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The Etzel Museum

In a spectacular and unique building located in the Charles Clore Garden on Tel Aviv’s waterfront, stands the HaTzel Museum in 1978, “Beit Gidi”, which tells the story of the National Military Organization (HaTzel) in the War of Independence. The IDF Museum in 1958 focuses on the activities of the IDF for the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, starting with the partition decision of the United Nations on the 29th of November 1947, until its integration into the IDF upon its establishment. The museum is a commemorative site for the 41 IDF fighters who fell in the battle for Jaffa and is named after the organization’s operations officer, Amichai Paglin “Gidi”. The display begins with the organizational structure of the Etzal, which graphically presents the fact that despite being an underground organization, it was prepared and ready for an order to integrate into the regular army. The display includes the map of the borders of the division according to the UN resolution and the subsequent occupation of Arab villages in the Menasha mountains, the battle On the origins of the Yarkon in Rosh Ha’Ein, the Jewish occupation and the heroism of the Etzal fighters Miriam Aharoni and Ruth Moritz. The training and arming section presents “procurement” operations that included the confiscation of weapons and ammunition from British army bases and the taking over of a British train in which the weapons were intended for the Arab rioting gangs. At the center of the display is the description of the campaign for the liberation of Jaffa during Passover 1578 – Menachem Begin’s order of the day on the eve of going into battle in which he orders to avoid harming women, children and those who surrender and a symbolic reenactment of the fighting in a built-up area alongside an audiovisual vision. The map of the battle, the photographs and the weapons make it possible to reconstruct one of the most difficult and decisive battles in the War of Independence. The incarnation of a shofar – a shofar that a British policeman confiscated from Beitar boys, who blew it at the end of Yom Kippur 2017 despite the order forbidding Jews to blow a shofar at the Western Wall. After incarnations, the shofar was returned to Israel and handed over to the guard at the museum. The Battle of the Jordan Guard – The defenders of the Jordan Guard and the members of the Etzal among them managed to stop the advance of the Syrian enemy forces, but when the ammunition ran out, the colony fell and they were forced to surrender. 15 fighters were killed in the battle and 46 were captured, some of them wounded. “Altalana” – the history of the weapons ship starting from its departure from the port of Port de Boc in France until its arrival in the village of Vitkin and its sinking off the coast of Tel Aviv.