Hebrew Women Join the Forces: Jewish Women from Palestine in the British Forces During the Second World War by Anat Granit-Hacohen (review)

When Jewish women carrying weapons appear in books chronicling the history of the yishuv (the Jewish community of Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel), more often than not they are members of an underground movement. They are typically khaki-clad Haganah or Palmach fighters, or members of the Etzel or Lehi undergrounds. In her book, Anat Granit-Hacohen tells the overlooked story of yishuv women who served during World War II in the British Army Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). She explores the significance of their military service for the women themselves, for the yishuv, and, as the title of the last chapter suggests, for the status of women in the yishuv at the time.

Did military service in the ATS play a part in advancing women’s equality, or was it merely a response to the “need of the moment” (pp. 374–377)? The answer to this question unfolds over the book’s three parts, which describe this historical episode chronologically: Part One: Recruitment Initiative; Part Two: Military Service; and, of course, Part Three: Demobilization. The book is based on the writer’s doctoral dissertation, in which she researched a topic that not only had been overlooked in Zionist historiography (pp. 372–374) but had also been struck off Israel’s common memory. It is not included in writings about the yishuv men who served in the British Army during World War II, which—unconsciously or intentionally—have ignored the service of yishuv women. A single outstanding exception is journalist, writer and editor Bracha Habas’s 1964 book Benot ḥayil (Valiant women), which was based largely on the personal stories of ATS women. Habas’s book was among the many sources used by Granit-Hacohen, together with interviews she herself conducted with ATS women.

A possible explanation for the marginal place of this story in the research literature is that the whole idea of yishuv women’s service in the ATS was a female initiative, as Granit-Hacohen discusses in the book’s first part. Behind the initiative stood the Council of Women’s Organizations (CWO), an umbrella for several Jewish women’s organizations in Mandatory Palestine. Yishuv women’s enlistment was at the top of the council’s agenda (pp. 48–50). Another dominant body in this regard was the Working Women’s Council. Other than wanting to see women enlist, it also sought to increase the number of its female supporters and enhance support for the Labor Movement in general. The stance of the Working Women’s Council was an example of an inherent dilemma for women’s organizations in Mandatory Palestine: Should advancing the interests of women be their first priority, or should they first look to the interests of their party or movement?

The dispute between supporters and opponents of women’s enlistment (pp. 78–82) is of special interest in this context. Those who opposed the idea were particularly concerned about defending “Jewish women’s honor” (pp. 82–84). Prominent among them was Rachel Katzenelson-Shazar of the Working Women’s Council, who opposed the participation of women in an armed struggle and did not believe enlisting in any army would make a difference to the status of women (p. 92)—a stand that has largely been justified over time. Other interesting stands were those of senior yishuv figures such as Yitzhak Tabenkin, a leader of the Kibbutz Hameuchad movement (pp. 82–83), who opposed the service of women in the British Army for reasons that had nothing to do with religion. Nevertheless, many thought that women’s enlistment was necessary; as Moshe Sharett (Shertok), then head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, said: “Where brain failed, the passage of time and the necessities of war prevailed” (p. 43). Notably, the same had already happened elsewhere, including in the British Army in World...