1941 – A Combatant and a Commander in the Palmach
In the summer of 1941, the Palmach was established, and Yitzhak Rabin was among the first to join its ranks. In 1943, several months after the defeat of the Germans in the Battle of El Alamein, the collaboration between the Haganah and the British army came to an end, and the Palmach needed to finance its activities by working at the kibbutzim. The new arrangement raised concerns in the Palmach lest they become idle, while those joining the British army would play an active role in the war against Hitler. Rabin was among those who stayed in the Palmach and considered the establishment of an independent Jewish force in the Land of Israel as the major task of his generation.
With the expansion of the Palmach and the organizing of military companies in battalions, Rabin was appointed Deputy Commander of the First Battalion.
At the end of World War II, the Yishuv leadership decided upon a new defense policy, which essentially posed a close fight for the achievement of the basic goals of Zionism – aliyah and settlement. In this context, the Haganah initiated the establishment of new settlements as well as illegal Aliyah. The conflict with the British was inevitable: many maapilim ships [illegally bringing refugees from Europe] making their way to the Land of Israel were unable to break through the British blockade. The maapilim, Shoah survivors, were removed from the ships and imprisoned at the Atlit Detention Camp. Rabin was the commander of the force that broke into Atlit in 1945, in the operation to release the maapilim, initiated by the Haganah. The operation was a success. During this operation, Rabin encountered Holocaust survivors, face to face for the first time.
In 1946, the Yishuv leadership decided to take the struggle against the British to the next level, and established the Jewish Resistance Movement, in which the Haganah, the Etzel, and the Lehi movements cooperated. After a series of activities, the British retaliated with a strong hand. On June 29, 1946, in a planned, comprehensive British military operation, preserved in the public memory under the name, Black Sabbath, the Yishuv leaders were arrested, and considerable weaponry was confiscated. Rabin was arrested with his father and sent for imprisonment from which he was released five months later. Immediately thereafter, he was appointed Commander of the Second Battalion of the Palmach. In October 1947, he was appointed as the Operations Officer of the Palmach.
“The Palmach, in its lifestyle, expressed a generation of volunteering sabras. A generation prepared to work to sustain itself. It expressed a type of new Israeli, a figure worthy of being a role model for young people. It was about the need for little to suffice and the same genuine, naïve willingness my friends and I had to sacrifice ourselves for the people.”
