Battle of Yad Mordechai

Part of 1948 Arab–Israeli War

Yad Mordechai memorial

Date	May 19–24, 1948
Location	Yad Mordechai, Israel
Result	Successful Israeli delaying action Six-month Egyptian control over the desolated commune and its surroundings

Belligerents

Israel

Egypt

Commanders and leaders

Unknown

Ahmad Ali al-Mwawi, Mohamed Kamel Rahmany (subcommander)

Strength

110 Kibbutz residents
20 Palmach (Haganah) fighters

2 infantry battalions
1 armored battalion
1 artillery battalion or
1 artillery regiment

Casualties and losses

26 killed
49 wounded

300–400 dead and wounded

Successful Israeli delaying action

The Battle of Yad Mordechai was fought between Egypt and Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, at the Israeli kibbutz of Yad Mordechai. The Egyptians attacked the settlement several times throughout May 19 and May 20, but failed to capture it. A final attack was launched on May 23, in which the Egyptians succeeded in capturing part of Yad Mordechai, following which the Israeli defenders withdrew. Yad Mordechai finally fell to the Egyptians on May 24 after hours of bombardment of the vacated kibbutz.

The kibbutz residents, aided by twenty Hagannah fighters, imposed a five-day delay on the Egyptians. This gave Israeli forces time to prepare for the Egyptians' northward advance, and they succeeded in halting the Egyptian advance at Ad Halom less than a week later.

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 too large and well defended 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.

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Wikipedia