Background
Yad Mordechai is a small kibbutz in southern Israel, founded in the 1930s and renamed in 1943 after Mordechaj Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The kibbutz, perched on a hill, dominated the coastal road midway between Gaza and Majdal (today Ashkelon).
Egypt had dispatched an expeditionary force of around 10,000 men under the command of Major General Ahmad Ali al-Mwawi to Palestine in April 1948. Mwawi had separated his forces into two parts, one to march towards Jerusalem, the other to advance up the coast to Tel Aviv. The Egyptians had bypassed several settlements along their route of advance, but on reaching Yad Mordechai on May 16, Mwawi decided that the settlement was far larger and well defended than to be simply bypassed. The Egyptians had the benefit of armor, artillery and air support. They also mustered 2,500 soldiers for the assault, far outnumbering the commune's 130 defenders.
An assembly of the kibbutz members decided on the evacuation of the women and children. On the night of May 18–19, a small Israeli armored column reached the kibbutz and extracted its 92 children. Left behind were 110 members (twenty of them women) and two squads of Palmachniks, equipped with light weapons, a medium machine gun and a PIAT hand-held anti-tank weapon.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Yad Mordechai
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