Shimon Avidan
   HOME
*





Shimon Avidan
Shimon Avidan ( he, שמעון אבידן; February 7, 1911 – September 11, 1994), born Siegbert Koch ( he, זיגברט קוך), was an Israeli soldier and officer, the commander of the Givati Brigade during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Born in Germany, he moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1934, and lived on Kibbutz Ayelet HaShahar and then Ein HaShofet He fought with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Avidan is also known for his activities in the Palmach in World War II. He led the "German Unit" of the Palmach, which was responsible for conducting guerrilla operations against the Axis powers. In 1945 he commanded the Saison operation against the Irgun and Lehi. During the 1948 war he was the operational commander of Operation Nachshon, Operation Barak, Operation Pleshet and Operation An-Far. His troops also fought at Nitzanim as well as joining Operation Death to the Invader and Operation Yoav. He resigned from the army after, according to Chaim Herzog, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Palmach
The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , ''Plugot Maḥatz'', "Strike Companies") was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach was established on 15 May 1941. By the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units. With the creation of Israel's army, the three Palmach Brigades were disbanded. This and political reasons compelled many of the senior Palmach officers to resign in 1950. The Palmach contributed significantly to Israeli culture and ethos, well beyond its military contribution. Its members formed the backbone of the Israel Defense Forces high command for many years, and were prominent in Israeli politics, literature and culture. History The Palmach was established by the Haganah High Command on 14 May 1941. Its aim was to defend the Palestin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Mandatory Palestine
Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. During the First World War (1914–1918), an Arab uprising against Ottoman rule and the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force under General Edmund Allenby drove the Ottoman Turks out of the Levant during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign. The United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence if the Arabs revolted against the Ottoman Turks, but the two sides had different interpretations of this agreement, and in the end, the United Kingdom and France divided the area under the Sykes–Picot Agreementan act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs. Further complicating the issue was t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Beersheba
Beersheba or Beer Sheva, officially Be'er-Sheva ( he, בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע, ''Bəʾēr Ševaʿ'', ; ar, بئر السبع, Biʾr as-Sabʿ, Well of the Oath or Well of the Seven), is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the centre of the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in Israel, the eighth-most populous Israeli city with a population of , and the second-largest city in area (after Jerusalem), with a total area of 117,500 dunams. The Biblical site of Beersheba is Tel Be'er Sheva, lying some 4 km distant from the modern city, which was established at the start of the 20th century by the Ottoman Turks. The city was captured by the British-led Australian Light Horse in the Battle of Beersheba during World War I. The population of the town was completely changed in 1948–49. ''Bir Seb'a'' ( ar, بئر السبع), as it was then known, had been almost entirely Muslim and Christian, and wa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Rishon LeZion
Rishon LeZion ( he, רִאשׁוֹן לְצִיּוֹן , ''lit.'' First to Zion, Arabic: راشون لتسيون) is a city in Israel, located along the central Israeli coastal plain south of Tel Aviv. It is part of the Gush Dan metropolitan area. Founded in 1882 by Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire who were part of the First Aliyah, it was the first Zionist settlement founded in the Land of Israel by the New Yishuv and the second Jewish farm settlement established in Ottoman Syria in the 19th century, after Petah Tikva. As of 2017, it was the fourth-largest city in Israel, with a population of . The city is a member of Forum 15, which is an association of fiscally autonomous cities in Israel that do not depend on national balancing or development grants. Etymology The name Rishon LeZion is derived from a verse from the Tanakh: "First to Zion are they, and I shall give herald to Jerusalem" ) (Isaiah 41:27) and literally translates as "First to Zion". History Ottoma ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres (; he, שמעון פרס ; born Szymon Perski; 2 August 1923 – 28 September 2016) was an Israeli politician who served as the eighth prime minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996 and as the ninth president of Israel from 2007 to 2014. He was a member of twelve cabinets and represented five political parties in a political career spanning 70 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and except for a three-month-long interregnum in early 2006, served as a member of the Knesset continuously until he was elected president in 2007. Serving in the Knesset for 48 years (with the first uninterrupted stretch lasting more than 46 years), Peres is the longest serving member in the Knesset's history. At the time of his retirement from politics in 2014, he was the world's oldest head of state and was considered the last link to Israel's founding generation. From a young age, he was renowned for his oratorical brilliance, and was chosen as a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion ( ; he, דָּוִד בֶּן-גּוּרִיּוֹן ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first prime minister of Israel. Adopting the name of Ben-Gurion in 1909, he rose to become the preeminent leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1935 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, which he led until 1963 with a short break in 1954–55. Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and executive head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946. As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the ''de facto'' leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led its struggle for an independent Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine. On 14 May 1948, he formally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, and was t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Chaim Herzog
Major-General Chaim Herzog ( he, חיים הרצוג; 17 September 1918 – 17 April 1997) was an Irish-born Israeli politician, general, lawyer and author who served as the sixth President of Israel between 1983 and 1993. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Dublin, the son of Ireland's Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935 and served in the Haganah Jewish paramilitary group during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt. He returned to Palestine after the war and, following the end of the British Mandate and Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948, fought in the Battles of Latrun during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He retired from the Israel Defence Forces in 1962 with the rank of major-general. After leaving the military, Herzog practised law. In 1972 he was a co-founder of Herzog, Fox & Ne'eman, which would become one of Israel's largest law firms. Between 1975 and 1978 he served as Israel's Permanent Representative to the United N ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lehi (group)
Lehi (; he, לח"י – לוחמי חרות ישראל ''Lohamei Herut Israel – Lehi'', "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi"), often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang,"This group was known to its friends as LEHI and to its enemies as the Stern Gang." Blumberg, Arnold. History of Israel, Westport, CT, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 1998. p 106."calling themselves Lohamei Herut Yisrael (LHI) or, less generously, the Stern Gang." Lozowick, Yaacov. Right to Exist : A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars. Westminster, MD, USA: Doubleday Publishing, 2003. p 78."''It ended in a split with Stern leading his own group out of the Irgun. This was known pejoratively by the British as "the Stern Gang' – later as Lehi''" Shindler, Colin. Triumph of Military Zionism : Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right. London, GBR: I. B. Tauris & Company, Limited, 2005. p 218."''Known by their Hebrew acronym as LEHI they were more familiar, not to say notorious, to the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Irgun
Irgun • Etzel , image = Irgun.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = Irgun emblem. The map shows both Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan, which the Irgun claimed in its entirety for a future Jewish state. The acronym "Etzel" is written above the map, and "raq kach" ("only thus") is written below. , dates = 1931–1948 , country = Yishuv, Mandatory Palestine Israel , type = Paramilitary (pre-independence) Unified armed forces (post-independence) , role = , size = , battles = Arab Revolt in PalestineWorld War II *Anglo-Iraqi War *Syria–Lebanon Campaign Jewish Revolt in Palestine Palestine Civil War1948 Arab–Israeli War , disbanded = 11 June 1948 , commander1 = , commander1_label = , commander2 = , commander2_label = , commander3 = , commander3_label = , notable_commanders = Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Avraham Tehomi, Menachem Begin , identification_symbol = , identification_symbol_label = , identification_symbol_2 = , identification_symbol_2_label ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

The Hunting Season
The Saison (Hunting Season) ( he, הסזון, links=no, short for ) was the name given to the Haganah's attempt, as ordered by the official bodies of the pre-state Yishuv, to suppress the Irgun's insurgency against the government of the British Mandate in Palestine, from November 1944 to February 1945. History At the outbreak of World War II the Yishuv was torn between its fight against the British for free Aliyah and a Hebrew state, and the desire to join them against Nazi Germany. The Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion called to "fight the war as if there was no White Paper and fight the White Paper as if there was no war". Indeed, by 1940, the Irgun ceased its activities against the British mandatory regime and sent its men to assist the British in several missions, one of which, in May 1941, resulted in the death of its commander, David Raziel, in Iraq. In 1943, as the tide was shifting in favor of the Allies, the Agency decided to assist the British in any possib ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Axis Powers
The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Empire of Japan. The Axis were united in their opposition to the Allies, but otherwise lacked comparable coordination and ideological cohesion. The Axis grew out of successive diplomatic efforts by Germany, Italy, and Japan to secure their own specific expansionist interests in the mid-1930s. The first step was the protocol signed by Germany and Italy in October 1936, after which Italian leader Benito Mussolini declared that all other European countries would thereafter rotate on the Rome–Berlin axis, thus creating the term "Axis". The following November saw the ratification of the Anti-Comintern Pact, an anti-communist treaty between Germany and Japan; Italy joined the Pact in 1937, follow ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]