This article is about Jewish resistance in Mandatory Palestine. For other uses, see Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.

The Jewish Resistance Movement , sometimes called United Resistance Movement (URM), was an umbrella group for Jewish Resistance movements in the British Mandate of Palestine. The group existed between the years 1945 and 1946, and coordinated attacks against the British military.

The group was founded after the end of World War II in Europe

End of World War II in Europe

The final battles of the European Theatre of World War II as well as the German surrender to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union took place in late April and early May 1945.-Timeline of surrenders and deaths:...

 by those disappointed in British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 policies towards the movement. The Zionist Movement had high hopes for the new Labour

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 administration in Britain, newly elected after war. However, it did not change British policy towards the Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 in Palestine and continued to abide by the edicts put forth in the White Paper of 1939

White Paper of 1939

The White Paper of 1939, also known as the MacDonald White Paper after Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary who presided over it, was a policy paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate for Palestine, as recommended in...

. The disasters the Jews suffered during the Holocaust made the disputes between the movements seem petty, and pushed them to unite their struggles. It had also hardened the Jews and made them more willing to stand up for themselves despite the cost. The leadership of the Yishuv

Yishuv

The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...

 understood that cooperation of all of the different streams would be have a more powerful impact on the British and international opinion.

Negotiations began for the formation of the movement in August 1945 at the behest of the Haganah

Haganah

Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...

 leaders, Moshe Sneh

Moshe Sneh

Moshe Sneh was an Israeli politician and military figure. One of the founders of Mapam, he later joined the Israeli Communist Party , and was one of the leaders of a more pro-Israeli split in 1965.-Biography:...

 and Israel Galili. At the end of October of the same year, an agreement was signed forming the "Jewish Resistance Movement". The leadership of the new movement included four representatives: Two from the Haganah (Sneh and Galili), a representative from the Irgun

Irgun

The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...

 (Menachem Begin

Menachem Begin

' was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944,...

) and a representative from Lehi

Lehi (group)

Lehi , commonly referred to in English as the Stern Group or Stern Gang, was a militant Zionist group founded by Avraham Stern in the British Mandate of Palestine...

 (Nathan Yellin Mor).

In order to coordinate the activities of the groups, a civilian committee known as "Committee X" was made up of six members, representatives of the various political stream, (including Levi Eshkol

Levi Eshkol

' served as the third Prime Minister of Israel from 1963 until his death from a heart attack in 1969. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister to die in office.-Biography:...

). The operations board, who approved operations plans, was made up of Yitzhak Sadeh

Yitzhak Sadeh

Yitzhak Sadeh , was the commander of the Palmach, one of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel and a cousin of British philosopher Isaiah Berlin.-Biography:...

 (of the Palmach

Palmach

The Palmach was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv during the period of the British Mandate of Palestine. The Palmach was established on May 15, 1941...

), Eitan Livni

Eitan Livni

Yeruham "Eitan" Livni was a Revisionist Zionist activist, Irgun commander and Israeli politician, father of Israeli politician Tzipi Livni, who is the current leader of the largest party in the Knesset, Kadima.-Biography:...

 (of the Irgun) and Yaakov Eliav (1917–1985) (of the Lehi).

During the movement's existence, eleven major operations were carried out, eight of them by the Palmach and Haganah, and three by the Irgun and Lehi, as well as many smaller operations. Notable among these were the release of 200 members of Aliyah Bet from the detention camp in Atlit

Atlit detainee camp

The Atlit detainee camp was a detention camp established by the British at the end of the 1930s on what is now Israel's northern coast south of Haifa. The camp was established to prevent Jewish refugees, mainly Holocaust survivors, from entering then-Palestine...

, bombing of railroads and train stations on the Night of the Trains

Night of the Trains

The Night of the Trains was a sabotage operation of the British railroads in Palestine on November 1, 1945...

, attacks on British police stations, bombing of dozens of bridges around the country in the night of the bridges

Night of the bridges

Operation Markolet was a Haganah venture on the night of the 16th to the 17th of June 1946 in the British Mandate of Palestine...

 and the bombing of the King David Hotel

King David Hotel bombing

The King David Hotel bombing was an attack carried out by themilitant right-wing Zionist underground organization Irgun on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946...

 in Jerusalem.

In August 1946, because of Operation Agatha

Operation Agatha

Operation Agatha sometimes called Black Shabbat or Black Saturday because it began on the Jewish sabbath, was a police and military operation conducted by the British authorities in the British Mandate of Palestine...

 and the King David Hotel bombing

King David Hotel bombing

The King David Hotel bombing was an attack carried out by themilitant right-wing Zionist underground organization Irgun on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946...

 (which shocked the public because of the deaths of many innocent civilians), Chaim Weizmann

Chaim Weizmann

Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....

, president of the WZO appealed to the movement to cease all further military activity until a decision would be reached by the Jewish Agency. The Jewish Agency backed Weizmann's recommendation to cease activities, a decision reluctantly accepted by the Haganah, but not by the Irgun and the Lehi. The JRM was dismantled and each of the founding groups continued operating according to their own policy.