmah more out of a desire for “togetherness,” the changes were wholly acceptable, but those who had aimed at equal opportunity and equal status underwent a considerable crisis as they attempted to reconcile themselves to the new reality. They consoled themselves by stressing the importance and even the essential nature of services. Combat might be important, but even soldiers had to eat, dress, wash, and be part of a society, and so far as facilitating these activities was concerned, the women had a vital role to play. Ironically, however, the historiography of war in general focuses solely on the military activities, thus entirely ignoring women’s participation.

Comparatively few women refused to reconcile themselves to their inferior status as non-combatants, continued to fight for their right to be included and even succeeded in their struggle, but it was precisely their experience that helped to create the myth of Palmah women’s role in combat. In the early years of statehood this myth had incredible educational value, but the time has come to re-evaluate it.

The ambiguous role of women in the Palmah is best expressed in illustrations in two of the Yiftah journals of 1949. While one is a sketch entitled “The Palmah Girl” which shows a young woman with a kerchief on her head, wrapped in an apron and with a broom in her hand, the other is a cover photograph of a young woman with stocking cap, holding a sub-machine gun, leaning against what seems to be an armored car, smiling as in a “posed” portrait.

Six years of joint living and training together, even if in separate groups, intended to prepare them for joint service, years in the course of which women participated in various military actions, were not enough to eradicate the traditional differentiation of the tasks respectively suited to the two sexes. The war denied women the choice which had seemed so real when they first joined the Palmah and which had indeed existed, in one form or another, until the war began.