Experts Shatter Some Myths

The War of 47-48 and the Six Day War — Not Miracles

Civil War: “Facing off in 1947-8 were a highly motivated, literate, organized, semi-industrial society and a backward, largely illiterate, disorganized, agricultural one.” Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 311.

War Against the Arab States: “The Arab forces in Palestine consisted (until the end of May) of not more than 28,000 troops -- some 5,500 Egyptians, 6,000-9,000 Arab Legionnaires, 6,000 from Syria, 4,500 from Iraq, a handful of Lebanese, and the remainder Palestinian irregulars and foreign volunteers. On paper, according to Haganah estimates, the combined Arab armies had some 75 combat aircraft, 40 tanks, 500 armored vehicles, 140 field guns, and 220 antiaircraft and antitank guns. In practice they had far less, much of the equipment (especially the aircraft) being unserviceable, and some of the remainder never reaching Palestine.

“After the invasion both sides substantially increased their forces, the Jews handily winning the manpower race. By mid-July the IDF was fielding nearly 65,000 troops; by early spring 1949, 115,000. The Arab armies probably had about 40,000 troops in Palestine and Sinai by mid-July, and 55,000 in October, the number perhaps rising slightly by the spring of 1949.” Morris p. 217

 

Six-Day War: “The armies were extremely ill-matched. Israelis, through their history, have tended to see themselves as the ‘weaker side,’ their army smaller and less well armed than their Arab enemies. The truth in 1967, as at other times, was different.” Morris, p. 311.

 

“American intelligence accurately predicted that Israel would defeat any possible Arab coalition within a few days, perhaps a week....” Morris, p. 310

 

“The Arab armies were mostly professional forces, relatively poorly trained, and not properly mechanized. The Egyptian army suffered from a basic weakness owing to the politicization of its command echelons, which resulted in the appointment of incompetent and inexperienced senior commanders, and structural weaknesses that were to prove fatal in wartime.” Morris, p. 312

 

“The Six-Day War was in all essentials, a clockwork war carried out by the IDF against three relatively passive, ineffective Arab Armies....Throughout, the initiative lay with the IDF; occasionally the Arabs 'responded' to an Israeli move; most often they served as rather bewildered, sluggish, punching bags.” Morris, p. 313      

 

Benny Morris, professor at Ben-Gurion University, is one of Israel's most prominent historians.

 

Israel’s Overly Aggressive Style

“The notion that Israel’s Wars were Wars of self-defense and that its limited military actions were primarily ‘retaliatory’ in nature rests on shaky foundations. Many Israeli politicians and institutional historians have tried to sell the world and the Israeli public for decades the conception that Israel’s military actions were primarily actions of self-defense. Some Israeli strategists have supported this notion by arguing that Israeli strategic posture was politically defensive (i.e., status quo oriented) but militarily offensive (e.g., Yaniv 1987a, 1995; Tal 2000; Levite 1989). The second part of this observation is generally true; the first part is not.

The central conclusion of the first part of this book is that most of Israel’s Wars were the result of deliberate aggressive designs or flawed conflict management strategies. At least one War (the Yom Kippur War) could have been avoided by judicious diplomacy. Israel’s War Experience is a story of folly, recklessness, and self-made traps. None of the Wars – with the possible exception of the 1948 War of Independence – was what Israelis call Milhemet Ein Brerah (“War of necessity”). They were all Wars of choice or Wars of folly." Ze’ev Maoz. Defending the holy land. A Critical analysis of Israel’s Security & Foreign Policy., p. 552.

 

“Second, there is a huge gap between the hostility to Israel in Arab Rhetoric and the actual efforts invested in fighting it. In fact, for a long time there may well have been an inverse correlation between Rhetoric and effort in the Arab-Israeli conflict: those States and groups that made the most noise did the least action. Moreover, the States that suffered the most casualties in the conflict were – for the most part – the first to engage in de facto or de jure Peace with Israel. And given the stability of the Egyptian-Israeli and Jordanian-Israeli Peace agreements, and even the Syrian-Israeli disengagement agreement in the Golan Height, it is fair to say that the existential threat from the immediate circle of enemies was remouved to a considerable degree.

 

“Third, at no time – including during the 1948 War of Independence – did the Arab world invest in the kind of human and material resources that would have been required to carry out a military or economic campaign capable of bringing about the destruction of Israel. Only a very small proportion of the population in the Arab States serves in the armed Forces. Only a relatively small proportion of the GDP in most Arab States goes to military expenditures. Moreover, most of the States in the region – even those that had suffered greatly from Israeli military actions and the Occupation of their territories – did not engage in developing WMDs that would allow them to destroy Israel. As we saw in Chapter 8, most programs aimed at developing WMDs and delivery systems in the Arab world emerged largely in response to Israel’s Nuclear Policy. In each and every War – including the 1948 War of Independence – Israel enjoyed an overwhelming superiority in terms of both quantitative and qualitative capabilities to the Arab Forces that actually confronted it. Israel was never the David in this conflict, and the Arab never played the role of Goliath. As we shall see in chapter 13, the qualitative and quantitative edge that Israel enjoys over any plausible Arab coalition is substantial and is widening as time goes by.

 

“As we saw in chapter 8, the notion of an all-encompassing Arab coalition was always a myth rather than an empirical Reality. Even when there seemed to be an Arab effort to pool resources in order to attack Israel – in 1948, in 1967, and in 1973 – the instances of deceit and the failure to fulfill actual pledges by various Arab States to others were far more numerous and far more severe than the cases of mutual help and joint efforts by several Arab States dedicated to the purpose of fighting Israel. The Palestinian issue may have captured much of that Arab Rhetoric. But the actual effort that the Arab States invested in defending and supporting the Palestinians or in actually helping them realise their dreams (whatever these may have been) was minimal. Both in Peace and in War, the Arab States were far more likely to betray and deceive each other than to act in concert.” Maoz, pp. 545-6

Israel has almost never initiated a Peace plan

“Israel’s spokespersons often claim that Israel has always outstretched her hand for Peace, only to be greeted by hostility, animosity, and rejection. The fact suggest that Israel was the spoiler of Peace on numerous occasions. A comprehensive analysis of Israel’s Peace policy shows that Israel has been at least as responsible for missing opportunities for Peace as have its adversaries. Israel has almost never initiated a Peace plan, and it has been a reluctant partner to the Peace initiatives originating in the Arab world and elsewhere. In many cases, Israel put deliberate or unintended obstacles in the path of Peace. Its decision makers were reluctant to make the concessions required to have Peace initiatives materialise. They were often slow to respond to the other side’s overtures and have often raised petty objections and obstacles that have derailed serious efforts at transforming the conflict.

“On those rare occasions when Israel made daring efforts to render Peace negotiations successful, it usually benefited. The returns of Israel’s reluctant Peace policy were far more beneficial than the returns of Israel’s daring military policies. The History of Israel’s Peace policy strongly refutes the myth of clinging to Occupied Territory as a measure of Security. Most of the cases wherein Israel was willing to apply the “land for Peace” principle helped stabilise and improve Israel’s Security. Even the limited and problematic Experiment of the application of the “land for Peace” principle toward the Palestinians suggests that it had the potential of transforming and stabilising Israeli-Palestinian relations.

 

“Israel’s reactive and reluctant Peace policy was embedded in deep psychological problems that plagued its political leadership and its Society. It was also affected by structural and political problems and by strategic myths that were never evaluated in terms of their actual performance. These factors continue to operate and constitute formidable barriers to Peace. Unless they can be overcome, Israel will continue to live by its sword.” Maoz, pp. 554-5

 

Ze’ev Maoz is the former academic director of the MA Program at the Israeli Defense Forces National Defense College and former head of the Graduate School of Government and Policy and the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.