Although Elisha never refers to it by name, “the Movement” refers to the Igrun (“The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel”), which was a real paramilitary organization based in British Mandatory Palestine. British Mandatory Palestine (1920-1948) was the colonial precursor to modern-day Israel. The Igrun operated between 1931 and 1948; based on this information and Elisha’s reflections, the events of Dawn take place in autumn of 1945.

The Igrun was an outcropping of a larger Zionist paramilitary group called Haganah (literally, “defense”), which was active between 1920 and 1948. Before Israel’s declaration of independence from the British, Haganah existed to defend the Palestinian Jewish settlements (Ha-Yishuv) from Arab attacks. While Haganah’s early activities were dictated by a policy of “self-restraint” (havlaga), the Igrun split from the group to carry out more radical activities.

Zionism is a nationalist philosophy whose central goal is to establish a homeland for the Jewish people. Austro-Hungarian-Jewish activist Theodore Herzl (1860-1904) is credited as the father of modern political Zionism. The Igrun subscribed to Revisionist Zionism, an ideology that dictates that only “active retaliation” against the Arabs could secure a Jewish state (Sachar, Howard. A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 1996, page 265).