"Volunteering for the British Army in World War II"

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During World War II, many of the Jewish communities in Israel volunteered for the British army to participate in the war against Nazi Germany. The settlement saw itself in these circumstances as an active ally of the United Kingdom (UK), and during the war, 38,000 Jews volunteered to serve in the British army, the largest number in relation to the general population of the United Kingdom at the time, serving approximately 431,000 people.

The attitude of the leadership of the settlement to the service of the British army was expressed in the words spoken by the outbreak of the World War, by the management of the Jewish Agency, which was the official representative of the Jews of the Land of Israel:

Volunteers and reservations

In the midst of the war, the President of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, announced on 29 August 1939, to the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: The Jews stand for the Great Britain. The Jewish Agency is ready and ordered to immediately open arrangements for the exploitation of Jewish human power, technical capacity, means and so on...” hence, the end of the war has done everything in its power to promote the recruitment of Jews in general and of the Land of Israel in particular, as such, to the service of the Allied armies.

The British were less enthusiastic. On September 2, 1939, Chamberlain responded politely that he was happy to accept the promise of his letter, but "they will not wait to hear from me at the present stage more than that of your spiritual promises of public devotion are made willing." A few days before the outbreak of the war, Archibald Wewell (Wavell), the commander of British forces in the Middle East, to Lord Gort, the head of the Imperial General Staff, warned that the Jewish opportunism should be taken advantage of the British cliff to promote... The establishment of a Jewish army in Israel... In the supervised outline of help for the British war effort.”

The British government was reluctant to raise the following reasons:
The Nazi propaganda claimed that the Jews were the war's worsens. The existence of Hebrew units in the British army could have strengthened this.
The commander of the British army’s forces claimed that 40,000 Jewish soldiers from the Land of Israel would harm the delicate sectarian sect that exists in Israel, whose name has now ended in suppressing the Great Arab Rebellion, especially in light of British policy in the White Book, which supported the establishment of a state with an Arab majority.
It was feared that the Jews who were trained to be soldiers could in the future be the nucleus for an independent Jewish army that could fight against the British army.

But despite the lack of enthusiasm, Britain’s difficulties in the war, and the need for human power, technical services, anduxiliary services – especially in a remote region from Britain, whose population is at a low technological and educational level, an area that sometimes the connection between it and Britain was difficult – led to mobilise the growing numbers of Jews from the land of Israel, to more and more of the British army.

Immediately with the outbreak of the war, at the end of 1939, the national institutions of the Jewish community proclaimed a commander who expressed the willingness of the settlement to join the war in the German enemy. 40,000 young men stood in the commander and expressed willingness to join the British army and fight its ranks – under a Hebrew flag. Moshe Cheroke, head of the political department of the Jewish Agency, is that he initiated the plan for mass mobilization for the British army.

In the summer of 1941, doubts were rejected. The German army attacked the Soviet Union, and was on its way to the conquest of the Suez Canal – the life artery of the British Empire. Italy, which had a special interest in the Mediterranean, also entered the war. In the Land of Israel, the lawsuit was renewed, in mass, to the British army. In the face of the Zionist leadership to the British, it is said: “Before the victory, the Jewish Land of Israel may be in jeopardy danger. “If we are forced, we have the right to meet in war.” National institutions have declared the recruitment order of singles