Grandma's army

THE INTERVENTION OF WORLD POWERS IN ISRAEL’S WARS From the end of World War I, both the US and the UK played a significant role in Israel’s struggle for Independence. The isolationist  policy which the United States exhibited towards Israel prevented any significant relations being fostered – even before the War of Independence. The exception was the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgentau, who sympathised with the plight of the starving Jewish population in the Old Yishuv. It was due to his efforts that Jewish organisations abroad established a special Fund, which eventually became the JOINT. Following WWI, and the forming of the British Mandate in Palestine, relations between the US and the Palestinian Jews were weakened even further. The only activities which remained were the Jewish Hadassah medical establishment and the recruiting of funds by the Zionist organization in America. With the Nazi persecution of the Jews in the end of the 1930’s, the US a...

  THE ORIGINS OF “GRANDMA’S ARMY” - II Once World War I came to an end, the British gained control over the Land of Israel as part of the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which divided the Middle East between the British and French. By the beginning of 1919, the three   Jewish battalions numbered over 5,000 men After the victorious end of the Palestine campaign, the name "Royal Fusiliers" was changed to " Judean Regiment ". Its insignia became a menorah  with the Hebrew  word " kadimah " (“forward”), and all officers and men at the front wore a Magen David on their sleeves. The actual strength of the Legion could have been more than twice as large. Applications for enlistment came from several countries; 1,500 volunteered in Salonika; in Italy 2,000, Transylvanian prisoners of war applied to be enlisted; the "Mountain Jews" from Dagestan in the Caucausus sent emissaries offering all their youth. The number of those who were allowed to actuall enlis...

After the outbreak of WWI,  Zeev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor submitted a resolution to the commander of British forces in Egypt, asking him to form a Jewish Legion, and propose to England its usefulness in Palestine. The commander told his Zionist visitors: "Under the law I am not entitled to accept foreigners into the British army. I can offer you only one thing: to form a mule transport unit from your young people and send it to a different Turkish front". In April 1915  “the Zion Mule Corps ”, so named by its commander Colonel John Henry Patterson, sailed from Egypt to Gallipoli. It consisted of 562 mostly Palestinian Zionists, five British officers, eight Jewish officers and 750 mules. As the Zion Mule Corps was the only transport unit on the peninsula, it was soon involved in transporting water, ammunition, food and other supplies to the front lines - under heavy fire. Probably, this was the first purely Jewish fighting corps that went into action since Jerusal...