Winning five existential wars
The Jewish nation has a long history of defending its independence against substantial odds – enemies with better warfare technology and with overwhelmingly more troops. This started with the legendary battles of Gideon and Barak in the period of the Judges. The triumphs of King David over the Philistines, the Moabites, Amonites and Arameans created a Judean mini-empire. But the Judeans never became a nation of warriors as can be seen from the Scriptures. Warrior were appreciated but not glorified, and the ideal of peace is a basic tenet in Judaism, as well as of Christianity when it emerged. Already Solomon’s reign was peaceful, and under the rule of the Davidic dynasty the Judeans maintained their independence for over four hundred years. This is the period when the ideal of world peace crystallized: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)
For your college debates: Ironically, the nation that gave the western world the ideas of world peace and national modesty “I see a people who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations.”(Numbers 23:9) of is being accused of aggression by the nation whose supremacist culture calls for conversion or subjugation of all of humanity to the Umma, the Islamic nation. It is amazing how some university “history” professors are parroting this Islamic propaganda.
However, when it came to the preservation of Judaism, the Jewish people became formidable warriors. During the period of the Second Temple, the Hashmonean leaders defied Hellenistic Syrian rule, which endangered the existence of Judaism, and defeated Syria’s superior army, establishing and maintaining an Israeli independent kingdom for close to two hundred years. Jewish warriors, who cherished religious and cultural independence, challenged twice the humongous military power of the Roman Empire, but were outnumbered and eventually defeated. Still, beating the Jewish rebellious armies was touted by the Roman as a uniquely glorious victory.
Recently, the Jewish people who hardly carried arms since the Bar Kokhba Revolt demonstrated their superiority on the battlefield, like in the days of Judah Maccabee (Judas Maccabeus), when their very existence in their homeland was threatened in 1948 by seven Arab standing professional armies. Let us take a closer look at those historical events.
On November 29, 1947 the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181 establishing a Jewish independent state in parts of the historical homeland, with Jerusalem, the ancient Jewish capital remaining under international control. This resolution which proposed to give the Jewish nation less than a quarter of the territory designated under the 1922 British mandate, and denies the Jews sovereignty over their historical capital, was accepted by the Jewish political leadership: Ben-Gurion and Weizmann. This surprising acceptance warrants an explanation.
1. The Jewish people was at the time in an unfavorable position: In the US there was a Democrat administration under President Truman, who opposed immigration of European Jewish refugees, victims of the Holocaust, into the US and whose disfavor of the Jewish state was illustrated later in the arms embargo he imposed on the State of Israel when it was under a devastating Arab attack, struggling for its very survival.
In Great Britain there was a Labor government under Clement Attlee with Earnest Bevin as Foreign Minister. Bevin, an outspoken pro-Arabist ordered the British Navy to blockade Palestine against “illegal” Jewish immigrants – remainders of the Holocaust, at the time when GB had an international mandate to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. And in Russia, Stalin was denouncing Zionism and jailing Zionist activist.
2. The Jewish leaders believed at that time that once the international community democratically endorsed the Jewish state that there will be peace. They were proven wrong just like after the Oslo accords, 46 years later.
3. There were tens of thousand of Jewish stateless (with no national passport) refugees interned in camps in Europe with no place to go to. It was urgent to bring them home to a sovereign Jewish state. If the Jewish leadership in 1947 would have known what we all know today and fully understand the motivation of the Muslims opposing the establishment of A Jewish state, they would probably have rejected the UN plan to curtail the Jewish presence in the Holy Land. However, historical analysis cannot be based on “what if,” it can only try to explain historical events and derive from them wisdom to prevent repeating mistakes of the past.
While the Jewish leadership accepted that compromise the Arab League (established in 1945), comprising 22 Arab countries rejected the UN compromised and vowed to destroy the Jewish state by force once it declared its independence at the termination of the British mandate (May 15, 1948). On that day the armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen invaded the mandatory territory with the declared intent to eradicate the Jewish state. The Arab intention was expressed publicly by Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League on May 15 1948: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." In other words, the Arabs threatened not just murder of individuals but of a nation, namely, genocide. According to international law, Genocide is a crime against humanity. The following map describes that 1948 assault.
This map will give you an idea of the situation Israel faced having just a militia (the Haganah) to confront these invading trained and equipped armies. On May 15, 1948 Israeli artillery consisted of two (2!) Hispano-Swiss artillery pieces smuggled in from Europe, and two (2!) light British tanks acquired illegally from the departing British army. Israeli air-force constituted then of a few Piper Cub planes and one (1!) DC3 “bomber”. Israel’s survival in that war can be regarded a miracle as was the miracle of having Stalin, the anti-Semitic atheistic Communist despot facilitating shipment of Czech arms, including a handful of Messerschmidt fighter planes. Without that material help Israel would not have survived. Stalin might have done this to annoy the British but he saved the Jews from another holocaust. The 1948 war reminds us of “You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.” (Leviticus 26:7,8)
At the end of that war an armistice line was drawn that left the Egyptian occupying the Gaza strip and the Jordanians occupying Judea, Samaria and the Old City of Jerusalem. That armistice line shown in the next map is the so called “1967 boundary” that the Arabs and their friends, including people in the US State Department, are calling on Israel to retreat to. This would give the Arabs the opportunity to accomplish their original 1948 plan of eradication the Jewish state, which they tried and failed in 1967 and 1973.
The Arab refugees of the 1948 war
The 1948 war resulted in close to half a million of Arab refugees who left their homes in the Jewish territory, including the Cities of Haifa, Jaffa, Ramle and Lod. These Arabs found refuge in the non-Jewish territories of the Land of Israel that were part of the British mandate and in the neighboring Arab countries. The following map describes the flow pattern of those refugees.
The Arab refugees of the 1948 Israel’s War of Survival (about 470 thousand Arabs, according to official UN figures) were victims of flagrant Arab aggression that dictated survival or death for the Israeli Jews. Even after their humiliating defeat by the fledgling State of Israel (with a population of just over half a million Jews), the Arab states did not recognize the right of Israel to exist, keeping the Arab refugees confined in camps (at the expense of the UN!), to be used militarily or politically in the next lethal attack on the hated Jewish state. Notwithstanding the tenuous peace with Egypt, which tacitly continues to support Arab terrorism against Israel, this situation has changed very little in the last 54 years. If someone has to pay reparations to those refugees, or to their descendents, it must be the Arab states, including rich Saudi Arabia that staged that war of aggression and caused the refugee problem in the first place. Since when does a victim of aggression compensate the aggressor for damages caused by the latter?
In addition to humiliation and loss of materiel they ended up with about 500,000 Arab refugees who fled the bloody battlefield, most of them at the persuasion of the invaders. The following are citation of Arabs concerning the refugee problem:
--- "The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile." - Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948.
--- “The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem” - Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948.
--- "This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country." - Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London) in The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 183.
By political maneuvering, the Arabs managed to make the world community pay for keeping the refugees in temporary camps and be used as pawns in the next assault on the Jewish state.
Ariel Sharon has requested as a precondition for any further negotiations with the Arabs that they withdraw their demand for the “right of return” of the 1948 refugees and their descendents. The common argument for this precondition is that such a “right of return” would amount to a demographic Arab Muslim takeover of the State of Israel, which wants to remain a democratic Jewish state.
This precondition is fully justified but for completely different reasons. For one, the question to be asked is: Who is responsible for the refugee problem in the first place? Irrespective of the “classical” argument whether all or part of those refugees left the Israeli territory out of their own volition, it is clear that they left as a result of the war of 1948. Now, whoever is responsible for that war must be responsible for its refugees. We all know that the war of 1948 was launched by a coalition of Arab countries, under the auspices of the Arab League, with the declared intent to eradicate the fledgling Jewish state. That assault was in flagrant defiance of international law (it was a belligerent crossing of an international border, like the German invasion of Poland in 1939) and it was also in blatant violation of the 1947 UN resolution that recognized establishment of the Jewish state. Consequently, the responsibility for the refugees rests fully on the Arab aggressor countries. However, the Arabs who deny the legitimacy of a Jewish state in an “Arab territory,” claim that their military campaign was justified. It was certainly justified by Islamic law, which forbids conceding of any “Arab land” to infidels.
Any concession on the question of “right of return” would imply that the Arab failed campaign were legally justified. Furthermore, if that campaign was legal and justified then the State of Israel is illegitimate. Arafat and his cohorts at Camp David understood this very well when they refused to budge on the issue of the “right of return”.
Arab concession on this crucial issue implies legitimacy of the Jewish state and an end to “justifiable” attacks on it, whether by military invasion or by terrorist attacks. This is the true reason for the Arab’s refusal to settle “Palestinian” refugees in their countries. A concerted official Arab effort to settle the refugees would have been admission of responsibility for the 1948 war and would legitimize the Jewish state. Arab propaganda has successfully converted this political legal topic into a humanitarian issue. The plight of the refugees has been callously exploited by the Arabs leadership not just to put political pressure on Israel, but also to justify its eradication.
Early stages of anti-Israeli terrorism and the 1956 Sinai campaign
Following their defeat in 1948, the Arabs, the Egyptians in particular tried to demoralize and break down the spirit of the Israeli by a terrorist campaign. The formation of the PLO, Palestine Liberation Organization, in 1964 has been Egypt’s second attempt to bring Israel to its knees by terrorism. In the years 1949- 1956 twelve hundred (1200!) Israelis were murdered by Egyptian terrorists, which prompted Israel to join France and Great Britain in their Suez campaign. The Arabs had no excuses of “occupation” or “settlement” to justify that terrorism – it was plainly aimed at defeating the Israelis by breaking their morale.
The Six Days War
The Egyptian defeat in 1956 taught them that Israel cannot be vanquished by terrorism alone because the Israelis can retaliate with all their military might against the perpetrator countries. So Egypt, with help of Syria, Iraq and Jordan, tried again in 1967 a frontal military assault. The 1967 War, the “Six Days War”, was preceded by Arab rhetoric similar to that of 1948: On May 27, 1967 Egyptian president Nasser declared: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight." On May 31 Iraqi President Rahman Aref announced: "This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear--to wipe Israel off the map." Genocide was again the declared Arab goal. These threats were accompanied by moving several Egyptian armored divisions into the Sinai Peninsula and blockading the Israeli seaport of Eilat. This time the Israelis confronted their enemies on their own territory and won! “How could one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight…” (Deuteronomy 32:28-30)
On June 5, 1967 the Six Days War started and ended by the 10th with a resounding defeat of the aggressors. That war is depicted in these two maps:
The third existential war – the Yom Kippur War
By the end of the Six Days War Israel controlled all the territory west of the River Jordan, including the territory currently under Arab control as a result of the 1993 “Oslo Accords.” However, this did not happen before another major Arab military in 1973. That sneak attack “the Yom Kippur War,” which was launched on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, resulted in a third humiliating defeat of the Egyptian army (see the following maps of the 1967 seize fire line and the 1973 battles in the western Sinai, notice the encircled Egyptian Third Army):
(to continue)