Speaking of rejecting Zionist expansion into Palestine
Seven well armed Arab armies attempted to destroy the poorly armed Jewish State in 1948, Arabs were the aggressors from the start
palestineremembered.com
This is one of the most misleading Zionist myths to ever be concocted. It is really amazing how this baseless claim, as it will be proven below, found its way to all sectors of the Israeli society, especially in its school system, military boot camps, and media. This concocted version of events was deemed necessary, by the Zionist leaders at the time, for the sole purpose of legitimizing Israel's USURPATION of the Palestinian people's political, civil, and economic rights.
Often when Israeli Zionists are confronted with facts contrary to their own version of events, they counter by accusing that the sources are sheer fabrication and Arab propaganda. To minimize such misunderstandings, we will directly quote two of the most prominent pro-Israeli historians, Martin Van Creveld (renowned Israeli military strategist) and Martin Gilbert, who wrote:
"In the Event of invading [Arab] forces were limited to approximately 30,000 men. The strongest [consider this fact while reading the next quote] single contingent was the Jordanian one, already described. Next came Egyptians with 5,500 men, then the Iraqis with 4,500 who ..... were joined by perhaps 3,000 local irregulars. The total was thus around eight rather under strength brigades, some of them definitely of second-and even third-rate quality. To these must be added approximately 2,000 Lebanese (one brigade) and 6,000 Syrians (three brigades). Thus, even though the Arabs countries outnumbered the Yishuv by better then forty-to-one, in terms of military manpower available for combat in Palestine the two sides were fairly evenly matched. As time went on and both sides sent reinforcements the balance changed in the Jews' favor; by October they had almost 90,000 men and women under arms, the Arabs only 68,000." (The Sword And The Olive, p. 77-78)
"Senior Hagana commanders met with committee [UN Special Committee On Palestine-UNSCOP] members in Jerusalem's Talpiot quarter in similarly surreptitious circumstances to express confidence that Jewish forces, which they numbered at 90,000, including 35,000 reservists, could overcome any Arab assault should it come to war." (Jerusalem Post)
"Ben-Gurion made serious effort, shortly before the United Nations vote on the Partition proposal, to seek neutrality of the King Abdullah of Transjordan, whose British trained and officered army, the Arab Legion, was the STRONGEST fighting force in the Middle East. The king had long been at loggerheads with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, for the moral leadership of the Arabs of the whole region. Abdullah's secret interlocutor was to be Golda Meir:"' ...... He [King Abudullah] soon made the heart of the matter clear: he would not join in any Arab attack on us. He would always remains our friend, he said, and like us, he wanted peace more than anything else. After all, we had a common foe, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.'"(Israel: A History, p.149-150)
"As for Abdullah's Arab Legion, it had fought better than any other Arab force. Yet on scarcely any occasion had the Arab Legion attempted to conquer territories allotted to the Jews by the partition plan, preferring to stay on the defensive." (The Sword And The Olive, p. 95)
".... there was no common military headquarters, no attempts at coordinating the offenses of the Arab armies, and ... not even a regular liaison service for sharing enemy intelligence." (The Sword And The Olive, p. 83)
"Perhaps the most important [of Arab armies problems] was a crippled shortage of ammunition, owing to the international arms embargo ..., in the case of the Iraqis and Egyptians, long lines of communications. For example, after February 25, 1948, the Arab Legion received no new ammunition for its 20mm guns. Some of the ammunition used by the Iraqi artillery was more than thirty years old; the Syrians had no ammunition for their heavy 155mm guns. Whereas Jewish stockpiles were growing all the times [especially the big arms shipment from Czechoslovakia in May 1948], the enemies were so depleted they stole ammunition shipments for each other. In addition, they were ill-coordinated, technically incompetent, slow, ponderous, badly led, and unable to cope with night operations that willy-nilly, constituted the IDF's expertise." (The Sword And The Olive, p. 95-96)
A Palmach (the Israeli strike force) report, written by Yigal Allon soon after Operation Dani in the first half of July 1948, stated that the expulsion of the Lydda and Ramle Palestinian inhabitants, beside relieving Tel Aviv of a potential, long-term threat, had:
"clogged the routes of the advance of the Legion and had foisted upon the Arab economy the problem of "maintaining another 45,000 souls . . . Moreover, the phenomenon of the flight of tens of thousands will no doubt cause demoralization in every Arab area [the refugees] reach . . . This victory will yet have great effect on other sectors." (Israel: A History, p. 218 & Benny Morris, p. 211)
Although we disagree with Arab armies' statistics (30,000 men) presented by Creveld, the reader could conclude the following:
The strongest Arab army to enter Palestine was in cahoots with the Israelis from the start. Based on H.M. King Abdullah's orders (who also commanded the Iraqi Army in addition to Transjordan's), the strongest Arab armies did not even encroach on the areas allotted to the "Jewish State" by the 1947 UN Partition plan of Palestine. On the contrary, the truth was the opposite, for example:
1- Lydda, Ramla, and the triangle areas where handed over to the Israelis without a fight. Although Transjordan's Army withdrew based on the orders of the King, the Iraqi Army (which was positioned a few kilometers north in Ras al-'Ayn) was given explicit orders not to intervene. It should be noted that these areas were densely populated with Palestinians, fertile, and strategically located for both Arabs and Israelis.
2- In mid-October, 1948 when the Israeli Army attacked the Egyptian (south) and Syrians (northeast) armies, the Iraqi and Jordanian armies were forbidden from opening a third front in the middle and south. The Iraqi Army was capable of splitting Israel in half if it was given the orders, and the Jordanian Army watched from the sidelines as the Israeli Army mauled the Egyptians in southern Hebron and Beersheba areas (Righteous Victims, p. 244). Note that the Iraqi Army was well positioned in the Tulkarm-Jinin areas (southeast of Haifa) which is only 12-14 kilometers from the Mediterranean, click here for a map illustration.
The other strongest Arab armies, Egyptian and Iraqi, had long lines of supplies and communications away from their basis in their respective countries.
Saudi Arabian and Sudanese armies contributed only few a thousand soldiers toward the middle of the war to shore up the exhausted Egyptian army in southern Palestine.
Under American and French pressure, the Lebanese Army was sidelined from the start and did not even cross the international borders. At most, the Lebanese army provided a mediocre artillery cover to some ALA [Arab Liberation Army] volunteers at the beginning of the war. (Righteous Victims p. 233-234)
By the time the Arab armies entered Palestine on May 15, 1948, close to 400,000 Palestinian refugees were already ethnically cleansed out of their homes, businesses, plantations, ... etc., who clogged the roads, burdened local economies, and demoralized the Arab populations, as it was admitted by Yigal Allon.
Arab armies did not attempt to coordinate their military operational planning, nor share any military intelligence among themselves. Actually, it wasn't until April 30, 1948, that the Arabs chiefs of staff met for the first time to work out a plan for military intervention. It is worth noting that this plan was wrecked by King Abdullah when he made last minute changes. (Simha Falpan, p. 133 & Iron Wall, p. 35)
According to Yochai Sela of Tel-Aviv University, the number of Israelis killed in the course of the 1948 war was as follows:
Fatality Category Value Percentage of Total
Civilianize killed*
1,150 20.15%
Military killed 4,558 79.85%
Total
5,708
100%
Soldiers killed between
Nov. 30, 1947 - May 15, 1948 1,345** 23.56%
Soldiers killed between
May 15, 1948- March 10, 1949 3,213** 56.29%
Killed within the
areas designated by the UN 1,581 27.70%
Killed outside the
areas designated by the UN 2,759*** 48.33%
Killed defending
Jewish settlements 984 17.24%
Killed attacking
Arab settlements 1,212 21.23%
Source: Simha Falpan, p. 198-199.
* Majority died in Jerusalem
** The number of Israelis killed while fighting the Arab Legion 1,367; the Palestinians, 1,092; the Egyptians, 910; the Syrians, 238; the Iraqis, 241; the Lebanese 129; Qawukji' ALA, 336, the British 30.
*** Mostly soldiers, non-civilianize.
These numbers clearly show that 48% of all Israeli casualties occurred during offensive actions outside the areas designated by the UN to the "Jewish state," where the vast majority of these Israeli fatalities were soldiers. So the soldiers killed in offensive actions is well over 60% of the total Israeli soldiers killed between November 30,1947 to March 10, 1949. In other words, from the Israeli prospective the 1948 war was more offensive than defensive in nature.
The Israelis maximally exploited the rivalry between King Abdullah of Transjordan and al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini. For example, before the entry of any Arab armies to Palestine on May 15th, 1948, Hajj Amin (who was residing in Tyre-Sayda in southern Lebanon) wanted to declare a provisional Palestinian government in Galilee, with Safad being its capital. Such intentions by al- Hajj Amin prompted the King to pull out Transjordan's irregulars troops out of Safad on the May 11th, 1948, which was the primary reason for it falling into Israeli hands. (Benny Morris, p. 105) Another good reason which enticed the King to collaborate with the Jewish Agency was the payment of $4 million for five years. (Simha Falpan, p. 138)
Although there was an arms embargo on the warring parties in the Middle East, the embargo negatively affected the Arabs more than the Israelis. While the Arab armies were depleting their arms and ammunitions, the Israelis were stockpiling weapons and ammunitions from a huge arms shipment from Czechoslovakia, which had arrived early May, 1948.
By October 1948, the Israelis had 90,000 armed men, while the Arabs had 68,000.
It is a fabricated myth that seven well equipped, organized, and coordinated Arab armies attempted to PUSH the poorly armed Jews into the sea, click here to read our rebuttal to this myth.
Click here for a detail map illustrating the standing of the Israeli and Arab armies on May 14th, 1948.
Although we could go on and on presenting the true version of events, we believe that we have presented more than enough facts from Israeli publications. We leave it up to the readers to do further investigations on their own for truth's sake. Finally, we like to end this article by directly quoting the famous Jewish historian Avi Shlaim:
"This popular-heroic-moralistic version of the 1948 war has been used extensively in Israeli propaganda and is still taught in Israeli schools. It is a prime example of the use of a nationalistic version of history in the process of nation building. In a very real sense history is the propaganda of the victors, and the history of the 1948 war is no exception." (Iron Wall p. 34)
"Despite all the political miscalculations and failures of those who planned the Sinai Campaign, it is their version that became firmly entrenched in the mind of the overwhelming majority of Israelis. The popular perception of the 1956 war in Israel is that it was a defensive war, a just war, a brilliantly executed war, and a war that achieved nearly all of its objectives. This version of the war was propagated not only by members of the Israeli defense establishment but by a host of sympathetic historians, journalists, and commentators. However deeply cherished, this version does not stand up to scrutiny in the light of the evidence now available. It is a striking example of the way in which history can be manipulated to serve nationalist ends. The official Israeli version of the 1956 war, like that of the 1948 war, is little more than the propaganda of the victor." (Iron Wall, p. 185)
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