Sublime

The evocative name Yung Yisroel signified the “youth” and newness of the group, its desire to be part of the newly forming Israeli culture, and its links to the modernist Yiddish literary movements that blossomed throughout the first half of the twentieth century in Europe and America.

Consequently, once America did get into the war—an action Roosevelt knew was necessary years before Pearl Harbor, as conquest of America was one of the final phases of the Nazis’ larger plan—domestic hatred for Jewish people found expression in the lie that Americans were fighting for the Jews while Jews stayed at home and relaxed.

On September 19, 1939, the general staff of the Haganah was founded. Well before a Jewish state was established, a well-organized Jewish army was raised. The Arab revolt was over, but the Jewish community in Palestine made the formative decision to organize a national military structure. Twenty months later, on May 15, 1941, the Palmach Strike