Hagana

Following the end of World War II, the British refused to lift the restrictions on Jewish immigration that they had imposed with the 1939 White Paper. This resulted in the Haganah leading a Jewish insurgency against the British authorities in Palestine; the campaign included the paramilitaries' bombing of bridges, railways, and ships used to deport illegal Jewish immigrants fleeing The Holocaust, as well as assisting in bringing more diaspora Jews to Palestine in defiance of British policies. After the adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, the Haganah came into the open as the biggest fighting force among the Palestinian Jews, successfully overcoming Arab militias during the Palestinian civil war. After the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, the Haganah became the new nation's military force. Shortly after Israeli independence and the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Haganah was merged with other paramilitary groups and reorganized into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).