At fourteen Mordechai joined the Haganah, the Jewish community’s underground military organisation. It was in the years when, with the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936, the Haganah began taking in teenagers for signals and communications units. At the age when teenagers today start high school, he was already a member of the underground. Eleven years later, aged 25, he commanded a company in the battle for al-Qastal.
A fork in the road
Fourteen years old, and an underground that needs every pair of hands.
Take the teenagers in
The price: Schoolchildren in an organisation the British were hunting.
Wait until they grow up
The price: A community with no army left with fewer defenders in the years of the riots.
And what happened?
The community chose the first. A whole generation grew up in the youth units and the Gadna, and he was among the first of them.
Sources (2)
- Mordechai Gazit — Hebrew Wikipedia Biography
- Haganah Heritage — Gadna (Hebrew) Biography
Israel and the world
A generation raised in the underground
The Jewish community had no army, and the Haganah relied on teenagers too. With the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936, youth units for ages 14 to 17 were set up alongside it, for signals and communications. In 1941 they were brought together as the Youth Battalions, the Gadna.
In rural settlements almost every boy and girl from 14 belonged, and in the War of Independence it numbered some 18,000 young people. The youngest, aged 12 to 14, helped with communications, fortifications and hospitals.
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