The main factions of effective Jewish Resistance after WWI were made up of the Haganah, the Palmach, the Irgun and Lehi. While these groups were collectively for the re-establishment of the Jewish Homeland in Palestine, their philosophies were vastly different and were often at odds with one another. At one point, the Haganah was aiding the British in the hunt for Irgun and Lehi fighters. 

While the Haganah was more focused on defense and not provocation, both the Irgun and Lehi were more aggressive. They believed a show of force was necessary to rid the land of the British and finally claim Eretz Yisrael as the sovereign Jewish nation. However, in 1945, David Ben-Gurion, then Chairman of the Jewish Agency, together with the Haganah determined it necessary to join forces and fight the British.

By the end of WWII, the Jewish Resistance’s main mission, Ma’akak (the Struggle) formed Te’unat HaMeri HaIvri (The United Resistance Movement) to aggressively attack the British who were still occupying the land of Israel. 

The Irgun, the Lehi (known pejoratively as the Stern Gang), and the Haganah defense forces joined together to push forward in their determination to liberate the Jewish land of Israel from its occupiers. 

The most well-known heroic act by the Palmach, the elite unit within the Haganah, was to attack the Atlit detention camp. Atlit, in Northern Israel, was a dehumanizing holding center where the British detained Jews who were escaping the ravages of Nazi Europe. Immediately upon the British imposing the antisemitic White Papers, which restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, these Jews were thus considered illegal.