len, the difference was motivation, the Arab armies' soldiers had none, the Israeli had no choice, win or be exterminated. Some of the Israeli forces had relatively good training (like the Palmach, trained by Wingeit (Spelling?)), other were taken directly from the boats that brought them from Cyprus' internment camps to the front, with no training.The Israeli had no air force nor armor, while their opposing forces had both. At Yad Mordechai, when the first tank in the Egyptian column was stopped with a Molotov cocktail, the rest simply turned back...The same happened in the north at Degania, where the first tank in a Syrian column was stopped with a Molotov cocktail and the rest turned tail.
The US and Western Europe had a formal arm embargo on the region, the eastern block did not, and Chechoslovakia sold the new state its first arms and few (two, if memory serves) Messerschmidt planes (one of which was piloted by Ezer Weitzman, who learned the art in the Royal Air force). Heroism and determination had a lot to do with that victory.
Zeev
PS, it seems that Sharon is not the only one that does not know how to control what he says, expecting that will not be repeated, Cheney's comment ("as far as I am concerned, you can hang Arafat"), which probably, like Sharon's comment ("I wish I let that sniper pull the trigger when he had Arafat in his cross hair twenty years back", was not intended for "external" public consumption, got there due to Ben Eliezer's big mouth. |
