(2015/5776)

In our previous issues, we made the case for detecting Hashem’s intervention in the United Nations’ vote to establish the State of Israel. We now proceed to argue for noticing God’s involvement in Israel’s War of Independence.

Rav Soloveitchik – The Military Miracle

Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, in his classic essay “Kol Dodi Dofeik,” articulates the view that Israel’s victory in its War of Independence was miraculous and involved divine intervention:

“The knocking of the Beloved[1] could be heard on the battlefield. The small Israeli Defense Forces defeated the mighty armies of the Arab countries. The miracle of the ‘many in the hands of the few[2]’ took place before our eyes. And an even greater miracle occurred at that time. God hardened the heart of Ishmael[3] and enjoined him to do battle against the state of Israel. Had the Arabs not declared war against the state, and instead, agreed to the Partition Plan, the state of Israel would have lacked Jerusalem, a large part of the Galilee, and several areas of the Negev[4]. Had Pharaoh, thousands of years ago, allowed the Israelites to depart from Egypt immediately, in accordance with Moses’ original request, Moses would have been bound to keep his promise and would have had to return after three days. However, Pharaoh hardened his heart and did not hearken to Moses. The Almighty took the Israelites out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. Consequently, Moses’ pledge that they would return to Egypt was no longer binding. A bilateral contract cannot bind one party if the other party refuses to fulfill his obligations[5]. It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh!”

The Big Picture

Detailed knowledge of Israel’s War of Independence is not needed to recognize God’s hand in this war. The very fact that a nation was invaded on three fronts by five Arab nations’ armies on the day it declared independence and survived is miraculous. Moreover, that nation not only survived, but it added considerable territory to its holdings. Indeed, I am aware of no other parallel to this in history[6]. The fact that Israel was seriously outnumbered and had hardly any heavy weapons only underscores the sense of divine intervention. Thus, it is hardly surprising that religious Jews (and many religious Christians as well) presume that a miracle occurred on the battlefields in 1948.

We will examine some of the details of the war in order to clarify and concretize this intuition. We will cite from two excellent works which describe the battles in detail: Chaim Herzog’s The Arab-Israeli Wars and Benny Morris’s 1948. We will point to three means of identifying divine intervention: incredible timing, astoundingly foolish decisions on the part of our enemies, and events which occur against all expectations. We have outlined these identifiers elsewhere, especially in our analysis of how Megillat Esther teaches us to how to identify divine intervention in an era when God does not perform outright miracles which violate the laws of nature.

Incredible Timing

In our previous issues, we cited Paul Johnson who noted the astounding decision of Joseph Stalin to support the founding of the State of Israel. Stalin facilitated the sale of an extensive amount of arms from Czechoslovakia at a time when the United Nations, with the strong support of the United States, imposed a strict arms embargo on the sale of military weapons to Middle East combatants[7]. The timing of the beginning of the arrival of these weapons was absolutely essential to the survival of the Jewish community in Palestine.

The Arabs of Palestine began their assault on their Jewish counterparts on November 29, 1947, the same day that the UN decided to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish States[8]. The objective of the Palestinians was to prevent the implementation of the UN resolution. As the months progressed, Arab attacks became more intense until the end of March 1948, when the Jewish community was in great danger of collapse. The Arabs focused their attacks on the Jewish community’s most vulnerable point, the convoys bringing supplies to isolated outposts in the Galilee, Negev and Judea. The Arabs had placed under siege the Jewish community of Jerusalem, which numbered 100,000 residents, by blocking the only route from the center of the Jewish community, the narrow road from Tel Aviv.

Benny Morris (p. 108-111) writes:

“The Arab ambushes during December 1947-mid-March 1948 had taken a heavy toll…Most of the Palmach[9] was deployed guarding the convoys and the casualty rate was appalling….It was an unequal struggle between small Haganah units in lightly armed, cramped, highly inflammable, makeshift armored cars and masses of Arabs enfilading the road from behind rocks on surrounding hills. Narrow roads made maneuver all but impossible…Once a convoy was ambushed, there was usually nowhere to retreat: Jewish settlements were often far away, and unfriendly Arab villages lay in all directions.

In late March, the Haganah had endured a series of major disasters on the roads. They appeared to portend defeat in the war….In less than a fortnight the Haganah lost most of its armored vehicles and dozens of its best troops…[British High Commissioner Alan] Cunningham noted the Zionists’ desperation ‘The balance of the fighting seems to have turned much in favour of the Arabs’. By the end of March the Jewish community had suffered about a thousand dead.”

The dire situation during the War of Independence had enormous political implications as well. Even American support for the partition of Palestine was seriously eroding to the extent that the American representative to the UN Security Council expressed the need to withdraw the Partition Plan due to the fear that the Jewish community in Palestine would be destroyed.

By the beginning of April 1948, the Jewish leadership recognized the need to go on the offensive and attack the bases of Arab militias that were attacking the Jewish community. With an invasion of regular Arab armies on the horizon, coming only six weeks after the British withdrawal from Eretz Yisrael, the need to destroy the Palestinian militias was vital if the Jewish community had even the faintest chance of surviving large scale invasions of regular armies. During this time period, the British were busy evacuating the country and would not seriously hamper Jewish defense efforts. The most serious roadblock to a proper Jewish response to ensure its survival was the lack of weapons.

Chaim Herzog (p. 19) records:

“The total Armament at the Haganah’s disposal in 1947 consisted of 10,500 rifles, 3,500 submachine-guns, 775 light machine-guns, 34 3-inch mortars and 670 two-inch mortars with sufficient ammunition for only three days’ fighting – even the standing force, the Palmach, could only arm two out of every three of its active members. At this stage, heavy machine guns, anti-tank guns and artillery were but a dream: not one existed in the Jewish forces[10].”

Benny Morris (p. 117) describes:

“The Haganah high command had to ‘borrow’ weapons from local units for a day or two for specific operations and the units (and the settlements) were generally reluctant to part with weapons, quite reasonably arguing that the Arabs might attack while the weapons were on loan.”

The Arrival of Czech Arms Just on Time

On April 1, 1948, the weapons from Czechoslovakia arrived just in time to enable the Haganah to implement a proper plan that would save the lives of more than six hundred thousand Jews who were living in Eretz Yisrael. Chaim Herzog writes (p. 39) “The arms predicament of the Haganah at the time is emphasized by the fact the 200 rifles and 400 light machine-guns that were unloaded from the aircraft constituted a major improvement in the Haganah’s arms situation.” David Ben Gurion[11] stated at the time “After we have received a small amount of the [Czech] equipment…the situation is radically different in our favor.”

As a direct result of the Czech arms shipments, the Haganah in the coming six weeks was able to defeat the Arab militias and secure the country to the extent that it stood a chance to survive the onslaught of five regular Arab armies. Moreover, the flow of Czech arms during the beginning months of the Arab invasion enabled Israel to deflect the Arab armies’ invasion and eventually win the war.

Was this merely a chance set of circumstances? The reasonable interpretation is that God’s subtle hand was involved. The fact that Joseph Stalin ordered the arming of the Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael and the arrival of the arms just in time seems far too fortuitous to be labeled as a mere coincidence.

Conclusion

Next week, we will, God willing, continue our discussion of Hashem’s miracles in Israel’s War of Independence. We will outline God’s subtle involvement in the war and how we can certainly say that the Israeli victory was a miracle.

[1] Rav Soloveitchik alludes to Shir HaShirim 5:2 which refers to divine intervention in human affairs.

[2] This reference is to the Chanukah miracle. Rav Soloveitchik wrote this essay in 1956. With the passage of time we may echo Rav Soloveitchik and say that we are experiencing in Israel an ongoing Chanukah miracle of a duration of sixty-eight years and counting, with God’s support, before our very eyes.

[3] There have been numerous instances when Arab intransigence has benefitted the Jewish State. Examples that stand out are Yasser Arafat’s rejection of Ehud Barak’s extremely generous peace offer at Camp David in 2000 and President Clinton’s even more generous proposal in December 2000, as well as Hafez al-Assad’s rejection of Barak’s offer of 99% of the Golan Heights in 1999. These proposals and the Arab rejections are documented at length with pictures of the original maps in The Missing Peace by Dennis Ross. The ceding of the Golan Heights specifically would have created a grave danger to Israel during the instability in Syria fifteen years after Assad’s rejection. Had the Mufti of Jerusalem accepted the 1937 Peel Partition Plan, Arabs would have controlled more than three quarters of Eretz Yisrael. Finally, had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan, the very large Arab population in the Jewish State which comprised of very large families easily would have outnumbered the Jews, and the Arabs would have assumed control of Israel by democratic means in a decade or less.

[4] It is somewhat surprising that Rav Soloveitchik views the 1948 War of Independence as a positive occurrence. Rav Soloveitchik often stressed the greater importance of human life over Eretz Yisrael (see, for example, Nefesh HaRav p. 98). However, Rav Soloveitchik might have felt that the Arab invasion of 1948 worked to the best interest of the Jewish people, since the original borders of the 1947 United Nations Partition were indefensible and could have led to more severe losses than those sustained in the War of Independence.

[5] This is an important insight which defends the morality of our failure to honor the pledge to return three days after we left Mitzrayim. For further discussion of this issue, see Rav Elchanan Samet’s Iyunim BeParashut HaShavua (1:178-191). Rav Soloveitchik’s insight also provides a justification for the morality of the State of Israel expanding its borders beyond the portion allotted to it by the UN in 1947 during its War of Independence. The failure of the Arab nations to accept these boundaries and instead launch a war of annihilation against the Jews renders the Partition borders as moot.

[6] The closest parallel to this miracle is the success of the American people in its revolution against England. It is, however, not completely parallel, since the Americans enjoyed the assistance of French soldiers without which they would not have won the war. This issue is discussed in depth in John Ferling’s outstanding work Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence.

[7] The American intention was to avoid war. In reality, the absence of weapons in Jewish hands would have resulted, heaven forfend, in the annihilation of the Jewish population of Eretz Yisrael in 1948.

[8] Israel’s War of Independence is divided into two very distinct phases. Palestinian Arabs waged a civil war from November 30, 1947, to May 13, 1948. The Jewish community struggled to survive as its self-defense mechanism, the underground Haganah, outlawed by British law, had to fight in a very restrained manner due to the limitations imposed by the British, who still controlled the country. After the British left and the Jews declared independence, the Jewish defense forces were able to operate in an unimpeded manner, but they faced the invasion of five regular Arab armies.

[9] The Palmach was the standing force of the Haganah, the Jewish defense organization in Eretz Yisrael regarded by the British government as illegal.

[10] All weapons had to be acquired surreptitiously, since the British forbade weapon ownership by Jews. The punishment for weapon ownership was, shockingly, no less than death.

[11] This is recorded in Benny Morris’s 1948 (p. 117).