Ray Jay wrote:Ricky:

In reality the situation was not so dire. The enemy was poorly organized, poorly equipped, poorly lead, and nothing was coordinated between all the component armies..

You've gone off the deep end with your revisionist history. The reality is that a tiny country that was just formed, was poorly equipped and facing an arms embargo, and had a large part of its population aligned against it with several surrounding armed countries with something like 50X its population and a greater percentage of military equipment who were saying that they want to kill all Jews in the new country. Israel survived against all odds. It was a modern day miracle.

Now you can say the enemy was poorly everything. But then ... OMG ... the Israelis were scared for all of their lives.

You can believe what you want to believe but if you want to convince other people you need to marshall facts, evidence , convincing arguments

At the beginning of the 1970s. I had begun to work on research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which, I hoped, would produce a Ph.D. thesis in sociology. The subject was the Zionist ideology of land and its relationship to other political doctrines. In the earlier stages of my research, I was shocked to discover that a major “purification” of the land (the term “ethnic cleansing” was unknown in that period) from its Arab Palestinian inhabitant was done during the 1948 War by the Jewish military and para-military forces. During this research I found, solely based on Israeli sources, that about 350 Arab villages were “abandoned” and their 3.25 million dunums of rural land, were confiscated and became. in several stages, the property of the Israeli state or the Jewish National Fund. I also found that Moshe Dayan, then Minister of Agriculture, disclosed that about 700,000 Arabs who “left” the territories had owned four million dunums of land.
The conclusion was that, as in many other cases, what seemed at first glance a pure and limited military doctrine, proved itself in the case of “Plan D” to comprise far-reaching measures that lead to a complete demographic, ethnic, social and political transformation of Palestine. Implementing the spirit of this doctrine, the Jewish military forces conquered about 20,000 square kilometers of territory (compared with the 14,000 square kilometers granted them by the UN Partition Resolution) and purified them almost completely from their Arab inhabitants. About 800,000 Arab inhabitants lived on the territories before they fell under Jewish control following the 1948 war. Fewer than 100,000 Arabs remained there under Jewish control after the cease fire. An additional 50,000 were included within the Israeli state’s territory following the Israeli-Jordan’s armistice agreements that transferred several villages to Israeli rule.

The military doctrine, the base of Plan D, clearly reflected the local Zionist ideological aspirations to acquire a maximal Jewish territorial continuum, cleansed from Arab presence, as a necessary condition for establishing an exclusive Jewish nation-state.

The fight was more even than the romantic picture you appear to have been told.

The Arab armies sent numbered about half that fielded by the Israeli Defence Forces. Both sides had access to military equipment of pretty much the same quality (and so if Israel had less percentage it could easily have had the same numbers of things like tanks and planes etc).

No this is just the usual conclusory stuff. You need letters, orders, diaries and other documentary evidence showing the Israeli plan and how it was carried out

The aim of this plan is the control of the area of the Jewish State and the defense of its borders [as determined by the UN Partition Plan] and the clusters of [Jewish] settlements outside the boundaries, against regular and irregular enemy forces operating from bases outside and inside the Jewish State.
Furthermore, the plan suggested the following actions, amongst others, in order to reach these goals:
Actions against enemy settlements located in our, or near our, defense systems [i.e., Jewish settlement and localities] with the aim of preventing their use as bases for active armed forces. These actions should be divided into the following types: The destruction of villages (by fire, blowing up and mining) - especially of those villages over which we cannot gain [permanent] control. Gaining of control will be accomplished in accordance with the following instructions: The encircling of the village and the search of it. In the event of resistance - the destruction of the resisting forces and the expulsion of the population beyond the boundaries of the State.

Forty-three current and former reservists belonging to an elite Israeli military unit signed an open letter refusing to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories, citing alleged abuses of civilians living in the region, according to media reports.

“We, veterans of Unit 8200, reserve soldiers both past and present, declare that we refuse to take part in actions against Palestinians and refuse to continue serving as tools in deepening the military control over the Occupied Territories,” the reservists, belonging to Unit 8200 -- an army intelligence unit comparable to the United State’s National Security Agency -- said in a letter addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Further research showed that the military blueprint for the 1948 war was the so-called “Plan D” (Tochnit Daleth). General Yigael Yadin, Head of the Operations Branch of the Israeli unified armed forces, launched it on March 10, 1948. ... How do you think Kemmerling and Morris get to their conclusions?
They discuss in depth in their books "Plan D" .

By the end of 1948, the Israel Defense Forces had 88,033 soldiers, including 60,000 combat soldiers

Just as I've said that the disappearance of up to 700,000 Palestinians from lands they occupied was an expulsion, not simply them all deciding to leave.

“The people who make the decisions at the newspapers – I speak from direct experience – are hostile toward Israel. They see themselves as part of an ideological alliance that includes NGOs and UN agencies.

“The move in social circles that are pro-Palestinian and hostile toward Israel and, and they see journalism not as a way to explain the complex story to people but as a political weapon with which they arm one side in the conflict,” he writes. . ...

“Another reason is that they have a kind of guilt about being white and Western, and Israel is perceived as a white country and the Palestinians are perceived as not white. And most Western journalists never heard of the fact that there are Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews.” ...

Friedman points out in his article that there’s nearly “no real analysis of Palestinian society or ideologies, profiles of armed Palestinian groups, or investigation of Palestinian government. Palestinians are not taken seriously as agents of their own fate.

“The West has decided that Palestinians should want a state alongside Israel, so that opinion is attributed to them as fact, though anyone who has spent time with actual Palestinians understands that things are (understandably, in my opinion) more complicated. Who they are and what they want is not important: The story mandates that they exist as passive victims of the party that matters.”

Gross, in our meeting in Tel Aviv, says he believes the anti-Israeli rhetoric promotes the entrenchment of the Palestinians and deters them from making the compromises necessary to achieve any long-lasting solution with Israel. ...

Another problem, according to Friedman, is the revolving door between the profession of journalism and political involvement – in other words, the movement of people from journalism to large international NGOs or the United Nations.

“The journalists do not see those organizations or the UN as subjects to cover even though they are the strongest players working here,” he says. “There is no critical coverage of the UN even though it is swollen, inefficient and often corrupt.”

Ray Jay wrote:Danivon:

The fight was more even than the romantic picture you appear to have been told.

Save your condescension for others. I'm going on what I've read.

The Arab armies sent numbered about half that fielded by the Israeli Defence Forces. Both sides had access to military equipment of pretty much the same quality (and so if Israel had less percentage it could easily have had the same numbers of things like tanks and planes etc).

In 1947 pre-Israel did not have access to the same quality of equipment. They did not have an air force or navy. They did not have mechanized tanks. Part of the miracle is the equipment and manpower they were able to obtain in 47 and 48 in spite of the British blockade.

Hindsight is 20:20. But the Arabs had more people, better terrain, and better supply routes. They surrounded the tiny country. Yes their countries were new as well (although modern Egypt achieved independence in 1922)

War is a crapshoot. You just don't know what is going to happen. Your foreign ministry thought it would go the other way. So did the CIA (but they get stuff wrong all the time :) ) The Arabs certainly predicted their own victory. I think it is important to note that Israel also could have lost a war of attrition over a few years. That's been a fear for a long time. How does a much smaller country stab mobilized.

Have you read that at the outset of the 1948 war, Ben Gurion was advised (based on what we now know are over-estimates of Arab strength, but even so) that the chances were even?

The war was close, and could have gone either way. But ascribing it to a 'miracle' goes too far.

The provisions of the plan did not call for expulsions of Palestinian villages that did not resist

As a military plan designed to ensure national survival, I think the idea that it was a hidden plan to ethnically cleanse Arabs from Jewish areas to be far-fetched.

Jewish leaders were concerned that these Arab villages would aid enemy forces so they came up with a plan to control the population.

And Ricky you like to quote Israelis who are sympathetic to the Palestinians

In WWI Canada rounded up Ukrainian and German immigrants and emprisoned them in forced labour camps. Out of fear that they would aid Germany.
In WWII Canada and the US put Japanese into interment camps and seized their property. Out of fear they would aid Japan.
Neither were moral. Neither were justified.
There's all kinds of instances where a majority "feared a minority" and forced them out of their homes, and forced them into internment or concentration camps....
Almost always justified by fear and reasons of security.

Beginning of the Civil War (30 November 1947 – 1 April 1948)
Aftermath of the car bomb attack on the Ben Yehuda St., which killed 53 and injured many more.
In the aftermath of the adoption of Resolution 181(II) by the General Assembly of the United Nations recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition,[12] the manifestations of joy of the Jewish community were counterbalanced by protests by Arabs throughout the country[13] and after 1 December, the Arab Higher Committee enacted a general strike that lasted three days.[14]

A 'wind of violence'[15] rapidly took hold of the country, foreboding civil war between the two communities.[16]

In the immediate aftermath of the General Assembly's vote on the Partition plan, the explosions of joy among the Jewish community were counterbalanced by the expression of discontent among the Arab community. Soon after, violence broke out from both sides and became more and more prevalent. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals came fast on each other's heels, resulting in dozens of victims killed on both sides in the process. The impasse persisted as British forces didn't intervene to put a stop to the escalating cycles of violence generated by IZL and LHI terrorism and Arab skirmishes.[17][18][19][20]

The first casualties after the adoption of Resolution 181(II) by the General Assembly were passengers on a Jewish bus driving on the Coastal Plain near Kfar Sirkin on 30 November. An eight-man gang from Jaffa ambushed the bus killing five and wounding others. Half an hour later they ambushed a second bus, southbound from Hadera, killing two more. At other places, Arab snipers skirmished Jewish buses in Jerusalem and Haifa.[18]

Irgun and Lehi followed their strategy of placing bombs in crowded markets and bus-stops.[21] As on 30 December, in Haifa, when members of the clandestine militant Zionist group, Irgun, threw two bombs at a crowd of Arab workers who were queueing in front of a refinery, killing 6 of them and injuring 42. An angry crowd massacred 39 Jewish people in revenge, until British soldiers reestablished calm.[19][22] In reprisals, some soldiers from the strike force, Palmach and the Carmeli brigade, attacked the village of Balad ash-Sheikh and Hawassa. According to different historians, this attack led to between 21 and 70 deaths.[20]

According to Benny Morris, much of the fighting in the first months of the war took place in and on the edges of the main towns, and was initiated by the Arabs. It included Arab snipers firing at Jewish houses, pedestrians, and traffic, as well as planting bombs and mines along urban and rural paths and roads.[23]

From January onwards, operations became increasingly militarized.

In all the mixed zones where both communities lived, particularly Jerusalem and Haifa, increasingly violent attacks, riots, reprisals and counter-reprisals followed each other. Isolated shootings evolved into all-out battles. Attacks against traffic, for instance, turned into ambushes as one bloody attack led to another.

On 22 February 1948, supporters of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni organized, with the help of certain British deserters, three attacks against the Jewish community. Using car bombs aimed at the headquarters of the pro-Zionist Palestine Post newspaper, the Ben Yehuda St. market and the backyard of the Jewish Agency's offices, they killed 22, 53 and 13 Jewish people respectively, and injured hundreds.[24][25] In revenge, Lehi put a landmine on the railroad track in Rehovot on which a train from Cairo to Haifa was travelling, killing 28 British soldiers and injuring 35.[26] This would be copied on 31 March, close to Caesarea Maritima, which would lead to the death of forty people, injuring 60, who were, for the most part, Arab civilians.[27]

Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organized the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem.[28] To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply the city with convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but the operation became more and more impractical as the number of casualties in the relief convoys surged. By March, Al-Hussayni's tactic had paid off. Almost all of Haganah's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed.[29] The situation for those who dwelt in the Jewish settlements in the highly isolated Negev and North of Galilee was even more critical.

According to the Arab League general Safwat:

Despite the fact that skirmishes and battles have begun, the Jews at this stage are still trying to contain the fighting to as narrow a sphere as possible in the hope that partition will be implemented and a Jewish government formed; they hope that if the fighting remains limited, the Arabs will acquiesce in the fait accompli. This can be seen from the fact that the Jews have not so far attacked Arab villages unless the inhabitants of those villages attacked them or provoked them first.[30]

The British either could not or did not want to impede the intervention of foreign forces into Palestine.[55][56] According to a special report by the UN Special Commission on Palestine:[57]
During the night of 20–21 January, a troop composed of 700 Syrians in battle dress, equipped well and in control of mechanized transport, enters Palestine 'via Transjordan.'
On 27 January, 'a band of 300 men from outside Palestine, was established in the area of Safed in Galilee and was probably responsible for the intensive heavy weapon and mortar attacks the following week against the settlement of Yechiam.'
In the night of 29–30 January, a battalion commanded by Fawzi al-Qawuqji that consisted of 950 men in 19 vehicles was deployed by the Arab Liberation Army and entered Palestine 'via Adam Bridge and dispersed itself around the villages of Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarem.'

...Fawzi al-Qawuqji, Field Commander of the Arab Liberation Army, arrived, according to himself, on 4 March, with the rest of the logistics and around 100 Bosniak volunteers in Jab'a, a small village on the route between Nablus and Jenin. He established a headquarters there and a training centre for Palestinian Arab volunteers.

Alan Cunningham, the British High Commissioner in Palestine, thoroughly protested against the incursions and the fact that 'no serious effort is being made to stop incursions'. The only reaction came from Alec Kirkbride, who complained to Ernest Bevin about Cunningham's 'hostile tone and threats'.[59]

The British and the information service of Yishuv expected an offensive for 15 February, but it would not take place, seemingly because the Mufti troops were not ready.[60]

In March, an Iraqi regiment of the Arab Liberation Army came to reinforce the Palestinian Arab troops of Salameh in the area around Lydda and Ramleh, while Al-Hussayni started a headquarters in Bir Zeit, 10 km to the north of Ramallah.[61] At the same time, a number of North African troops, principally Libyans, and hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood entered Palestine. In March, an initial regiment arrived in Gaza and certain militants among them reached Jaffa.