A contest of will
The military superiority of the Israelis is achieved in spite of a disparity of numbers.
They have a superiority in will and intellect.
This is different from the will that Hitler used to leverage Gemany’s military inferiority to a position of strength in the late 1930s. His goal was world domination during his lifetime.
Jews learned some brutal lessons after the dispora. They were treated better in the Middle East than in much of Europe. Russia had its pogroms and there was that Dreyfus incident in France. Spain had the Inquisition and persecution and expulsion in England was reversed by Cromwell. Roman Catholics were his favorite targets. Germany seemed to be the most receptive place for Jews prior to the 1920s.
Jews had few friends in the world during the Hitler years. No one wanted to take or protect them. There were some honorable gentiles such as the King of Denmark, Winston Churchill, and Orde Wingate. Some Berliners raised hell to prevent some Jewish neighbors from being deported to death camps and a Japanese Ambassador to a Baltic state was rather generous with passports for Jews attempting to escape. Admiral Canaris provided documents to a famous Polish Rabbi that allowed him to make it to the USA.
The image of the Jew seemed to be polarized. There was the radicalized and deophobic troublemaker at one extreme and the pacifist who trusted the kindness of strangers who were really monsters. This pacifism made it easier to dehumanize the trainloads of humans bound for extermination.
Wingate taught Jews in what was then Palestine to fight and was removed as a threat to the status quo. He was the premier innovator in unconventional warfare and went on to fight in the liberation of Ethiopia and in Asia. His death deprived Israel of a military leader and the task fell to a student named Moshe Dayan.
The spirit of Israel was not born in the blend of mysticism and socialism of the early Zionist but in the courageous fight put up in the Warsaw Ghetto. A few smuggled revolvers (Ghetto Sabbath-night Specials?) were used to trigger an uprising that tied up a substantial numbers of Waffen SS troops. Military defeats can become spiritual victories with long-term consequences, as witness the unforgettable Alamo. The spirit of ‘Never Again’ resonates in Jerusalem.
The territorial grabs of the Axis forces and Soviets were not voluntarily regurgitated.
Israel has been rather modest in its post 1948 conquests. Should it return that superb artillery platform known as the Golan Heights to a hostile Syria? Should not neighbors who tolerate and encourage terroristic attacks pay some price in real estate?
Israel had been the beneficiary of foreign assistance. During its first war, surplus material from the Third Reich proved useful. Then France sold Israel some modern military aircraft. They have gotten a lot of equipment from the USA and have produced some splendid weaponry on their own.
The Arab states are akin to vagrants who have been given winning lottery tickets by outsiders. The lottery was geological. They could afford to buy a lot of things. from gaudy trinkets to modern weapons. The crude materiel built by the USSR was provided in great quantity and appeared to make great targets before becoming scrap metal.
Who would make the better companion in a foxhole? A fanatic Arab shooting his AK in the air or an Israel taking aim with a Galil?
How many remember the Iraqi air force (what was left of it) doing the flying version of the ‘bugout stomp’ to Iran?
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