MACHAL Mitnadvei Hutz LaAretz and Aliyah Bet

The establishment of the Jewish state of Israel in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49 happened with the assistance of the MACHAL, war veterans from around the world giving military assistance, and Aliyah Bet, the illegal immigration of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe to Israel. These organizations provided the necessary logistical and personnel support to win the war.

The MACHAL, the acronym for “mitnadvei hutz laAretz” or "volunteers from abroad", consisted of about 3500 men and women from over 40 countries from a variety of social and religious backgrounds who volunteered to fight for Israel in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Many of these volunteers came from Canada and the United States and provided service in all aspects of military operations; the majority however, applied their experience in the air. The American and Canadian contingent of MACHAL formed the core of the Israeli Air Force. These volunteers not only brought their fighting and technical experience and expertise to pilot and maintain the aircraft, but also their connections to suppliers of planes, parts, munitions. The volunteers also trained others to pilot and maintain the aircraft essential to keeping the Air Force aloft. Other volunteers from Canada and the United States applied assisted in other areas, such as, artillery, intelligence gathering, logistics, medicine, naval operations, tactical planning, and numerous other military specialties gained from their experiences in World War II; experiences that the Palestinian Jews did not have.

Prior to and during the war, many volunteers also assisted Israel by serving as crew on the many transport ships that brought Jewish refugees out of Europe against the British restrictions on immigration to Palestine. These illegal transports of immigrants, known as the Aliyah Bet were often conducted in hazardous conditions and threats from British patrols.

This collection was assembled under the auspices of MACHAL volunteer and scholar Ralph Lowenstein. Lowenstein, a member of the American Veterans of Israel (AVI), served in the 79th Armored Battalion of the 7th Brigade, Israeli Army from August to December of 1948. While serving as the dean of the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications he realized that many of the volunteers with whom he had served would die and little to no effort had been made to gather information about their backgrounds and service in the cause of Israel. Using mailing lists from AVI he started to collect information on some 400 volunteers with a 52 question survey to the veterans of Aliyah Bet, specifically those people who served on the 12 American owned ships, and MACHAL and the roughly 100 volunteers who served in both. The volunteers responded to his questionnaire and also sent copies of memoirs, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, various audio-visual materials, and other documents. Ralph Lowenstein, with the help of Samuel Klausner, Simon Spiegelman, David Kaplan, Elihu Bergman, Jason Fenton, David Hanovice, Eddy Kaplansky, and Yael Herbsman produced this collection. In 2005, with donations from many contributors, Lowenstein established a museum and website dedicated to the volunteers.

Sources: The Aliyah Bet and MACHAL Virtual Museum http://israelvets.com/story_aliyahbet_machal.html . Markovitzky, Yaacov. MACHAL: Overseas Volunteers in Israel's War of Independence . Tel Aviv: Ministry of Education, Israel Information Center, Publication Service, 2007. Found at http://www.mahal-idf-volunteers.org/about/Machal.pdf .

From the guide to the MACHAL [Mitnadvei Hutz LaAretz] and Aliyah Bet Records, undated, 1930-2010, (American Jewish Historical Society)