The majority of the Palestine Refugees' Committee,…

The majority of the Palestine Refugees' Committee, under the encouragement of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor, endorses a resolution calling for the formation of a military unit from Russian Jewish deportees from Palestine that would participate in the British effort to seize Palestine from the Ottoman Empire.

A small committee in Alexandria approves the plan in February 1915.

Trumpeldor, a Russian Jew from Piatygorsk who had joined the Russian army in 1902 and served in the Russian-Japanese war two years later, had lost his left arm during the siege of Port Arthur and had been taken prisoner, receiving a high Tsarist order of merit for his gallantry and zeal.

He subsequently settled in Palestine in 1912 and for a while lived at Deganya, but had been expelled from Palestine following the outbreak of the war and his refusal to take Ottoman citizenship.