Eighty some years before the Israeli Defense Force became one of the most powerful armies in the Middle East, it was a flelging, disparate group of volunteers that were part of the Zionist movement in what was the Palestine Mandate established by the League of Nations and governed by the United Kingdom. When WWII began after Adolph Hitler began his blitzkrieg in Poland in 1939 and Italian Dictator Mussolini joined him by attacking France and the Balkans, some members of the Zionist movement joined the British Army. Facing constant pressure from those Zionist volunteers to have their own Jewish Brigade instead of serving within British units, the British military and government originally resisted. But when in 1944 the British and American governments began to receive witness accounts and intelligence about German extermination camps slaughtering Jews that had been rounded up from all over Europe, the British acquiesced and thus the first Jewish Army since Roman times was born. It was made up of approximately 5,000 soldiers - mostly men but some women from the Palestine Mandate - and it took up positions in March of 1945 in Italy on the Adriatic sector of the Gothic Line as part of the British Eighth Army. After participating in various battles along the Senio River in the April 1945 offensive to break through German forces and capture Bologna, the Jewish Brigade was moved to northern Italy in the mountains along the borders of what is today Italy, Slovenia and Austria. From there some Jewish Brigade members began unauthorized missions using British vehicles to rescue Jewish refugees who had escaped the Holocaust and bring them to ports in Italy so they could be transported to the Palestine Mandate. The Jewish Brigade soldiers would eventually return to the Palestine mandate and their experience on the Gothic Line was instrumental when tensions between Jews and Arabs erupted in war in 1948. After Israel was established as an independent nation in 1949 and the Israeli Defense Force was formed, the Jewish Brigade veterans were a core part. This included officers, who used their military training in the British Army to continuously overcome far larger and better-equipped Arab armies, especially the Egyptian Forces, as Israel evolved. This story is told by Stefano Scaletta, a native of Italy and resident of Tel Aviv, in a recent book titled La Brigata Ibraica tra Guerra e Salvataggio dei Sopravvissutti alla Shoah (1939-1947) or in English: The Jewish Brigade between war and rescuing the Holocaust survivors (1939-1947). And as part of the podcast's Past is Present theme, Scaletta also responded to questions about whether or not Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Force's policies in Gaza and the West Bank since the April 7, 2023 attack by Hamas have been disproportionate and, as some human rights groups and others claim, amount to a genocide against the Palestinians.