The Rise of Israel

The Rise of Israel
The state of Israel is one of the most controversial countries in the world. Yet its
unique creation and rise to power in 1948 have not been adequately explained either
by its friends (mainstream Zionists) or by its detractors (Arabists and post-Zionists).
Using a variety of comparative methodologies, from contrasting the Jewish state to
other minorities in the Ottoman Turkish Empire, to the rise of the four Tigers in Asia,
to newly independent countries and revolutionary socialist countries in Europe and
Asia, Jonathan Adelman examines how Israel gained the strength to overcome great
obstacles and become a serious regional power in the Middle East by 2007.
Themes addressed include:
• How the creation of Israel is strikingly different from that of most new states.
• How voluntarist forces, those of individual choice, will and strategy, played a
major role in its creation and success.
• In-depth analysis of the creation of a revolutionary party, government, army and
secret police as critical to the success of the socialist revolution (1881–1977).
• The enormous size of the forces aligned against the state, including major inter-
national and religious organizations representing billions of people, international
reluctance to helping Israel in crisis, and internal Israeli and Jewish issues.
• The tremendous impact of revolutionary (socialist and semi-capitalist national-
ist) factors in giving Israel the strength to survive and become a significant
regional power over time.
Jonathan Adelman provides a fresh perspective on one of the most controversial

states in the world and avoids the highly charged ideological descriptions that often
plague such discussions. Understanding the rise of Israel, a key state in the region,
helps to explain a great deal about the Middle East today.
Jonathan Adelman, who teaches at the Graduate School of International Studies at

the University of Denver, has written 11 books on Russian and Chinese politics,
revolutions and security studies. Having taught at Hebrew University and the
University of Haifa, he applies his knowledge of revolutions and international affairs
to explaining the creation and flourishing of Israel.
Israeli History, Politics and Society
Series Editor: Efraim Karsh
King’s College London
This series provides a multidisciplinary examination of all aspects of Israeli

history, politics and society, and serves as a means of communication between
the various communities interested in Israel: academics, policy-makers, prac-
titioners, journalists and the informed public.
1. Peace in the Middle East 8. Israel at the Polls, 1996

The challenge for Israel Edited by Daniel J. Elazar and
Edited by Efraim Karsh Shmuel Sandler
2. The Shaping of Israeli Identity
9. From Rabin to Netanyahu
Myth, memory and trauma
Israel’s troubled agenda
Edited by Robert Wistrich and
Edited by Efraim Karsh
David Ohana
3. Between War and Peace 10. Fabricating Israeli History
Dilemmas of Israeli security The ‘new historians’, second
Edited by Efraim Karsh revised edition
4. US-Israeli Relations at the Efraim Karsh
Crossroads
Edited by Gabriel Sheffer 11. Divided against Zion
Anti-Zionist opposition in
5. Revisiting the Yom Kippur War Britain to a Jewish state in
Edited by P. R. Kumaraswamy Palestine, 1945–1948
Rory Miller
6. Israel
The dynamics of change and
continuity 12. Peacemaking in a Divided Society
Edited by David Levi-Faur, Israel after Rabin
Gabriel Sheffer and David Vogel Edited by Sasson Sofer
7. In Search of Identity 13. A Twenty-Year Retrospective of

Jewish aspects in Israeli culture Egyptian-Israeli Relations
Edited by Dan Urian and Efraim Peace in spite of everything
Karsh Ephraim Dowek
14. Global Politics 24. Decision on Palestine Deferred
Essays in honor of David Vital America, Britain and wartime
Edited by Abraham Ben-Zvi and diplomacy, 1939–1945
Aharon Klieman Monty Noam Penkower
15. Parties, Elections and Cleavages 25. A Dissenting Democracy

Israel in comparative and The case of ‘Peace Now’, an
theoretical perspective Israeli peace movement
Edited by Reuven Y. Hazan and Magnus Norell
Moshe Maor
26. Britain, Israel and Anglo-Jewry
1949–1957
16. Israel and the Polls 1999 Natan Aridan
Edited by Daniel J. Elazar and
M. Ben Mollov 27. Israeli Identity
In search of a successor to the
17. Public Policy in Israel pioneer, Tsabar and settler
Edited by David Nachmias and Lilly Weissbrod
Gila Menahem
28. The Israeli Palestinians
18. Developments in Israeli Public An Arab minority in the Jewish
Administration state
Edited by Moshe Maor Edited by Alexander Bligh
29. Israel, the Hashemites and the

19. Israeli Diplomacy and the Quest Palestinians
for Peace The fateful triangle
Mordechai Gazit Edited by Efraim Karsh and P. R.
Kumaraswamy
20. Israeli- Romanian Relations at the
End of Ceauceşcu’s Era, 30. Last Days in Israel
Yosef Govrin Abraham Diskin
31. War in Palestine, 1948

21. John F. Kennedy and the Politics
Strategy and diplomacy
of Arms Sales to Israel
David Tal
Abraham Ben-Zvi
32. Rethinking the Middle East
22. Green Crescent over Nazareth Efraim Karsh
The displacement of Christians
by Muslims in the Holy Land 33. Ben-Gurion against the Knesset
Raphael Israeli Giora Goldberg
23. Jerusalem Divided 34. Trapped Fools

The Armistice Region, Thirty years of Israeli policy in
1947–1967 the Territories
Raphael Israeli Schlomo Gazit
35. Israel’s Quest for Recognition and 43. Israeli Institutions at Crossroads
Acceptance in Asia Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Garrison State diplomacy
44. The Israeli-Palestine Peace
Jacob Abadi
Process Negotiations, 1999–2001
36. The Harp and Shield of David Within reach
Ireland, Zionism and the State of Gilead Sher
Israel, 1937–1963
Shulamit Eliash 45. Ben-Gurion’s Political Struggles,
1963–67
37. H. V. Evatt and the Establishment A lion in winter
of Israel Zaki Shalom
The undercover Zionist
Daniel Mandel 46. Ben-Gurion, Zionism and
American Jewry
38. Navigating Perilous Waters
1948–1963
An Israeli strategy for peace and
Ariel Feldestein
security
Ephraim Sneh 47. The Origins of the American-
Israeli Alliance
39. Lyndon B. Johnson and the
The Jordanian factor
Politics of Arms Sales to Israel
Abraham Ben-Zvi
In the shadow of the hawk
Abraham Ben-Zvi 48. The Harp and the Shield of David
40. Israel at the Polls 2003 Ireland, Zionism and the State of
Edited by Shmeul Sandler, Ben M. Israel
Mollov and Jonathan Rynhold Shulamit Eliash
41. Between Capital and Land 49. Israel’s National Security
The Jewish National Fund’s Issues and challenges since the
finances and land-purchase Yom Kippur War
priorities in Palestine, 1939–1945 Efraim Inbar
Eric Engel Tuten 50. The Rise of Israel
42. Israeli Democracy at Crossroads A history of a revolutionary state
Raphael Cohen-Almagor Jonathan Adelman
Israel: The First Hundred Years (Mini Series)

1. Israel’s Transition from 4. Israel in the International Arena

Community to State Edited by Efraim Karsh
5. Israel in the next Century
2. From War to Peace? Edited by Efraim Karsh
3. Politics and Society since 1948
The Rise of Israel
A history of a revolutionary state
Jonathan Adelman
First published 2008
by Routledge
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© 2008 Jonathan Adelman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Adelman, Jonathan R.
The rise of Israel : a history of a revolutionary state / Jonathan
Adelman.
p. cm. – (Israeli history, society and politics; 49)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Israel–History. 2. Israel–Foreign relations–20th century.
3. Zionism–History. I. Title.
DS126.5.A64 2008
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2007042980
ISBN 0-203-92829-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–77509–4 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0–415–77510–8 (pbk)
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ISBN13: 978–0–415–77509–0 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–77510–6 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–92829–5 (ebk)
For my loving Deborah
Contents
List of tables xi
Preface xii
PART I
The rise of Israel 1
1 Introduction 3
2 Controversy over Israel 15
3 The rise of Israel in comparative perspective 27
PART II
Obstacles to the rise of Israel 43
4 Jewish issues 45
5 Hostility of the major powers 57
6 Enmity of the Arab world and Iran 73
7 Major international and religious organizations 91
8 Western unwillingness to help Israel in crises 102
9 Israeli issues 110
PART III
Revolutions and the rise of Israel 119
10 Historical roots of the revolutions 121

11 Two modern Zionist revolutions 131
x Contents
12 Revolutionary military-security factors 144
13 Revolutionary factors: aliyah, education, government
and party 166
14 International factors 179
15 Conclusions 198
Notes 207
Bibliography 243
Index 257
Tables
1.1 The economy of Israel, 2005, compared to that of more than

100 new nations created since 1945 7
1.2 Scientific capabilities of Israel and selected countries, 2005–06 7
6.1 Weapons balance, May 1948 76
10.1 Jewish members of Russian radical parties, 1905–07 129
12.1 Level of Israeli military exports 153
Preface
The idea for this book began 20 years ago, in Moscow, when I visited the
Laboratory for the Study of Israel at the Soviet Academy of Science (the
Soviet Union did not recognize Israel at that time). The Russians asked me to
give an impromptu talk on Israel, where I had taught at Hebrew University
two years earlier. An hour later I wound up my talk on how modern Israel
actually was Russia incarnate. While giving that talk I came to realize how
much revolutionary Russian movements had influenced Israel. Over time this
idea developed into the theme of this book, on how Israel had been and
remained a revolutionary state.
So many people in the fields of revolutions and Israeli studies have influ-
enced me – Bernard Lewis, Michael Oren, Efraim Karsh, Shlomo Avineri,
Jacob Talman, Gerry Steinberg, Jack Goldstone, Theda Skocpol, Crane
Brinton, Seweryn Bialer, Orde Kittrie and many others. But I bear full
responsibility for the ideas herein expressed and all errors that may have
resulted.
On a personal note, I have been very fortunate to have found in Deborah
Jordy the loving, intelligent and wonderful companion for the rest of my life.
It is to Deborah that I gratefully dedicate this book.
Part I
The rise of Israel

1 Introduction
In the post-modern world we have lost our sense of wonder and awe at those
once seemingly improbable events that have become our current prosaic real-
ity. Who ever thought that small, ragtag, poorly armed bands of a few tens of
thousands of men in the American colonies in 1775, in Russia in 1917 and in
China in 1935 would amount to much? Yet they launched the American
Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution that became
world historical events that shook the world.1 And who in 1900, when there
were 50,000 largely religious and poor Jews in Ottoman Turkish Palestine,
would have imagined that by 1948 a Jewish state would win the War of
Independence and by 2007 become a regional First World power?
An analyst in 1900, asked about the likelihood of a Jewish state, would
have replied: “Don’t be absurd! Even Herzl admitted that the idea of a Jewish
state, if proclaimed publicly, would be met with ‘universal laughter.’2 The
Arabs derisively call the Jews ‘the penniless of the weakest of people, whom
all governments are expelling.’3 The Jews, without a state in over 1,800 years,
have no idea how to be soldiers, farmers or government officials. Lacking any
international power, they think the idea is a mirage.4 Over 99 percent of them
don’t live in Palestine or want to live in such a backwater. Those few who live
there are dependent on halukah [foreign charity].5 They are a drop in the sea
of 600,000 Palestinian Arabs and 20 million Arabs.”6
The analyst in 1916, when the expulsion of thousands of Palestinian Jews
by Ottoman Turkey and war depredations left the community on the verge
of destruction, would have exclaimed, “Don’t be crazy! The Jews dream of
settling the land but their two socialist parties have fewer than 2,000 agri-
cultural workers and they own 2 percent of the land. Either the Germans will
win the war and the Ottoman Turks will drive out the Jews (as they did the
Armenians) or the British will win and create an empire. Over 300 million
Muslims and 390 million Christians will never let tens of thousands of Jews
control their Holy Places!”7
The analyst in 1942 would have exploded, “Nazi Germany is exterminating
most of the Jews in the world at Auschwitz. The British Empire, enforcing the
1939 White Paper, is banning the survivors from Palestine and planning an
independent Palestinian state in 1949. The Soviet Union supports the Arabs
4 The rise of Israel
and persecutes the Zionists. The world is indifferent to their fate. The 500,000
Jews in Palestine will be destroyed, if not by the Nazi panzer divisions closing
in on Palestine, then by tens of millions of Arabs, led by the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Hussein.”8
When the state of Israel was proclaimed in May 1948, the aged analyst
would have proclaimed, “There are 650,000 Jews against 50 million Arabs.
The Jews have no strategic depth, heavy weapons, American help or profes-
sional officers. They’ve done poorly so far and have an amateur underground
army arrayed against five professional armies. Field Marshal Montgomery
gives them three weeks, General George Marshall thinks they are doomed,
British senior intelligence officers think the Arabs will win handily, the CIA
gives them two years at the best and even Yigal Yadin gives them only a 50:50
chance of survival. Their situation is hopeless.”9
This very elderly analyst would have been tasked with similar questions in
1967, when the ring of Arab enemies had tightened around Israel, and in
1973, when on the third day of the war Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said
that “The Third Temple is falling.”10
Perhaps Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president, put it best when he
declared that “To be a Zionist it is not perhaps absolutely necessary to be
slightly mad but it helps.”11
Weakness of the Jews

Given the often dismal history of the Jews in over 1,800 years in the Diaspora
(forced conversions, massacres, pogroms, expulsions and the Holocaust),
the analyst was reasonable. Two thousand years ago, 8 million Jews made up
20 percent of the population of the eastern Mediterranean and 10 percent of
the Roman world. By the twenty-first century there should have been more
than 100 million Jews in the world: there are but 13 million.12
Even many Zionists were dubious that a traumatized people could achieve
nationhood. Leo Pinsker in Autoemancipation in 1882 derisively declared that
“For the living, the Jew is a dead man; for the nations an alien and a vagrant;
for property holders a beggar; for the poor an exploiter and a millionaire; for
patriots a man without a country; for all classes, a hated rival.”13 In 1900
most Jews in the Russian Pale of Settlement were luftmenschen without a
definite occupation, debarred from most government and professional posi-
tions. An 1892 American commission found their health and misery to be
worse than those of the poorest Russian peasants and workers. Theodor
Herzl confided in his diary that “We are a nation of shnorrers and beggars.”14
In 1900 the small, largely religious Palestinian Jewish community seemed a
weak reed for creating a Jewish state. Nor did the 10 million Jews in Europe,
North America, the Middle East and North Africa seem more promising.
For, as David Vital described their situation in 1900:
A pervading feature of the life of the Jews in their Exile has been their
Introduction 5
weakness; a permanent and notorious inability ever (and anywhere) to
match strength for strength, pressure for pressure, or even benevolence
for benevolence. Weakness was at the very foundation of their relations
with the people among whom they lived and the alien rulers to whom
they were subject . . . Nowhere were they masters, not even – in the final
analysis – in their own homes . . . Herzl . . . sought . . . to reverse the
course of Jewish history – in effect, to overcome the tremendous dispar-
ity between the splendid aims of Zionism and the pitiful means available
to it.15
In November 1947 the new CIA in a report on “The Consequences of the

Partition of Palestine” warned that, after initial successes the Jews, without
strong and unlikely outside assistance, would probably be defeated within two
years.16
Even after victory in 1948, Israel was still weak. Israel in the 1948 war
lost East Jerusalem, the Etzion Bloc, Latrun, the Dead Sea potash works and
1 percent of its population. It had over 400 miles of narrow borders, with
hostile neighbors and no natural barriers of protection. Syrian planes taking
off from Damascus were 46 miles from the Galilee, and Saudi planes
taking off from Guruet were 87 miles from Dimona. Israel had a Third World
economy with $43 million in exports (led by Jaffa oranges). Israel was an
educational backwater with some areas of excellence, only 700 university
students and a weak health care system. Many Israelis and most new
immigrants spoke poor Hebrew.17
The power and perseverance of their enemies

The Jews were well aware of their desperate situation. In two speeches in 1937
and 1939, David Ben Gurion analyzed the international balance of power:
Great dangers await us on every front . . . Worldwide our strength is next

to nothing alongside the mighty powers contending . . . What is our
strength against gigantic powers . . . against the Arabs in their Arab
countries . . . against the mightiest empire in history . . . the British
Empire?18 . . . [The Jewish people] stand powerless and defenseless. It has
no navy, no army, no government, not even a tiny strip of land of its own.
The world’s rulers seem to believe that anything can be foisted on this
helpless people.19
Their enemies then and later were numerous, powerful and often deter-
mined. These included great powers (the Tsarist Russian Empire, the Soviet
Union, Nazi Germany, the British Empire 1937–49, the Ottoman Turkish
Empire), regional powers (the Arab states), strong transnational religious
movements (the Roman Catholic Church, the World Council of Churches,
Islam), international organizations (the United Nations after 1951), most
Third World states after 1967 and global anti-Semitism. Walter Laqueur
observed that “Zionism faced gigantic obstacles [and] had to fight for the
realization of its aims in the most adverse conditions.”20
Their enemies often acted with strength, power and persistence. Nazi
Germany exterminated 6 million Jews (the reservoir of the future state), spread
massive anti-Semitic propaganda and threatened to destroy the Palestinian
Jewish homeland in 1941 and 1942. The Soviet Union, from 1924 to 1984
(save for 1948 and 1949), eliminated powerful Zionist organizations, destroyed
the fabric of Jewish life, massively armed the Arabs against Israel and spread
anti-Israel propaganda. Once supportive of Zionism (from 1917 to 1929), the
British Empire barred hundreds of thousands or even millions of Jews look-
ing to immigrate to Palestine in the late 1930s and in the 1940s and backed
Arab nations in 1948. The Ottoman Turkish Empire limited Jewish immigra-
tion and investment in Palestine and threatened to annihilate the community
during World War I.
Most of the Arab world, with its oil wealth, large populations and strong
ties to both Western powers and the Soviet Union, opposed Israel in eight
wars and two intifadas. Global religious movements, including Islam, the
World Council of Churches and often the Roman Catholic Church, as well as
various international organizations and the bulk of the new Third World
states, also were hostile, especially after 1967. The correlation of forces was
strongly negative for the Jews striving to create and develop a Jewish state.
The unlikely Israeli story

And yet, despite all this, Israel survived and did well. It won six wars and
defeated the second intifada. It is one of the world’s leading countries in ABM
systems (Arrow), satellite systems, foreign intelligence services (Mossad),
military power (Zahal), R&D (4.7 percent of GNP), high-tech (4,000) and
biotech (1,500) startups, companies on the NASDAQ (80) and arms exports
($4 billion).21 More Israeli patents (1,188) were granted in the United States
in 2006 than Chinese (366), Indian (354) and Russian (268) combined.22
Israel is a First World country with a $140 billion economy and $46.5 billion
in exports (including $15 billion hi-tech). In 2005 Israel’s foreign direct
investment (FDI) was $5.6 billion and in 2006 $13.2 billion.23
Israel pioneered in new social forms such as the kibbutz, moshav, youth
aliyah village, Nahal military settlements and mechina program for the dis-
advantaged. Hebrew University, Technion and Weizmann Institute are in the
top ten universities in Asia, and there are over 150,000 students in higher
education.24 After immigration of 2.5 million Jews and rapid growth of its
Arab population, Israel has 7 million people, a population equal to that of
almost half the world’s nations. Israeli Jewish males, with life expectancy of
76 years, had the world’s third highest life expectancy, a year greater than
American males. By 2007 the vast majority of Israelis spoke excellent Hebrew
and created an authentic Hebrew culture.
Introduction 7
Table 1.1 shows how the Israeli economy is competitive with that of lead-
ing First World countries.25 Table 1.2 shows the strong scientific capabilities
of Israel.
Difficult questions: How was Israel created and why did it

flourish against all odds?
Only 5 percent of 4,000 peoples in the world have achieved statehood in
the last several centuries. Most successful states had millions of people
forming a demographic majority with a common culture, language, history,
religion and power predominating in a single area for many centuries
and controlling significant resources. Quebec, Scotland, Bavaria, Wales, the
Basque land and Catalonia have shown that even possession of all or nearly
all these attributes has been no guarantee of statehood. But the Jews in 1881
and even 1947, dispersed all over the world, lacked nearly all of the basic
attributes of statehood.
In most Third World countries, nationalism was a mass reaction to alien
European rule led by intellectuals. An early intellectual revolt led to a mass
Table 1.1 The economy of Israel, 2005, compared to that of more than 100 new
nations created since 1945
Nation GDP per capita

(purchasing power parity)
$
Singapore 28,100
Israel 24,600
South Korea 20,400
China 6,800
Jordan 4,700
India 3,300
Source: Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, Washington, D.C.: CIA, 2006.
Table 1.2 Scientific capabilities of Israel and selected countries, 2005–06
Countries Scientific papers citations

(per million)
Israel 3,330
Singapore 3,075
Canada 2,890
Russia 299
Iran 142
Egypt 79
Syria 16
Saudi Arabia 1
Source: Scientific Citation Index, 2005–06.

revolt against the aliens. The intellectuals absorbed the frustration, resent-
ment, impulses and experiences of the masses and expressed them in political
form. As Ben Halpern has explained:
But, for Diaspora Jews, not oppressed in their own country by a foreign
garrison or administration or by landlords and nobles garnering the
fruits of conquest, their mass response was not revolt but emigration.
Their oppressors were not foreigners but the majority of the population
or foreign rulers with majority support for oppressing Jews. The Jews
lacked any control over the means of production for they were an exiled
people without a strategic base. They needed a strategic base in a home-
land to create Jewish workers or peasants. The Zionist task was to change
the historic responses of emigration to better countries or passivity and
to impose a new pattern. Nationalism, then, for the Jews, meant a revival
of national culture and sovereignty, a reconstruction of a tradition that
had faded away. The Zionists needed to change popular ideology.26
This leads to a series of difficult questions:

How could the Jews, who were expelled from their homeland over 1,800
years ago and lacked military experience or traditions, achieve statehood and
flourish in a hostile environment? How could yeshiva students, ghetto denizens
and middlemen from over 100 countries become farmers, soldiers and states-
men?27 How could they overcome a harsh security environment that for 60
years had meant that a single Israeli defeat would mean the end of the state?28
How could the Jews, who merited no entries in the index of a 622-page
book on the Ottoman Turkish Empire, create a state in the heart of the
Muslim Middle East?29 How could the Zionist movement, which was a failure
in its first 20 years (1897–1916) and smaller than the Bundist movement in the
1920s, succeed when other national movements had floundered? How could a
small state (with 5.4 million Jews in 2007) fight more wars than any other
country in the last 60 years and not only survive but flourish and maintain a
vibrant democracy?
Was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 inevitable? Far from it. And
were its flourishing and transformation into a strong First World state inevit-
able? Not at all. We need to understand much better why it succeeded and
flourished.
Importance and neglect of the topic

Surprisingly, there is not a single work on Israel, by Arabists, post-Zionists or
mainstream scholars, that raises and answers our questions. Only Efraim
Karsh’s edited volumes on Israel’s first hundred years and his work on
rethinking the Middle East devote any space to this question and this is
confined to slightly more than a page. There Efraim Karsh, Mordechai
Nisan, David Tal and Sasson Sofer separately speak of “the huge obstacles”
Introduction 9
that were overcome and the lacuna in the scholarship about how this came
about.30
The Arabists, influenced by Edward Said’s Orientalism and anti-Zionism,
have not paid serious attention to the creation and rise of Israel.31 Viewing
Israel as a tool of colonialism, racism and imperialism, they see nothing posi-
tive in Israel, which is derided as a Western sub-agency. Since its power
derives from the West, it is devoid of interest itself. Efraim Karsh has
summarized the Arabist position:
Nowhere has this “victimization culture” been more starkly manifest

than in the historiography of the Arab–Israeli conflict. Dismissing out of
hand the notion of Jewish nationalism and reluctant to acknowledge any
wrongdoing on their part, the Arabs have invariably viewed Israel as an
artificial neo-crusading entity created by Western imperialism in order to
divide and weaken the Arab and Muslim nations. Israel’s ability to sur-
mount the sustained assault by the vastly larger and more affluent Arab
World has thus been seen not as an indication of its intrinsic strength but
as proof of the unwavering Western, particularly American, support; the
collapse and dispersion of Palestinian society – as an exclusive result of
Israel’s imperialist grand designs.32
Given the Arabist belief in the power of anti-imperialist movements, this

is a striking omission. The same is true of post-Zionism. Leading Israeli
scholars (such as Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Benny Morris, Baruch Kimmerling
and Ilan Pappe), influenced by the failures of Israel from 1973 to 1993 (the Yom
Kippur War, Lebanon War and first intifada) and deconstructionism, have
focused on Israel’s failures, with minimal discussion of its successes.33 View-
ing Israel as morally dubious because it was born with the “original sin” of
the expulsion of the Palestinians followed by numerous other failures, they
see the Arabs as hapless victims of Zionist and Israeli aggression.34 As revi-
sionists and debunkers of what they deem to be Zionist “heroic myths,” they
are not interested in focusing on or understanding Israel’s accomplishments.
But, while the scholars of the Arabist and post-Zionist camps refuse to
confront this important reality, the mainstream scholars, who do recognize
Israeli successes, have not seen them as problematic. There are a number of
fine general works on Israeli history (Eban, Sacher, Gilbert, Stein, Bregman)
but none see the rise of Israel as problematic.35 Similarly, the rise of Zionism
(Reinharz, Laqueur), the idea of the Jewish state (Halpern) and the Six Day
War (Oren) are covered in a non-problematic fashion.36
Need for comparative historical studies

A useful way to understand the development of a state is to look at it in
comparative perspective. Any state, no matter how exceptionalist, has much
in common with the 200 states in the world. Israel has conformed to global
trends by creating a socialist and then a semi-capitalist democratic First
World society with a strong high-tech sector, extensive educational system
and societal integration.
Apart from security studies, studies on nation building, state building, eco-
nomic development, modernization and nationalism rarely include Israel,
which is felt to not fit into accepted conceptual and experiential categories.
Israel rarely appears in comparative political or Middle East studies.37 Israel’s
rapid economic growth does not draw much scholarly attention.38 Israel is
seen as a country defining and playing by its own rules.39
There are comparative studies on Israel that look broadly (Barnett40), or
show insights into its party system (Hazan and Maor,41 Burk,42 Kimmerling43),
urban planning (Troen44) and military (Cohen,45 Peled,46 Horowitz,47 and
Maman, Ben-Ari and Rosenhek48). Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler
have shown that mainstream and revisionist studies overemphasize the role of
the individual and often lack comparative historical perspective.49
A comparative historical approach to Zionism allows us to set the rise of
the Jewish minority against other minorities (Lebanese Christians, Kurds and
Armenians) in the Ottoman Turkish Empire who strove for statehood with
very different results. The Lebanese Christians (the most promising of the
group in 1920) achieved statehood in 1946 but lost dominance owing to the
Taif Accords in 1989.50 The more numerous Kurds (25 million) never achieved
statehood despite the potential implied by the Treaty of Sèvres (1920). The
Armenians, who suffered enormously from Turkish massacres (1894–95,
1915), failed to achieve statehood after the Paris Peace Conference and had to
wait for statehood until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
A comparative historical perspective is valuable in many areas. We can
set the creation of Israel in the context of over 100 national liberation
movements in the post-World War II era. With the extraordinary role of the
military and security issues in Israeli society, we can conceptualize Israel
by placing it in the context of comparative civil–military relations. New/old
Israel can be profitably compared to other new societies (the United States,
Canada, New Zealand and Australia) or to other rapidly growing Third
World states (such as the Four Tigers of Asia).
The need for placing Israel in a revolutionary context

Most of all, we need to place Israel as the fruits of a revolutionary movement
in the context of the literature on comparative revolutions. Yehezkel Dror has
argued that, “despite pronounced differences, Israel’s main features approxi-
mate the original visions of Zionism much more so than in the case of other
revolutionary transformations.”51
Zionism was both a national liberation movement and a social revolution.
The socialist Zionist revolution (1881–1977) had profound goals that reached
far beyond the re-creation of a Jewish state to a radically new democratic
political, economic and social basis for the Jewish people. Israel can also be
Introduction 11
compared to bourgeois revolutions (such as the United States), with powerful
similarities in wars of independence, immigrant societies, democracies and
lack of externally imposed systems.52
Since 1977 Israel has been undergoing another revolution, this time
globalizing and semi-capitalist, with a profound impact on the state. Samuel
Huntington stated that:
A revolution is a rapid, fundamental and violent domestic change in the

dominant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, social
structure, leadership and government activity and policies . . . Notable
examples are the French, Chinese, Mexican, Russian and Chinese revolu-
tions . . . Revolution is the ultimate expression of the modernizing out-
look, the belief that it is within the power of man to control and to
change his environment and that he has not only the ability but the right
to do so . . . it is most likely to occur in societies which have experienced
some social and economic development and where the processes of mod-
ernization and political development have lagged behind the processes of
social and economic change.53
Numerous works on comparative revolution by Crane Brinton, Barrington

Moore, Theda Skocpol, Jack Goldstone, Ted Gurr, Charles Tilly and Nikkie
Keddie have advanced understanding of revolutions through comparative
analysis of such revolutions as the English, French, American, Russian, Chi-
nese and Iranian revolutions.54 Works such as the volume by Aviel Roshwald,
comparing the disintegration of the Tsarist Russian, Austro-Hungarian and
Ottoman Turkish empires from 1914 to 1923, advance our understanding.55
To view Israel as a revolutionary country may surprise some readers. All the
great revolutions (England, the United States, France, Russia, China, Iran)
were directed against monarchical imperial authority. The first Israeli revolu-
tion, in a small dependent former colony rather than a great state, was not
against a local, alien, oppressive regime but against those standing in the way
of a social and national fulfillment in an ancient homeland. Commonly cited
causes of revolution, such as large-scale peasant revolt against an oppressive
ancient regime, demographic problems, significant fiscal crisis, division with
the elite, desertion of the intellectuals, strong international pressures and fail-
ures in war, did not apply here,56 and nor did the concept of a universalist
ideology as an outcome, as Zionism (like Judaism) focused on a single people.
Yet the Jews were a different people. For almost 2,000 years the Jews lacked
a state, peasantry, nobility, monarchy, army, elite or intellectual class. The
task was to transform a relatively traditional, religious and passive people
accustomed to hardships, repression and autonomy into one prepared to
fight for and acquire a nation far away from their current state. The revo-
lutionary impulse came not from a foreign oppressor but from the conditions
under which European Jews lived from 1840 to 1945. Jonathan Frankel has
commented that:
events such as the Damascus blood libel of 1840, the Mortara case of
1858, the recurring anti-Jewish excesses in Rumania during the 1870s, the
pogroms of 1881–82, the expulsion from Moscow ten years later and the
Dreyfus Affair involved the Jews, first and foremost, precisely as Jews,
as a collective entity . . . these crises in Jewish life were the nearest equiva-
lent to war and revolution in the history of a state, a sovereign society.
At such a juncture, every assumption, however time-honored, may be
called into question and ideas normally too utopian to voice, can enter
the discourse of the everyday. This is the extraordinary moment in the
outward flow of time.57
And if these were the equivalents of war and revolution in pushing the
Jews towards a Zionist revolution in the nineteenth century, then how much
more so were the pogroms of 1903 in Kishinev and 1905 across Russia, the
expulsion of Jews in 1915 from the western border towns of Russia, the
killing of upwards of 100,000 Ukrainian Jews in the Russian civil war, rising
anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe in the interwar period and the Holocaust
that massacred 6 million Jews?
The Zionist socialist revolution shared a series of features with other
revolutions – a strong ideological fervor, the sense of a life-and-death strug-
gle, a chiliastic sense of optimism about the creation of a new society and new
man, a stress on justice and egalitarianism, the need to create a new party,
government, army and secret police on a new more modern basis, and intense
demographic pressures.
In the end, as in the other revolutions, state power would be centralized,
enhanced and bureaucratized, a more egalitarian society would emerge in the
short run and one party would dominate for a generation. The international
environment would be a powerful factor, the revolution would be led by a
small intellectual group who would build a version of a brave new world, and
other countries would feel threatened. A strong modernization thrust would
be evident and open, and the winning revolutionaries would emerge victori-
ous but weak. Even the loss of life (22,000 dead, 70,000 injured) in Israel
would be comparable to that suffered by the English in the 1640s civil war
(100,000 fatalities), and less than the millions suffered in the Russian and
Chinese civil wars.58
The second, semi-capitalist revolution would also promote a powerful role
for Israel in the world as its economy boomed and its values aligned with the
New World Order, and aspects of socialism would continue to be a part of
the Israeli social and economic structure.
Israeli success: Palestinian failure

The success of the Jews, despite enormous obstacles, in creating and develop-
ing a strong state of Israel obviously raises a related question: why did the
Palestinians, also (and often forgotten in the rhetorical battle) granted a state
Introduction 13
in United Nations Resolution 181 in November 1947, fail to create their own
state and make it flourish? The numerically superior Palestinians with sup-
port from a number of other Arab states and foreign powers were as advanced
as any of their neighbors in the Arab world and possessed a strong national
identity by 1948.
Rashid Khalidi in The Iron Cage delineated their numerous failings, par-
ticularly “a striking lack of organization, cohesion and unanimity in the
Palestinian polity” and the “frequent incapacity and weakness” of Palestinian
leaders in dealing with outside forces before 1948. Khalidi depicts the “less
than successful state building” of the PLO and Palestinian Authority, marred
by poor leadership, autocracy, corruption, lack of foreign investment, failure
to develop the rule of law, establishment of a patronage machine and rule
by external Tunis returnees not relating to the local population. He also
bemoans today “the almost criminal level of irresponsibility for Palestinian
factions to fight one another in such circumstances.”59
The numerous failures of the Palestinians highlight the importance of the
factors present in Israeli success and absent in Palestinian failure: socialist
and capitalist revolutions, alliance with the democratic West, building new
societies, creation of strong modern organizations, a strong will to fight, and
pragmatic and realistic leadership. The failure to mobilize voluntarist factors
and international support doomed the Palestinians as it allowed the Israelis
to overcome stronger obstacles and achieve a seemingly unlikely statehood
and then regional power.
Structure of the book

Both hostile and friendly scholars rarely contemplate the unlikely nature of
the rise and flourishing of Israel and how conditional its rise was on a series
of forces that need to be delineated. The rise and the flourishing of Israel
were both historically highly problematic. By looking at the obstacles and
advantages possessed by the Zionist movement, by the view from 1900 and
1948, we gain a strong vantage point to understand this phenomenon.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I after this introduction looks at
the literature on Israel and the value of seeing Israel through comparative
eyes. Part II deals with the huge obstacles facing the creation and developing
of the state of Israel. In addition to looking at internal obstacles in the Jewish
and Israeli worlds, we examine such powerful external obstacles as the role
of international and religious communities, the major powers and the unwill-
ingness of the West to help in times of crisis. Part III seeks to understand the
rise of Zionism through an examination of its historical roots and the nature
of the two revolutions. Then it turns to understanding the power of revo-
lutionary and international factors in the rise of Israel. The book provides in
the conclusion an overview of the interaction of these factors in producing
such a “unique” state.
The book has deliberately chosen to eschew the usual chronological and
linear view that treats each topic in a clearly defined space and time. Rather
it has chosen the thematic approach to avoid chopping up the book. At
times, the reader needs to keep in mind the particular time and space
under discussion. But, given that Israeli Jews, through the last 125 years
(1882–2007), have faced a hostile international and regional environment
(with shifting characters) with small numbers, limited resources, aid from the
Diaspora and some help from the democratic West, this approach seems
worthwhile. Despite all its successes, Israel’s security dilemmas and threats
today (a possible nuclear Iran, its Syrian ally and Islamic fundamentalist
Hamas and Hezbollah on its borders) remain serious. Israeli leaders them-
selves draw such analogies. Only such a thematic approach can highlight the
overall obstacles that have been overcome and revolutionary methods that
have been employed to make this possible.
Limitations of the volume

This book has only a limited mission. It does not seek to provide a com-
prehensive history of Zionism or Israel. It does not provide a history of
Zionist foreign policy, religion, Likud or the Labor Party; nor does it seek to
provide an examination of Zionist or Israeli political theory. It does not
focus, like so much other work, on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which has
produced over 400 volumes.
The book is not based on original research but rather represents an attempt
to better understand the rise of Israel through a synthetic, comparative polit-
ical and revolutionary examination of Israel. There is an abundance, even
plethora, of secondary material which is used for this purpose in the volume.
The volume also does not mine any new ground in primary sources. Rather,
like most volumes of its kind, it extensively utilizes secondary works in a
comparative framework to bring up hopefully new and interesting ways to
examine familiar subjects. The comparative method allows us to move away
from philosophically charged views of Israel and to compare Israel with
similar countries.
We address two interrelated questions: how, against all obstacles, was the
state of the Jews created, and how and why did it flourish? We seek to under-
stand the profound process of the creation and flourishing of the state of
Israel. In that process we will learn much about the Jews and Israel, as well as
the modern international political system.
Even many in the post-Zionist camp have conceded the “stunning . . .
brilliant success” and “miracle” of Israel, truly in the words of Amos Oz “a
dream come true.”60 From a Third World backwater in 1948, modern Israel
has developed a First World economy, a progressive education and health
system, a high-tech powerhouse and a home for Jews scattered and per-
secuted all over the world.61 We need to understand how this “miracle” was
created and sustained against enormous odds and at what cost. Let us begin.
2 Controversy over Israel
As its sixtieth anniversary nears, Israel remains one of the most controversial
countries in the world. For every person pleased or thrilled by the seemingly
miraculous rise of Israel, there have been far more people distressed, puzzled
or angry at its success. Arab nationalist, Third World, Western leftist and
even religious scholars and leaders have been particularly vexed by the success
of Israel, which stands out against the failures of pan-Arabism, Arab nation-
alism, Third World socialism, Communism and Islamic fundamentalism and
their foreign patrons (Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union).1
Israel’s success in becoming a First World power has highlighted the
failures of Middle Eastern authoritarian powers to catch up with the old
European periphery (Greece, Spain, Portugal), the new European periphery
(Central Europe) and the rising great powers of Asia (China, India) and
Eurasia (Russia). As billions of people have adopted aspects of the New
World Order values of democracy, export-led capitalism, the rule of law, the
Internet, gender equality, tolerance for minorities, and free speech and press,
the grave failures of most Middle Eastern regimes have led many to scapegoat
Israel. While Israel is far from blameless, the explanations are often lacking in
comparative or historical depth.2
Israel as a racist, colonialist state

Many scholars, such as Rashid Khalidi and Joel Kovel, have seen Israel as a
foreign, colonial imperialist enterprise foisted on the region by Europe and
the United States. They have spoken in terms of “ethnic cleansing,” “South
African-like apartheid,” “subjugation and denial of rights,” and “terroriza-
tion and subsequent flight of about 750,000 Palestinians from 1947 until
1949.”3 They have focused on the security barrier, settlements and numer-
ous checkpoints as indicative of the colonial enterprise. Former President
Jimmy Carter, in his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, has asserted that
Israeli total domination and suppression of violence have deprived the
Palestinians of their basic human rights in a way not dissimilar to South
African apartheid.4
Yet there are serious problems in seeing Israel as a rapacious colonial
enterprise. Settlers usually went to colonies with which they had no emotional
connection, while the Jews were returning to their ancestral homeland and
rediscovering their past.5 The Jews, with their religion, culture and history
rooted in the land of Israel, were not alien to Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed or
Tiberias, their four holy cities. They are integrally connected to the region.
Half of all Israelis are Arabs or Sephardi Jews from North Africa and the
Middle East and the majority of the rest (Ashkenazim) were born in the
Middle East (Israel).
Many Palestinians, both today and before 1936, far from fighting the Jews,
collaborated with them on grounds of personal or group benefit, opposition
to Arab violence or belief that the Zionists were too strong to be opposed.6
Even some scholars who are sympathetic to the notion of Israel having colo-
nial aspects, like Gershon Shafir, acknowledge that Israel lacked many of
the core aspects of European colonialism.7
Before 1918 the European powers, far from seeking to overthrow the
Ottoman Turkish Empire and colonize the region, tried to prop it up. If the
Ottoman Turks had stayed out of World War I, they would probably have
survived. Even after the war, the British and French accepted mandates from
the League of Nations that specifically envisioned their ultimate independ-
ence.8 Hence, without the British and French trying to colonize the region
after 1918, the Zionists could not have been colonial agents.
Colonies were usually run and directed by European great powers, while
the Jews lacked a colonial Great Power or metropole to sponsor them or take
them back if they wished to return. The Jews lacked a mother country to
provide protection, investment and guidance. The Jews were largely at the
beck and whim of two often hostile empires (the British and the Ottoman
Turkish empires). The Ottoman Turkish Empire favored fellow Muslims
(Arabs) from 1881 to 1918, and Great Britain favored the Arabs strongly
from 1939 to 1948. Only from 1922 to 1929 was there mild and declining
British support for their cause. A predominantly leftist Jewish Yishuv was not
a natural ally for the British Empire, which eventually preferred the far more
numerous Arabs.
Until 1948 the bulk of Jewish immigrants to Palestine came from Nazi
Germany, Tsarist Russia (before 1917) and republican Poland (1920–40).
None of these countries held the mandate for Palestine or were protectors
of the Jews.9 To the contrary, the Nazis were trying to exterminate all Jews,
Tsarist Russia was trying to forcibly convert, repress or expel its Jews and
Poland practiced extensive anti-Semitic discrimination against the Jews.
When the Jews arrived in Turkish or British Palestine, they arrived with great
difficulty, as local authorities tried to prevent their arrival, kept them from
buying land and hindered them after they arrived.
From 1937 to 1948, the British Empire tried to prevent the creation of a
state and severely restricted Jewish immigration. At a time when several
million Jews might have tried to reach its shores, Palestine was largely closed
to legal Jewish immigration.10 The British repressed Jewish state-building
Controversy over Israel 17
activity. As the British withdrew from Palestine, they tried to turn positions
over to the Arabs, actively sold weapons to Iraq and Jordan and refused to
sell to the Jews.
Colonial powers generally provided safe passage for their citizens, a
favored position in the colony, guaranteed trade and markets and protection
from natives and rivals in the region. None of this existed for the Jews, who
lacked imperial protection.
Settlers generally migrated to colonies for their economic potential. But
Palestine was very poor and backward and the Jews came for ideological or
religious, not economic, reasons. Economic prospects were far better in the
United States or the West.
While most settlers built private estates and plantations for profit and gain,
the Jews created hundreds of villages on a collective communal basis without
exploitation. They bought the land from the Arabs at exorbitant prices rather
than pushing them off the land. They did not use native Arab labor, prefer-
ring to use their own. They reclaimed the ancient language of Hebrew rather
than using more familiar European languages.
Most settlers arriving in the colonies found predominantly nomadic or
unsettled people, while the Jews found a largely settled population controlling
and tilling the land. While settlers were lured to colonies by the prospects of
free land, the Jews had to pay dearly for poor-quality semi-desert land. While
most settlers relied heavily on local menial labor provided by native slaves and
servants or imported indentured servants, the Jews relied on themselves or
labor hired in the free market. Most settlers came to colonies with at least
some means, while most Jewish refugees were poorer than the typical
European settler.
The vast majority of colonies were abolished in the 1950s and 1960s. By
contrast, Israel flourished and boomed only after the British colonial rulers,
who favored the Arabs, left in 1948. And, while most settlers came to the
colonies to settle the land, in Israel over 90 percent of the Jews settled in the
new Jewish towns.
To the extent that Israel had colonial-like aspects as a settler colony of
people coming to Israel from other lands, it mainly resembled the British
settler colonies which gave birth to the United States, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand.
There have been four major types of colonies: British pure settlement,
Portuguese plantation, Spanish occupation and Spanish mixed colonies. The
latter two, popular in Southeast Asia, coastal Africa and Latin America, were
impossible for the Jews without the backing of a Great Power.11
From 1882 to 1900, under the tutelage of Baron Rothschild’s French
North African colonial experts and the failure of Jewish immigrants to strike
roots in the soil, the rural model was that of a Portuguese plantation system.
This system, with overseers, a small settler workforce and heavy use of local
Palestinian labor, was tried and abandoned by 1900 as an economic failure
that failed to attract Jewish labor.
But the British pure settlement model, which loosely seemed to fit the
Israeli model after 1900, suffered not only from the numerous deficien-
cies listed above but one more critical difference: it rested on the removal
and neutralizing or eliminating of the local native population. With the
support of the British imperial power, the Indians in Canada and the
United States and the Aborigines in Australia could be pushed aside.
After independence, Americans forcibly removed the American Indians to
reservations.12
The Jews, always an urban people, had under the Ottoman Turks and the
British rule to pay large sums for poor native land. By 1947 they had acquired
260,000 acres (350 square miles), less than a good-sized ranch in Texas, in
over 50 years of buying less than 5 percent of Arab land.13
There could be no exploitation of the local Palestinian population. Mostly
rich absentee landlords prospered from the Jewish immigration. With largely
remote and often alien Ottoman Turkish and British rule (1881–1948), the
Jews had no enforcement power and after 1905 pushed for the “conquest
of labor.” This meant two economies, a Jewish self-contained economy and
an Arab economy.14 The Zionist socialist immigrants, opposing the use of
cheap local labor which they saw as a moral threat, were interested in nation
building, not exploitation.15
There has been no elimination of the local population on the British and
American models. Indeed, there has been just the opposite. In 1910 there were
425,000 Palestinians from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.16
Almost a century later the Palestinian population has soared to 4,200,000.17
In Jerusalem, under Israeli rule since 1967, the Arab population has soared
from 65,000 Arabs in 1967 to 235,000 Arabs by 2007.
Zionism, far from being an adjunct or servant of colonialism, successfully
fought and overthrew British colonial rule in Palestine, which deployed close
to 100,000 soldiers and paramilitary forces to maintain its rule in Palestine in
the late 1940s. Zionism was diametrically opposed to traditional European
colonialism. For, as Derek Penslar has observed:
the Zionist movement sought to create a society ex nihilo, thereby

allowing social reformist ideologies to cement themselves in the very
foundations of the Yishuv. As to colonial models, there was a qualitative
difference between the imperialist power’s system of controlling and
exploiting colonies for the benefit of the metropolitan government and
the Zionist goal of using an international organization to create an
autonomous homeland. There took place a wide-ranging transfer of
technology from Europe to Palestine . . . This process was quite different
from normal imperialist practice where a mere geographic relocation
of technology was the rule and only the colonial rulers had access to
sophisticated technical knowledge.18
Israel as an American/Western implant or offshoot
Arabists, leftist scholars and some neo-realist scholars often argue that the
success of Israel has been due to massive Western and American support.
John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt have asserted that the power of the Israel
lobby has tilted American foreign policy towards Israel and allowed it to
succeed.19 John Kovel has argued that Israel is a “junior partner” of the
United States and Great Britain and Israelis serve as “courtiers of the empire
that is destroying the planet itself.”20
Western sympathies for several decades were clearly on the side of the Jews,
with their democracy and Western orientation, rather than the Arabs, with
their autocracies and Islamic orientation. In 1947 Americans by two to one
favored a Jewish state.21 The United States has provided almost $100 billion
in foreign aid to Israel since 1970, an impressive sum. It has given economic,
military, political, diplomatic and technical support that has been invaluable
to Israel. This has reflected, in Bernard Reich’s words, “remarkable parallelism
and congruence of broad policy goals,” including preventing war, cooling down
the Arab–Israeli dispute and supporting Israel’s existence. There has never
been a formal legal alliance, mutual security pacts, formal alliance or merging
of armies.22
The impact of this aid was limited, less than the GNP of Israel in 2007
alone. The $2 billion to $3 billion in largely military aid given yearly by the
United States to Israel pales in comparison to the several hundred billion
dollars that the Arab oil states and Iran receive yearly for their export of
oil and gas. The American aid is less than 1 percent of yearly American
military spending and was minor compared to the $250 billion a year
spent by the United States during the Cold War in Central Europe and
Northeast Asia.23
Clearly, American help, while important, is only part of the story. Presidents,
as Steven Spiegel and William Quandt have reminded us, play a critical role in
Middle East decision making.24 The United States under President Roosevelt
refused to try to save millions of Jews during the Holocaust. While President
Truman provided crucial recognition of Israel in May 1948, he imposed an
arms embargo on Israel and in December 1948 forced Israel not to take the
Gaza Strip and withdraw from El Arish in the Sinai.25 As Bernard Reich has
indicated, “At Israel’s birth, the United States seemed to be a dispassionate,
almost uninterested midwife – its role was essential but also unpredictable
and hotly debated in U.S. policy circles.”26
In 1957 President Eisenhower forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai and
Gaza without any compensation. In the 1967 war President Johnson, person-
ally sympathetic to Israel, told Foreign Minister Eban that “Israel will not be
alone unless it decides to go it alone,” while Secretary of State Dean Rusk
told him, “If Israel fires first, it’ll have to forget the United States.” President
Gerald Ford in 1977 had his famous “reappraisal” that for more than six
months froze new military supplies to Israel. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War
the United States prevented an Israeli preemptive strike at the start of the war
and delayed arms shipments to Israel as massive Soviet arms shipments were
on their way to the Arabs. In 1979 at Camp David President Carter threat-
ened to cut off American aid to Israel and in 1981 President Reagan sold
AWACS to Saudi Arabia. In 1982 the United States distanced itself from
Begin’s war in Lebanon and in 1991 prevented Israeli retaliation against
Iraq for Scud missile attacks. President Bush withheld loan guarantees
to Prime Minister Shamir over settlement policy in the West Bank. In
more recent years there were disagreements over Israeli reaction to the two
intifadas and settlement activities.27
France, which helped Israel from 1955 to 1967, then sided with the Arabs.
Germany, Italy and Britain provided almost no military or economic aid
to Israel, save for Germany’s one-time 1957 payment of $900 million for
Holocaust restitution and the sale at reduced rates of five Dolphin class
submarines in the early 1990s and 2007.
Overall, then, while benefiting greatly from Western help, Israel has been
far from the favored stepchild of the West or the United States.
Israel as a stepchild of the Holocaust

Many scholars have argued that the main reason for the creation of
Israel was the feeling of sympathy of Western powers for Jews after the
Holocaust. Walter Laqueur declared that “the state owed its existence to
the disaster.”28 Ben-Yehuda and Sandler felt that the Holocaust created
“immense momentum” for the creation of the state of Israel.29 Those hostile
to Israel take the view of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who in
his September 2007 speech to the United Nations General Assembly asserted
that “For more than 60 years Palestine, as compensation for the loss they
occurred during the war in Europe, has been under occupation of the illegal
Zionist regime.”30
Especially in the United States and at the United Nations the Holocaust
did build strong momentum for the creation of the state of Israel. Yet it was
far from decisive. Anti-Semitism was quite strong in both the British and
the American elites after the Holocaust. The Holocaust did not prevent the
British Empire from openly siding with the Arabs during the Holocaust
(1939–45) and afterwards (1945–48) arming the Arabs against the Jews. The
Holocaust did not trump the European interest in oil or push the United
States to revoke its ban on selling weapons to the Jews. Even the brief
(1948–51) Soviet honeymoon with the Jews did not see open emigration to
Israel and was caused not by the Holocaust but mainly by a desire to destroy
British power in the Middle East.
In a deeper sense the Jewish state was created despite the Holocaust
rather than because of it. The destruction of 6 million predominantly East
European Jews destroyed the great reservoir of future immigrants to Israel
from the main bastion of Zionism for the past three generations. Israel’s
population, as Efraim Karsh has pointed out, would likely be several times
larger had there been no Holocaust.31 Also, if the Holocaust was such a
powerful force in the creation of a state, then why did the 1915 Armenian
genocide, which killed 40 percent of all Armenians and created strong
Western sympathy, not lead to an Armenian state in 1919 but only in 1991
after the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
Israel as a stepchild of the Diaspora

Many would stress the powerful role of a wealthy Jewish Diaspora. No
doubt the Diaspora has played a significant part in the rise and flourishing
of Israel, especially in the creation and early development of Israel after
1948. It has provided tens of billions of dollars of economic aid, worked
diligently to obtain political support for Israel and shown a major interest in
Israel. Yet, 99 percent of American Jews failed to immigrate to Israel, fight
in the Israeli army or give major funds for economic development (a mere
$2 billion of FDI from 1948 to 1988). In the last decade wealthy American
Jews gave 94 percent of their mega-gifts to non-Jewish causes, and even then
heavily to non-Israeli causes.32 Seven times as many Israelis immigrated to
the United States as American Jews immigrated to Israel. Diaspora pressure
did not prevent a number of American presidents acting against Israeli
interests.
Over time Diaspora aid has declined greatly as a percentage of the grow-
ing Israeli economy. Today, it accounts for no more than 1–2 percent of
Israeli GNP. In the 1990s some leaders, such as Yossi Beilin, even thought
Israelis should forgo it altogether. As the Israeli economy has been trans-
formed from a Third World economy of a few billion dollars to a First
World economy of $120 billion, the contribution of Diaspora Jews has
inevitably declined. Diaspora Jewry (with a 50 percent intermarriage rate in
the United States and 70 percent in Europe) has been shrinking in both
absolute and relative size to an Israel that has grown from 650,000 Jews in
1948 to 5,200,000 Jews today. The American Jewish community, although
wealthy, now devotes 80 percent of its charitable giving to non-Jewish
causes (compared to 50 percent a generation ago) – and most of that
does not go to Israel. Many American communities in the United Jewish
Federation, facing an aging population, slow growth or demographic decline,
Russian immigration and increasing need for social services, have substan-
tially cut back their contributions to Israel. Israel typically receives less
than one-third of all contributions made to Jewish federations across the
country.
Finally, in the last 20 years, as Israel has gained broad international recog-
nition and integrated into the global economy, it no longer needs to rely
predominantly on its Diaspora Jewish base. The biggest investors in the
Israeli economy are the decidedly non-Jewish “Oracle of Omaha” Warren
Buffett, with his $4 billion investment in Iscar Metals, and Hewlett-Packard,
with a $4 billion takeover of Mercury. The billions of dollars invested by such
Silicon Valley titans as Intel and IBM have no ethnic base, and nor does the
multibillion-dollar yearly trade with Russia, China and India.
Under these conditions the Diaspora, while still of value and rebounding
somewhat during the second intifada, has faded significantly in importance,
with fewer than 150,000 Western Jews in Israel constituting barely 3 percent
of the local Jewish population and the Diaspora shrinking in size and Jewish
identity.
Israel as a brutalizer of the Arabs

Many writers argue that Israel’s success was caused by a willingness to use
extreme brutality against local Arabs and the Arab world. John Kovel has
spoken of the Israeli “python that is squeezing Palestine to death.”33 The
post-Zionist Avi Shalim, echoing Ilan Pappe and others, has spoken of the
“massive injustice” done to the Palestinians.34 And, certainly, as seen in
the imposition of military rule on Israeli Arabs from 1948 to 1965, discrimin-
ation against the local Arabs and at times harsh policies in the territories,
there is some basis for this argument.
But international affairs have been remarkably brutal. For centuries, there
was, in that famous phase, scarcely a year when there was not a war some-
where in Europe. Russian expansion to the east and American expansion to
the west often entailed considerable brutality. Germany was created by
Prussia after three wars from 1862 to 1870. The United States preserved its
unity through a grinding civil war that took 600,000 lives and is remembered
in the South for Sherman’s march to the sea. Charles Tilly has coined a
remarkable aphorism that “War makes the state and the state makes war.”35
The core of the neo-realist argument is that war (and its sub-agent brutality)
has been a powerful and integral part of international affairs, showing no
signs of disappearing in the new century.36
The creation and maintenance of Israel left the bulk of Palestinians
(with the considerable majority having fled of their own accord) not only
alive but living within the definition of historically mandated Palestine so
defined in 1922.37 In 1947 there were 1.2 million Arabs west of the Jordan
River. Today, in 2007 there are 4.7 million Arabs west of the Jordan River
(1.3 million in Israel and 3.4 million in the West Bank and Gaza Strip). The
majority of the remaining Palestinians live adjacent to Palestine in Jordan
(over 2 million), Lebanon (300,000) and Syria (200,000). Thus, the Palestinian
population has grown almost sixfold since 1948, hardly a sign of excessive
brutality. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Arab population has soared
from 1.0 million in 1950 to a projected 4.2 million in 2010 and will likely reach
6.0 million in 2025.38
The argument presupposes a peaceful growing over of national states that
does not accord with the historical record. The Palestinians, resorting to
violence in 1948 to try to throttle the state of Israel and two intifadas, and the
Arab involvement in six offensive wars with Israel (1948, 1967, 1969–70,
1973, 1991, 2006) show a strong record of Arab proclivity to violence.39 As
Walter Laqueur argued in his classic history of Zionism:
Zionists are guilty of having behaved like other peoples – only with some
delay due to historical circumstances. Throughout history nation-states
have not come into existence as a result of peaceful developments and
legal contracts. They developed from invasions, colonization, and violence
and amid struggle.40
Although Israel has acted at times with great force to maintain peace
and avoid terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it has also shown an
enlightened attitude towards the Arabs and Palestinians. If it were only a
brutal repressive force, why would it voluntarily first occupy Gaza in the
1948, 1956 and 1967 wars and then leave it in 1949, 1957, 1994 and 2005?
Israel withdrew from the territory on which 98 percent of Palestinians lived in
1994, and by 2000 60 percent of Palestinians lived under full Palestinian
control. Israel offered at Camp David II in 2000 to leave 100 percent of the
Gaza Strip, 95 percent of the West Bank, and East Jerusalem neighborhoods,
and even territorial compensation for the annexed areas.41 Even after the
failure of Camp David II in July 2000 and the outbreak of the second inti-
fada in September 2000, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak still went
to Sharm el Sheikh (October 2000) and Taba (January 2001) to continue the
negotiations, discuss a non-paper and make more concessions, even to the
point of offering to absorb some refugees.42 In August 2007 Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert floated a withdrawal plan that was remarkably similar
to that Ehud Barak offered in 2000.
From 1967 to 1991 Israel, while cracking down hard on terrorism, provided
an unusually progressive occupation regime. From 1967 to 1987 Palestinians
were given open access to Israel, and 140,000 of them worked in Israel.
There were open bridges between Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. During
the 1967–87 period the West Bank and Gaza Strip were among the fastest
growing economies in the world. The Gaza Strip saw its income per capita
soar from $80 in 1967 to $1,706 in 1987. The West Bank saw its GDP
more than triple in the same period as one-third of its workforce worked
in Israel in agriculture, building or services. By 1987, 120,000 workers a
day were crossing into Israel. Israel allowed the creation of 6 universities
and 14 vocational colleges where there were none before 1967. Infant mor-
tality dropped from 86/1,000 in 1967 to 20/1,000 in 1989. In 1967, fewer
than 20 villages were hooked up to communal water mains: in 1989,
200 villages were hooked up. In 1967 there were 113 clinics and hospitals in
the territories: in 1989 there were over 378. Average life expectancy rose from
48 years in 1967 to 73 years in 1989. The Israeli economy, oil booms,
capital inflows and Jordanian payments of Palestinian salaries fueled the
boom.43
Finally, as a nation state Israel had a legitimate right to self-defense against
terrorism directed at its citizens, especially within the Green Line.
Israel as a sub-agent of imperialism

Dependency theorists, such as Immanuel Wallerstein, L. S. Stavrianos and
Andre Gunder Frank, argued that Zionism was an agent of imperialism in
establishing a white settler state in Palestine, serving faithfully the interests
of international capitalism and imperialism while oppressing the native
Palestinian population.44 Yet Zionism, far from being a reactionary move-
ment, is, as Eyal Chowder has observed, a revolutionary ideology that mixes
Marxist and Nietzschean themes. It is a “novel fusion of a creative notion of
self with the quest for collective therapy, upon presenting normative meta-
morphosis as an individual achievement that also fosters grand collective
action.” The power of will and individuals is decisive with this modernist
movement.45
Michael Barnett has shown that the anti-Zionist argument has logical and
historical faults.46 The Zionists were frequently at odds with the core imperial-
ist powers, who often abandoned them because their cause did not serve
the Great Power economic or strategic interest. This focus on capitalism is
odd because Israel built up one of the few successful socialist movements in
the Third World and did not fight on the side of the United States in either
the Korean War or the Vietnam War.
If Israel was a sub-agent of imperialism, it seems odd that it did not
receive strong backing from the United States during the first 20 years of
the Cold War with the Soviet Union. It had to navigate this dangerous
period replete with the help of a middling power (France), with the often
open enmity of another middling power (Great Britain) and the at best
benign neutrality of the United States. In its first 40 years it received a
meager $2 billion of foreign direct investment from the international capit-
alist community, which was wary of socialist Israel and its precarious
future.
It was also the socialist power (the Soviet Union) that saved it in 1948 with
a supply of weapons from Czechoslovakia. Many American and British
leaders (including President Truman) saw Labor Party Israel in its early days
not as a sub-agent of imperialism but as a possible agent of Moscow, not
Washington or London.
Can Israel, as Wallerstein implied, be located on the semi-periphery of
global capitalism? Yet its high-tech industries are in the core of modern
international capitalism. Was it, as Frank saw, a sub-imperialist country? Yet
it has been often snubbed by major core powers. Israel until 1977 used its
capital imports to build a socialist state and developed without substantial
capital inflows from the core states.
Israeli intransigence
A common criticism has been that Israel is the enemy of peace, that it is
Israeli intransigence, its “Holocaust mentality,” its devotion to settlements,
its repression in the territories and powerful military machine and secret
police that have triumphed over the peace-loving attitude of the Arabs.47 The
flight of over 500,000 Palestinian refugees during the 1948 war (some of
which was forced), its sometimes aggressive settlement policies, voluntary
war in Lebanon in 1982, and the harder-line policies of Likud leaders
(Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu, Sharon) have given some credence to these views.
But, while Israel has undoubtedly missed opportunities for peace, two facts
need to be remembered. Middle Eastern leaders and Islamic fundamentalist
groups, calling for the elimination of Israel, have launched or supported eight
wars and two intifadas in the last 60 years. The 1948 calls for “driving the
Jews into the sea” were echoed in 1964 by the Arab League summit in Cairo
calling for the “final liquidation of Israel” and the 1967 calls by Nasser to put
an end to the Zionist regime and liberate Palestine.48 The massive terrorism of
the Palestinians against civilian targets since 1967, the bloodbath of the
second intifada, the nihilist rejection of Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah and
their frequent rocket attacks on Israel and Iran’s strident calls (as well as
building of nuclear weapons) in 2005–07 for the liquidation of Israel have
reinforced Israeli fears that the end could be in sight.
Yet Israel has been far from intransigent. The 1937 Peel plan, which
envisioned a tiny Jewish state of 1,940 square miles (20 percent of Palestine)
and no Jerusalem, was approved by David Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann
and a vote of 299–160–6 in the 20th Zionist Congress. After the 1948 war
Israel took back 30,000 refugees and offered to take back 70,000 more. In 1949
the three left-wing parties devoted to peace (Mapai, Mapam, Communists)
gained 55 percent of the votes for the first Knesset compared to Herut with
12 percent. After the 1967 Six Day War, Levi Eshkol offered to return the
Sinai to Egypt and a demilitarized Golan Heights to Syria for peace. Even
the Likud leader Menachem Begin in 1978 returned the entire Sinai to Egypt,
a position supported by 82 percent of the population and a Knesset vote of
84–19–17.49 Labor Party Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1992–95), backed by
a popular majority, pushed through the Oslo I (1993) and Oslo II (1995)
agreements withdrawing from the territories and signed a peace agreement
with Jordan (1994). Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the
Hebron Accord (1997) withdrawing from 80 percent of Hebron and initialed
the Wye River Accord (1998). A weakened Labor Prime Minister Ehud
Barak (1999–2001) made major concessions for peace at Camp David II
(2000) and pursued negotiations at Sharm el Sheikh (2000) and Taba (2001).
In 2007, after the second intifada (2000–05) and Lebanese War (2006), over
60 percent of the population continued to support peace talks.
As with all such criticisms, there is an element of truth in much of them.
Israel has been far from perfect. But it has been much further from the racist,
colonialist, repressive, brutal society, created only because of the Holocaust
or the Diaspora, that its critics have depicted. In a virtual stage of siege, it has
maintained a democratic, modern, progressive, high-technology society, with
30 political parties, free press and assembly, gender equality and the rule of
law, elevating even its minority Arab population. In the coming chapters we
will understand how this was accomplished through two revolutions that
overcame massive obstacles and created the modern state of Israel.
3 The rise of Israel in
comparative perspective
A comparative historical study of the rise and flourishing of the Jewish state
can shed some significant light on Israel. Such comparative work has been
uncommon. We could examine Israel in six comparative contexts:
• The rise of Israel can be compared to the fate of other minorities in the
Ottoman Turkish empire. The question is why were the Jews the only
minority to obtain a powerful state when other minorities (Lebanese
Christians, Armenians and Kurds) seemed better situated in 1917?
• The rise of Israel can be compared to the fate of over 100 national
liberation movements. The question here is why, despite their disabilities,
were the Jews able to build one of the most powerful states and one of the
few democracies among newly independent states after 1945 despite a
virtual state of war?1
• The rise of Israel can also be compared to the efforts to build new soci-
eties, whether in remote colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand) or socialist utopias (Russia, China and Vietnam). The
question here is why, despite their weakness, were the Jews more success-
ful in creating a democratic socialism that endured and gradually gave
way to globalized capital than the socialist countries, which yet bore
some resemblance to the new settler colonies of the British model?
• The rise of Israel can be compared to the fate of other social revolutions.
The question here is how did the Israeli revolution compare to those of
other bigger nations?2
• The rise of Israel can be compared to that of the Four Tigers of Asia.
The question here is why, despite a higher security burden and more
threatening region, was Israel able to grow commensurately with the
Four Tigers of Asia and exceed them in high technology?
• The rise of Israel can be compared to that of other countries with serious
problems in civil–military relations. The question here is why, despite
many prerequisites for an authoritarian, elitist, dominant military system
(a state of constant siege, frequent wars and violence), is Israel not a
militarist society?
Jews and other minorities in Ottoman Turkey
Let’s start with the first question of how the least likely of the four significant
minorities (Jews) in the Ottoman Turkish Empire achieved a strong nation
state while one did and lost it in 1989 (the Lebanese Christians), one gained a
weak state only in 1991 (the Armenians) and the one with the greatest num-
bers (the Kurds) is still waiting almost 90 years after the dissolution of the
Ottoman Turkish Empire.
The four minorities were all ancient peoples with deep roots in the region.
All suffered at the hands of the dominant Sunni Arab community. The Jews
and the Christians spent centuries as second-class dhimmis, tolerated but
persecuted for their heretical beliefs. The Kurds, as non-Arabs, non-Persians
and non-Turks, suffered for their differences.3
All four minorities faced powerful enemies. Most of the Arab world and
great powers (the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Ottoman Turkey and the
British Empire 1937–49) strongly opposed a Jewish state. Turkey, Georgia,
Azerbaijan and Russia opposed an Armenian state. The Kurds were opposed
both by Arab states (Syria and Iraq) and by the non-Arab world (Turkey and
Iran). The Arab Sunni world and Lebanese and Syrian Muslims opposed a
Lebanese Christian state.
All suffered at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. In 1895–96 the Turks
massacred 300,000 Armenians, and in 1915 500,000 to 1.5 million Armenian
civilians died a brutal death. The Kurds suffered massacres at the hands of
the Turks in the last century. The Jews in 1917 were on the verge of extinction.
The Turkish authorities rounded up the 7,000 Jews of Jaffa and started them
on a forced march to the north. In 1858, after a Maronite peasant uprising,
Druze attacks killed 5,000–10,000 Christians and created upwards of 100,000
Maronite refugees. Only French intervention prevented further bloodshed.4
All four minority nationalities had Western patrons, including France
(Lebanese Christians), Britain (Palestinian Jews), Britain (Kurds) and Russia
and America (Armenian Christians), and anticipated some form of national
independence. In 1920 the Lebanese Christians rejoiced at the creation of a
Christian-dominated Lebanon under a French mandate. In 1920 the Kurds
hailed the Treaty of Sèvres that offered them some autonomy and the ability
to petition the League of Nations for a state in one year. In 1920 the Armenians
still had an independent republic with international support. The 1917 Balfour
Declaration, the 1921 appointment of Herbert Samuels as British High
Commissioner in Palestine and the 1922 League of Nations mandate to
Britain which spoke with favor on a Jewish national homeland in Palestine
greatly encouraged the Jews.
The brightest future appeared to belong to the Lebanese Christians. Ever
since 1861 the Mount Lebanon Maronites had enjoyed an autonomous status
with special privileges and autonomy under an Ottoman Turkish-appointed
Christian governor. They built a political, cultural and economic infra-
structure for a Lebanese Christian state, which they created in 1920 under their
The rise of Israel in comparative perspective 29
French patrons. They had the numbers (60 percent of the population or
1 million Christians), the wealth (highest among any minority in the Middle
East) and the highest status (besides Greek Orthodox already expelled to
Greece) among the minorities in the empire. In 1943 a Christian-dominated
state was created in Lebanon.5
The next most likely candidate for statehood was the Armenians. They
had world sympathy from the Turkish killings and support from the victori-
ous Allies, who in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) backed an independent Arme-
nian state. Their numbers were adequate (3.5 million) and they were wealthier
than the Kurds and the Jews. They had been the second highest ranking of
the minorities in the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres
promised them independence, which was supported by President Woodrow
Wilson. The Armenians from 1918 to 1920 had an independent repub-
lic, their own Indo-European language and a unique Armenian Orthodox
Church (Gregorian).6
The least likely candidate was the Jews. There were 65,000 Jews in Palestine
in 1918. Jews lacked a compact territory they dominated (Jews were 10 percent
of the population), a common language (few Jews spoke Hebrew), history
(few Jews had lived in the region for 2,000 years) and psychology (frequent
battles between religious and secular Jews, “bourgeois” and “socialist” Jews).
In 1918, having narrowly avoided the fate of the Armenians, the Jewish com-
munity in the Ottoman Turkish Empire formed 0.2 percent of its 25 million
people, 1 percent of the 5 million minority peoples, and 10 percent of the
Palestinian population. There was often strong inter-sectarian rivalry in
which the Jews were the low man on a long totem pole. Their fate seemed
sealed.7
And the results of all those dreams? Armenian and Kurdish dreams of
independence were soon crushed, and only the strong Lebanese Christians
gained a proto-state. In September 1920, a month after the Treaty of Sèvres,
Turkish forces invaded Armenian territory. By November the Armenian gov-
ernment had signed an armistice with Turkey leaving a tiny area under
Armenian control. The Armenian prime minister, facing the advance of
Russia and Turkey and the lack of Western support, opted in December 1920
for a Soviet republic without independence. By 1922 the Soviet Union had
created an Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the 1923 Treaty of
Lausanne did not even mention Armenian independence.
Similarly, for the Kurds by March 1921 the Allies had reneged on their
vague promises in the Treaty of Sèvres. With Ataturk having denounced the
Treaty of Sèvres and occupied part of Kurdish territory:
the Allies no longer had any interest in an independent Kurdish state.

Only the British had ever been interested in the Kurds (and they even
failed to list it as a possible mandate in January 1919) and they rapidly
lost their interest as their forces dwindled in the region and the Turks
advanced.8
By 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne, reflecting the triumph of Russian and Turkish
power, did not mention an independent Kurdistan. The Kurds were left under
alien governments (Ataturk’s Turkey, Reza Shah’s Persia and King Faisal’s
Iraq) without any mention of autonomy. Between 1923 and 1991 Kurdish
was discouraged and then outlawed as a language.9
Things improved during and after World War II. Lebanon in 1943 became
an independent state with Christian dominance enthroned in the constitution
that guaranteed it 6:5 predominance in Parliament and the control of the
presidency of the country. In November 1947 the United Nations voted for
partition of the British Mandate in Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish
state. In May 1948 the Jews proclaimed their independence and won the
Israeli War of Independence. But the Armenians remained a part of the
Soviet Union and the Kurds, after the brief Mahabad Republic of 1945, also
remained stateless.
By 2007 each minority had some political forms. The Armenians had a
small state, the Kurds an autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq,
the Maronites some authority (such as the presidency) in Lebanon and the
Jews a strong, if beleaguered, state in Israel. But, except for the Jews, this fell
far short of the hopes and dreams of 1920.
The 1989 Taif Accord after the civil war (1975–89) spelled a death blow
to Christian dominance. Some 600,000 Maronites fled from Lebanon, and
by 2007 Christians were less than one-third of the population. The 25 million
to 30 million Kurds lacked a state, making them the largest minority in
the world without a state. Even autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, owing to
strong opposition from Turkey, Syria, Iran and other Iraqis, was unlikely to
become a state.10 The Armenians had a small state (11,000 square miles and
3.3 million people), isolated by mostly hostile Muslim nations. The small
Armenian economy had a GNP of only $12 billion.11
Decisive factors
Although the minorities issued many appeals for international support in 1918
and 1919, there were so many conflicts and such intermingling of ethno-
national groups that such idealist appeals had a relatively small impact.
Neo-realism
Rather, national interest, power politics and the harsh realities of the inter-
national system would ultimately hold sway. After the 1895–96 killings of
Armenians, an 1897 international conference called for reforms benefiting the
Armenians. Russia opposed an independent Armenian state, the French sup-
ported Ottoman Turkey, the Germans wanted to become the protectors of
Ottoman Turkey, the Austro-Hungarians were too involved in the Balkans
and the Americans were absent. In 1915 during the massacres of the Armeni-
ans, the international community did nothing. As with European Jews during
the Holocaust, morality meant little without the cold cash of international
politics, without military and economic power.12 Margaret Macmillan spoke
of the Armenians, who had a powerful impact on the emotions of the British
and Americans:
Fine sentiments but they amounted to little in the end . . . Help was far
away but Armenia’s enemies were close at hand. Russians . . . would not
tolerate Armenia or any other independent state in the Caucasus. On
Armenia’s other flank, Turks deeply resented the loss of Turkish terri-
tory and the further losses implied in the Armenian claims. In Paris
Armenia’s friends were lukewarm and hesitant.13
National cohesion
Given the strong forces opposing their projected new states, the minorities
needed to mobilize all their resources for the struggle. Max Weber argued that
the definition of a state is that institution which has the monopoly of the
control of the instrument of violence in a given territory.14 Given religious,
ethnic, regional, tribal and clan tensions within the minorities, this could be a
huge challenge.
Only the Jews, through their revolution, overcame the internal divisions
that plagued other minorities. The Jews created a unified national leader-
ship (the Jewish Agency) with a plethora of unifying institutions (Haganah
Palmach, Histadrut, Mapai and even Herut). At the 1919 Paris Peace
Conference there was one unified delegation and a modern concept of nation
that was broadly accepted. In 1948 the government sank the Altalena, a
ship bringing in French military supplies for Menachem Begin’s separatist
Irgun.
There were no modern parties or quasi-governments in the other three
cases. The Kurds, unable to achieve national unity, were noted for their
tribal warfare, religious differences (Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Sufis), secular/
religious conflicts, urban/rural division, clan rivalries, and national and local
influences. Often the Kurds fought each other as well as external authority.15
As Margaret Macmillan reflected in Paris 1919:
Unlike other emerging nations, Kurdistan had no powerful patrons in

Paris and the Kurds were not yet able to speak effectively for themselves.
Busy with their habitual cattle raids, abductions, clan wars and brigand-
age, with the enthusiastic slaughter of Armenians or simply with survival,
they had not so far demonstrated much interest even in greater autonomy
within the Ottoman Empire where the majority lived. Before the Great
War, the nationalisms stirring among the other peoples of the Middle
East had produced only faint echoes among the Kurds. Even the main
center of Kurdish nationalism, consisting of a few small societies and
a handful of intellectuals, was in Constantinople. The only Kurdish
spokesman in Paris in 1919, a rather charming man, had lived there so
long that he was nicknamed Beau Sharif. He did his best.16
Divided among four major countries (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey), they
have not been able to unify their forces. The generations of “endless
clashes” between the Barzanis and the Talabanis constituted a “dark chap-
ter in the Kurdish history.”17 In 1945 and 1946 few Kurdish tribes, lack-
ing national fervor and repelled by the Soviet Communist backing of the
Kurdish republic, came to its aid. Iranian troops crushed the republic within
a year and soon hanged its leader.18 In 1945 Albert Hourani concluded that
tribalism was a more powerful force among the Kurds than nationalism,
which he found “limited” at the time.19 Outside forces, including Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, have been able to mobilize some
Kurdish forces against other Kurdish forces. The situation that Justin
McCarthy depicted for the Kurds in 1918 had not totally changed even in
succeeding decades:
Nationalism was not an understood concept . . . Those Kurds, who were

under the leadership of tribal chiefs, felt loyalty to those chiefs and to
leaders of mystical religious sects . . . They had no wish to lose their
authority to the government. This did not cause them to unite with other
tribes in a common goal. Kurds in other tribes were occasional allies,
occasional enemies, but no more. To speak of any sort of nationalism, or
even ethnic identity, in such circumstances would be absurd. The other
Kurds, those of the cities and those villages more or less independent
of tribal control, were much like Turks in their relation to the state.
Loyalties were to the sultan and religion.20
Kurds thus were divided by the five nations in which they lived, by their
diverse tribes to which they owed significant loyalty, by their religion (mostly
Sunnis but some Shiites or other sects), by a group of dialects that composed
their language, by urban/rural origins, by geography and by social class and
education.21 Only since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the rise of
a Kurdish leader as president of Iraq (Talabani) have the Kurds at last
achieved full regional autonomy, yet not nationhood.
The Lebanese Christians were handicapped by the divisions of religious
differences, even within Christianity. Nearly half of Christians were not
Maronites but Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Syrian and Armenian
Catholics, Chaldeans and other Christians. Greek Orthodox (nearly 40 percent
of the size of the Maronites), fearing the fate of their large population in
countries such as Syria and Jordan, were better integrated into Muslim soci-
ety and some fought for the Muslims in the Lebanese civil war. They
often resented their secondary role in the Maronite-led groups. Many Greek
Orthodox and Greek Catholics, often poorer than the Maronites, were pan-
Arabists rejecting the Maronite claim to Christian hegemony in Lebanon.
Some favored a Greater Lebanon, others a Lesser Lebanon focused on
Mount Lebanon, the traditional Christian base.22
There were four major divergent Christian views on independence,
dependence and their place in the Arab world in which they were located. A
small but significant element, rejecting independence or a predominantly
Christian Lebanon, thought this a futile endeavor given the size of the sur-
rounding Arab Muslim world. A second larger group of older Arabs in the
1940s and 1950s saw Lebanon not as a future independent state or Christian-
dominated state but rather as a place of refuge for persecuted minorities who
needed mainly to preserve their autonomy at best. A third group, composed
of Maronites and other Uniates (under the umbrella of the Roman Catholic
Church), supported a pro-European Christian Lebanon oriented towards
the Mediterranean and not the Arab world. The last group, composed of
Christian nationalists, conceded that Lebanon would be an Arab country but
the center of Arab Christians.
The clans, such as the Chamoun, Franjieh and Gemayel clans, often bat-
tled each other rather than forming a cohesive government under a single
democratically elected leader. They also had a multitude of parties which
sought to gain support from non-Christians. The Maronite church, which
owned one-third of the fertile lands, had its own interest.
The Armenians, divided geographically (little Armenia proper and greater
Armenia), were unable to mobilize a significant portion of their population.
They were divided between supporters and opponents of the Soviet Union
and Arab nationalism. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Armenians
were so divided that they had two main rival delegations and 40 independent
Armenian delegations.23
Will to fight
Smaller and less well-equipped militaries have destroyed bigger, even far big-
ger, opponents in large part because of their will to fight and die for a cause.
The Jews, because of their predicament, history, modernism, revolution and
socialism, have had a strong will to fight over the last 60 years. Without this
stronger will to fight, the Jews would likely have been defeated by the Arab
numerical preponderance.
There was a lower will to fight among the three other minorities. Some
Greek Orthodox even fought against the Maronites in the Lebanese civil war.
Many Lebanese Christians fled from the plains to the mountains to escape
the fighting.24 Many Kurds fought against other Kurds in repeated conflicts
within Iraq. As for Armenians, they showed a greater will to fight than the
Kurds or Maronites but still a lesser will than the Jews.
Immigration
Aliyah was a decisive element, with 400,000 Jewish immigrants before 1945
and almost 2.5 million more after independence in 1948. By contrast, there
was virtually no immigration in the other three cases but often major emigra-
tion, especially from Armenia in 1918–22 and from Lebanon in the 1980s and
1990s. As for the Kurds, there was no migration from other Kurdish popula-
tions in the region to support a drive for national independence either after
World War I or more recently.
Institution building and the economy

The Jews, lacking governmental or economic experience, created the base for
a powerful government, military and secret police starting in the 1920s and
accelerating before 1948. By 1948 this modest but significant government,
military and economy were ready for statehood. By contrast, the Lebanese
Christians never integrated their separate militias into a modern force and
suffered accordingly. The Kurds often fought each other as much as the
enemy. The Armenian army was modest but capable of achieving victories
over Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s.
The Lebanese Christians failed to create a modern government. By includ-
ing the vilarets of Beirut and Damascus in 1920 to the old Sanjak, the
Maronites, who had a clear majority before then, reduced the Christian (and
Maronite) portion of the future state and increased that of the Muslims.25
Even by the 1940s the Kurds had failed to create a modern or even semi-
modern economy. There was just the beginning of the creation of a Kurdish
bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. In the mountainous regions the majority of
Kurds lived as nomads and semi-nomads, with farmers in the plains.26 Start-
ing in 1991 and accelerating after 2003 the Kurds began to build a good
infrastructure for a state.
As for Armenia, the Soviet Union had during 70 years built up a skeletal
republican government and socialist economy. It had educated the popula-
tion and given tens of thousands of Armenians military and secret police
experience, as well as even diplomatic and governmental experience. By 1991
Armenia had an excellent infrastructure for its new state.
Diaspora
The Diaspora was a major force in creating and sustaining the new state of
Israel. By contrast, it played a minor role for the Kurds and only a modest
role for the Armenians and the Lebanese Christians. The Lebanese Diaspora
played a “weak role” in helping the Lebanese Maronites. Lebanese Greek
Orthodox, Greek Catholics and Maronites lived in separate communities
abroad and helped only their own community in Lebanon. There are 10 million
to 13 million Lebanese living in the Diaspora (including 2 million in the
United States and 500,000 in Europe), many but not most of them Maronites.
They sent money but were more occupied in settling and establishing their
own communities abroad. The Maronites, though, were the most active of
the Lebanese Diasporas.27 The Kurds had a modest Diaspora, heavily in
Germany and elsewhere. Predominantly nomads and peasants, they lacked
religious, communal or cultural ties to the West.28 Armenia had an active
Diaspora that played a role, especially after 1991.
Level of modernization
Israel represented a powerful thrust towards modernization from a people
that less than two generations earlier had largely been immured within the
walls of the shtetls of Eastern Europe and the mellahs of North Africa. The
Kurds were on the low end of modernization, and the Armenians and
Lebanese Christians on the higher end. This did not translate into modern
education, social forms, gender equality and the rule of law. In the 1940s,
Maronites were primarily farmers and feudal landlords with a prosperous
Beirut bourgeoisie. They were only 29 percent of the Lebanese population.
Maronite and non-Maronite Christians formed 53 percent of the Lebanese
population.29
International political support

Here the Lebanese Christians scored the highest. Their French patrons, who
were predominant in Lebanon from 1920 to 1945, were willing to exert the
full force of their power behind the creation and maintenance of a Lebanese
state. By contrast, the Armenians (1919) and the Kurds (1920) received glow-
ing words and promises of a state but in the end no power really helped them.
President Woodrow Wilson, initially a great champion of the Armenians, saw
his desire for League of Nations membership defeated by the United States
Senate in 1919. Justin McCarthy has assessed that we:
must judge the Allied treatment of the Armenians as craven. Idealistic

support of the Armenian cause, no matter how wrong-headed, was pro-
claimed. Armenians were encouraged to resist their enemies, rather than
try to come to accommodation with them, because the Europeans and
Americans would soon give the Armenians all they wanted. Then it was,
“Sorry, too expensive for us. You’re on your own. All the best.”30
Only the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union allowed Armenia to finally
become a state, if one often embattled with the Muslims, especially Azerbaijan
over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Kurds, with frequent patrons, had none willing to fight for them and
were repeatedly abandoned by Western and other powers. In 1946 the Russians
abandoned them, in 1975 the Iranians abandoned them and in 1991 the
Americans and the British partially abandoned them but also created a no-fly
zone that laid a base for an autonomous Kurdistan after the 2003 American
invasion of Iraq.
The Jews had the most extensive ties to the West, both through their
Diaspora and owing to their 2,000-year sojourn in the West. The Kurds, as
peasants and nomads in the Middle East, were very weak in ties to the West.
In between were the Armenians and the Lebanese Maronites, with significant
ties but considerably less than the Jews.
The Jews and national liberation movements

The rise of Israel represented another of the national liberation movements
that have swept to power in over 100 countries in the Third World since the
end of World War II. There are some commonalities.31 The Labor Party was a
predominantly socialist political party that ruled for decades after independ-
ence and mobilized the population for modernization tasks. It led a struggle
to oust a Western imperialist power ruling the colony. Israel used military
force (Haganah/Palmach) and sporadic terror (Lehi) against a colonial power.
It mobilized international support for its independence movement. It was an
underdeveloped economy at the time of independence. It had young elites at
the time of independence. The country had discrete collectivities divided
by ethnic, communal, religious and linguistic differences. There was a strong
post-colonial nationalism. Israel had strong socialist forms of governance and
mobilization. It mobilized a Diaspora for support and legitimized its struggle
through support at the United Nations (United Nations Resolution 181).
Its moderate leadership stressed the role of nation over the role of class
(David Ben Gurion’s mamlakhtiut). Israel had chiliastic exuberant notions of
achievements under an independent regime. There was considerable violence
in the birth of the nation.
Several authors have suggested, despite the obvious differences in size and
religion, that Israel be compared to India.32 Both in 1948 were Third World
countries with Muslim–non-Muslim civil wars that killed huge numbers of
people. India and Israel emerged from British colonialism in a complex battle
against both the British (largely peaceful) and the Muslims. Both divided the
land of British rule in bloody warfare between themselves (Hindus and Jews)
and the Muslims. India and Israel were Third World nations that immediately
became democratic regimes under a dominant socialist party that ruled for
30 years (the Israeli Labor Party and the Indian Congress Party). Both later
made a transition to global integration, free market capitalism and stronger
alliance with the West and especially the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.
While Israel’s rise to power reflected a number of aspects common to many
other states, there were also some striking differences.33 Israel had an urban
semi-modern economy rather than an agricultural economy dominated by
villages, peasants and low productivity. It had a well-educated, politically
aware and mobilized populace rather than a narrow circle of modernizers
and parochial, traditional, poorly educated masses heavily traditional in
attitude. Its main struggle was not with an imperial power but war with a rival
claimant to territory (the Palestinians) and external powers (Egypt, Syria,
Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq). Israel suffered strong regional and inter-
national isolation after independence and was not allowed to join the newly
independent bloc after 1948. It has had an ongoing violent and political
struggle for existence in the last 60 years. Unlike most Third World countries,
it has been a democratic regime from the onset of independence, with a
decisive role for immigrants. There was no social revolution accompanying
national independence.
The Jews and new societies

The Jews, as one of the oldest peoples in the world, ironically created one of
the newest societies in the ancient land of Israel. Israel represented a revolu-
tion and transformation of traditional Jewish society. Starting over in its
homeland with 24,000 Jews in 1880, the 5.4 million Jews in Israel by 2007
created a new society. If we adapt Louis Hartz’s idea of European fragments
being implanted in the Third World (the United States, Canada, Australia,
South Africa and Latin America), Israel (which he does not discuss) could
be considered a European fragment from the nineteenth-century Russian
revolutionary movement.
From 1880 to 1977 Israel represented a cultural fragment of Russian revo-
lutionary thought implanted in the Old/New Land.34 This occurred despite
the fact that half of its population of today did not originate in Europe but in
the Islamic world, with 1.3 million Arabs and over 2 million Sephardim. It
occurred despite the fact that the original Russian Revolution, consummated
in the 1917 October Revolution, failed with the disintegration of the Soviet
Union in 1991. Its inspiration was as much the populist narodnik tradition
(ironically often anti-Semitic) as urban Menshevism and Bolshevism.
But the Israeli story fits the Hartz model in a number of ways. The trans-
formation of European radicalism into a powerful nationalism was reflected
in Ben Gurion’s own slogan, “From class to nation.” Socialism was reborn as
a form of nationalism with socialist aspects such as “ideology becomes a
moral absolute, a national essence.” Israel lost its relationship to Russia and
Europe, not only because of the ethnic dominance of non-Europeans and
their distance from their European roots, but in Hartz’s words because,
“When a fragment of Europe becomes the whole of a new nation, it becomes
unrecognizable in European terms.” The lack of a native bourgeoisie against
which to struggle, and the presence of national enemies reinforced this
transformation of class to nation.35
Many aspects of Israeli society reflected its Russian revolutionary origins
in authors ranging from Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Nekrasov to
Dmitri Pisarev and Vladimir Lenin. The Russian revolutionary heritage
was brought by the numerous Russian pioneers of the first three aliyahs,
especially the latter two. Walter Laqueur argued for the “powerful” impact of
Russian socialism on Israel for “It is impossible to exaggerate the impact
of Russian Socialism on the Zionist Labor Movement.”36 Most of the Jewish
revolutionary leaders (Berl Katznelson, A. D. Gordon, David Ben Gurion,
Chaim Weizmann, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Yosef Trumpeldor, Moshe Sharett,
Eliezer Ben Yehuda and Golda Meir) came from Tsarist Russia, usually
Belarus and northern Ukraine. Most Second Aliyah pioneers were young,
single Russians hailing from eastern Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, who
retained attachment to Russian rivers, fields and forests and believed in a
Russian soul.37
The First Zionist Socialist Revolution reflected the Russian revolutionary
stress on socialism (the Labor movement), ideology (a chiliastic utopia),
highly ideological parties (Mapam, Mapai, Achdut Haavodah), high political
self-consciousness, collectivism and communalism (kibbutzim, moshavim,
Histadrut), doctrinal squabbling and the virtues of manual labor. Russian
radicalism was also reflected in a strong group thrust to social life (with
frowning on bourgeois individualism), the ideal of service and romantic
notions about individual sacrifice for the group, and a Manichean view of the
world. Russian realities also brought a heavy bureaucratic element to gov-
ernment activities (bureaukratsiya). The Israeli stress on high culture and
education reflected its Russian origins as well.
It did this without civil war, save for the brief 1948 Altalena Affair. Israel
reflected the power of a utopian vision (here New Socialist Jerusalem),
modernity, modernization and struggle. But it had to be adapted to Israel,
because neither Russian populism (with its stress on the peasant) nor Russian
social democracy (with its stress on the working class) totally fit the Israeli
reality. Israeli and Russian radicalism was bred in the reaction to the medieval
and often retarding effect of massive Russian anti-Semitism (650 laws
aimed at the Jews) and of Russian society itself. Michael Mann put the
situation best:
On representation, Russia was at the opposite extreme from the United

States. By 1900 it remained the only autocratic monarchy in Europe, the
only one without any pretense of party democracy, the one in which state
elites and parties most interrelated as court factions. Its militarism was
also distinctive in sustaining an empire surrounding the Russian “core”
territories . . . Thus, militarism was unusually pronounced domestically
as well as geopolitically. The Russian state crystallized as capitalist but
also as highly monarchical, militarist and centralizing.38
The traditional Jewish class structure made a revolutionary utopia in Israel

more practical. In Europe, the Middle East and North Africa the Jews had
almost no elements of a traditional power structure: no nobility, aristocracy,
landlords or guilds and a weak middle class. While in Poland, in 1931, 67.5
percent of Polish Christians worked in agriculture, only 4.4 percent of Jews
did so. Even when Jews were concentrated in the trade and light industrial
areas, many were luftmenschen and easily abandoned their pursuits.39
The power of migration and a new land opened the door to the achieve-
ment of a New Israel, much as the American migration created the New
World in North America. Having fled persecution and oppression, the immi-
grants were ready to build a new classless world in a new land. They could
start again in a new space without feudalism, capitalism, aristocracy, nobility,
peasantry or officialdom. The Old World was far away geographically and
soon mentally, even more so for the next generation for whom it was a distant
shore. Also, the small, poor, dependent local traditional Jewish society was
easily ignored and pushed aside in the search for the new utopia.40
Israel was far closer in the First Zionist Socialist Revolution to a remote
Europe than to the modern United States. Few Western immigrants came
to Israel or felt comfortable there. The goal of building the utopia, a New
Jerusalem, with a heroic and glorious past, was a key to the Russian revo-
lutionary myth. Yet Israel does bear some similarities to the equally new
society of the United States, which also fought a war of liberation against
British colonialism, conducted an internal war against enemies (Indians, the
South) and conducted mass popular mobilization for war against superior
external enemies. Like Israel too, the United States was a nation of immi-
grants with devotion to its new society (the New World), adoption of universal
military service, and a militia-like structure against professional armies.
Bound together also by common bonds of religiosity (here Protestantism)
and history against its enemies, it showed a passionate commitment to dem-
ocracy, civil society and the rule of law. It possessed a cohesive civil society
more fluid than that of the home country.41
As in Australia, there would be little respect of wealth, no recalcitrant
bourgeoisie, no capitalist credo and powerful yet moderate trade unions.
Too, the nomadic and aboriginal natives were few in number and not a strong
factor. The Labor Party was always very pragmatic, and the country was
born modern, without a struggle against the non-existent past in a new space.
Australia, like Israel, was born a radical nation without a past, only a future
in a working-class paradise.42
The Jews and social revolutions

There is a strong literature on revolutions, spanning over 150 years from Karl
Marx and Crane Brinton to Theda Skocpol and Barrington Moore and now
Nikkie Keddie and Jack Goldstone. From this literature we can analyze
several important points. First, we can look at Israel as a social revolutionary
movement in a broader context. Then, we can look at the second stage of the
Israeli revolution and its parallels with other socialist movements that have
moved on towards global capitalist integration.
There are numerous causes of social revolutions that transform the eco-
nomic and political structures. They include alienation of the intellectuals
and bankruptcy of the treasury (Brinton43), growing tensions between means
and forms of production (Marx44), rise of the bourgeoisie and peasant revolts
(Moore45). Revolutions are caused by world time and international pressures
from military defeats (Skocpol46), demographic pressures on brittle economic
and state structures (Goldstone47) and relative deprivation (Gurr48).
For the Jews these factors do not work since the Jews never had their
own state and sought it in their original homeland that most had left 2,000
years earlier. For them, thereafter, the equivalents of these factors were the
oppression and repression that they suffered on the margins of European and
Middle Eastern societies and states.
Israel and the Four Tigers of Asia (1950–2007)

Israel can also be viewed as a rapidly growing Third World country like the
Four Tigers of Asia (South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong). It
shares a number of attributes with these countries (and colony).49 It has close
political and economic ties with the West, which provided substantial foreign
aid for strategic and symbolic reasons and had a strong impact.50 Israel has
powerful nearby enemies that require sustained military effort, similar
to the Four Tigers (China for Hong Kong, North Korea for South Korea,
Malaysia for Singapore, and China for Taiwan). The Jewish state has powerful
state elites, motivated by foreign threat and patriotism, and used autonomous
and state resources for the development of a diverse industrial base and not
for its own aggrandizement. Israel has experienced rapid economic export-led
growth that transformed a Third World backwater in 1950 into a First World
economic powerhouse by 2007. It has had weak foreign investment, fearful of
political and economic instability, and weak ties to the original colonial
metropole. Israel is a former colony, like the Four Tigers.
With weak natural resources, Israel too has a smallish population, a modest
to weak agricultural endowment, a weak landed class and no frontier. Blessed
with a strong educational and technological thrust, it has experienced massive
immigration (like Hong Kong and Singapore) and a positive international
environment. As a small trading country, Israel is vulnerable to external
economic and political shocks.
Until the 1980s, Israel, as a democratic regime of largely Jewish origin,
lacked the highly authoritarian politics, the powerful neo-Confucian ideology
and the strong Chinese ethnic element (save South Korea) of the Four Tigers.
It has strong, not weak, universities, a stress on technology rather than con-
sumer goods and no relation to the prevalent Japanese cartel model in East
Asia. Its savings rate is much lower than in Asia, its consumption level is
much higher and it is quite innovative in the social sector. Israel has had
socialism and strong trade unions, neither of which has been found in the
Four Tigers.
From 1950 to 1970 Israel resembled East Asia. But it lacked the above-
mentioned aspects of the Asian model and could be compared to both Latin
America and the United States. Its low savings rate and high rate of con-
sumption resembled the United States. Its temporary hyperinflation, high
debt ratio, heterodoxy, difficulties with governability, high inflation and
negative balance of payments resembled Latin America.51
Israel is a vulnerable state with security concerns driving foreign policy in a
hostile regional environment that have fostered seven wars and two intifadas
in the last 59 years. It has multiple and superior opponents, limited resources
and a hostile environment. Uniquely, it has raised the importance of the
military to a very high level and fulfilled the desires of Jewish identity for a
Jewish majority and reliance on a Jewish Diaspora. Shibley Telhami found
that, while neo-realism can explain much of Israeli foreign and defense
policy, the ideological element is relevant as well.52
Israel and a militarist society

Israel on the surface would seem a prime candidate for an authoritarian,
militarist society like imperial Germany or Sparta. Besieged by powerful and
significant enemies for 60 years (as well as before statehood) and forced to
mobilize its citizens to be soldiers or reservists ready to serve, it would seem a
likely candidate for militarism. Indeed, Yitzhak Rabin’s famous quip “Who is
an Israeli? He is a soldier who spends 11 months a year on leave as a civilian”
would seem to show this tendency. So too would the predominance of famous
generals and military men as prime ministers (Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak,
Arik Sharon) and as leaders of various companies.
How can we understand that Israel has avoided becoming a militarist state?
Moshe Lissak has shown that Israel has mild militarism, a multi-party sys-
tem, frequent criticism of the military, civilian control of the military, a high
degree of professionalism in the military and a limited role of the military in
the economy and politics.53 Many features of classic militarism – a highly
offensive security doctrine, emphasis on territorial expansion, glorification
of war and chauvinism, lack of a powerful civilian counter-culture, and regu-
latory power of the military – do not exist in Israel.54 Rather Israelis, in
the 1990s (heyday of “Peace Now”) and even today, still have a strong, even
passionate, desire for peace, not war.
Other factors – the power of revolutions, the ideals of new societies, the
universality of military service, the reserve system civilianizing the military,
and the early retirement program – have played a key role in preventing a
militarist system. So too may have the very small size of the country and
some Jewish atavistic tendencies that historically have debunked military
leaders, secrecy and harsh authority and yearned for peace.
This chapter has shown that Israel, while certainly exceptional in many
ways, can be fruitfully compared to other new states, new societies, revo-
lutionary states, the Four Tigers of Asia and states avoiding militarism. It
has shown how Israel overcame great obstacles to be the only one of the four
significant minorities in the Ottoman Turkish Empire to achieve a highly
successful First World state 90 years after the dissolution of the Empire. Such
comparisons also move us away from the highly ideologically charged discus-
sions of Israel in Chapter 2 to using traditional political science and socio-
logical categories for understanding Israel. For, at the end of the day, Israel
needs to be analyzed as a state, however exceptional, in comparison with the
200 other states in the world. These comparisons have shown dramati-
cally how successfully Israel has done, with the greatest similarities to highly
successful other states such as the United States and the Four Tigers of Asia.
Part II
Obstacles to the rise of Israel
In Part II we turn to a detailed look at the great obstacles; obstacles faced

by very few national liberation movements, in the path of the creation and
flourishing of the state of Israel. These included internal obstacles (Jewish
issues), territorial obstacles (Israeli issues), the hostility of major powers
(Ottoman Turkey, Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, the British Empire 1937–
49, Nazi Germany), regional powers (many Arab powers and Iran 1980–
2007) and international religious and political groups (the Roman Catholic
Church, liberal Protestants, Muslims, Third World nations and the United
Nations), and the unwillingness of friendly Western powers to help in times
of crises.
To overcome such huge obstacles, Israel needed to do more than mobilize
the talents and resources of the 13 million Jews in the world, millions of
whom before 1989 had lived immured in a Communist world hostile to Israel.
It needed to find a multiplier that would unleash massive new capabilities and
allow the Jews to create and propel their new state forward in the inter-
national arena. These new revolutions (socialist, then capitalist) did precisely
this, as they have done for other states and peoples lagging behind in the
international arena.
Amos Elon has observed that “Arab enmity has helped the Zionists to
maintain what too often disappears in other revolutionary regimes – the
atmosphere of ‘permanent revolution.’ ”1 Israel’s permanent revolution has
endured for several generations and allowed the lengthy socialist revolution
in the late 1970s to merge into a semi-capitalist revolution (under the Labor
Party as well as the Likud Party).2 The costs of the revolution would not
be low – frequent semi-hysteria in Israeli public discussion, popular oblivi-
ousness to significant flaws in Israeli realities, poor treatment of minorities
and immigrants, a growing social gap, significant pollution issues and the
downplaying of other social issues.3
But the power that revolutions unleashed, together with other significant
factors, helped create the state and make it a leading regional power within a
few decades. In a terrible security environment this has made most Israelis
supportive of the revolutions that have saved them from the huge obstacles
they faced, even at a significant cost.
44 Obstacles to the rise of Israel
Let us now turn to examining the plethora of great and medium-sized
obstacles with which Israel has had to contend over the last 125 years and
especially the last 60 years, and even now to a significant degree.
4 Jewish issues
The Zionist movement had to accomplish far more than the usual national
liberation movement for, as Jacob Talmon delineated its tasks, it had to:
1 focus the passions and will of diverse Jewish communities all over the
world;
2 create on a voluntary base a government, parliament, bureaucracy and
army long before the Jews had even settled in the land of Israel in any
number;
3 win over the support of a significant portion of the non-Jewish world
and utilize that to gain aid and recognition from the top international
bodies;
4 build, without compulsion, a nation state from immigrants from
extremely diverse climatic, cultural and economic backgrounds;
5 establish self-governing towns, villages, agriculture, industry and self-
defense bodies;
6 create a new basis for a civilization with a new language and social
experimentation;
7 organize civil disobedience, underground acts and guerrilla movements
and then fight five professional armies in 1948 and several more in
succeeding decades;
8 maintain a democracy and strong education and culture while sur-
rounded by hostile Arab states;
9 win every battle and war against Arab nations who possessed quantitative
superiority in manpower and military equipment;4
10 take the relatively dead ancient language of Hebrew (spoken by 20,000
Jews in 1905) and make it a vibrant language of 5 million Jews by 2004.5
How could it happen in the face of so many obstacles?
Finding the Jews to populate the land of Israel

Some of the greatest problems were issues on the Jewish street. The Jews
historically loved Zion but had not gone to Zion. In 586  the Babylonians
destroyed Judea and scattered the Jews in exile. When the Persian King Cyrus
the Great 50 years later allowed the Jews to return to their land, the majority
of them decided to stay in the Diasporas of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Even
with the aid of Ezra and Nehemiah the return was a slow and painful process.
By the time of the flourishing of the Jews in the Second Temple during the
middle Roman period, perhaps 60 percent of Jews remained in the Diaspora.6
How could this fate be avoided this time and the wandering Jews find a home
in Israel?
By 1900 half of the 10 million Jews in the world lived poor and embit-
tered lives in the vast Pale of Settlement of Tsarist Russia while the rest
were scattered in the United States and Canada, Western and Central Europe,
the Middle East and North Africa. The Jews lacked a common territory,
language, economic life or culture. The Eastern European Jewish com-
munities were divided into a number of states with their own autonomous
institutions, intense jealousies and suspicions and desire for positions and
status.7
Why would the tradition-bound Jews of Europe as well as North Africa
and the Middle East come to Palestine/Israel when Zionism represented a
radical assault on tradition? For, as David Vital put it well:
Besides, to rebel against the Jewish condition, as against any long-

established status quo, was to incur resistance. The more radical the
intent and the more effective the means to implement it, the greater was
the resistance. This within Jewry; thus without. Change required a mobil-
ization of human and material resources, defined purposes, organization
. . . But every settled thing in Jewry militated against a radical approach
to its ills; habit of mind, precedent, the Tradition itself in its most explicit
forms, the invertebrate, powerless and partly voluntary structure of the
nation, and the private views and purposes of a majority – if indeed a
diminishing majority – of the Jews themselves.8
Jews had many options besides Zion, including emigration to the West,
Communism, Bundism, Orthodox Judaism, Reform Judaism, assimilation
and conversion. The ultimate other Zion would be the United States, and
especially New York, which by 1900 had the largest Jewish population in the
world. Most Jews considered the United States the “Land of Promise”
(“goldene medine”) as opposed to the “Promised Land.” By 1914 over
1 million Jews lived in New York, where they enjoyed political and religious
freedom, economic opportunities and a strong Jewish life so lovingly
described by Irving Howe in The World of Our Fathers. Over 2.5 million Jews
went to the United States.9 The lure of America was so strong that, when
4,500 Jewish legionaries from Britain and the United States found themselves
in Palestine at the end of World War I, less than 6 percent chose to stay there
rather than return to Anglo-America.10
There was also the lure of other Zions. Baron Hirsch resettled 45,000 Jews
Jewish issues 47
in Argentina by 1914 while the Soviet Union resettled 30,000 Jews in the
1930s in the less hospitable realm of Birobidzhan.11
Founded by Karl Marx (a converted Jew) and with many Jewish leaders
(such as Bernstein, Lassalle, Luxemburg and Trotsky), revolutionary social-
ism’s “messianic appeal” was “irresistible.”12 While its atheism, historical
determinism, centralization and impersonal forces alienated traditional Jews
and denigrated Jewish nationalism as a reactionary bourgeois phenomenon,
it appealed strongly to marginalized Jews.
Many Jews were attracted to leftist Bundism (founded also in 1897), which
called for a Jewish autonomous socialist entity. In the 1905 Russian Revolu-
tion the Bundists played a major role and over 4,000 Bundists languished in
jail.13 Bundism, extolling Yiddish culturalism and denouncing Zionism as a
bourgeois, utopian romantic dream, dominated Poland, the largest Jewish
center in the world, from 1920 to 1940.14
Many remained adherents of traditional Orthodox Judaism, which was
hostile to Zionism until after the Holocaust. Orthodox Judaism, dominant in
Eastern Europe until 1914, often depicted Zionism as a heretical, false mes-
sianic delusion of the premature return to Zion. Most rabbis, notables and
communal leaders opposed Zionism and moving to Palestine. Most German,
Hungarian and Eastern European Orthodox movements before the Holocaust
fought Zionism and excommunicated those who went to Palestine.15
Many other Jews in the United States, Germany and Hungary were
attracted to Reform Judaism, which from 1840 to 1940 was staunchly opposed
to Zionism. Reform Jews saw Judaism as a religion, not a nation.16
After the French Revolution, assimilation, conversion and intermarriage
were powerful forces, especially in Central and Western Europe and more
recently in North America. While Eastern European Jews lived as recognized
national minorities with linguistic, cultural, social and religious institutions
in a state of persecution by the authorities, Western and Central European
Jews enjoyed full citizenship and access to the fruits of the Emancipation. As
Barry Rubin put it well:
At that time, Jews began to be offered choices and opportunities in place

of a way of life hitherto taken for granted. That era saw a transition
from a traditional Jewish society wrapped in religion, though a period of
demoralization, division and uncertainty, to a more complex solution
of adverse religious interpretations and general acceptance that Jews are
a people. Christians expected Jews to convert; leftists expected them to
dissolve themselves in socialism and liberals expected them to become
equal but identical citizens. Each such solution occurred in hundreds of
thousands of cases. There also arose a distinctive assimilating Jewish
subculture and massive participation in a wide range of intellectual and
political movements, reflecting the dilemmas that Jews were facing.17
As early as 1492 only 50 percent of Spanish Jews expelled from Spain left
the country: the remainder assimilated and converted, with only a small
minority remaining secretly Jewish. In the 1830s Heinrich Heine argued that
conversion was “the admission ticket to European culture.” By the 1890s
Theodor Herzl foresaw assimilation as the main enemy, declaring that “Whole
branches of Jewry may wither and fall away.” All leading Berlin Jewish host-
esses of literary salons in the early nineteenth century eventually converted to
Christianity, as did all but one of the children of Moses Mendelssohn.
From 1871 to 1933 assimilation (and a low birth rate) in Germany was so
strong that the number of Jewish children plummeted 50 percent. In Hungary
by 1940 there were as many as 100,000 former Jews professing Christianity. In
1914 one-third of Jews were intermarrying in Berlin and Hamburg. In the
1920s the rate in Hungary was 33 percent and in liberal Amsterdam 70 percent.
Famous converts from Judaism included Karl Marx, Heinrich Heine, Felix
Mendelssohn, Benjamin Disraeli, Gustav Mahler, Bernard Berenson, Ludwig
Wittgenstein and Boris Pasternak. In Tsarist Russia in 1839 there were
40,000 Jewish converts to Orthodox Christianity living in Moscow and Saint
Petersburg. Barry Rubin seems to guess that 10–15 percent of world Jews
today (perhaps as many as 2 million Jews) are no longer Jews, owing to
conversion and descendants of conversion. In the United States today there
are 200,000 formal converts to Christianity and other religions and 1.4 million
children of some Jewish aspect no longer considering themselves Jews.18
However, the impact of assimilation before 1917 was limited. Conversions
among 7 million Russian Jews between 1904 and 1914 averaged only 1,000 to
1,500 a year, and some of them returned to Judaism.19 Only under the Soviet
Union would assimilation increase, to the point where the intermarriage rate
by the late 1980s was closing in on 60 percent, a rate roughly comparable to
the United States.
There were enemies for Zionism even within the non-radical, non-
assimilationist, non-Orthodox camp. Most Jews, even in the Ottoman Turkish
Empire, initially rejected the premise that their home was in Palestine, rather
than in the countries in which they resided. In 1909 none of the four Jews
elected to the new parliament were Zionists.20
Why Palestine?
And why would they go to Palestine? Before 1940 most Jewish theologians, as
well as most American and European Reform and Orthodox Jews, were
opposed to Zionism.21 A. J. Sherman depicted the legacy by 1917 of 400 years
of Ottoman Turkish rule:
a poor and backward territory . . . For centuries under the Turks

Palestine had lain neglected and forlorn, without roads, without water
supplies, without a railway and almost without schools and hospitals . . .
even [without] a water supply. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre stood
in danger of collapse. There were no telephones. The life of the fellahin
Jewish issues 49
pursued its slow round of dust, disease and debt. So had it been since the
days of the Old Testament.22
Palestine in 1918 suffered from extensive deforestation, plagues of locusts,

repeated crop failures, a collapsing agricultural economy and “almost uni-
versal poverty, malnourishment and disease among both Arabs and Jews.”23
In 1920, 97 percent of Jewish workers in Tiberias came down with malaria.24
The land was often infertile, the climate harsh and unhealthy and the work
rough and unfamiliar.25
In the early twentieth century, Jerusalem suffered from malaria, trachoma,
cholera, typhus, typhoid, ringworm, malnutrition and pox. It lacked a modern
plumbing system and in the winter its unpaved streets turned into quagmires.
In the summer its air was “polluted by clouds of gagging dust.” In 1919
bubonic plague and relapsing fever broke out in Jaffa. In the early 1920s,
14 percent of Jewish children died before their first birthday. Trachoma
afflicted the eyes of 40 percent of Jewish school children.26 In the early 1920s
Jerusalem had no radio, no cinema and no libraries but significant filth.27 In
the 1920s and 1930s malaria killed hundreds of workers who drained the
swamps of the Galilee and laid stones by hand for the streets of Tel Aviv.
For Arabs the average life expectancy in Palestine in the 1880s was 27 years
– a level not seen in the West for several hundreds of years. In 1931,
86 percent of Palestinian Arabs were illiterate and most were peasants. Some
Arab villages had no electricity, sanitation or roads; people used camels for
transport, rode donkeys and used wooden ploughs in the fields. As late as
1948 Arab life expectancy was 48 years, over a decade below that of the West.28
Even during British rule over Palestine (1918–48), Palestine lagged behind the
West. There were kibbutzim like Shefayim in the 1930s:
Shefayim was wretchedly poor. Its treasury was always empty, the food
was inadequate, and the “public buildings” were one barracks, preten-
tiously called the “refectory” and one barn used for work during the day
and for recreation at night. The area was infested with scorpions and
poisonous snakes and, by a special dispensation of the Almighty, enjoyed
stifling heat in summer and violent storms in winter.29
In 1948, Israel had a Third World economy, minimal exports, almost no

industrial exports and relatively low health standards. It was the only major
state in the world (outside Taiwan) whose legitimacy remained disputed by
many states in the world.30 Mass immigration led to a sharp decline in the
standard of living, rationing, black markets and the erection of wooden
shacks (ma’abaroth) bereft of electricity or running water for hundreds of
thousands of immigrants. Why would they come to a state with perpetual
physical threat, heavy military service, a low standard of living and an onerous
tax burden?31
In 1914 the 35,000 Zionists in the New Yishuv were less than the 50,000
religious members of the Old Yishuv, and only 1 percent of world Jewry
belonged to the Zionist movement.32 The Conjoint Foreign Committee, rep-
resenting British Jewry in external affairs, placed an anti-Zionist statement in
The Times. In 1917 the majority of British notables were anti-Zionist.33 From
1880 to 1914 over 1.5 million Russian Jews immigrated to the United States,
200,000 to Britain and 65,000 to Palestine.34
Emigration was also a major problem. Probably 60–70 percent of the Bilu
group in the early 1880s left the country.35 Perhaps 70 percent (David Ben
Gurion claimed 90 percent) of the famed Second Aliyah (1904–14) of 40,000
immigrants that founded the modern state left the country.36 During the
recession in 1927, 30 percent of the 80,000 largely Polish immigrants of the
Fourth Aliyah emigrated from Palestine. The next year as many Jews left
the country as arrived.37 Since 1948 over 2.5 million Jews have come to Israel
while perhaps 750,000 Israelis have left the country, mainly for the United
States.38 The passage of restrictive immigration laws in the United States in
1925 lessened the flow of Jews by 90 percent by the late 1920s and 95 percent
by the early 1930s.39
Overcoming numerous barriers to integrating the immigrants

into a new society
Unlike the history of most new states, Jewish history played out for over
1,800 years in over 100 countries. With no unified Jewish state since 70 ,
Diaspora customs, reflecting sharp differences in culture, history and social
structure, were often disruptive. Edwin Montagu, British Colonial Secretary
for India in World War I, only mildly exaggerated the problems when he
wrote in a 1915 memorandum to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith:
There is no Jewish race now as a homogeneous whole. It is quite obvious

that the Jews in Great Britain are as remote from the Jews in Morocco or
the black Jews in Cochin as the Christian Englishman is from the Moors
or the Hindoo . . . I cannot see any Jews I know tending olive trees or
herding sheep . . . Hebrew to the vast majority of the Jews is a language
in which to pray but not a language in which to speak or write . . . [It
would be forming a state out of] a polyglot, many-colored, heterogeneous
collection of people of different civilizations and different ordinances
and different traditions.40
Until 1948 the Yishuv (pre-1948 Jewish community) was 85 percent

Ashkenazi. The immigration in the 1950s of 650,000 Sephardi Jews from
North Africa and the Middle East created an acute conflict between the
Ashkenazim and Sephardim.41
The gap today between 2 million Sephardim (1950s immigrants) and 1
million Russians (mostly 1990s immigrants) and 2 million veteran Ashkenazim
is substantial and significant, though diminished over time. In the first two
Jewish issues 51
decades of the state the Ashkenazim dominated every facet of society, from
the institutions to businesses, universities, schools and clubs. This created
a sharp conflict when the rising Sephardim and later the new Russians
would demand their place in society and the state. As late as 1967, families
from Asia and Africa earned less than 50 percent of the amount earned
by those of European origin. Only after 1967, with the rise of a new Israel-
educated population and the availability of cheap Palestinian labor from
the territories would the Sephardim rise into the white-collar and middle
class.42
Israel faced serious problems in “absorbing” the immigrants.43 It had to
transform them into Hebrew-speaking members of an economy with a very
different occupational profile than in the Diaspora. Almost 39 percent of
Diaspora Jews were in commerce but only 14 percent of Palestinian Jews were
in commerce. A revolution in the profile and psychology of immigrants
would be necessary after they arrived in the Promised Land.44 For as Stephen
Schecter wrote in a review of a novel by A. B. Yehoshua:
I find myself nodding at the Ishmaelite’s words, as would anyone who

knows anything of the workings of a Jewish organization. What Jew ever
listens to another Jew? What Jew is ever persuaded by another Jew of
anything? What Jewish organization ever sticks to a decision when some-
one always has a better idea after the decision was taken? And yet, Jewish
organizations thrive, a Jewish country exists.45
Certain Diaspora Jewish traits needed to be changed. Jews, with their notion
of “three Jews, four opinions,” were not ready for discipline and organization.
Jews, used to being minorities, tended not to push an active political agenda
in public but rather deferred to authority. In 1932 Chaim Arlosoroff wrote to
Weizmann of the failure of Zionist aims due, in Laqueur’s summary, to “a
return to the time-honored Jewish fatalism, to Micawberish expectations that
something would turn up.”46
In the 1890s Jewish leaders doubted the capacity of impoverished Eastern
European Jews to lead the movement against significant Jewish and non-
Jewish opposition. In 1896 Baron Edmund de Rothschild called Eastern
European Jews an “army of shnorrers” (beggars).47 The establishment of
authority was the life task of David Ben Gurion, for:
He undertook a task that could justifiably be called a mission impossible.

After all, the problem of imposing a single authority on the Jewish
people – to close their ranks and guide them along a single national
course – has been the leitmotiv of Jewish history. The Bible is full of
narratives indicating that prophets or kings – or even higher authority –
were not always equal to the task . . . For some two thousand years, the
Jewish people had a dubious distinction; lacking their own land, they
recognized no central authority . . . In their dispersion the Jews obeyed,
in matters temporal, the political authority that happened to govern their
host country; in matters spiritual they heeded their local rabbi . . . there
developed a genuine distinction between Eastern and Western Jewry.48
Unlike the case in common international practice, Israel took nearly all
Jewish immigrants under the Law of Return. From 1948 to 1952 the Jewish
population of Israel more than doubled, and doubled again from 1952 to
1972. The vast majority of the new immigrants were impoverished refugees
needing food, clothing, housing, jobs, education and a language (Hebrew) to
function in a new and strange society. David Ben Gurion outlined the
immensity of the task facing the new country:
There are fifty-five nations of origins represented in the army and you
have no concept of how great are the distances and how considerable the
differences between these national groups. The great majority of our
nation is not yet Jewish, but human dust, bereft of a single language,
without tradition, without roots, without a bond to national life, without
the customs of an independent society. We must mend the rifts of the
Diaspora and form a united nation.49
While the earlier immigrants were more ready for the challenge, many of
the 2.5 million immigrants after 1948 lacked the mental orientation, the posi-
tive and euphoric notions about heroism, sacrifice and conquest in a modern
society. The Jews, save for German Jews in the 1930s, brought almost no
capital and few skills. Except for Soviet Jews, most came with no real liveli-
hood – and among them entrepreneurship was rare. An element had never
even seen an electrical appliance in their lives and brought significant Third
World health problems with them to Israel.50
The biggest issue was a cultural and mental one. The 1930s had shown, to
use Jacob Talmon’s felicitous phrase, that, for the European immigrants, “the
world was now divided into countries which wanted to get rid of the Jews and
countries which did not want to let them in.” As Talmon continued:
Wooed at one time as a community of vast influence and accepted then

as an ally, the Jews had shrunk to the status of hunted animals and
unwanted refugees . . . And as their needs grew more desperate, the power
of the Jews continued to decline . . . Humiliated, betrayed, forsaken, the
Jews were left almost entirely defenseless before Hitler’s genocidal
campaign . . . A whole people was surrendered to an assassin with the
sole stipulation that every member of it, every man, woman and child,
healthy or sick, normal or paralyzed, should be put to death, individually
or collectively, by the bullet of a thug or in specially built human abat-
toirs, after being starved, tortured, flushed out from every hiding place
and brought to the factories of death from the remotest corner of
Hitler’s empire . . . The Allies were far away . . . There was no judge to
Jewish issues 53
appeal to for redress, no government to turn to for protection, no neighbor
from whom to ask for succor, no God to pray for mercy.51
The 350,000 Holocaust survivors who came to Israel after the war were
mentally and physically exhausted and beaten. They had been expelled from
their homes, lost most or all of their families, been robbed of their assets and
been battered physically and mentally.52 Always before them would be the
horrors of the hiding places, the hatred of their neighbors, the roundups, the
trains, the dogs, the camps and the extermination chambers, and the fates of
their families. A common “survivors’ syndrome” entailed perpetual anxiety,
symptoms of isolation and withdrawal, psychosomatic incidents and fre-
quent signs of trauma. Most Holocaust victims, often in poor physical and
mental condition, showed signs of a desire to be left alone, a survivor’s guilt
for being alive when so many close relatives and friends had died, a feeling of
total abandonment, helplessness, uprooted adolescence, shame, and destruc-
tion of security and self-identity. All this complicated the task of making use
of their talents and energies in the new Israel.53
The 650,000 largely poorly educated Sephardi immigrants from North
Africa and the Middle East were not well prepared for life in Israel. As second-
class dhimmis (Peoples of the Book), their lives with limited rights in Arab
lands and Iran left them fearful, passive and apolitical. The dhimmis had lived
in ghettos (mellahs), where they paid higher taxes than Muslims, wore special
distinctive clothes, owned smaller houses and had no ability to own horses.54
The Sephardim resented their treatment by the Ashkenazim.55 When they
arrived, they were sprayed with insecticide and sent to live in primitive huts
and tents. They were disproportionately sent to do menial labor in villages
and remote and inaccessible areas that created a double marginality, both
socio-economic and geographic.56 Their ancient culture was often derided
as obsolete by Ashkenazi Labor-dominated government emissaries.57 Most
immigrants wound up in ma’abaroth (tent cities with many wooden shacks).
Once given apartments, they typically received tiny apartments of 8–35
square meters with 1.5–2 rooms.
Israelis cheered as 49,000 Yemenites, who had been in Arabia for 1,500
years, came on Operation Magic Carpet in 1949 and 1950. Most of the
poorly educated, largely rural Yemenite Jews were in poor physical shape,
with the average adult male weighing but 80 pounds. Tuberculosis, venereal
diseases and bilharzia were common, while many children suffered from
malnutrition.58
Israelis also cheered as the Ethiopians arrived against great odds (4,000 of
them died crossing the desert into Sudan). But absorbing 70,000 Ethiopians,
with 20,000 more Falash Mura waiting in Ethiopia, has proved a daunting
task. The great majority of them lived in rural areas raising cattle in extended
patriarchal families. With poor education and health, they faced further
traumas in the camps in Addis Ababa and on the long journey to Israel.
Today, 70 percent of the adults are unemployed in modern Israel.59
Few Jewish immigrants had democratic experience and many no industrial
experience. Most were poor and many were in poor health. Most did not
speak Hebrew or relate to Zionist ideas. How could they overcome the
ingrained habits of centuries and effectively enter the modern world? As
Israel Zangwill put it in Children of the Ghetto:
People who have been living in a ghetto for a couple of centuries are not
able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to
efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges. The
isolation imposed from without will have to come to seem the law of their
being.60
Given the threats from their neighbors, Israel had to create a strong mili-
tary with a citizen army. Before emancipation in the nineteenth century, Jews
had been barred from citizenship and participation in warfare. In World War I,
1.5 million Jews served in the armies and 140,000 were killed. But few served
as officers or general staff officers.61
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, was concerned about Jewish
ability to adapt to statehood, for “Exile has planted into us a distrust of all
governments. We were a people perpetually in opposition to all government,
because we were not in control of our own fate.” He saw the Jews before
and after 1948 as akin to the Jews wandering for 40 years in the wilderness
after the exodus from Egypt but before arriving in the Promised Land. They
brought slave features with them even as they escaped from slavery, for:
The people of Israel has not yet been sufficiently imbued with political
state-like consciousness and responsibility as befits a self-governing
nation . . . a people used to Exile, oppressed, lacking independence for
thousands of years, does not change overnight by fiat or by a declaration
of independence . . . Most of our public knows how to demand from the
state more than a hundred percent of what it owes the state . . . In our
country even personal manners are deficient.62
There was one saving element – the violent and turbulent experiences of
explosive anti-Semitism, war, revolution and migration showed most Jewish
immigrants that their old strategies for survival were now unbearable and
often irrelevant. Their experiences of flight and persecution prepared them for
a brave new world that Israel, with a Jewish majority, promised to build for
them.63
Divisions within the Jewish people

Although there were numerous rivals to Zionism from outside the move-
ment (Communism, Socialism, Bundism, assimilation, religiosity), there were
many divisions within Zionism as well. There were profound differences
Jewish issues 55
between religious Zionists (Mizrahi), socialist Zionists (Mapai), revisionist
Jews (Herut) and liberal Zionists (General Zionists). Even within these cat-
egories there were sharp differences between ultra-orthodox and orthodox
Jews and between Communist and socialist Jews (who also came in several
varieties). Secular squared off versus religious, Ashkenazim versus Sephardim,
socialists versus bourgeoisie, assimilation versus deeply Jewish commitment,
and culturalists (Ahad Haam) versus practical (Chaim Weizmann).
There were deep arguments over what Zionism meant. Was it the creation
of a utopia or simply another nation state? Should the state be a deeply
Jewish state or simply a state of the Jews? Was the goal political rejuvenation
after 1,800 years or a cultural revival? Could the Jewish state be discarded
if it didn’t work? Did this mean the beginning of the End of History since
it meant a manmade solution to the lengthy Exile? The divisions within
Zionism reflected the fact that “many of the weaknesses of the Zionist
movement were so many reflections of the internal weaknesses, the fissiparity
and heterogeneity of the Jewish people.”64
Creating a Jewish state with an impoverished Zionist movement

The financial resources at the disposal of both the immigrants and the inter-
national Zionist movement were weak. Joseph Chaim Brenner’s denunciation
of the Diaspora Zionist movement as nothing more than “verbal Zionism”
seemed apt.65 Theodor Herzl dreamed of tapping the wealth of a small class
of rich Jews to buy a charter for the Jews from Ottoman Turkey and to
support the development of Jewish communities in Palestine. Yet, with few
exceptions, the wealthy Jews were neither Zionists nor willing to give. In 1907
the budget of the Zionist Organization was $20,000, equal to the yearly
spending of a single wealthy German or British family. The Jewish National
Fund in 1907 had only $250,000 to spend, an “extremely limited” amount.66
In 1920 Keren Hayesod pledged to raise over $125 million for development in
the next five years: instead it barely raised $15 million in six years. The budget
of the 1933 World Zionist Congress was less than $1 million, which allowed
them to buy only 11,000 acres in the next 20 months.67
In the mid-1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, the budget of the
World Zionist Organization was significantly smaller that that of any major
Diaspora community. The Zionist Organization of America in 1932 had
8,400 members and, even by 1939, 43,000 members with minimal donations.
In 1935 less than 10 percent of world Jews belonged to the Zionist movement.
The numbers ranged from 33 percent in Palestine, 20–30 percent in Lithuania
and Latvia, 10 percent in Poland to only 3 percent in the United States.68 Only
after the Holocaust did the number reach 200,000 in 1945. Walter Laqueur
has noted:
The freedom of action of the Zionist movement was severely circum-

scribed by its extreme poverty; land could not be bought, sufficient
support could not be given to immigrants and funds for political work in
Palestine and in the Diaspora were altogether inadequate.69
The prospects for Zionism, financially strapped with small numbers and
smaller funds, seemed hopeless before World War II and the Holocaust.
The weakness of the Zionist movement before 1940, the backwardness of
Palestine, the divisions within the Jewish people, their poverty and trad-
itionalism, the traumas and the attractions of other parties or countries all
boded ill for the success of the enterprise. And yet, despite the massive losses
suffered during the Holocaust, the tentative shoots of Zionist socialism
would blossom in the post-war world, providing the impetus for the success
of the First Socialist Revolution in the first 30 years of statehood.
5 Hostility of the major powers
A major problem for new states is the implacable hostility of other states. For
the Armenians the hatred of the Turks and dislike of the Russians were a
major hindrance in creating a state for generations. For the Kurds the hostil-
ity of four major Middle Eastern states (Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria) helped
prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdistan. For Lebanese Christians,
the hostility of the Muslim world ultimately destroyed their state. For Israel,
the hostility of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, Tsarist Russia, the British
Empire (1937–49), the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the bulk of the Arab
world was a massive problem for the creation and flourishing of Israel. While
it can have some positive effects (promoting internal cohesion and immigra-
tion to Israel), its negative effects are serious. Michael Oren has observed
that, after generations of powerlessness, the Jews had to confront “immense
forces” arrayed against Israel that posed “existential challenges” to its very
creation and existence.1 Joel Migdal, who was more sanguine about the
impact of foreign threats on Israel, has written:
Outside enemies, of course, can have the most devastating impact on the
ability of leaders to achieve their goals of state predominance within a
given territory. In the worst of circumstances, they can militarily defeat the
state and its leaders and demand the most drastic sorts of changes. Even in
less severe circumstances, they can cripple the state’s domestic control
through war economic sanctions and more. They can also aid directly
those internal groups that are struggling with the state for social control.2
The hostility of the Ottoman Turkish Empire (1881–1917)

While the popular image of the Ottoman Turkish Empire in its last decades
was as “the sick man of Europe” cutting a slightly ridiculous figure, it pos-
sessed enough power to destroy the Zionist enterprise. Even on its last legs
during World War I, the Ottoman Turks massacred 600,000 to 1.5 million
Armenians, defeated Britain and France at Gallipoli and Iraq and stopped a
Russian invasion force.
Under Ottoman Turkish rule, the population of Palestine, during a time of
rapid growth elsewhere, remained 300,000 in 1517 and 1817. There were 6,000
Jews in 1517 and 1838. Political instability, economic decline and hostility
to Jews threatened the Palestinian Jewish community with bankruptcy or
expulsion. It was a traditional, artificial community, dependent on foreign
subsidies and “constant vigilance” to ward off greedy threats from Ottoman
Turkish officials or hostile neighbors. This kept the pre-Zionist community
small, dependent, pious and frightened.3
The Ottoman Turkish Empire, especially Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876–
1908) and his Young Turk successors (1908–18) opposed the Jewish desire to
create their own state.
Having lost Balkan territory (1878) and Muslim territory (Egypt and
Tunisia in 1882 and 1883) to European imperialism, Sultan Abdul Hamid
feared the Jewish nationalists seeking to wrench away Palestine. He resented
the Jews, who came largely from Russia, which wanted to destroy Ottoman
Turkey. He feared Europeans who imposed the Capitulations (foreign conces-
sions and extra-territoriality). The Sultan opposed working with the Jews,
who seemed to lack the money to make such a deal worthwhile.4
From 1882 to 1918 Ottoman Turkey repeatedly restricted Jewish immigra-
tion and purchase of land. In 1881 the Porte announced that Jews could
immigrate to the empire anywhere except Palestine. They could not come in
groups or receive privileges and must become Ottoman Turkish citizens. In
1882 Jews were banned from the four holy cities (Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias
and Hebron). Only in 1888 did Ottoman Turkey officially allow some Jewish
immigration. In 1891 the Porte tried again to close the empire to all Russian
Jews. In 1892 and from 1897 to 1902 the Mutasarrif of Jerusalem banned land
sales to Jews. In 1893 it tried to get Russia to not allow Jews passage on ships
bound to Ottoman Turkey. In 1899 the Mufti of Jerusalem called for the expul-
sion of Jewish newcomers to the land. In 1900 the government announced that
only Muslims could settle in Jerusalem. In 1901 there were new restrictions
on immigration and land sales. In 1906 the Ottoman Turkish authorities
levied heavy taxes on Jewish settlements and stopped construction of some
plants. In 1908 the Young Turks renewed a ban on land sales to Jews.5
The Jews, who bribed Turkish officials and gained protection from Euro-
pean consuls, achieved some success. The 24,000 Jews in 1882 rose to
70,000–80,000 Jews in 1908. By 1910 the Jews, who owned less than 2 percent
of the land, were 10 percent of the local population.6
In 1914, with the revoking of Capitulations to European powers and
Turkey’s entering the war, this protection was gone. As most Palestinian Jews
held foreign (mostly Russian) passports, Jews were seen as alien elements.
Already harmed by the siege of Turkey and the decline of the Ottoman
Turkish Empire, the Yishuv was cut off from overseas markets and its sup-
portive Diaspora. By the middle of 1916 the exigencies of war would leave
75 percent of Palestinian Jews on social welfare.7
In December 1914 the aging Turkish governor of Jaffa, Beha-a-Din, ordered
the expulsion of the 6,000 Jews living in the city. That month 12,000 Jews
Hostility of major powers 59
were expelled to Alexandria and 500 recent immigrants were expelled from
Palestine.8 In 1915 many Jews were sent to punitive and even dangerous labor
service. After the disastrous Turkish campaign against the British in early
1915, its commander, Djemal Pasha, appointed Beha-a-Din as his “secretary
for Jewish affairs.” He closed the Anglo-Palestine Bank, Zionist newspapers,
schools and political offices, banned Zionist public activities and encouraged
Arabs to attack Jewish villages. Zionist leaders, such as David Ben Gurion
and Yizhak Ben-Zvi, were sent into exile. Hundreds of Jewish youths in
“labor battalions” were marched off in chains to prisons or forced labor
in Damascus; others were exiled to Brusa, Constantinople and the pits of
Tarsus. By March 1915, 10,000 Palestinian Jews were exiled to Egypt, half of
them in refugee camps.
Only the intervention of the German Foreign Minister, Arthur von
Zimmerman, and the United States Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey, Henry
Morgenthau, prevented disaster in 1915. But, with the British invasion of
Palestine in early 1917 and the discovery of the pro-Allied Aaronsohn spy
ring, the situation of the Jews again turned dire. In 1917 the 7,000 Jews of Jaffa
and Tel Aviv were expelled and marched towards the north to an uncertain
fate.9 Only the intervention of the German foreign ministry, German diplo-
mats in Istanbul and General von Falkenhayn prevented the Turks from expel-
ling the Jews of Jerusalem in 1917. Suffering from starvation and disease, only
one-third of Jerusalem Jews remained in Jerusalem by the end of 1917.10
Hunger and disease decimated the Old Yishuv of Jerusalem, Safed and
Hebron. Only the rapid British military advance into Palestine, taking Jaffa
(November 1917) and Jerusalem (December 1917), saved the Yishuv from
total disaster. As Sachar related:
The rejoicing [in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv] was premature. With the
winter rains, Allenby’s campaign stalled and Jews in northern Palestine
remained hostages under Turkish military rule. Their last remnants of
security were gone by then, for Ottoman troops began indiscriminately
confiscating Jewish farms, and arms deserters by the thousands ran
amok, terrorizing Jewish settlements, looting property, even killing. It
was during the final phase of Turkish occupation in Palestine that the
Yishuv endured its worst torment. By the time the British resumed their
offensive in the spring, and ultimately overran the last of the enemy’s
forces in September 1918, the Jewish population had been reduced from
its pre-war figure of 85,000 to less than 55,000. Of those lost, between
8,000 and 10,000 had perished of hunger, illness and exposure.11
The hostility of Tsarist Russia

Tsarist anti-Semitism, reflected in 650 anti-Jewish laws, repeated pogroms,
expulsions, massive social, economic and administrative discrimination, cre-
ation of the Pale of Settlement, Black Hundreds, blood libels and popular
slogans (“Beat the Jews and Save Russia”), left the Jews powerless without
national communal organizations to defend themselves.12 Anti-Semitism was
deep and pervasive. As Pyotr Stolypin, chairman of the Russian Council of
Ministers, declaimed:
We can observe them [the Jews] the way we observe and study animals,
we can feel disgust for them or hostility, the way we do for the hyena, the
jackal or the spider, but to speak of hatred for them would raise them to
our level . . . Only by disseminating in the popular consciousness the
concept that the creature of the Jewish race is not the same as other
people but an imitation of a human with whom there can be no dealings,
only that can gradually heal the natural organism and weaken the Jewish
nation so it will no longer be able to do harm or will completely die out.
History knows of many extinct tribes. Science must put not the Jewish
race but the character of Jewry into such conditions as will make it
perish.13
The authorities banned formal Zionist organizations, and in 1907 the

Zionist Organization was declared illegal. In 1908 there were numerous
arrests of Zionists and the stopping of their fundraising. In 1910, in an
empire of 5–6 million Jews, there were only 70,000–100,000 members of
Zionist organizations. By 1913 there were 150 trials of Zionists.14 During
World War I hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews were expelled from
border areas into the interior. Hundreds of Russian Jews were executed on
charges of treason; others were taken as hostages or subjected to pogroms.15
The growing hostility of the British Empire (1920–49)

The British embrace of the Jews during the Balfour Declaration and early
period of British rule of Palestine didn’t last and ultimately proved nearly
fatal. Throughout the interwar period, there were conflicts between pro-
Jewish forces (early British leaders, the Colonial Office, led in the 1930s by
W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore) and anti-Jewish forces (military leaders, the Foreign
Office, led in the 1930s by Anthony Eden). There were also conflicts between
those who wanted to rule as cheaply as possible and those who had a broader
strategic view. Many forces pushed in an anti-Jewish direction: British anti-
Semitism, the ouster of Lloyd George in October 1922, the British imperial
need to control the Middle East to protect the vital oil routes, Iraq, the
emirates and the Suez Canal, the need to gain support from the predomin-
antly Arab Middle East and Muslims worldwide, the strategic importance
of Palestine, the need to propitiate the Arab majority in Palestine and the
improbability that the Jews would ever have a state.16
Enthralled by the romance of the Arab East (Lawrence of Arabia), many
in the British elite found Arabs physically attractive, hospitable, courteous
and friendly to an extent that the Western Jews were not. By contrast, they
often detested the “bad and tiresome tribe deniers of Christ and eternal
wanderers, often obnoxious.”17 During World War I the “London [govern-
ment] believed in powerful, mysterious Jewish societies.”18
The British military administration (1918–20) refused to publish the Balfour
Declaration in Palestine.19 By April 1920, when Arab riots inside the Old City
of Jerusalem killed some Jews and injured several hundreds, the rioters
shouted “The government is with us!,” while Arabs in the British police
joined the Arab rioters and British police stayed outside the walls of the Old
City. British army units prevented Jewish forces from patrolling the Old City
and sentenced their leader Vladimir Jabotinsky to 15 years at hard labor in
the Acre prison. British officials were often more comfortable with the Arabs
than the more Europeanized Jews.20
In May 1921, when Arab rioters killed 42 Jews and attacked Jewish farm
colonies, they received light sentences.21 The British inquiry blamed the Jews
and their immigration for causing the riots.22 The British civilian government
(created July 1920) created a largely Arab police force and government bur-
eaucracy.23 When British authorities restricted Jewish land purchases in the
1920s and 1930s, this forced the Jews to pay high prices to Arab landowners.
Even by 1939 the Jews owned only 5 percent of Palestine.24
In 1922 the Churchill White Paper proposed limited Jewish immigration,
created Transjordan and rejected the idea of Jewish statehood. In 1922 the
House of Lords voted to revoke the Balfour Declaration but the House of
Commons restored it.25 The British civilian administration, by appointing
the radical nationalist Haj Amin Al-Hussein as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
discouraged moderate Arab elements.26
The growing Arab struggle against the Jews, the rising European threat
from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the British involvement in the Arab
Middle East and the fear that their days were numbered turned the British
against their former allies. The Arab riots of 1929 led to the 1930 Passfield
White Paper, which urged restrictions on Jewish immigration and land sales
and retracted the promise that the Jews could develop Palestine.27
The Arab Revolt (1936–39) pushed the British against the Jews. In 1936 the
British did little to stop the Jaffa riots or over 2,000 attacks on the Jews.
As the attacks grew increasingly anti-British, they began to react in kind.
By 1937 the Peel Commission called for an Arab state, with 80 percent of
Palestinian territory, and a small Jewish state. The Arab Revolt, as in 1921
and 1929, led to further concessions to Arab radicalism and terror. While in
the mid–1930s 45,000 Jews arrived yearly, in the late 1930s the British, despite
the looming Holocaust, cut immigration to 13,000 Jews a year.28
The 1939 British White Paper abolished the Mandate and Balfour Declar-
ation, calling for the creation of an Arab Palestine in 1949 and the limiting of
Jewish immigration to 15,000 a year for five years and then zero if the Arabs
opposed it. Land purchases by Jews would be banned in some areas and
restricted by others. The House of Commons approved the White Paper by
268 to 179.29 As Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain asserted in April 1939:
We were now compelled to consider the Palestine problem mainly from
the point of view of its effects on the international situation. It was of
immense importance, as Lord Chatfield had pointed out, to have the
Moslem world with us. If we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews
rather than the Arabs.30
Strategic geography (guarding the route to India and the Far East), oil (for
war) and numbers guided the British decision to close the doors to Palestine
for the Jews.31 At the March 1939 St. James Conference in London the British
assured the Arabs of their support after the war for a bi-national unitary state
with a permanent Arab majority.32 The 1939 White Paper and conference
doomed hopes of creating a small Jewish state which could absorb hundreds
of thousands or even millions of Jews anxious to flee Europe.33 While in
1936 Chaim Weizmann thought 700,000–1,000,000 Jews could be brought to
Palestine, David Ben Gurion estimated there were 2–5 million Jews who could
be saved.34 The British turned back ships bearing tens of thousands of Jewish
refugees, arrested Haganah members, confiscated arms and stopped new
settlements.35
In 1940 new land regulations prevented Jews from buying land in 95 percent
of Palestine. In November 1940, 250 Jews on the SS Patria drowned in Haifa
Bay, and in February 1942 over 750 Jews were lost in the Black Sea on the SS
Struma. Although during the war Palestinian Jews sided with the British and
120,000 Jews volunteered to fight for the British Empire, the British mounted
raids on kibbutzim. Jews caught trying to immigrate to Palestine were sent to
camps in places like Mauritius where conditions were harsh.36
When Jews volunteered for the British army in 1940, they were initially
made laborers at low pay. Even when they volunteered for dangerous com-
mando missions to Syria, Iraq and East Africa (with casualty rates exceeding
50 percent), the British treated them with contempt. Only in January 1944 did
the British allow the creation of a Jewish Brigade of 24,000 Jews to serve in
various police and paramilitary units at home and in Italy.37 In June 1941,
British troops, camped outside of Baghdad after the demise of pro-fascist
Prime Minister Rashid Ali, did little to stop the riot that killed 150 Jews,
wounded 450 others and inflicted £800,000 of damage on Jewish property.38
In 1943 and 1944 the British helped sponsor the new Arab League, which
called for an Arab Palestine.39
Motivated by anger at the Jewish desire to expel them from Palestine, anti-
Semitism, Jewish terrorism and fear of a Communist Israel, Britain after the
war opposed the creation of Israel.40 The new British Labor foreign secretary,
Ernest Bevin, in 1945 characterized the American view as “let there be an
Israel and to hell with the consequences.”41 Richard Crossman remembered
that Bevin “added that he would not be surprised if the Germans had learned
their worst atrocities from Jews.”42
In 1945 the British government rejected allowing 100,000 European Jewish
refugees into Palestine. In June 1946 tens of thousands of British soldiers
arrested hundreds of members of the Jewish Agency and Haganah officers
and over 3,000 other Jews but uncovered only one arms cache, at Kibbutz
Yagur. By 1947 the British maintained 80,000 troops and 16,000 British and
local police units in a country of fewer than 2 million people. Enormous
army and police structures were erected at a cost of £2 million. Massive
arrests, curfews, deportation and fences were aimed at destroying the nascent
Jewish army and will to fight.
While many Jews were eager to come to Palestine (700,000 would arrive
from 1948 to 1951), the British kept them away at a critical juncture in 1947 and
1948. The British kept 40,000 Jews in Cyprus camps and many of 250,000
Jews in European detention camps and 600,000 Sephardim in the Middle
East from coming to Palestine. They did little to stop 5,000 Arab irregulars
from infiltrating Palestine by January 1948.43 After the United Nations voted
33–13 to create Arab and Jewish states in Palestine in November 1947, the
British refused to cooperate with the Jewish Agency. The British:
wished to see a far smaller and weaker Jewish state than that envisaged by
the UN Partition Resolution and did its utmost to bring about such an
eventuality . . . to cut Israel “down to size” and to stunt its future popula-
tion growth through the prevention of future Jewish immigration . . .
British policy-makers sought to forestall an Israeli–Tran Jordanian peace
agreement unless it detached the Negev from the Israeli State.44
The British maintained a strict embargo on Jewish immigration and

weapons acquisition until their departure in May 1948. While the British
released Arabs caught with weapons, Jews caught with illegal weapons were
sentenced to jail. While the British did little about local Arab armies, they
carried out customs inspections against Jewish imports and raided kibbutzim
looking for weapons.45 They turned a blind eye to the Arab blockade of
Jerusalem (which left civilians eating 1,000 calories a day), and Arab move-
ment into the Galilee and Jaffa threatening Tel Aviv. In March 1948 they
disarmed surviving Jewish soldiers after the loss of the Etzion bloc. The British
removed Palestine from the sterling bloc and abrogated arrangements for the
supply of vital commodities.46 In February 1948 they approved £300,000 for
the Supreme Muslim Council.
In April 1948, soon after the Deir Yassin massacre of over 100 Arabs,
Jerusalem Arabs killed 78 Jewish doctors and nurses on the road to Mount
Scopus. British forces, five minutes away, refused to intervene for seven hours
despite pleas from the Jewish Agency, Haganah, Hebrew University and
Hadassah Hospital. British convoys passed the vehicles with the medical
personnel and did nothing.47
The invading Jordanian Arab Legion had 7,400 Arab soldiers led by
many British officers, 24 cannons and 45 armored cars. British weapons and
ammunition were sold to pro-British allies such as Egypt, Jordan and Iraq.
While a few strategic points were handed to the Jews, the army camps at
Sarafand, Tel Litwinsky, Lydda Airport and Latrun and cities such as Safed
were handed over to the Arabs.48
The British pressured the United States to maintain its arms embargo
against Israel. Its naval blockade prevented arms from reaching Israel and
Jewish youth from reaching Israel until May 1948. The British fought to
detach the Negev from Israel, to prevent a Jewish land corridor from the
coast to Jerusalem, to maintain control of the port of Haifa and to push the
transfer of the Eastern Galilee to Syria. Britain did not recognize Israel until
nine months after May 1948 and fought Israel’s admission to the United
Nations.49
In 1948 Great Britain imposed an oil embargo on Israel. In November
1948, the British drafted a United Nations resolution negating Israeli gains
and proposing to hand over southern Palestine to the Arabs. In December
1948 Great Britain abstained on a United Nations vote recognizing the state
of Israel. In January 1949 near El Arish, the two sides nearly came to blows.
The Israelis shot down five British planes in the Sinai, and Britain threatened
to invoke its treaties with Egypt and Jordan. After the Israelis withdrew from
the Sinai, the British recognized Israel.50
After 1948 the British maintained their treaties with Iraq and Jordan,
which were hostile to Israel, and Sir John Glubb Pasha ran the Jordanian
Arab Legion until 1956. In 1955, when negotiating the withdrawal from the
Suez Canal, the British did not negotiate freedom of passage for Israel
through the canal.51 In 1955, with their mutual defense treaty with Jordan,
British commanders drew up plans for bombing major Israeli cities and
Israeli airfields. In the run-up to the 1956 Sinai Campaign the British had
operational plans (Operation Cordage) to come to Jordan’s aid by bombing
Israeli airfields, laying a naval siege and attacking Israeli naval bases from the
sea.52 While the British alliance with Israel during the 1956 Sinai Campaign
changed the tone of the relationship, it lasted only a brief time. Overall, the
British Empire, then a great power and even a superpower, posed grave
obstacles to the creation of Israel.
Dangerous enmity of Nazi Germany (1933–45)

The rise of Adolf Hitler to power in Germany in 1933 created a massive threat
to Zionist plans. Germany was the greatest military, economic, scientific
and technological power in Europe. The Nazi desire to destroy the “Judeo-
Bolshevik conspiracy” had to be taken seriously by 400,000 Palestinian Jews
who lacked even a state. Hitler tried and nearly succeeded in killing all
10 million European Jews, destroying the Palestinian Jewish Yishuv and
mobilizing European and Arab support against Palestinian Jewry.
Even as Hitler was going down to defeat in 1944 and 1945 he continued to
destroy European Jewry. This was seen in the killing of 500,000 Hungarian
Jews in 1944 and the continuation of the concentration camps when their
transport and personnel were needed for the war effort. In Prague the Nazis
constructed a Museum of the Extinct People to show their victory over the
now defunct Jews.53
The Afrika Korps under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in North Africa
from 1940 to 1943 nearly destroyed the British Empire and Jewish home-
land in Palestine. As David Ben Gurion warned Felix Frankfurter in a
memorandum in 1942:
The invasion [of Palestine] by Hitler, even temporarily, may result in the
complete annihilation of the Jewish community there – men, women and
children – and the total destruction of their workers by the Nazis with
the help of the Mufti. To the Jewish people throughout the world, this
will mean more than the massacre of some 600,000 Jews; it will be the
ruin of their Third Temple; the destruction of their Holy of Holies.54
The impact of fascist anti-Semitism was enduring. Many European Jews,

even after liberation in May 1945, were afraid to return to their homes. In the
Middle East the impact was powerful, for as Bernard Lewis observed:
But the poison continued to spread and from 1933 Nazi Germany and its
various agencies made a concerted and on the whole remarkably success-
ful effort to promote and disseminate European style anti-Semitism in
the Arab world. The struggle for Palestine greatly facilitated the accept-
ance of the anti-Semitic interpretation of history, and led some to blame
all evil in the Middle East and indeed in the world on secret Jewish plots.
This interpretation has pervaded much of the public discourse in the
region, including education, the media and even entertainment.55
The Nazis killed almost 80 percent of the 7.8 million Jews living between
the Atlantic sea ports and the borders of the furthest German advance into the
Soviet Union. In Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Majdanek
and dozens of other concentration camps created for the “final solution” of
the “Jewish question,” Jews were murdered through being worked to death,
starvation, diseases, beatings, shootings or gassing.56 By 1945 the 500,000
survivors typically weighed 60–80 pounds and faced severe mental torture.
Those who had fled to the Soviet Union and the West or gone into hiding
were also scarred for life. During the war only 90,000 European Jews reached
Palestine.
The Holocaust largely eliminated the Jewish reservoirs of future immi-
grants to Israel. Poland, which had 3,300,000 Jews in 1938, had fewer than
300,000 Jews by 1945. Hungary, which had 650,000 Jews in 1940, had fewer
than 150,000 Jews in 1945. Germany, which had 520,000 Jews in 1938, had
fewer than 30,000 Jews in 1945. The 16 million Jews in the world in 1940
were now barely 10 million Jews by 1945. Nearly half were in the affluent
United States. With a low Jewish birth rate, the number of Jews would never
regain its pre-war high, topping off at 13 million in 2007.
Given the Arab population, which grew from 50 million Arabs in 1950
to 285 million Arabs in 2007, and Palestinian population, which grew from
1.2 million Palestinians in 1950 to almost 8 million Palestinians in 2007, this
was a huge loss, not only morally and ethically but strategically as well.57
Today we can hardly capture the feelings of the survivors. Perhaps only
poetry and literature can come close. Paul Celan (1920–70), a Rumanian Jew
whose parents were killed in the Holocaust, who spent time in a labor camp
and later committed suicide, came closest in his poem “Death Fugue”:
Black milk of dawn we drink it at dusk

We drink it at noon and at daybreak we drink it at night
We drink it and drink it
We are digging a grave in the air there’s room for all
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
He writes when it darkens to Germany your golden hair Margarete
He writes it and steps outside and the stars all glisten he whistles for his
hounds
He whistles for the Jews he then digs a grave in the earth
He commands us to play for the dance
Black milk at dawn we drink you at night
We drink you at daybreak and noon we drink you at dusk
We drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
He writes when it darkens to Germany your golden hair Margarete
Your ashen hair Shulamite we are digging a grave in the air there’s room
for us all
He shouts cut deeper in the earth to some the rest of you sing and play
He reaches for the iron in his belt he heaves it his eyes are blue
Make your spades cut deeper the rest of you play for the dance . . .
Black milk of dawn we drink you at night
We drink you at noon death is a master from Germany
We drink you at dusk and at daybreak we drink and we drink you
Death is a master from Germany his eye is blue
He shoots you with bullets of lead his aim is true
A man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
He sets his hounds on us he gives us a grave in the air
He plays with the serpents and dreams death is a master from Germany
Your golden hair Margarete
Your ashen hair Shulamite58
Would there be a need for a Jewish state after the Holocaust? Jewish
Agency representative Arthur Lichtheim wrote to Nahum Goldmann, Presi-
dent of the World Jewish Congress, in September 1942:
The most optimistic forecast today is that 1½ million [Jews] may survive
. . . the basis of Zionism, as it was preached during the last 50 years, has
gone . . . The main argument was that 4 or 5 or 6 million in Eastern
Europe need and want a home in Palestine . . . After the victory of the
Allied Nations there can be no problem in resettling this small number of
surviving Jews in that “freed” and “Democratic” (or Communist?)
Europe of tomorrow where they will be given equality of rights.59
In 1948 David Ben Gurion lamented, “For thousands of years we were a

nation without a state. Now there is a danger that Israel will be a state
without a nation.”60 After World War I, several great powers had seen the
Jews as allies. With the destruction of the important European Jewish com-
munity, the victorious Allies of World War II had little interest in the Jews. In
1945 the Jews were not invited to attend the opening San Francisco meeting
of the new United Nations. The Allies, as seen by Roosevelt’s 1945 meeting
with Saudi King Ibn Saud, courted the more powerful Arabs.61
The hostility of the Soviet Union

The hostility of superpowers like the Soviet Union posed huge problems for
Israel. Such powers, with their nuclear, massive conventional and technical
capacity, predominance in the world order, permanent membership in the
United Nations Security Council and far-flung influence throughout the
world, left small states such as Israel with minimal margins of error to avoid
catastrophe. The Soviet Union destroyed the Zionist movement at home,
exported tens of billions of dollars’ worth of arms to anti-Israeli Arab states,
and prevented over a million Jews from immigrating to Israel before and
after 1948. Only 103,000 Soviet Jews went to Israel from 1917 to 1972, less
than 5 percent of all immigrants.62 After the 1955 Czech arms deal, Soviet
involvement in the Middle East grew until by 1980 it supplied and trained
most major Arab armies, including the Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan,
Algerian and Yemenite armies. It pushed the Arab cause at the United
Nations, provided economic aid and put military pressure on Israel.63
Marxism, anti-Semitism, oil and a desire to gain a foothold in the Arab
Middle East contributed to the Soviet hostility towards Israel. Marxist ideo-
logy was notably hostile to Zionism and Israel. As Robert Wistrich has
observed:
Marxists have frequently argued that the survival of the Jewish collectivity
– whether in a purely religious, a national or a state form – is politically
reactionary. They have followed . . . the young Marx who dismissed
Judaism as a wholly negative phenomenon . . . anti-Semitism was a tem-
porary and secondary phenomenon; with its dissipation the last factor
encouraging the “illusory” national cohesion of the Jews would also
fade.64
Lenin, condemning anti-Semitism and pogroms, called for Jewish assimila-
tion and attacked Jewish nationalism and Zionism. Stalin in 1913 stressed
that Jews, lacking a common territory or culture, were not a nation worthy of
national self-determination.65
In 1917 a powerful Russian Zionist movement, with 1,200 branches with
300,000 members, became “the dominant political force among the Jews,”
with Zionists outnumbering Bolsheviks on the Jewish street by more than
50 to 1.66 In Odessa on the occasion of the issuance of the Balfour Declar-
ation, a two-mile-long march of 150,000 Odessa Jews passed the British con-
sulate singing the British and Jewish anthems.67 A Ukrainian Jew in Kiev
remembered that:
From early morning thousands of Jews, dressed in their holiday clothes

and Zionist emblems, streamed to the university campus on Vladimir
Street. All balconies of Jewish homes were decorated in blue and white.
Three military bands marched at the head of the parades and Zionist
flags flew above . . . The British consul . . . received a bouquet of flowers
and expressed his gratitude in an emotional voice.68
In January 1918 the Zionists won 60 percent of the vote to the Jewish
Congress. In some centers, such as Minsk, the Zionists (65,000 votes) trounced
the socialists (11,000).69 At the time that several million Russian Jews were
turning towards Palestine, the Bolsheviks came to power determined to des-
troy such movements. Although they initially moved slowly, they liquidated
the movement within seven to ten years. Hebrew language classes, newspapers
and libraries, Zionist organizations and farms preparing Russian youth to
immigrate to Israel were banned by 1924, and Jewish religious institutions
were severely under attack. By 1924 several thousand Zionists were in exile,
special prisons or camps, and the next year several thousand Zionists were
under arrest.70
Almost echoing the old Bundist proposals for autonomy, the Soviet regime
recognized Jews as a nationality, created a Jewish Section of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (Evsektsiia), and allowed a flowering of Yiddish
schools, institutes, publishing houses, newspapers and theaters. By the late
1920s the Zionist movement lay in ruins.71
In the 1930s Joseph Stalin, Georgii Chicherin and Maxim Litvinov created
the Siberian Palestine (Birobidzhan), which attracted tens of thousands of
Jews to the Far East. The near Arctic climate, wilderness and swamps, geo-
graphic isolation from Europe and lack of Jewish roots doomed it. During
the Great Purges, Stalin liquidated the remaining Zionist leaders, the leaders
of the Evsektsiia and the organizers of Birobidzhan.
After the relatively liberal World War II interlude (including the creation of
the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee), Stalin unleashed anti-Semitic purges in
Eastern Europe including Czechoslovakia (Stansky trial) and Rumania (Ana
Pauker trial). The final years of his life (1948–53) were the “black years of
Soviet Jewry” which saw the disbanding of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee,
the closing of all Yiddish schools, the shooting of 30 Jewish poets and thou-
sands of Jewish intellectuals, the murder of the famous theater director
Solomon Mikhoels (head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee) and the
massive firing of Jews. The 1953 Doctors Plot involved nine doctors (six of
them Jews) accused of trying to poison Stalin and other party leaders. Stalin
ordered the preparation of labor camps in Siberia for the deportation of Jews
of Moscow and Leningrad, but he died before this could occur.72
In September 1948 Israel’s first Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Golda
Meir, arrived in Moscow in time for High Holiday services:
The street in front of the synagogue . . . was filled with people, packed
together like sardines . . . Instead of the 2,000 odd Jews who usually
came to synagogue on High Holidays, a crowd of close to 50,000 people
was waiting for us . . . Within seconds, they had surrounded me, almost
lifting me bodily, almost crushing me, saying my name over and over
again . . . the crowd still surged around me, stretching out its hands
and saying, “Nasha Golda” (our Golda) and “Shalom, shalom” and
crying.”73
As Arkady Vaksberg recounted Stalin’s reaction:
Stalin was frightened by the flood of letters that the Lubyanka comrades
reported to him (probably with some exaggeration). Heroes of the war,
awarded so many medals and ribbons, were pleading to be sent to
Palestine to repel “Arab aggressors and British fascists.” He was parti-
cularly incensed by the information from Abakumov and Suslov that some
Jews were already collecting money to build a Jewish Soviet squadron,
the Josif Stalin, for Israel.74
After some critical help in 1948 in recognizing Israel and shipping arms to
it through Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union quickly returned to its tradi-
tional hostility. By December 1952 the Soviet Union vetoed its first pro-
Israel resolution at the United Nations. In 1955 the Soviet Union, through
Czechoslovakia, signed a major arms deal sending 100 T-34 tanks and over
100 MIG 15 fighter planes to Egypt. After initial temporizing, Prime Minister
Nikolai Bulganin threatened a rocket attack on France and Britain if they did
not cease their advance. As he cabled David Ben Gurion:
The Soviet Government has already expressed its definite condemnation

of the armed aggression by Israel . . . the Government of Israel, acting as
a tool of foreign imperialist Powers, continues the foolhardy adventure
challenging all the peoples of the East who are waging a struggle against
colonialism . . . The Government of Israel is playing with the fate of
peace, with the fate of its own people, in a criminal and irresponsible
manner. It is sowing hatred for the State of Israel among the peoples of
the east, which cannot but affect the future of Israel and which will place
a question upon the very existence of Israel as a State.75
After the ceasefire, the Soviet Union threatened to intervene with volun-
teers if the advancing armies did not withdraw. A new arms deal with Egypt
was announced after the war ended.76 In the next several years the Soviet
Union made a series of arms deals worth $700 million to $1 billion. By 1967
Moscow had sold 2,300 sophisticated first-line tanks (including T-54/T-55s)
and self-propelled artillery pieces and 800 combat planes (including MIG
21s) to Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The Arabs had a 2:1 superiority in first-line
fighter interceptors and tanks over the Israelis.
In the early 1960s, 85 percent of synagogues were closed and Jews were
handed 65 percent of the 110 death sentences imposed for “economic
crimes.” Trofim Krychenko published his anti-Semitic tract Judaism without
Embellishment.77 Only in the 1970s would Brezhnev allow 250,000 Jews to
emigrate, but it took the end of the Soviet Union to allow over 1 million Jews
to go to Israel. From 1968 to 1985 over 200 Soviet Jews (led by Anatoly
Sharansky) were imprisoned after applying for emigration to Israel.78
In 1966 and 1967 Moscow was especially belligerent against Israel. By 1967
the Soviet Union had shipped $2 billion of military aid to the region, includ-
ing 1,700 tanks, 2,400 artillery pieces, 500 jets and 1,400 advisers. In mid-
1966 a joint Syrian–Soviet communiqué issued in Moscow described Israel as
“a military arsenal and base for aggression and blackmail against . . . the
Arab people” and pledged full Soviet support for the Arabs “in their just
cause against colonialist Zionism.”79
The Soviets erroneously told Syria in April 1967 that Israel was massing
troops on the Syrian border. By May Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser
moved 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks into the Sinai, obtained the quick
withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force by Secretary General U
Thant, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and pushed the Israelis
to a full mobilization for war. The Soviet Union seemed to be prodding the
Arabs towards war.80
Near the end of the war, the Soviet Union cut off diplomatic relations with
Israel, sent 70 warships into the Mediterranean and threatened “independent
action.” But, as before, it did not intervene directly itself nor re-supply the
Arab side until after the war was over.81 After the war it sent nearly 50,000
tons of weapons to Egypt.
After the second failure of Soviet allies and arms, Moscow began to escal-
ate its commitment to the Arab cause. With the United States tied down
in the Vietnam War and the Russians seeing an opportunity in fighting for
their Arab allies against “Israeli occupation,” a new strategy emerged. In the
1969–70 Attrition War, the Soviet Union escalated its role in the anti-Israel
coalition. By the end of 1970 the Soviet Union had over 200 active pilots
flying 150 MIGs at six exclusive airfields for Egypt, 12,000–15,000 men in
missile crews manning 80 missile sites (with advanced SAM 3s) and another
4,000 advisers for the Egyptian army.
In July 1970, the Russians, contravening the terms of the ceasefire agree-
ment, installed 40 missile sites with 500–600 launchers near the Suez Canal.
The next year Moscow sent a large number of MIG 21s to Egypt and
doubled the number of SAM missile batteries. But, in July 1972, after the
Soviet Union refused to send more offensive and advanced weapons (such as
modern bombers and guided surface-to-surface missiles) to Egypt, Anwar
Sadat ousted nearly all the 15,000 Soviet advisers and closed down their
bases. The Soviet Union then signed a $700 million arms deal with Syria and
provided it with 3,000 military advisers. In 1973, after a mild rapprochement
between Moscow and Cairo, the Soviet Union provided 30 Scud missiles, a
few MIG 25s and more ammunition to Egypt. It also returned 1,500–2,000
advisers to Egypt in time for the war. By October 1973 Egypt had over 400
MIGs and a small number of modern bombers, almost 800 surface-to-air
missile launchers, 1,700 artillery pieces, almost 2,000 tanks and numerous
anti-tank weapons, all of Soviet origin.82
Buoyed by the early success of the Arabs in the Yom Kippur War, the
Soviet Union urged Arab nations to support Egypt and Syria, threatened
Israel, delayed a ceasefire and massively re-supplied the Arab armies from the
fourth day of the war with 100,000 tons of equipment (twice that sent by
the United States), including 700 modern T-62 tanks. By the sixteenth day of
the war when the tide had turned against the Arab armies, a note from Soviet
President Leonid Brezhnev to American President Richard Nixon threatened
“unilateral actions” if the Israelis continued to advance against the Syrians.
The placing of Soviet airborne divisions on alert and the arrival of more
Soviet ships in the Mediterranean led the United States to place its troops on
a DEFCON 3 alert status. But the Soviet Union did not send its troops or
pilots into combat, restrained the supply of the most advanced weapons and
supported the ceasefire.83
In the three wars the Soviet Union threatened military intervention against
Israel at the end of each war. Although there were limitations on Soviet
actions against Israel in these wars, from 1954 to 1970 over 50 percent of
Soviet global military aid went to the Arab cause. This placed a great burden
on Israel. It went on a continual war footing, created a virtual garrison state
and required its typical male to spend seven years in the military from 18 to
54 years of age (combat units until 40 years old).84 In the 1982 war in Lebanon,
the Soviet Union only made verbal threats and sent a few ships into the
Mediterranean.85
After the rise of Gorbachev in 1985, pressures on Israel stopped and rela-
tions improved. By the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991,
diplomatic relations were already restored. If the million Russian Jews who
came to Israel after 1991 had been allowed to go by 1948, the difference would
have been critical for Israel.
Overall, the challenges from Ottoman Turkey, the British Empire (1937–49),
Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union were great and nearly
destroyed the state before it began and after it was formed. Dealing with such
great external challenges helped force the Zionists, both before and after
statehood, to support revolutionary and radical measures in order to with-
stand such great pressures on a yet relatively weak structure. But it also meant
that, even today, with the new challenge from Iran, Israel has remained a
virtual garrison state with all attendant costs therein.
6 Enmity of the Arab world
and Iran
Israel has also faced massive threats from some of the 22 Arab states and
the Palestinians over the last 60 years of statehood and the decades before
statehood. As some of the old threat waned after 1979 (Camp David) and
1994 (the Israel–Jordan Peace Treaty) there was added the new threat from
Iran after 1979 and Islamic fundamentalism in the 1990s and 2000s. In
1947, 650,000 Israeli Jews faced five Arab states with 27 million people and
1.2 million Palestinians nearby. In 2007, 5.3 million Israeli Jews faced 20
hostile Arab states with 215 million people, two Palestinian entities with 3.5
million people and Iran with 70 million people.1
Zeev Maoz found that from 1948 to 2004 Israel was the most “conflict-
prone” state in modern history and led the world for the most intense inter-
national rivalries in the last 200 years. It faced six inter-state wars, two civil
wars and 144 dyadic militarized inter-state disputes, threats and displays or
use of force against another state. He concluded that “Israel still lives by the
sword.”2
For over 80 years there has been an “all consuming conflict” that is “endemic
and intractable” between the Jews and the Arabs. In 1937 the Peel Commis-
sion wrote of the “cavernous gulf between Arabs and Jews, between a highly
organized democratic modernity and an old fashioned world.” In 2006
Rotberg wrote that “Anti-Israeli sentiment has been strong and widespread in
the Arab world during the last few years.”3
After eight wars and two intifadas, only two of the 22 Arab states (Egypt
and Jordan) recognize Israel’s right to exist, and a handful of states (Morocco,
Tunisia and some emirates) maintain sub rosa relations. Hamas-led Gaza, the
Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon and parts of Fatah in the
West Bank are virulent in denying Israel’s right to exist. For almost 60 years
some of the Arab states and now Islamic fundamentalist movements have
waged a multi-faceted war to destroy Israel. The Middle East with 60 percent
of the world’s oil reserves and two of the three major gas reserves, has the
wealth and power to mount a significant threat to resource-poor Israel.
Over the last 60 years the nature of the conflict has changed from an inter-
state one with the Arabs to an inter-ethnic one with the Palestinians with little
Arab state involvement. From 1948 to 1973 there were five wars with Arab
states, sometimes one state at a time (1956, 1969–70) and other times several
states (1948, 1967, 1973). With the declarations of Arab leaders (1948, 1967)
that they would wipe Israel off the map, there was “intense instability.” As
Ben-Yehuda and Sandler found, “Given the hostile nature of the Arab–Israeli
milieu, nonaccommodative outcomes seem the most reasonable way to con-
clude a confrontation, leading to a perpetual cycle of violence that begets
violence with short intervals of non-crises periods between escalation.4
After 1973 the cold peace with Egypt (and the warmer one with Jordan in
1994) stabilized the Arab–Israeli conflict and prevented any new major wars
since 1973 save with Syria in Lebanon in 1982. The first Palestinian intifada
(1987–91) was relatively peaceful with notable exceptions. However, the cold
peace has involved a low degree of cooperation, hostile Egyptian elites and
media and no extensive security, political, economic or cultural interactions.5
After the end of the Cold War, with the 1991 Madrid Conference, the 1993
and 1995 Oslo Accords, the 1997 Hebron Accord, the 1998 Wye River Accord
and the 2000 Camp David II negotiations, the confrontation seemed to be
“winding down,” for as Ben-Yehuda and Sandler observed in 2002:
The gravity of the crises was reduced, the number of crises was reduced,
the number of crisis actors was smaller and the level of both military and
political involvement by the superpowers in the conflict was decreasing.
The trend has been matched albeit to a more limited extent by a decline
in the severity of violence in crises and a move to more peaceful modes
of crisis management. Similar symptoms were detected in the form and
content of crisis outcomes.6
Countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Qatar and Oman developed some rela-
tions with Israel in the 1990s and met with Israel at international meetings.
But the failure of the peace process led to a recrudescence of violence with
the second more violent Palestinian intifada (2000–05), the rise of Hamas
and Islamic fundamentalism among the Palestinians and the Arabs, the
summer 2006 war in Lebanon with Hezbollah and the threat of Iran to
obtain and use nuclear weapons against Israel. The refusal of Iran and its
Islamic fundamentalist allies (Hamas and Hezbollah) to accept the existence
of Israel has revived the existential threat to Israel that seemed to have vanished
two decades ago. The breadth and depth of the resistance to Israel mark it as
a unique case. After 60 years of Israel’s statehood, books still debate “Will
Israel survive?”7
One thing has helped Israel: that its regional enemies have overwhelmingly
been Third World autocratic dictatorships known for their “abysmal” mili-
tary performance, with poor tactics, inept generals, weak information man-
agement, limited use of weapons and maintenance and weak morale and
training. There has not been an effective, coordinated inter-state alliance
to eliminate Israel, or a real coalition. This has given Israel a breathing
space but not eliminated the real challenges to the state’s existence.8 For the
Enmity of the Arab world and Iran 75
Arab world, hating Israel has become almost a way of life. As Barry Rubin
observed:
the manipulation of the Arab–Israeli conflict is one of the most powerful

weapons in the arsenal of antireform regimes, hard-line ideologues and
radical Islamic opposition. They argue that there can be no internal
change, no softening of autocracy and no cooperation with the United
States unless the issue is first resolved in a way that satisfies their stringent
demands. Nothing can be done until Israel is defeated or destroyed and
since this does not happen, nothing can be done.9
Whatever modest decline in Arab virulence against Israel was observable

by 2007, it was more than matched by the rise of Iranian virulence against
Israel from 1988 (after the end of the war with Iraq) to 2007. Actively sup-
porting the two intifadas, building nuclear weapons to threaten Israel’s
existence and extending massive funding, arms and training to terrorist
organizations, Iran has repeatedly been named by the Department of State as
“the most active sponsor of terrorism” and a member of the Axis of Evil.10
This veritable multi-generational war against Israel has been fought in four
dimensions: conventional (and nuclear) warfare, unconventional (guerrilla or
terrorist) warfare, economic warfare (boycott and embargo) and political
(diplomatic and propaganda) warfare. The players have changed: Egypt
dropped out after Camp David and the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai in
1981, and Jordan limited its involvement after its defeat in 1967 and dropped
out after the 1994 Peace Treaty with Israel. Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah
replaced them. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have historically been
hostile but limited in their actions to economic and political warfare.
Conventional warfare
In the 1948 war, so uncertain were Israeli leaders of their fate that David Ben
Gurion secured only a 6–5 vote to declare the state of Israel, whose existence
was in doubt for its first few months. In the 1956 war Prime Minister David
Ben Gurion said that, in the face of Egypt’s massive arms supply from
Russia, the war was a “matter of life or death.”11 In 1967 the Israelis feared
that the Egyptian–Syrian–Jordanian alliance would achieve its goal of “driv-
ing the Jews into the sea.” In 1973 the sudden Egyptian–Syrian attack on
Yom Kippur achieved such early success that Moshe Dayan feared that
the Third Temple was coming to an end. In 1991 the Iraqi missile attack with
39 Scuds provoked considerable anguish in Israel, which lacked the weapons
to shoot them down.
In 1948 the Jews faced multiple threats. The 650,000 Palestinian Jews were
outnumbered almost 2:1 by 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs and outnumbered
40:1 by the 27 million Arabs in the region. With 70 percent of the Jewish
population located in the Tel Aviv, West Jerusalem and Haifa areas, the Arabs
controlled most of the land. There were long lines of communications
between the three cities. Most Jewish settlements in the Negev and Galilee
were isolated not only from the big cities but also from each other. Jerusalem,
the Etzion bloc near Jerusalem and the western Galilee were surrounded by
Arab areas, while Tel Aviv and Haifa were near large Arab towns and
settlements.
Five professional Arab armies invaded the country on May 15, 1948. By
contrast, the Haganah had been an illegal organization that had never oper-
ated above the company level. While not a single Haganah officer had ever
commanded a battalion, most of its soldiers had never seen significant com-
bat.12 As Ben Gurion said, “Our men in the Army are good Zionists but they
have yet to become soldiers.”13
The Jews could mobilize from diverse sources. At the beginning of the war,
the Jews counted on 18,000 soldiers. During the war they added 32,000 more
men from the Haganah and 9,500 youth (15 to 18 years old) from the Gadna
youth battalions. Most Haganah men were middle-aged men or untrained
adolescents. Several thousand foreign volunteers (Mahal), mostly with mili-
tary experience, fought for Israel.14
The army was outgunned at the beginning of the war, which started at the
end of November 1947. Initially it had no tanks, fighter planes, bombers and
heavy artillery. Most of its weapons were unreliable, antiquated World War I
rifles and homemade submachine guns and mortars. In November 1947 it
had nine light airplanes, 10,000 rifles, 3,500 submachine guns and 1,050
medium and mainly light machine guns. The army had only 40 Jewish pilots,
20 of whom had been in the RAF.15 In May 1948 the balance of weapons
favored the Arabs (Table 6.1).
Even later in 1948 Israel had only 13 tanks and a single modern post-war
tank. Most of its fighting power consisted of half-tracks, jeeps and hand-
made armored cars.16
The Jews possessed a relatively unified military and political command,
while the Arabs lacked a unified command and had five separate armies.
Almost the entire Jewish population supported the state, which strictly
organized its resources. The Arabs were split in loyalties to different states
and to different Palestinian leaders, often of low caliber. Save for the small
Table 6.1 Weapons balance, May 1948
Arabs Jews
Field guns 152 0

Armored cars 140–159 0
Tanks 20–40 0
Fighter planes 55–59 0
Source: E. Luttwak and D. Horowitz, The Israeli Army

1948–1973, Cambridge: Abt Books, 1983, p. 30.
Transjordanian Arab Legion, all the Arab armies were essentially derived
from traditional colonial armies, with near obsolete weapons, geared more
for internal security than external defense. Riots in Egypt in 1946 and Iraq in
1948 prevented the British from enhancing Arab military capability. The rela-
tively low economic, social and educational attainments of most Arab states
were reflected in their limited military capabilities.17
The Jewish soldiers were highly motivated and there were some excellent
younger officers (Yitzhak Sadeh, Yigal Allon, Moshe Dayan, Yigal Yadin,
Arik Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin), while the Arabs had few talented officers. The
Jews had a stronger will to fight and learned better over time. By contrast,
Arab soldiers and officers were divided between urban and rural, tribes and
families, and split over the role of the Mufti. The Arab states refused to give
the Grand Mufti a leadership role as they created in December 1947 their
own Arab League Military Committee.18
In January 1948 the Haganah had units of 100 men, a consultative head-
quarters and no artillery, armored cars or airplanes. By December 1948 the
Israeli army had a series of brigades, a semi-professional core, headquarters,
250 guns, armored cars and a nascent air force. Despite serious problems
(chaotic administration, inexperienced officers, open debates and decentral-
ization), it was more professionalized than the Arab armies. Unlike the Arab
armies, it was operating on internal lines of communications.19 With help
from the Diaspora, the Israelis in 1948 bought $12 million in arms, including
25 Messerschmitt 109 aircraft, 5,000 light machine guns and 24,500 rifles.20
The war developed in five stages. The first stage (December 1947 to March
1948) saw the Arabs on the offensive as the Jews tried to protect their cities and
300 Jewish settlements. Maintaining communication, supplies and weapons
by armored trucks and bus convoys with isolated settlements was difficult and
expensive. Jewish units were small, never greater than a company. Jerusalem
was besieged by Arabs, especially in February and March 1948, while the
Jews lost 1,200 lives, half of them civilians.21
The second stage (April 1948 to May 14, 1948) saw the Jews go over to the
offensive. In Operation Nachshon nine companies opened the road to Jerusa-
lem. In April shipments from Czechoslovakia brought 4,200 rifles and 240
machine guns. The battle for Deir Yassin, a village overlooking the road to
Jerusalem, saw the Irgun seize the village, killing over 100 civilians and
accelerating the Arab flight from Palestine. In May 1,200 Jews in Safed
overcame 12,000 Arabs and took the town. The Jews seized vital parts of
the Upper and Lower Galilee. At Yad Mordechai the resistance of 140 sol-
diers held up the 2,300 Egyptian soldiers with modern weapons for almost a
week. At the same time, in May the Arabs seized the four settlements of the
Etzion bloc.22
The third stage (May 15, 1948 to June 10, 1948), with the declaration of
independence and import of heavier weapons from Czechoslovakia, saw the
creation of a nascent modern Jewish army. Five modern Arab armies invaded
from three directions, but lacked an overall plan, failed to use their weapons
well and refrained from helping each other. The Israeli army managed to stop
all five armies but lost East Jerusalem, Latrun (on the road to Jerusalem)
and the Gush Etzion bloc.
The fourth stage (July 9 to July 18, 1948) came after a truce that allowed
the Israeli forces to import arms and consolidate their positions. Despite the
loss of Kfar Darom in Gaza, they seized Nazareth and much of the Lower
Galilee, took Lod and Ramle near Tel Aviv and shelled Tyre in Lebanon.
The final stage (after October 10, 1948) saw Israeli forces on the offensive
everywhere. With an army of 120,000 men, 60,000 rifles, 220 artillery pieces
and 7,000 vehicles, the Israelis created a regular army with ranks and a com-
mand structure. In four major operations the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
seized the Upper Galilee, marched into Lebanon, defeated the Egyptian army
in the Negev and took the bulk of the Negev and Beersheba and part of the
Gaza Strip as well as part of the Sinai. At the end of the war the new Israeli
air force shot down five RAF planes and lost none.23
Like other revolutionary armies, the Israeli army was hardly a professional
army in 1949. It was a hodgepodge of soldiers, without military tradition, and
an agglomeration of makeshift units, with officers largely lacking military
knowledge, no firm unified command structure and highly diverse tables of
weapons and organization. Owing to the refusal of most countries to sell
arms to Israel, weapons had been bought all over the world as needed without
any regard for standardization.24
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion dealt with these problems after the end
of the war. Arguing that a new war would not occur for six to eight years,
he reduced the army to 27,000 men. He dissolved the Irgun (by force in
the Altalena Affair in June 1948), Lehi (after the assassination of Count
Bernadotte in September 1948) and the Palmach (at the end of the war). Ben
Gurion created a unified army with a small professional core, a larger con-
scripted army and a large reserve element (on the Swiss model). Israel kept a
reservoir of trained soldiers available on short notice while allowing most
people to pursue their normal civic routines.
The reserves, providing 65 percent of the men in combat units, were based
on informal and familiar bonds between officers and men. Rank was little
observed or emphasized. All men, soldiers and officers, were called on a first-
name basis and served under the same conditions. A number of close groups
formed over the years and decades of reserve service. Coupled with yearly
memorials of comrades who had died in the service, the men came to know
each other intimately and fight well together.25
The Israeli military had a hard time in the early 1950s dealing with the
thousands of fedayeen guerrilla raids from Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza
Strip that killed or wounded over 1,200 Israelis and disrupted the Israeli
economic infrastructure. Early responses were poorly conducted and rela-
tively ineffective. In 1953 the army turned to Arik Sharon, a reserve major
studying at Hebrew University. With the help of Moshe Dayan, Sharon cre-
ated Unit 101 with 40 soldiers, many of them Sharon’s friends, including the
redoubtable Meir Har-Zion. They carried out commando raids deep into
enemy territory. But even by 1956 they had failed to stop the fedayeen raids.26
The 1955 Czech arms deal with Egypt changed the balance of power in the
region and emboldened Egypt against Israel. Israeli leaders, led by Prime
Minister David Ben Gurion and Chief of State Moshe Dayan, wanted to stop
Egypt, achieve peace on their borders, open the Straits of Tiran, gain Western
allies and improve precarious borders.27
With help from France (angry over Algeria) and Britain (angry over the
nationalization of the Suez Canal), which deployed 80,000 soldiers, 13 war-
ships and hundreds of bombers and fighters, the Israeli army matched up
well with the Egyptian army in the Sinai. The Israeli Southern Command had
almost as many men as the Egyptian Eastern Front (5:6 brigades), more
tanks (250:58) and a modest inferiority in airplanes (81:109).28
The Israeli army started the war with a deception move, the dropping of
360 Israeli paratroopers under Rafael Eitan 125 miles deep into the Sinai.
Within four days the Israeli army, led by 250 tanks, seized almost the entire
Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, at a cost of 177 men. Despite problems,
the Sinai Campaign led to free navigation through the Straits of Tiran, the
end of fedayeen raids and new international respect.29
By 1967, feeling that their 1948 and 1956 defeats were caused by long-gone
regimes and by British and French intervention, the Arabs were dragged into
another round of warfare. Russian misinformation about Israeli massing of
troops on the Syrian border, Nasser’s aspirations to lead the Arab world,
miscalculations and emotionalism on the Arab street led to war. In May and
early June 1967 Nasser moved 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks into the Sinai,
blockaded the Straits of Tiran, took over the control of the Jordanian army,
pushed the Iraqi army to begin to move its troops into Jordan and demanded
that the Israelis evacuate Eilat and Nitzana.
The odds seemed stacked against Israel in the Six Day War. In 1967 the
surrounding Arab states had a strong superiority in manpower (456,000 to
275,000 men), tanks (2,755 to 1,093), artillery pieces (2,084 to 681) and
fighter bombers (682 to 286).30 The initial Israeli air strikes destroyed the
aerial capabilities of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Within four days Israeli forces
had reached the canal and in little over a day scaled the Golan Heights.
Casualty rates were 25 to 1 in Israel’s favor, while the POW rates were almost
400 to 1. No fewer than 10,000–15,000 Egyptian soldiers died and 12,000
were taken prisoner, while the Israelis on all three fronts lost 700 soldiers
killed.31 Over $2 billion worth of Egyptian military equipment was destroyed.
Years of planning, practice, intelligence, tight operational control, imagin-
ation and discipline paid off.32 After six days Israel had taken East Jerusalem,
the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, territory with
42,000 square miles, five times the size of Israel.
During the War of Attrition (1969–70) along the Suez Canal, the army was
on the defensive and forced to dig in. The Bar Lev Line, with its 30 fortifica-
tions and armored reconnaissance units between the forts, represented a
radical change for the army. Massive Egyptian artillery shelling and a large
Soviet presence (15,000 advisers, SAM 3 missile bases, MIG 21 jet fighters
and hundreds of Russian pilots) posed a real challenge to Israel. Israeli deep-
penetration raids, shooting down five Russian-piloted MIGs over the canal
without losses, armored expeditions on the western bank of the canal and
offensive operations led to a truce at the cost of 720 Israelis.33
The 1973 Yom Kippur War, which began as an intelligence and military
failure, saw Israel again outgunned and outmanned. The Arab states had a
significant advantage over Israel in manpower (505,000 to 310,000 men),
tanks (4,841 to 2,000), artillery pieces (2,055 to 570) and airplanes (1,254
to 476). While the Arab goals may have been more limited than in 1948 and
1967, they posed a serious threat to Israel.34
Arab surprise and planning gave them an edge in the first days of the war.
The Egyptians (with a 40:1 manpower advantage) and massive anti-tank and
anti-air weaponry achieved their initial goals on the Suez Canal, as did the
Syrians (with a 4.5:1 tank advantage on the Golan Heights).
The tide turned as the advantages of surprise wore off, Israeli reserves were
mobilized and the Israeli army developed counter-measures to the large-scale
Arab anti-tank missiles and SAM anti-air networks. Together with extensive
air power (Israel lost over 100 planes in the war), the Israeli tank forces
pushed the Syrians off the Golan Heights and moved towards Damascus on
October 12. In the west, a massive Egyptian offensive in the Sinai was
repelled. A crossing of the canal by Arik Sharon and his unit led the Israeli
army to move rapidly up and down the canal and then to strike towards
Cairo. The Israelis encircled the Egyptian Third Army in the Sinai. The war
ended with the Israeli army 60 miles from Cairo and 30 miles from Damascus.
Over 2,500 Israeli soldiers and 16,000 Syrian and Egyptian soldiers were
killed.35
The war in Lebanon (1982–85) was a war of choice. In June 1982, Sharon
evidently did not tell the Cabinet of his true plans. Israeli forces in three days
overran the 25-mile Palestinian zone with a loss of 25 killed. Within a week
the Israeli army was on the outskirts of Beirut. The siege of Beirut led to the
withdrawal of Palestinian forces to Tunis and Syrian forces to Syria. In
September the murder of Bashir Gemayel and massacres in the Palestinian
camps of Sabra and Shatilla (for which the Kahane Commission pinned
indirect responsibility on Arik Sharon) turned the tide. The Israelis withdrew
from Lebanon, save for a six-mile-wide security strip on the border. The
Israeli army performed well (82:1 kill ratio in the air, 10:1 kill ratio in tanks)
but the results depressed many Israelis.36
Since 1985 the army has been involved, often peripherally, in several more
wars. In 1991 Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles with conventional warheads at
Israel, killing one Israeli and damaging 4,000 apartments. Under American
pressure, Israel did not respond. In 2003 Israel did not participate in the Allied
coalition war in Iraq. In July 2006, after the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers,
Israel launched a 34-day ground assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hezbollah launched over 4,000 missiles, killing over 100 Israeli soldiers and
50 Israeli civilians and damaging 2,000 buildings. The highly limited Israeli
ground offensive was largely confined to the area south of the Litani River.
Almost 10,000 Israeli air force sorties damaged Hezbollah’s strategic infra-
structure and its headquarters in the Dahiya district of Beirut. But Hezbollah,
by surviving, claimed victory.
The army currently faces a multitude of threats in a rapidly changing
strategic arena. It increasingly has to deal with remote missile threats from
nearby (Syria) and faraway countries (Iran) that may develop biological,
chemical or nuclear weapons.37
Unconventional warfare (terrorism)

Israel also has faced massive unconventional war (terrorism) which is “vio-
lence directed to political end by non-state actors.”38 Seeing Israel as innately
evil, “almost all Arabs” have endorsed anti-Israeli terrorism.39 This terrorism
escalated after Arab defeats in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1969–70 and 1982.
Carried out mainly by Palestinians, terrorism has roots in the 1920s and
recurrent failures in its inter-ethnic struggle with the Jews, Arab states and the
British Empire. The political, economic, societal and military weakness of
the 600,000 Arabs in 1900, 1.2 million Arabs in 1948 and 4.7 million Arabs in
2007 in historical Palestine and the strength of its enemies have produced a
sense of shame, frustration and humiliation that has provided a strong base
for terrorism, rejectionism, radicalism and now Islamic fundamentalism.40
The key has been repeated Palestinian failure to achieve statehood and
the elimination of Israel. This started well before the two “naqbas” (cata-
strophes) of 1948 and 1967. The first important failure was that of the Arab
Revolt (1936–39) primarily against the British colonial rulers and secondarily
against the Jews. The British, using ruthless tactics and working at times with
the Jews, exhausted the Palestinians, who were internally divided, lacked
adequate arms or trained soldiers and failed to coordinate their attacks. The
British destroyed most of their political capabilities (trade unions, associ-
ations and parties) and drove out and crushed their elite. With fewer than
25,000 British troops and 15,000 Jewish auxiliaries by late 1938, the British
imposed military rule over 1 million Palestinians. Five thousand Palestinians
died (one-fourth killed by fellow Arabs), 15,000 were wounded and 5,600
were arrested. The demise of the urban elite led to a failed revolt by the
rural elite and the fragmentation of the Palestinian elite. The moderate
Nashashibis were pitted against the radicals led by the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Hussein, who was driven into exile in Iraq and Nazi
Germany. Although the 1939 White Paper met most Palestinian demands (a
state in 1949, a ban on aliyah and land sales after 1944), it was rejected by the
Mufti while the “Palestinian Arabs were exhausted and fractured.”41
Despite their defeat, the Palestinians adamantly opposed both the 1937
Peel Commission giving them an Arab state with 80 percent of Palestine or
the 1938 Woodhead Commission giving them even more territory. In 1939 at
the St. James Conference in London they refused to sit in the same room
as the Jews or shake hands with them.42
The first and searing “naqba” was the defeat and flight of the Palestinians
in 1948. The early successes of the forces of the 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs
in late 1947 and early 1948 turned into disaster. By April 1948 the Israelis had
taken Jaffa and in May Haifa. Mustering only 2,000–3,000 fighters, together
with fewer than 4,000 for the Arab League and 5,000 for Abdal Qadir al
Husseini (killed in April 1948), the Palestinians “were ill prepared to fight.”
They lacked internal coordination, and Palestinian factions often detested
each other. The numerically inferior Jews, “organized for total war,” quickly
routed the Palestinians and destroyed 350 villages. Most of the 520,000–
760,000 Palestinians refugees, encouraged by the Arab League and Arab
leaders, fled voluntarily, but some were forced from their homes. The defeat
shocked the Palestinians, who expected a quick victory and return to their
homes.43
From 1948 to 1967 Egyptian rule in the Gaza Strip and Jordanian rule in
the West Bank limited any development of Palestinian aspirations. Hundreds
of fedayeen raids from 1951 to 1955, often with Egyptian and Jordanian
support, killed 905 Israelis.44 After the Israeli victory in the 1956 Sinai
Campaign, these attacks were largely limited. The second “naqba” in the
1967 Six Day War was a devastating defeat for the Palestinians, who believed
that Egypt would “drive the Jews into the sea” and hand Israeli territory over
to them. After the 1967 Six Day War reunited the Palestinians under Israeli
rule, there developed a growing Palestinian drive for independence.
Inspired by successful revolutionary movements in Algeria, Kenya, Cuba,
Vietnam and China, Yasir Arafat, after the massive defeat of the Arab states
in the Six Day War, tried to establish a permanent revolutionary base in
the newly occupied territories. In a “dramatic failure” he and his entourage
fled the West Bank in less than two months in August 1967. Palestinian
terrorism greatly escalated. By December 1967 Israel, arresting almost 1,000
guerrillas and implementing collective punishment, established order in the
territories.45
Energized by the Khartoum summit which rejected any negotiations, peace
or recognition of Israel, Arafat transferred his base from the West Bank to
Jordan. Together with the Gaza Strip, Lebanon (1968–73) with 5,000 guerrillas
and Jordan (1968–70) with 20,000 guerrillas, Arafat in August 1970 pro-
claimed his intention to “liberate the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the
Jordan River” by “uprooting the Zionist entity from our land and liberating
it.” From June 1967 to March 1971 terror raids into Israel killed 120 civilians.
There were nine hijackings of airplanes from 1969 to 1972, including spec-
tacular events at Athens, Munich and other airports.46
After George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
hijacked three planes and blew them up in Zarqa, the Jordanian army using
tanks, artillery and airplanes inflicted a “shattering defeat” on the Palestinians.
Killing 3,000 Palestinians in September 1970, Jordan closed Palestinian
institutions and arrested and expelled their leaders.
In 1971 the Palestinian guerrillas tried to re-establish themselves in the
Gaza Strip. Arik Sharon’s “iron fist” policy, killing 100 guerrillas, arresting
750 Palestinian guerrillas and resettling 160,000 refugees, crushed them as
Palestinian attacks were “almost absent.”47
Arafat, forced out of Jordan, established a military base with 15,000 guer-
rillas in southern Lebanon and a political base among the 235,000 Palestinian
refugees in Lebanon. Palestinian terrorism provoked both the local popula-
tion led by the Maronite Christians and Israel. In 1970 the Lebanese army
and guerrillas clashed, and in the 1975–89 Lebanese civil war over 150,000
civilians and combatants were killed. Syrian intervention in 1976 dealt the
Palestinian forces supporting the leftists and Muslims a devastating defeat.
The Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1978 in Operation Litani defeated
local Palestinian forces. The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon routed the
Palestinian forces in several days and two months later in August 1982 forced
the evacuation of the Palestinians from Beirut to Tunis. While many did
return to Lebanon within two years, the elite remained in Tunis for ten years.
Syrian and Libyan support for Fatah Colonel Abu Musa killed hundreds
of Palestinians, while Arafat was deported from Damascus to Tunis.48
The first intifada (1987–92), which started spontaneously, was relatively
peaceful. Rocks rather than guns and suicide bombers prevailed, with Arabs
killing 528 Arabs while killing 12 Israeli civilians and wounding 1,268 other
civilians. But it did not end the occupation or achieve national independence.
By June 1991 the Israelis had exiled 69 of its leaders, killed 600 Palestinians
and arrested over 40,000 Palestinians. This Israeli success in containing the
revolt, the loss of support from the Soviet Union (which dissolved in 1991)
and alienation of the Arabs by their support for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait
(1990–91) led to the expulsion of over 200,000 Palestinians from Kuwait and
the end of most Arab aid. The guns turned inwards as almost half of the
Palestinians killed in the first intifada were killed by other Palestinians. The
only success was when King Hussein in July 1988 disclaimed interest in
reclaiming the West Bank.49
Iraq, Syria and Libya actively supported Palestinian terrorism, as did
Egypt before 1973. From 1968 to 1975 only three of 204 terrorists caught in
Europe remained in jail. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, Black September
terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes, an act that led to the end of leniency by the
mid- and late 1970s. The 1973 Algiers summit recognizing the PLO as the sole
legitimate representative of the Palestinians and the 1974 address of Yasir
Arafat to the United Nations General Assembly, which recognized the PLO
as the representative of the Palestinians, brought a sharp decline in Palestin-
ian terrorism. From 1968 to 1984, 15 Palestinian terrorist organizations car-
ried out 131 attacks on Israeli targets. The most well-known included the
1974 killing of 26 children and adults at Maalot and 16 civilians in Kiryat
Shemona.50
After the creation of the peace process in the 1990s, the Palestinian leader-
ship returned in 1994 and ruled the territories as autonomous units for the
rest of the decade. After Oslo I and II, the Israelis gave sole control of
Palestinian cities (save Hebron) and the large refugee camps to the Palestin-
ians.51 By 1997 the Israelis had left most of Hebron and the Palestinians held
open elections. Their record, as seen in the rise of Hamas, was poor. Their
massive bloated bureaucracies (Israel had ruled Gaza with 5,000 bureaucrats,
and the PA needed 40,000), large-scale corruption and ineptitude left
40 percent of the Gaza workforce on the public payroll. Instead of the 9,000
security personnel proposed by Oslo, the Palestinians had 45,000. There was
minimal promotion of education, social services, infrastructure development
and the economy. Yet it seemed likely there would be a Palestinian state.52
The failure in the 1980s in the territories and the hardships suffered by the
refugees opened the door for Hamas to build a social system independent of
the secular PLO. From February 1989 to March 2000 it launched 27 attacks
that killed 185 Israelis. By 1991 Hamas was the leading terrorist group and
the second leading political group in the territories. In 1992 Israel deported
415 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad activists to Lebanon. In 1993
Hamas launched its first suicide bomb attack. In 1996 the PLO arrested hun-
dreds of Hamas activists. In the 1990s it had somewhere between 750 and
1,250 fighters.
In the second intifada (2000–05) Hamas took the leading role, with 52
suicide bombings and 425 terrorist attacks killing 377 Israelis from September
2000 to March 2004. While the suicide bombings (which involved only 3–20
kilograms of explosives) were less than 1 percent of attacks, they killed over
50 percent of Israelis who died in that period. They caused grave damage to
property and people and created broad media coverage. The shahid (Muslim
martyr in a holy war) was promised heaven as a reward. The suicide bomb-
ings involved recruitment of the attacker, physical and emotional training in
isolation, intelligence, the operational plan, preparation of combat means
and collaborators, a farewell ceremony on videotape, perpetration of the
attack and tapping media potential. They were cheap, simple and hard to
stop, inflicted heavy casualties, left no one behind to be taken captive and had
a strong impact on enemy public opinion.53
Suicide bombers killed 20 mostly Russian teenagers at the Dolphinarium
disco in Tel Aviv (June 2001), blew up 14 patrons at the Sbarro restaurant in
Jerusalem (August 2001) and massacred 20 mostly elderly patrons at a Pass-
over seder in the Park Hotel in Netanya (March 2002). The second intifada
killed over 1,000 Israelis (70 percent civilians) and wounded over 5,000
people.
The second intifada, feeding the illusion that the Israelis would fade away,
was a protest against Israeli power and Palestinian corruption and ineffi-
ciency. It helped destroy the fragile political institutions, physical structures,
economy and educational structures of the territories. It led to the return of
Israeli forces to the territories and the coming to power of Arik Sharon
(2001–05) in Israel. The intifada, far from ending the occupation or gaining a
state, promoted the rise to power of Hamas by January 2006 in Palestinian
legislative elections.54
Israeli counter-actions and Palestinian terrorism led to economic catas-
trophe and the more than doubling of unemployment. The GDP per capita
plummeted 40 percent from $1,490 (1999) to a meager $934 (2004), while the
poverty rate more than doubled to 48 percent. Together with the 9/11 attacks
in the United States and suicide attacks in Europe, it turned public opinion in
the United States, France and Britain against the Palestinian cause.55
After the defeat of the second intifada in 2005, Hamas turned to hundreds
of mortar attacks and allowed over 4,000 Qassam rockets to be fired into the
Negev. After winning the January 2006 legislative elections, Hamas in June
2007 physically took over the Gaza Strip. By late 2007 it had as many as
13,000 men under arms.56
Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), the leading terrorist group in the
territories, was founded in 1988 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Its charter called
for the destruction of Israel, a Palestinian state, the integration of Islam and
Palestinian nationalism, opposition to the peace process and the declaration
of Hamas as the sole representative of the Palestinians. Its roots are in the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Ismailiya in 1928 by Hassan al
Banah, who integrated pan-nationalism and religious fundamentalism. By
1947 the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood had 25 branches with 12,000–
25,000 members. After the 1967 war Hamas gained strength in the Gaza Strip
and after 1976 in the West Bank.57
Hamas has raised large sums of money for its social and military activities
from the territories, the Arab world (especially Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
states), Iran and the West. It received millions of dollars from Iran and until
2003 $25,000 for the families of each suicide bomber from Iraq. Hamas has
received as much as $30 million a year in foreign funding out of an overall
budget of $30–$90 million.58
Headquartered in Gaza City, Hamas has run a series of profitable eco-
nomic ventures, a network of charities and extensive Islamic fundraising. It
runs medical clinics, educational institutions, nursing homes, sports clubs,
religious institutions, women’s institutes, media forums, technology schools
and early childcare centers, which built strong support from needy Palestinians
not served by the PA.59 Its mosques, hospitals, clinics and schools provide
meeting places for terrorists, sites for the burial of arms caches and explo-
sives, cars and homes for ferrying and hiding fugitives and tens of thousands
of people willing to assist Hamas in return for its social services.60
Hamas is not a unified organization. Rather it has divisions, between the
internal leadership (Gaza Strip) and the external (Syria), the moderates and
the extremists, the Palestinian-first and the Islamist-first factions, and the
Gazans and the Kuwaitis/Syrians.61
Palestinian Islamic Jihad has operated on a smaller but still lethal scale. It
does not provide social welfare as does Hamas. It works extensively with Iran.
The assassination of its leader, Fathi Shiqaqi, in Malta in 1995 dealt it a
severe blow from which it never has fully recovered. Yet it has significant
capacity to do harm as a terrorist organization.62
A major non-Palestinian Shiite terrorist group has been Hezbollah (Party
of God), which began in 1982 after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. For
18 years it fought to oust Israel from the Security Zone (three to six miles
wide in southern Lebanon) and succeeded in May 2000. In October 2000 its
leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, incited “holy war” against Israel, called for
suicide bombing and rendered material aid to Palestinian guerrillas. Syria
provides financial and military aid to Hezbollah. In July and August 2006
Hezbollah rained 4,000 katyusha rockets down on Israel, killing 150 Israelis
and forcing over 1 million Israelis to flee the north of the country.63 By the
summer of 2007 it had rebuilt its weaponry, redeployed despite the presence
of UNIFIL and Lebanese army troops in the south, and posed a significant
threat to Israel’s north and perhaps even its center.
Israel faced threats from terrorist groups associated with Fatah. The Al
Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, founded in September 2000, was a secular, national
and violent offshoot of Fatah. An armed militia operating somewhat indepen-
dently of Fatah, it carried out many suicide bombings in Israel after January
2002. The Tanzim, a youth paramilitary wing derived from the Fatah Hawks
in 1995, had 3,500 activists in 2000. It carried out a series of shootings and
car and roadside bombings within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In April
2002 the arrest of its leader, Marwan Barghouti, weakened the movement.64
Economic warfare
The Arab boycott of Israel differed from most boycotts which were aimed at
containment of a threat (China and Cuba) or change in a political system
(South Africa and Rhodesia). The Arab states adopted a war footing in
peacetime against a targeted state with primary economic sanctions to foreign
businesses dealing with Israel while blacklisting third parties refusing to
comply with the boycott. The boycott was of indefinite duration, evaded
international law and reflected a willingness to incur losses to achieve its goal.65
The Arab and Muslim world after the defeat in the 1948 war launched a
large-scale economic boycott of Israel. Their oil production, huge capital
equipment, infrastructure needs and lingering global anti-Semitism enhanced
the effectiveness of a boycott against an originally weak Third World state.
Most Third World countries after 1948 and the Communist world after 1967
with varying degrees of enthusiasm maintained the boycott until the late
1980s. Some states, such as Iran (until 1979), Turkey, Romania and Kenya,
refused to abide by the boycott.66
The boycott had a long history even before 1948. From 1922 to 1937 there
were numerous calls among Palestinians and Arabs to boycott Jewish busi-
nessmen in the region. The new Arab League in March 1945 called for the
Arab world to ban the import of Jewish goods from Palestine. In 1946 a
Permanent Committee implemented the boycott, which was formalized in a
May 1948 ban on all commercial and financial transactions with the new
Israel. The Arab League imposed an air, sea and land blockade on Israel and
eliminated postal, radio and telegraphic communications with the new state.
By 1951 a Council resolution established a Central Boycott Office in Damas-
cus with branches in all Arab states. By 1956 Egyptian seizure of ships bound
to Israel halted tanker traffic to Haifa and forced Israel to build its own
merchant fleet. Major shipping companies refused to call at Israeli ports.
Only after the 1956 Sinai Campaign was the Gulf of Aqaba open and only in
1975 did the blockade of the Suez Canal (begun in 1950) come to an end. In
the 1970s the Boycott Office had 18 branches with 200 people.67
The major macro instruments of the boycott were a blacklist, maritime
blockade, diplomatic, trade and financial threats against those trading with
Israel, and oil, weapon and trade isolation. The micro instruments included
customs legislation, ship regulations, boycott questionnaires, contracts, letters
of credit and ship documents. There was not only a primary boycott but also
a secondary boycott against all foreign firms that dealt with Israeli affiliates,
subsidiaries or provision of credit. In Lebanon, second offenders of the boy-
cott garnered life sentences, while in Syria there was a prison sentence with
hard labor. Goods shipped through Alexandria, Port Said and Suez bound
from or to Israel were confiscated and ships searched for Israeli materials.68
The European reaction was mixed. Even after the 1975 European Economic
Committee/Israel Free Trade Agreement, the European group showed a
widespread pattern of Arab boycott compliance and discrimination. France,
which had been aligned with Israel from 1955 to 1967, had over 350 firms on
the boycott list and maintained a limited anti-boycott law, still showed a
widespread pattern of compliance with the boycott. After de Gaulle in 1967
ended the special relationship, France by 1973 was excluded from the oil
embargo and until 1981 accommodated the boycott.69
Great Britain formally opposed the boycott and by 1973 had 1,200 firms
on the boycott list. But for four decades it strongly complied with the boycott
and in 1973 was exempted from the oil embargo and production cuts. Only by
1995, when Great Britain ended its arms embargo on Israel, did British com-
panies work extensively with Israel.70 Japan was the largest country obeying
the boycott for decades. Almost totally dependent on oil imports, anxious not
to offend the Arab world, removed from the conflict and with no special ties
to the small Jewish state, Japan for four decades maintained the boycott
against Israel. Only in the 1990s, as the Israeli market grew, Jordan and the
Palestinians negotiated with Israel and Arab oil power declined, did Japan
move away from the boycott. But until then Japan provided no investment,
state credits or development aid to Israel and little trade. In 1984 Japanese
exports to the Arab world were $12.9 billion, to Israel $200 million. Japan’s
imports from the Arab world were $30 billion, as it received 40 percent of
its oil imports from the Arab world. While 150 Japanese companies (includ-
ing Sony, Hitachi and Olympus) were on the blacklist, perhaps 90 percent of
Japanese companies (including Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, Japan
Air Lines and Yamaha) would not deal with Israel. All this changed markedly
in the 1990s, but the lack of Japanese investment, technology transfer, imports
and aid in Israel’s first four decades was a major impediment to development.71
The United States often complied with the boycott from 1950 to 1980.
While Congress and the public often opposed the boycott, much of the
bureaucracy (especially the State, Commerce and Transportation depart-
ments), motivated by a desire for political and economic relations with the
Arabs, preventing the rise of Soviet influence in the Middle East and residual
anti-Semitism, were opposed to anti-boycott actions. From October 1975 to
September 1976, 92 percent of 169,700 boycott requests were honored by
American firms. In 1976 and 1978 Congressional legislation and ensuing
Commerce Department action tightened anti-boycott regulations against the
desire of the Arab lobby and oil companies. President Reagan also vigorously
tackled the boycott. By 1983 less than 4 percent of companies complied with
the boycott requests.72
The 1973 oil embargo, levied on the United States and the Netherlands
after the Yom Kippur War, reinforced the power of the Arab world. The price
of oil skyrocketed fourfold in 1973 and had nearly tripled again by 1980.
Arab oil exports soared from $4 billion in 1972 to $60 billion in 1980 and the
embargo reinvigorated the power of the boycott aimed at Israel.
In 1980 Egypt, after signing a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, cancelled the
boycott – yet continued for many years to ask American companies for boy-
cott compliance. The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon increased the power
of the boycott, which extended to 26 other non-Muslim countries. In the
1990s the Oslo peace process and growing peace process limited the impact of
the boycott. By 1994 the Gulf states had ended their indirect boycott of
Israel. The 1994 Peace Treaty with Jordan ended Jordan’s boycott the next
year. By 1997 Qatar and 14 Arab states had some economic relations with
Israel. Four Middle East and North Africa economic conferences in the
mid-1990s broke down Israel’s isolation. But the Netanyahu era (1996–99),
failure of that process after Camp David in 2000, and the launching of the
second intifada (2000–05) reignited the boycott activists. Most non-Muslims
did not reinstate the boycott. FDI into Israel more than quintupled from
1991 to 1995. From 1990 to 1997 Israeli exports to India quintupled and
doubled to Japan.73 This pace even accelerated in the following decade.
Many companies evaded the boycott by operating through third parties
and other deceptive means. The Arab world could push hard only if com-
panies had a significant interest in the Arab market. Before 1969 Cyprus and
Iran were easy markets for third parties to promote Israeli trade with forbid-
den countries. The Arab world lacked control of most third-party companies,
and Israeli goods were often high-quality and less expensive than those
available in the open market place. Israeli origins were often concealed, while
Israeli companies worked through brokers and often falsified certificates.
After 1977 Israeli companies often bought European companies, further
concealing their identity. Many major companies (such as Ford, Coca-Cola,
RCA and Sheraton) were powerful enough to ignore Arab pressure.74
The boycott’s direct impact on exports may have been limited (an Israeli
Ministry of Finance study found that from 1972 to 1983 exports would have
been 1 percent greater without the boycott), but it had an impact on invest-
ment and people. From 1955 to 1985 Israel received only $2 billion in FDI, as
companies were loath to lose the larger Arab market. Israel had a hard time
finding foreign partners for production and research. The boycott harmed
technology transfer to chemical, pharmaceutical, metals and electrical indus-
tries and use of cheaper Israeli labor. Not being able to send ships through
the Suez Canal until the late 1970s imposed a transportation cost on Israeli
exports. There was the loss (except through secret means) of the nearby Arab
market (which in the late 1930s had taken 12 percent of Jewish Palestine’s
exports). Oil cost more without access to nearby Arab sources. An Israeli
Chamber of Commerce study found that from 1951 to 1991 the boycott cost
Israel $45 billion, as few of the Fortune 500 companies invested in Israel.
Foreign tourism was impacted significantly. Israel paid more for more distant
imports, phantom trade operations were costly, and expensive import substi-
tutes and self-sufficient capital equipment and technology misallocated
resources to high-cost and inefficient operation.75
Political warfare
There was a brief period of time after World War I when it seemed that the
Arabs and the Jews might work together. In 1919 Emir Faisal and Chaim
Weizmann during the Versailles Peace Conference negotiated their difference.
But the developing nationalism of the Arabs and the anti-Semitism and high
political ambitions of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem placed the Arabs and
Jews on a collision course. After the failure of the Arab Revolt (1936–39),
the Palestinians, under the Grand Mufti, increasingly turned towards Nazi
Germany, where he lived during the war.
During the 1950s and 1960s the Arab states sought to politically isolate
Israel. Much of the world responded by not recognizing the new Jewish state.
The acme of this effort came in 1975 with the passage of the “Zionism is
Racism” resolution at the United Nations, with support from the Communist
bloc, Muslim bloc and many Third World states. Israel, recognized by only
80 countries, became “virtually a pariah state, internationally condemned
and isolated.”76 Only the end of the Cold War, the decline in oil prices and
the 1990s peace process transformed the situation, and in 1991 the resolution
was repealed. By 2000 Israel was recognized by more than 150 states,
and had peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, peace negotiations with
the Palestinians and attendance at a series of international meetings with the
Arabs. But the failure of the peace process at Camp David II (July 2000), the
outbreak of the second intifada (2000–05), rising international criticism of
Israeli actions in the territories, the sharp increase in oil prices and the ascent
of Iran and the Islamic fundamentalist movements promoted anti-Israelism
globally.
The four kinds of warfare – conventional war, unconventional war, eco-
nomic boycott and diplomatic isolation – forced Israel to expend significant
energy to maintain its existence. Israel extensively resorted to secret diplo-
macy.77 Israel became for decades a pariah state, a garrison state, swimming
upstream until the 1990s against the currents of international politics,
economic and military. Then, with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and a
potentially nuclear Iran towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first
century, Israel again faces significant threats to its existence. It faces a form of
possible, evolving “fundamentalist encirclement” from Iran and its allies
(Syria, Gaza, southern Lebanon, and possibly southern Iraq after the
departure of American forces) and the distant missile and nuclear threat of
the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the future there remains the danger that the
West Bank might come under the dominance of Hamas, thereby beginning to
close the circle on Israel, especially if either of the moderate regimes in Egypt
and Jordan were to be overthrown. The serious enemies are no longer states
thrown on the trash heap of history (Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, Nazi
Germany, Ottoman Turkey), to use Trotsky’s term, but new threats that also
endanger the state.
7 Major international and
religious organizations
The Jews faced major obstacles from organizations representing over 3 billion
people, including Catholics, mainline Protestants and Muslims, who opposed
the state of Israel for decades. Overcoming significant religious opposition
was a major hurdle, as was the opposition of the United Nations and Third
World through much of this period.
The opposition of the Roman Catholic Church

For many centuries the supersessionist philosophy of Catholicism argued
that the Jews were replaced by the Christians as the new Israel and the Holy
Land belonged to Christians. In the 1960s and 1970s, two new ideas battled
for theological supremacy. Neo-Marcionism, which emphasized accommoda-
tion to Muslims, Eastern Christians and secular liberals, gained support from
most liberal Protestant denominations and many Roman Catholics. Christian
Zionism, which stressed good relations with the Jews and the state of Israel,
found support among fundamentalist and evangelical Protestants. As Paul
Merkley has written:
The real contest within Christianity – on which the survival of the Jews
may well depend – is over one of the oldest theological issues in the
Church: How the destiny of the Jews is related to the destiny of the
Church.1
For the 10 million Jews in 1900 and the 13 million Jews in 2007, the opposi-
tion of a church representing over 1 billion Roman Catholics was a serious
problem. For many centuries the hostility of the Roman Catholic Church was
seen in support for laws directed against the Jews, the Crusades that devas-
tated Jewish communities in the Rhineland and Palestine, the Inquisition that
expelled the Jews from Spain and burned them at the stake, and the ghettos
established in the sixteenth century. The quasi-silence of the Church during
the Holocaust reinforced this image.2
The Roman Catholic Church, as a transnational institution, has significant
ideological and moral authority going back 2,000 years. It has over 2,000
dioceses and 540 archdioceses all over the world and is recognized by over
120 countries, including the United States and countries in Western Europe
and much of the Third World. Its 1 billion adherents constitute 16 percent of
the world’s population, a majority of all peoples in Latin America, close to
half of Europe’s population and hundreds of millions in Africa and Asia. Its
strongly hierarchical organization and ties with European and Latin American
countries provide it with a global reach. The position of the Roman Catholic
Church was likely to have global resonance through its role in the Holy Land,
which gave birth to Christianity.3
For over 100 years the Roman Catholic Church has been openly or covertly
hostile to the creation and flourishing of the state of Israel.4 Only in the last
decade, with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the growing power of
the state of Israel, has the relationship between Israel and the Vatican become
friendlier. Concerns about its relationship with the Islamic world and non-
Catholic Third World, identifying with European thought, protecting Arab
Catholics, safeguarding its churches, monasteries, convents and educational
institutions in the Holy Land, fearing an intolerant Jewish government, and
its historical anti-Jewish theology have played a significant role. Its global
ideological power pushed it to conceive of its relationship with the Zionists
and Israel in a context that was often profoundly anti-Israeli.5
In 1899 American Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey Oscar Straus told
Theodor Herzl that he “considered Palestine impossible to attain . . . The
Greek and Roman Catholic Churches would not let the Jews have it.” Herzl
told Straus that the Church “is the rich brother who hates the poor brother.”6
That year the Jesuit daily Civilta Cattolica called the Jews “A race of murder-
ers of God, even if supported by all the anti-Christian sects.”7 As early as
1904 Pope Pius X told Theodor Herzl that:
We cannot encourage this movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from

going to Jerusalem – but we could never sanction it. The ground of
Jerusalem, even if it were not always sacred, has been sanctified by the
life of Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church, I cannot tell you other-
wise. The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recog-
nize the Jewish people . . . The Jewish religion was the foundation of
our own; but it was superseded by the teachings of Christ and we cannot
concede it any further validity . . . If you come to Palestine and settle
your people there, we shall have churches and priests ready to baptize all
of you.8
In 1917 the Vatican opposed the Balfour Declaration. In March 1919 Pope
Benedict, finding that “truly harrowing indeed is the thought that souls
should be losing their faith and hastening to damnation on that very spot
where Jesus Christ Our Lord gained for them life eternal at the cost of His
Blood,” called Jews “infidels” whose coming to power would cause “terrible
grief for us and for all the Christian faithful.”9 In September 1921 the Cardinal
Major organizations 93
Secretary of State declared that Jewish mass immigration to Palestine would
be “immoral, illegal and . . . quite contrary to Christian sentiment and tradi-
tion.” A 1922 Roman Catholic Church memorandum opposing key aspects
of the Balfour Declaration was presented to the League of Nations.10 Chaim
Weizmann declared that “the Vatican is moving Heaven and Earth against us,
and the old fight between Judaism and paganism has been renewed with
vigor.”11
Vatican opposition to Zionism continued throughout the interwar years.
In 1929 the Vatican, while deploring the Arab riots, blamed the Zionists as
the root cause. In October 1938 Vatican Under Secretary of State Domenico
Tardini told British representatives that “there was no real reason why [the
Jews] should be back in Palestine . . . Why should not a nice place be found
for them, for instance, South America?” In 1939 the Vatican endorsed the
anti-Zionist British White Paper.12
During the Holocaust, although there were some pro-Jewish acts, most
Vatican leaders maintained their silence, for “the extermination of European
Jews had no substantial impact on the set pattern of Vatican hostility toward
political Zionism.” In the fall of 1944, a memorandum prepared by the
Vatican’s Secretariat of State for Pope Pius XII before his meeting with
Winston Churchill stated that “the Holy See has always been opposed to
Jewish domination in Palestine . . . to give [Palestine] to the Jews would
offend all Christians and infringe upon their rights.” In 1945 Moshe Shertok
met Pope Pius XIII but the visit “went nowhere.” Even after 1945, the refusal
of the Church to return Jewish children handed over to their care during the
war and its role in helping Nazi war criminals escape to Latin America
showed no change in an anti-Jewish direction.13
In 1947, given world sympathy to the Jews after the Holocaust, the Vatican
kept a studied neutrality to the struggle at the United Nations over creating
Israel. This allowed the United States and Jewish forces to convince many
Catholic Latin American nations (almost half of the General Assembly) to
back partition and a Jewish state. Yet, in 1948 the Vatican opposed the
partition plan, calling the creation of Israel on May 14:
another tragic milestone in the Via Crucia of Palestine . . . [for Israel was]
not the heir to Biblical Israel. The Holy Land and its sacred sites belong
only to Christians; the true Israel. Catholics simply are not in a position
to understand the centrality of the state of Israel for modern Judaism.14
After 1948, a shaken Vatican supported non-recognition of Israel, inter-

nationalization of the holy sites and Jerusalem, repatriation of Palestinian
refugees and retreat of Israel to the 1947 United Nations Resolution 181
frontier lines. Cardinal Spellman, who urged President Truman not to admit
Israel to the United Nations until it internationalized Jerusalem, opposed
Israel making West Jerusalem its capital.15
In the 1950s much Vatican work went to charity for the Palestinian refugees,
both Muslim and Christian. By the early 1960s the Vatican, seeing the staying
power of Israel, increasingly pro-Israel American policies and the growing
power of Jewish Diaspora communities, moved towards equidistance between
the two parties. Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council (1962–65) pro-
moted Catholic–Jewish reconciliation, eliminated the use of the words “per-
fidious Jews” and made a historic call that the Jews were a “people most dear
to God,” for Jesus was born “of the living tradition of the Jewish people.”
In 1964 Pope Paul VI, a strongly pro-Palestinian pope, visited both Jordan
and Israel and talked with King Hussein and Israeli President Zalman Shazar
on a visit to the Holy Land. But his 11-hour stay in Israel was brief and
unproductive.16
The Six Day War pushed the Vatican towards a more positive view of
Israel. However, the Church condemned the Israeli annexation of the Old
City of Jerusalem. The growing number of Third World Catholics, European
pro-Palestinian policies and resentment of Israeli domination of the Holy
Land and treatment of the territories prevented Vatican diplomatic recogni-
tion of Israel. In 1974 and 1975 the Vatican recognized Palestinian national
rights. In 1973 in a letter to the president of the Pontifical Mission for Palestine,
Monsignor John Nolan, Pope Paul VI declared, “The Palestinians . . . are
particularly dear to us because they are people of the Holy Land, because
they include followers of Christ and because they have been and are still
being so tragically tried.”17
Despite his personal warmth towards the Jews going back to his childhood
in Poland, Pope John Paul II was far from an uncritical admirer of Israel.
Despite the support for the 1979 Israeli–Egyptian Peace Treaty and meetings
with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir, the Vatican continued to be strongly
pro-Palestinian.18 Pope John Paul II met with Yasir Arafat in 1982, 1988 and
2000 and expressed his support for a Palestinian state. In 1995 the Vatican
created an Office for the Representative of the PLO to the Holy See, clearly a
forerunner of formal recognition of the PLO. In the 1990s, the pope repeat-
edly appointed Palestinians inside Israel who were hostile to the Oslo peace
process. In 1994, the Church recognized Israel.19 In 1998 the Vatican issued
“We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” which represented progress in
Jewish–Catholic relations.
In March 2000, during the jubilee year, Pope John Paul II made an historic
four-day trip to Israel. The pope visited Yad Vashem and prayed alone at the
Western Wall. Here, echoing his 1986 comment on a visit to a Roman syna-
gogue that Jews are “the older brothers of the church,” he left a famous note
at the Western Wall that read:
God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring
your name to the nations. We are deeply saddened by the behavior of
those who in the course of history have caused those children of yours
to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to
genuine brotherhood with the people of the covenant.20
By 2007 the Vatican balancing act between Israel and the Arabs was con-
tinuing. However, several issues were not resolved after over ten years of
negotiations – the legal and tax status of the Church, access to Catholic holy
places, the upkeep and sanctity of the areas around the holy places and the
decline of the Christian population in the West Bank.21
Overcoming the opposition of world Protestant churches

Despite early British and American Protestant sympathy with Zionism, the
mainline American Protestant churches had serious problems with Israel. Like
the Roman Catholic Church, they shared a theology that saw the destruction
of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70  and Jewish exile and persecution
as a divine punishment for the death of Jesus and refusal to accept him as
their savior. Christians believed that they would replace the Jews, who would
wither away and die. They saw the New Israel (Christian Church) replacing
the Old Israel (the Jewish people). The Jews had lost not only their identity as
Israel but their divine right to the Holy Land. Christian theology considered
Palestine to belong to them and not the Jews, who had forfeited their rights.
They wished to keep Palestine as an historical museum to their past.
Zionism threatened Christian beliefs that the Jews were a doomed, power-
less people without rights. Jewish nationalism was unwelcome to Christians
who saw Jews as Christ killers and a repetition of the fatal error in rejecting
Jesus. As a leading Protestant theologian put it in 1948, “His own people, the
Jews, want to set up again a narrow Jewish political nationalism, against
which he protested at the cost of his life.” Protestant liberals, basing them-
selves on the Gospels, supported the Palestinians out of concerns for social
justice, peace and Third World national liberation.22 Many Protestant theo-
logians from 1917 into the middle 1960s, influenced by the strong missionary
movement in the Middle East, wanted to convert the Jews, rather than recog-
nize an increasingly powerful and disconcerting Jewish state.23 Many preferred
rising Arab nationalism to Jewish nationalism and manifested a disdain for
Jews, American, European or Israeli.24
The mainline, liberal Protestant churches were indifferent or hostile to
Zionism from the beginning. They were particularly influenced by Protestant
missionaries who had been active in the Middle East since 1819 and who in
1866 had created the Syrian Protestant College (now American University of
Beirut). At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference the president of the American
University of Beirut, Howard Bliss, opposed the Balfour Declaration and
called for Palestine to be wrapped into a Greater Syria under an American
protectorate. The August 1919 report of the presidential King–Crane Com-
mission opposing a Jewish homeland in Palestine and supporting an Arab
kingdom for the region was led by Henry King, the president of Presbyterian
Oberlin College.25
Focused on reconstructing and strengthening their own denominations in the
interwar period and strongly isolationist, most mainline Protestant churches
did not support Zionism. As the Christian Century, an independent Protestant
weekly, put it in August 1927 deriding “aggressive Jews” who wanted to claim
the country as a “homeland”:
Historically the Jew has never been in possession of Palestine. It is the

conviction of most modern Biblical scholars that the Old Testament con-
tains no anticipation of a restoration of the Jew to its ancient homeland
which can apply to the Jewish people and the present age.
The weekly, deriding Jewish nationalism, immigration to Palestine and Jewish

land purchases in Palestine, called the 1917 Balfour Declaration “a mischiev-
ous and ambiguous promise” which “could not be realized consistently with
justice to other elements of the population.”26
In the 1930s, with the rise of fascism, persecution of the Jews and some
Arab sympathy for the fascists, the National Council of Churches became
less hostile to the Jews. Yet, until 1939 no major organized body of American
Protestantism supported a Jewish state or Zionism. In 1933 the Christian
Century denounced Zionism as a “chimerical scheme” that would entail “the
slaughter of hordes of Arabs.” The weekly also asserted that Jewish national-
ists had crucified Jesus Christ. In 1937 the weekly opposed the Peel Commis-
sion and its call for partitioning Palestine. It asserted that the “separatist”
Jewish religion, which was an “alien element in American democracy,” needed
to encounter the “universalist” Christian Church. In 1939, endorsing the
anti-Zionist British White Paper, the Christian Century declared that “The
ambition to make Palestine a Jewish state must be dropped” but Palestine
could be “a cultural and spiritual center for world Jewry.”27
By 1948, the pressure from Arab Protestants and local missionaries, super-
sessionist theology, oil ties, dislike of Jews and the emphasis on peace and
justice issues led the new World Council of Churches to be ambivalent or
even hostile to the new state. In May 1948 a bitter Christian Century blamed
the creation of Israel on New York Jewish voters. In 1948 such renowned
anti-Zionist Protestant leaders as Virginia Gildersleeve (dean of Barnard
College), Henry Sloane Coffin (former president of Union Theological
Seminary), Bayard Dodge (president of American University of Beirut),
Harry Fosdick (minister of Riverside Church) and Paul Hutchinson (editor,
Christian Century) formed the Committee for Justice and Peace in Washing-
ton, D.C. to oppose United Nations Resolution 181 that had called for a Jewish
state in Palestine. The American Friends of the Middle East, the first overtly
pro-Arab organization formed in the United States after 1948, numbered 18
leading Protestant clergymen on its 65-member national council.28
After 1948 the Christian Century and leading American Protestant churches
supported the internationalization of Jerusalem. The plight of the Palestinian
refugees from the 1948 war helped turn the churches further against Israel.
The Christian Century, bemoaning the “catastrophe” and “deep injustice”
suffered by the Palestinians, called for the return of the refugees to their home
and property in Israel. Either they would be politically repatriated or nothing
would be accomplished. In 1951 and 1956 the World Council of Churches
held refugee conferences in Beirut that became increasingly politicized and
anti-Israel. In 1949 Henry Sloane Coffin, in an influential article in the
Christian Century entitled “Perils to America in the New Jewish State,” derided
Israel as parasitic, aggressive and fanatical.”29 By 1954 the Second Assembly
of the World Council of Churches meeting in Evanston, Illinois dropped any
reference to Israel in its resolutions. In 1956 Princeton Theological Seminary
professor O. T. Ellis queried, “Does the Israeli cause deserve to succeed? . . .
We believe the verdict of history will be, No!” In 1957 the Christian Century
warned of a “darkest tragedy” and the need “to rescue Judaism, a religious
faith from Zionism, a nationalistic creed.”30
During the 1967 Six Day War the World Council of Churches and its lead-
ing Protestant denominations were silent. Official Protestant bodies provided
no support for Israel’s right to exist and did not show concern that Israel
might be destroyed. They seemed to link Israel’s right to exist to the resolution
of the Arab refugee problem. Many clergymen and theologians (including
the National Council of Churches) refused to sign a statement of conscience
in support of Israel, while only a minority (many more fundamentalist)
supported Israel’s right to exist.31
The 1967 Six Day War transformed a moderate preference for the Arabs
into a passionate support of their cause. Israel, no longer David, had become
Goliath and a Western power occupying Arab lands. The cause of the weak
and victimized Palestinians seemed irresistible. Leading Protestant theo-
logians and professors “with deep horror” attacked Israeli “crimes” for, in the
words of Presbyterian minister and Yale professor William Oxtoly, “Israel
deserves no support from the religious men because it inflicted suffering
through acts of premeditated brutality.” The National Council of Churches,
while opposing Israeli annexation of Jerusalem, did call on the international
community to recognize Israel. The American Jewish Committee found there
was no clear moral commitment of most churches to the survival of Israel or
its population.32
The Israeli victory in the war ruined a spiritual Judaism. In August 1967
the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches deplored Israeli
annexation of the territories and demanded their withdrawal. In August 1969
the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches declared that the
establishment of Israel in 1948 had done injustice to the Palestinians and
called for Palestinian self-determination and political independence. In 1980
the council condemned the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem. At the 1983
Vancouver meeting, the World Council of Churches called for a Palestinian
state. The 1987 Palestinian first intifada drew strong support from the liberal
Protestant churches. In 1989 the World Council of Churches presented the
United Nations Commission on Human Rights with a document supporting
Yasir Arafat and a Palestinian state, while denouncing the Israeli occupation
as unlawful. In the 1990s problems with the Oslo peace process were blamed
on the Israelis. In 2000 the Commission of Churches on International Affairs
submitted a document to the United Nations detailing a long series of unjust
Israeli actions.33
In 1974 Arab influence in the World Council of Churches was enhanced by
the creation of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), representing
Arab clergy in 17 Christian denominations with 14 million Christians (includ-
ing Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant) in the
region. In 1979 the MECC held a conference on the Palestinian refugees
and in 1983 opened a travel agency to promote Palestinian and Arab causes
to Westerners. In 1986 it denounced the Christian Zionist International
Congress. In 1988 the council stated that “we stand with the refugees and the
deported, with the distressed and the victims of injustice.” A 1990 ecumenical
assembly in Cyprus supported the Palestinian cause.34
With the second intifada (2000–05), the mainline Protestant churches
intensified their hostility towards Israel. Presbyterians, Episcopalians and
Lutherans supported Palestinian self-determination and condemned Israeli
occupation of the territories while the Methodists remained neutral. A 2004
study of the four largest mainline Protestant churches (United Methodist,
Evangelical Lutheran, Episcopal and Presbyterian) and their two leading
councils (the National Council of Churches and the World Council of
Churches) found that from 2000 to 2003 Israel was condemned 37 percent of
the time and the United States 32 percent of the time. As Erik Nelson and
Alan Wisdom observed:
It also demonstrated what can only be considered a fixation on the

Israel–Palestinian conflict in which churches have clearly taken sides
against Israel. The most difficult questions this study cannot answer – but
which these data clearly raise – are: Why do mainline churches exhibit
this focus on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? . . . Why do they devote so
little attention and insensitivity, by comparison, to human rights abuses
elsewhere in the world?35
The authors suggest many reasons, including solidarity with leftist European
elites, identification with Arab Christian churches, multiculturalism and
ethical relativism, holding the United States responsible for global conflicts
and anti-American imperialism. For Israel it meant that the churches of the
hundreds of millions of mainline Protestants often condemned Israel and
even questioned its existence.36
A similar position was taken by the Church of England. Gerhard Falk
found that, under the influence of the same forces as liberal American Protes-
tantism, British establishment Protestantism demonstrated “almost universal
hostility towards Israel.”37
Despite Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon (2000) and Gaza
(2005) and Hezbollah’s massive katyusha assault on Israel from Lebanon
(2006), many mainline Protestant churches remained overtly hostile to Israel.
In 2004 the Presbyterian General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for a
“phased selective divestment” from MNCs operating in Israel. Although it
modified this resolution in 2006, the assembly called for the 1967 borders,
ending the occupation, criticizing the security barrier beyond the 1967 line
and “constructive engagement” replacing divestment.38 In 2005 the United
Church of Christ voted for “economic leverage” against Israel, while the
World Council of Churches urged its constituent members to “seriously
consider” divestment.
Overcoming the opposition of Islam

In 2007, 1.3 billion Muslims make up 20 percent of the world’s population
and account for one-fourth of the nations in the world (57 countries). Their
dislike and hatred of Zionism, especially among Middle Eastern Muslims
(Arabs and Persians), is legendary. In a poll in 2003, 59 percent said that the
person they hated most in the world was Arik Sharon, the Israeli prime
minister. Only two of the 23 Arab and Persian Muslim countries (Jordan and
Egypt) have diplomatic relations with Israel.39
When Zionism developed at the end of the nineteenth century, the great
majority of Muslims were strongly opposed to a non-Muslim state in the heart
of the Middle East. When Israel won five wars from 1948 to 1973 against
numerically superior Muslim forces, the outrage in the region was palpable.40
The causes of Islamic dislike and hatred for Israel run deep. Jews (like
Christians and Zoroastrians) were treated as second-class People of the Book
in the Moslem world. The Iranian Revolution (1979), seizure of the Grand
Mosque in Mecca (1980), assassination of the peacemaker Anwar Sadat
(1981) and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon promoted the backlash. So did the
intifadas and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism from New York and London
to Madrid and Ankara and the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan,
as did the lengthy occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank after 1967.
The Islamicization of the Arab–Israeli conflict brought Muslim nations to
the side of radical anti-Israeli Palestinians. State-run Arab media (as well as
private media) denied that Israel was a nation and hence a state and was
stunned that a dhimmi people dared to fight against the Muslims in the center
of the Arab world and repeatedly win. They denied Jewish claims to the Holy
Land, spoke in anti-Semitic terms, and denigrated Zionism as an agent of
global imperialism bent on expansion and confiscating Palestinian land. They
saw Israel waging a war of genocide against the Palestinians.41
Overcoming the opposition of the United Nations and

the Third World
The United Nations, dominated by Western and Latin American countries,
from 1945 to 1952 was friendly towards the creation of Israel. From 1952 to
1991 it was quite hostile. The change in the role of the Communist bloc and
the rise of independent Third World countries transformed the United
Nations. After the 1973 oil embargo, the Arab world garnered increased
support for almost 20 years. While there were no national agencies for over
60 million refugees worldwide, it created UNRWA (United Nations Relief
and Work Agency) with 17,000 employees solely for the Palestinian refugees.
It did not restrain the guerrillas operating in UN supervised areas. In United
Nations Resolution 3236 (passed 89–8–27), the United Nations supported
the inalienable right of the Palestinians to self-determination, independence
and sovereignty. In 1974 Yasir Arafat attacked Zionism from the podium of
the United Nations General Assembly with a gun in his holster, saying:
An old world order is crumbling before our eyes, as imperialism, coloni-

alism, neo-colonialism and racism, the chief form of which is Zionism,
ineluctably perish. We are privileged to be able to witness a great wave
of history bearing peoples forward into a new world which they have
created. In that world just causes triumph.42
In September 1975 Ugandan President Idi Amin received a standing ovation

for declaring from the podium of the General Assembly that “I call for the
expulsion of Israel from the United Nations and the extinction of Israel as a
state, so that the territorial integrity of Palestine may be ensured and upheld.”
While expulsion of Israel was avoided by American and Western action, the
cheering showed the sentiment on the floor.43
In December 1975 the United Nations passed General Assembly Resolution
3379 (72–35–32) denouncing Zionism as racism. Although passed with fewer
than 75 votes, it remained United Nations policy until repeal in 1991. This
resolution was matched by other resolutions that established the United
Nations Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestin-
ian People and recognition of the PLO as the official representatives of the
Palestinians. From 1969 to 1972 there were four anti-Zionist resolutions a
year, from 1973 to 1978 16 per year and in 1982 44 resolutions.
The United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim in his September
1979 annual report to the General Assembly on peace and security failed
to mention the Camp David Peace Accords. The United Nations tried for
decades to undermine the moral and legal basis of the state of Israel. Its
platform for the PLO served as a “valuable entrée to public opinion in
Europe, which was largely supportive of the concept of the United Nations
as a world forum.” Only American threats to withdraw funds and member-
ship in the General Assembly and any United Nations body supporting an
expulsion resolution kept Israel in the United Nations against repeated Arab
pressure in the early 1980s.44
In the late 1980s and early 1990s the United Nations moved towards a
more nuanced stance on Israel. The decline of the PLO, the waning power of
OPEC, an increasingly anti-United Nations American policy, the end of the
Cold War and victory of the United States led to the number of nations
recognizing Israel soaring from 70 in 1988 to over 160 by 2007. These included
Russia, India, China and all of Eastern Europe.45
But the second intifada (2000–05) again pushed the United Nations against
Israel. In September 2001 the UN Durban World Conference against Racism
repeatedly attacked Israel as a racist state. The NGO Forum adopted a
document equating Zionism with racism. All references to anti-Semitism and
the Holocaust were deleted. Only the United States and Israel walked out of
the conference. In August 2004 John Dugard, the United Nations special
rapporteur on human rights in the territories, said Israeli rule in the West
Bank and Gaza “was worse than South Africa” and constituted apartheid. In
May he called for an arms embargo against Israel for its raids in Rafah to
stop attacks on Israel.
The opposition of the Roman Catholic Church, mainline Protestant churches

and organized Islam, as well as the United Nations (1952–91), was and often
remains a major obstacle to Israel. While the degree of threat has waxed and
waned since the 1920s and 1948, for Israel dealing with this diffuse and multi-
faceted opposition has provoked a deep sense of isolation and loneliness
in the region. International conferences and United Nations forums have
often been scenes of serious criticism of Israel, with rarely a word said in
its defense, except at times from the United States. Overall, then, despite
all the progress made by Israel in escaping international pariah status, this
deep-seated enmity remains a major concern for Israel.
8 Western unwillingness to help
Israel in crises
But Israel’s problems did not end with its enemies and detractors. The West,
despite often being friendly to Israel, was reluctant to intervene in crises and
wars involving Israel.
Overcoming Western unwillingness to support Israel in major

wars and crises
While the Soviet Union inevitably supported the Arab side before 1988, the
Israelis could not in wartime count equally on the West. Except for the
French before 1967, Israel never received major support in wartime from
Europe after 1967, while the United States refused to sell major arms to Israel
from 1948 to 1962.
Israel has received strong support from the United States over the last
60 years. But it also had to battle presidents (like Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford
and Carter) who often were hostile or had other agendas. Given the power
of the attitudes, style and advisers of the president, who could be some-
what independent, if limited by a number of factors (Congress, interest
groups, bureaucracy, the international system and the media), this was hardly
surprising.1
Israel faced strong ambivalence and even antipathy in certain arenas (the
State Department and the Defense Department) in the United States. In 1917
the State Department “vehemently” opposed the Balfour Declaration and
felt that “a Jewish state should never be tolerated.” Secretary of State Robert
Lansing opposed the Balfour Declaration.2 Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly
waffled on his support for the creation of the state of Israel. In a letter to
Congress in March 1945 about his meeting with Saudi King ibn Saud, he
wrote that, “of all the problems of Arabia, I learned more about the whole
problem, the Muslim problem, the Jewish problem, by talking with Ibn-Saud
for five minutes than I could have learned in exchange of two or three dozen
letters.”3 Monty Penkower depicted Roosevelt as “actually veer[ing] toward
State’s anti-Zionist standard.” Public pledges in late 1944 and early 1945 to
support Zionism were balanced with confidential promises through the State
Department to Moslem rulers opposing Zionism.4
Western unwillingness to help Israel in crises 103
A sympathetic Harry Truman, while supporting the creation of Israel,
waffled as well. After supporting Israel in November 1947, the United States
seemingly backed away from the partition plan and pushed a trusteeship for
Palestine until May 1948.5 In May 1948 future Secretary of State Dean Rusk
wrote: “We have told them [the Jews] that if they get in trouble, don’t come
to us for help in a military sense.”6 Secretary of State George Marshall,
supported by the CIA, Defense Secretary James Forrestal and leading State
Department diplomats (Dean Rusk and Leroy Henderson), warned President
Truman that he would vote against him if he supported the creation of
Israel.7
In 1948 the Americans seemed to collaborate with the British in supporting
the mediator Count Bernadotte’s plans that focused on replacement of Israel
by a bi-national state. These plans, ended by his assassination in September
1948 and Israeli victories, included demilitarization or international control
of Haifa, surrender of large areas of southern Palestine to the Arabs in return
for the western Galilee, the incorporation of the Negev into Transjordan, the
internationalization of Jerusalem and the joint control of Jewish immigration
by Jews and Arabs through the union of the two territories in a dual state.8 In
1949 at the Lausanne Conference the United States called for Israeli with-
drawal from the southern Negev, repatriation of 200,000–250,000 refugees
and no direct contacts between Israel and the Arabs.9 The Truman adminis-
tration tried to placate the Arabs and win their support through concessions.10
But, at the same time, American support for the partition plan and early
recognition of the state of Israel were critical to the creation and early success
of the state of Israel.
Dwight Eisenhower often used American Jewish funding of Israel as a club
to wrest concessions. In 1954 Assistant Secretary of State Henry Byroade:
maintained . . . that the Zionist ideology of Israel and its free admission of
Jews were a legitimate matter of concern both to the Arabs and to the
Western countries . . . America also took drastic steps to enforce Israeli
submission to restrictions of its sovereignty in the civilian development of
the demilitarized zones and it maintained a stiff avoidance of Israeli
Jerusalem after it became the effective and proclaimed capital of the
country. In addition, America from time to time expressed a vague sym-
pathy, if not support, for plans to cut back Israel’s territory in vital areas.11
In the middle 1950s the United States and Great Britain, which was closely
allied with the Arab world, floated two secret peace initiatives code-named
Alpha and Gamma. In Alpha Israel would concede large parts of the southern
Negev in return for an Arab pledge of non-belligerency. Egypt would have
received huge quantities of American arms and a land bridge across the
Negev to Jordan. In December 1955 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
called for reparations and repatriation for refugees and cession of the southern
Negev so that Jordan and Egypt would be able to touch each other. In 1956
the Gamma plan proposed trading Egyptian non-belligerency for more Israeli
land.12 That year too President Eisenhower rejected an Israeli request for an
American–Israeli alliance in face of the threat to its existence posed by the
Czechoslovak arms sales to Egypt.13
The United States refused to sell Israel weapons from 1948 to 1962. Yet
even here the record was mixed. In 1948 Israel faced five better-armed Arab
armies, but the United States would not budge. However, this embargo
(December 1947) also allowed Great Britain, which probably would have
sold more weapons to the Arabs than the United States to the Jews, to dras-
tically cut back its military aid two months later to all Arab states, save
Transjordan.14
In 1950 the United States, Great Britain and France issued the Tripartite
Declaration calling for keeping the peace by preventing arms imbalance in
the region. Declassified documents have revealed that, from 1950 to the mid-
1950s, the United States and Britain had detailed military plans for oper-
ations to be launched against Israel if it committed any aggression against its
neighbors.15 While talking about arming Iraq in the mid–1950s, the United
States refused an Israeli request for arms. Even when the Russians through
Czechoslovakia sold Egypt 250 MIG jets in 1955, the United States refused
an Israeli request for 48 F-86 jet fighters and 60 Patton tanks.16
In the 1956 Sinai Campaign, President Dwight Eisenhower criticized the
Sinai Campaign and forced an Israeli withdrawal. Ambassador to the United
Nations Henry Cabot Lodge called for United Nations members to provide
no economic, military or financial aid to Israel until it withdrew to the 1949
armistice lines.17 In 1957 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles threatened
“serious consideration” of economic sanctions and the possible lifting of the
tax-exempt status of the United Jewish Appeal if Israel did not withdraw
totally.18 In 1960 the United States sold radar equipment to Israel. In 1962
President Kennedy broke the boycott by selling Israel Hawk anti-aircraft
missiles. Not until 1968, 20 years after the creation of Israel, would the
United States in the wake of the Six Day War become the major weapons
supplier to Israel.19
In 1967 the United States, preoccupied with Vietnam, did not help Israel as
it faced the Egyptian army moving into the Sinai and Gaza. It was dilatory
even on its 1957 guarantee for Israel’s right to pass through the Straits of
Tiran. In May 1967 the State Department implied that the United States had
no commitment to Israel and that the Sixth Fleet would likely remain neutral
if there were fighting.20
The United States in 1967 delayed any response to an Israeli request for
such arms as 100 Hawk missiles, 140 Patton tanks and 24 Skyhawk jets and
refused to appoint a liaison with the Israelis. As Israeli Ambassador Avraham
Harmon told Eugene Rostow, “If war breaks out, we would have no telephone
number to call, no code for plane recognition and no way to get in touch with
the Sixth Fleet.” The day before the war started, President Lyndon Johnson
sent a letter to the Israeli government stating that, “I must emphasize the
necessity for Israel not to make itself responsible for the initiation of hos-
tilities. Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone. We cannot
imagine that it will make this decision.” While President Johnson was pro-
Israeli, he was unable or unwilling to take a determined stand on Israel’s side
unless Israel seemed threatened by extermination. Secretary of State Dean
Rusk was less than friendly towards Israel.21
President Nixon was often confrontational towards the Israelis. In 1973 the
United States refused to warn Israel of the upcoming war and spare Israel
much devastation and trauma. It also cautioned that Israel not fire the first
shot, thereby ensuring some Arab successes.22 The Soviet Union re-supplied
Egypt and Syria on the fourth day of the war, while the Americans waited
until the tenth day of the war. In the middle 1970s President Ford carried
out a famous “reassessment” of American support for Israel until forced to
change his position. President Carter, supportive of a Palestinian homeland,
was often critical of Israel and sold 62 F–15s to Saudi Arabia.23 In 1982
the United States, which the year before had sold AWACS planes to Saudi
Arabia, did nothing to aid the Israelis in the war in Lebanon and was often
critical of it.
In 1991 the United States prevented Israel from retaliation after being hit
by a barrage of 39 Iraqi Scud missiles that killed one Israeli and damaged
4,000 apartments. In 2002 the Bush administration frequently admonished
Israel not to retaliate after major terrorist attacks, a position that changed
only after June 2002. Only after the Karine A affair, 9/11 and protracted
Palestinian terrorism did the Bush administration become more sympathetic
to the Israeli position. This was seen again in the green light given to Israel
in July 2006 in its campaign against Hezbollah and a $30 billion ten-year
military aid package proposed in the summer of 2007.
Israeli leaders often spent a lengthy amount of time in negotiations and
consultation with Washington before taking action. When they failed to
adequately consult (as in the Phalcon sale to China), they were reprimanded.
Israel was still dependent on the United States in a way that significantly
limited its freedom of action.
The situation was more problematic (save for France from 1956 to 1967)
with regard to other Western powers. The congruence in values (democracy,
free market economies, the rule of law, free speech and the Internet) and major
trade between Israel and Europe did not translate into European support for
Israel during crises.
Global anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism

The Jewish desire to create and maintain the state of Israel ran into extensive
anti-Israelism that stemmed from anti-Semitism, oil dependency, Third World
romanticism of the Palestinian victims and post-modernism. Anti-Semitism
had deep roots in both the Christian and the Muslim worlds. It is true that
Jewish history also had significant periods of hospitable Jewish existence
from the Babylonian Diaspora in Talmudic times, Ptolemaic Egypt and much
of the Roman Empire to Muslim and pre-Christian Spain, the pre-partition
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, pre-Nazi
Germany and the United States today.24 But, as Cecil Roth has written, for
1,400 years in Europe until the French Revolution the Jew was:
subject to a systemic degradation, an exclusion from opportunity, a

warping of his natural bent and a distortion of his normal position . . .
They were compelled to live together in a separate quarter of the town,
known as the Ghetto, which was generally unhealthy and rarely large
enough to accommodate them without the most appalling overcrowding.
The Ghetto gates were closed every night and, until they were opened
again in the morning, no Jew might show his face outside and no Gentile
might venture within . . . In the streets, sometimes in the Ghetto too, the
Jew had to be distinguished by an ugly badge of shame, a yellow circle
worn on the outer garment above the heart in Germany, a yellow or
crimson hat or kerchief in Italy . . . Each Sabbath the Jews were forced to
attend conversionist sermons, where they were compelled to hear long
tirades against Judaism. Their children might be seized and forcibly bap-
tized . . . Jews were not allowed to ride in coaches or to be addressed with
the customary courteous prefixes . . . On Good Friday, in many places,
they were stoned by the rabble and buffeted by the authorities, sometimes
with fatal results . . . They were harried with absurd accusations . . . So
many restrictions, in fact, were placed upon the Jew that life would have
been impossible for him had he obeyed them all. Evasion was necessary,
if he were to exist.25
In Europe blood libels, accusing Jews of killing Christians for use of their
blood, were widespread from 1144 to 1407 in such towns as Paris, Munich,
Prague, Krakow and London.26 During the Crusades tens of thousands of
Jews were killed in over a dozen German towns, from Cologne to Worms to
Prague in 1096. Forcible conversions of Jews occurred for over a thousand
years in Marseilles (591), Paris (629), Spain (1146, 1391, 1411, 1492), Krakow
(1407), Toulouse (1431), Portugal (1497), Rome (1543, 1783) and Ukraine
(1648–56). Tsar Nicholas I introduced 25-year military service for Jews (1827,
1874) and 12-year-old Jewish children were often forcibly converted to
Orthodoxy.
To the east and south, matters were not much better. After 644 , when
Jews were not willing to accept Islam they were expelled from the Hijaz by
Muslim rulers. In Persia as late as 1848 the Jewish community of Meshed
was forcibly converted to Islam. In the Byzantium Empire there were four
major campaigns (640, 721, 873 and 930 ) when popes ordered forcible
conversion and baptism and forbade the practice of Judaism.27
Jews were expelled from England (1290), France (1306, 1322, 1394),
Germany (1096–1192), Hungary (1349–60), Lithuania (1445, 1495), Spain
and Portugal (1492, 1496). During the Black Plagues of the 1340s, Jews were
blamed for poisoning the wells, and over 300 Jewish communities were
attacked. The Spanish Inquisition (1492–1820), which claimed 341,000 vic-
tims, burnt Jews at the stake in auto-da-fés for heresy, persecuted former Jews
(merinos) and relentlessly focused its power on the Jews.28
The rise of Protestantism (1517) did not immediately change matters. In
1543 Martin Luther in “On the Jews and Their Lies” called for setting fire
to synagogues, destroying their prayer books, forbidding rabbis to preach,
smashing and destroying Jewish homes, seizing Jewish property, expelling the
Jews and even making them do forced labor.29
The Chmielnicki massacres (1648–56), led by the Cossack leader Bogdan
Chmielnicki, killed over 100,000 Jews in Poland and Ukraine and tortured or
abused tens of thousands of other Jews.30 In Russia, Tsar Ivan IV declared in
1550 that “It is not convenient to allow Jews to come with their goods into
Russia since many evils result from them. For they import poisonous herbs
and lead astray Russians from Christianity.”31
Anti-Semitism, with the entry of the masses into politics after the French
Revolution, resurfaced with a vengeance in the modern world. Many leaders
of the French Enlightenment were anti-Semitic.32 In Europe the leading anti-
liberal movements (Communism, fascism and nationalism) displayed varying
degrees of anti-Semitism, despite (or perhaps because of) the emancipation
of the Jews west of the Elbe. Napoleon freed the ghettos of Europe but
they were restored after his demise in 1815. The failed 1848 Revolution led
to emancipation in Italy (1848–70), Britain (1858), the Austro-Hungarian
Empire (1867) and Germany (1871).33
Despite its numerous leaders of Jewish origins, Communism often had
leaders who reviled the Jews. This started with its founder Karl Marx (himself
of Jewish origins), who wrote On the Jewish Question in 1844:
The real God of the Jews is money. Their God is only an illusory bill of
exchange . . . What the Jewish religion contains in the abstract – the
contempt of science, of art, of history, of man as an end purpose in
himself; all this is the conscious view, the virtue of the money man . . .
The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant
. . . The Jewish law, of a people without a land, is the religious caricature
of morality and law . . . Judaism . . . is by nature narrow minded and soon
exhausted . . . The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of
society from Judaism.34
The Dreyfus Affair from 1894 to 1906 reflected strong anti-Semitism in the
center of Europe. When Alsatian Jewish Colonel Alfred Dreyfus was charged
and convicted falsely with treason in the case of missing documents, the mob
in Paris shouted “Death to the Jews,” thus inspiring Theodor Herzl’s promo-
tion of modern Zionism. It took over a decade before he was exonerated and
brought back from exile in Devil’s Island. In Vienna, an anti-Semitic mayor
(Karl Lueger) won election three times starting in 1895 on the platform of
anti-Semitism and the need for anti-Semitic legislation.
In France and Germany anti-Semitic racialist doctrine, based on a crude
version of social Darwinism, became popular. In 1853 the French Comte
Joseph de Gobineau proclaimed the superiority of Aryan virtue over the
degenerate Semitic and Latin types. In 1863 Ernst Renan in his Vie de Jesus
declared that “the Semitic race, compared to the Indo-European race, repre-
sents an inferior level of human race.” By the late 1880s Édouard Drumont
had founded the Anti-Semitic League and its daily paper, La Libre Parole.35
Anti-Semitism was particularly pervasive and even deadly east of the Oder
in Russia, Poland and Rumania. After the Rumanian government in the
late 1860s and 1870s made clear that it wanted to expel its Jews, the major-
ity had immigrated to the United States by 1914. In Russia, plagued by
pogroms, discrimination, resident restrictions in the restricted Pale of Settle-
ment and dire poverty, over 2 million Jews had immigrated to the United
States by 1914. In 1903 the Tsarist secret police (Okhrana) in the fraudulent
Protocols of the Elders of Zion claimed that Jews secretly ran the world.
During the 1918–20 civil war in Russia over 30,000 Jews were killed in over
2,000 Ukrainian pogroms, and 150,000 Jews may have died from wounds and
illness.36
Anti-Semitism reached its height during the Holocaust when the Nazis
killed 6 million Jews during World War II. At the Evian conference (1938)
none of more than 30 states (save the Dominican Republic, which later
reneged on its pledge) were willing to take in any Jewish refugees. In Vichy
France (1940–44) Marshal Henri Pétain resurrected anti-Semitic restrictions
on Jews and allowed the deportation of 82,000 French Jews to Auschwitz.
The Romanian government of Marshal Antonescu killed over 200,000
Romanian Jews in its own camps.37 In the Soviet Union anti-Semitism led
to the removal of most Jewish leaders in the Great Purges, Stalin’s refusal to
appoint almost any Jews to the new elite and discrimination against Jews
entering into universities.
Anti-Semitism was strong in the United States, where an overwhelming
majority in 1938 said the United States should keep out political refugees.38
President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of the King of Saudi Arabia, told
General Nogues in Casablanca in January 1943 that he understood “the
specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the
Jews in Germany” and would keep in place discriminatory quotas against
Jewish professionals in North Africa.39
Even after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and resultant anti-Israeli attitudes
remained strong. Anti-Semitism remained strong even after the liberation of
the camps and demise of Nazi Germany by May 1945. Stalin unleashed the
“dark years of Soviet Jewry,” highlighted by the Doctors’ Plot (1952), the
shooting of 30 leading Jewish poets and preparations for deporting Soviet
Jews to labor camps in Kazakhstan. Anti-Semitic political trials were wide-
spread in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. In the United States, President
Truman repeatedly expressed himself in an anti-Semitic manner, and key
advisers, such as George Marshall, Dean Rusk and Robert Lovett, were
strongly opposed to the creation of the state of Israel.40 The British in 1948
favored the Arabs as they left Palestine and offered to sell upwards of 50,000
machine guns to Jordan and Iraq.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, there has been a resurgence
of global anti-Semitism. Thinly veiled anti-Semitism is now common in
much of the Third World and at the United Nations. In 2002 the outgoing
Malaysian prime minister at the Office of the Islamic Conference declared
that “The Jews rule the world by proxy” and received a standing ovation from
the representatives of 57 Islamic countries. United Nations resolutions con-
demning anti-Semitism are regularly omitted from resolutions condemning
racism, discrimination and prejudice, while the Jewish state has been attacked
in several hundred United Nations resolutions. In Europe almost one-third
of the population remains anti-Semitic, and Israel, until recently, received
scant support. Thousands of anti-Semitic incidents have occurred since 2000
in Europe, especially in France. The United States Congress in 2004 passed a
Global Anti-Semitism Act requiring the State Department to form an office
to issue an annual report on anti-Semitism around the world. Massive Arab,
Nazi and Soviet anti-Semitism have fed global anti-Semitism, which continues
to pose a threat to the Jewish state in 2007.
Western unwillingness to help Israel in crisis has been a serious problem
for Israel. It has accentuated the sense of international isolation when even
its friends are reluctant to get involved on behalf of a small state. Given its
thin margin for survival and the regional and international forces opposing
it, this issue can achieve cardinal importance for Israeli leaders and push
them at times towards preemptive strikes. It leaves Israel feeling alone in a
largely hostile Arab–Iranian sea (especially when the bulk of the Egyptian
and Jordanian populations are hostile towards Israel) and even questioning
whether Israel will be able to survive in the years and decades ahead.
9 Israeli issues
Not all the problems facing Israel have been external. There have been a
series of specifically Israeli issues that have further complicated the rise and
flourishing of Israel.
The centrality and visibility of the land of Israel

A key problem for Israel has been the centrality of the Middle East in the
geography, history, culture and mythology of the world. The 600 billion
barrels of oil reserves (60 percent of the world’s reserves) of the Middle East
are critical to the global economy. The Middle East stands at the crossroads
of three powerful regions (Europe, Africa and Asia), with great powers con-
testing it for thousands of years. Cartographers in the Middle Ages placed
Jerusalem at the center of world maps. James Parks wrote that “Spiritually,
geographically and economically it [the land of Israel] lies at the heart of
humanity.”1
Three factors made the Arab–Israeli dispute a central issue in world affairs.
The Arab–Jewish contest over Israel occurred in modern times. It happened
in the center of the Middle East and Arab world and developed at the religious
crossroads of Western civilization, in areas and places (such as Jerusalem)
that arouse great sentiment in hundreds of millions of people.
Jerusalem is the holiest city to Jews, the second holiest city to Christians
and the third holiest city to Muslims. This is the city which King David
walked, where Jesus trod the Stations of the Cross and died on the cross, where
Muhammad ascended to heaven. This is the land that Egyptians, Greeks,
Persians, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Mamelukes and Jews fought over and died
for. This is the land key to three great Western monotheistic religions.
Disadvantages in size, numbers, weapons and borders in

major wars with the Arabs
Joel Migdal has stressed the impact that recognized borders have on the
development of a state.2 Israel has probably had more borders than any other
state in the world:
Israeli issues 111
1 Ottoman Turkey (1900–18) – no borders but part of three sanjaks
(Jerusalem, Nablus and Damascus) of empire;
2 British Occupation (1918–22) – historical Palestine including Trans-
jordan;
3 British Mandate (1922–48) – Palestine west of the Jordan River;
4 Israel (1948–67) – smaller Israel of 7,800 square miles;
5 Israel (1967–81) – larger Israel with East Jerusalem, Sinai, the Golan
Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip;
6 Israel (1981–94) – medium Israel without the Sinai Peninsula but still
with the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip;
7 Israel (1994–2004) – medium Israel with self-rule in Gaza and the West
Bank;
8 Israel (2005–07) – medium/smaller Israel without Gaza and four former
settlements on the West Bank and occupation of much of the West Bank,
and also the Golan Heights.
Here is an incomplete list of plans that have been floated for the final
borders of the state of Israel and their relative portion of historical Palestine
west of the Jordan River:
1 Peel Commission (1937) – 20 percent of Palestine;

2 Woodhead Commission (1938) – 5 percent of Palestine;
3 British White Paper (1939) – no Israel but an Arab independent state
(1949);
4 United Nations Partition Plan (1947) – 45 percent of Palestine and no
Jerusalem;
5 International Peace Plans (1967 onward) – pre-1967 borders with small
modifications;
6 Rogers Plan (1969) – pre-1967 borders with minor modifications;
7 Begin Plan (1977 onward) – Israel without the Sinai Peninsula but with
East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights;
8 Baker Plan (1981) – pre-1967 borders with small modifications;
9 Clinton Plan (2000) – pre-1967 borders with annexation of major settle-
ment blocs;
10 Saudi Plan (2002) – pre-1967 borders;
11 Geneva Plan (2003) – largely pre-1967 borders;
12 Sharon Plan (2005) – pre-1967 borders plus annexation of major settle-
ment blocs (15 percent of the West Bank).
From 1948 to 1967 Israel operated with one of the most vulnerable borders
in the world. With no strategic depth (a waist 9 miles wide), small Israel
(7,800 square miles) had 615 miles of borders – 350 miles with Jordan, 130
miles with Egypt, 68 miles with Lebanon, 50 miles with Syria and 37 miles
with Gaza.3 The long, ill-defined, ill-protected borders with Jordan had hun-
dreds of thousands of refugees on the other side, as did the smaller borders
with Gaza, packed with refugees from 1948. This geographic vulnerability
was compounded by the lack of natural barriers to protect Israel.4
Israel has been one of the few countries without fixed and internationally
recognized borders. During the pre-1949 period, its potential size careened
from 10,000 square miles (Mandatory Palestine) to 1,870 square miles (1937
Peel Commission Plan) to 5,630 square miles (1947 Partition Plan) to 7,800
square miles (1949 armistice lines).5 From 1948 to 1982 its borders were
armistice lines from the war. Only in 1982 did it gain a fixed recognized
border with Egypt and in 1994 with Jordan. Even in 2007 its borders with
Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians are neither recognized nor finalized.
These borders, beyond being strategic defensive lines, served as cultural
markers, legal and achieved dividing lines and ideological statements of the
identity of a country. They provide cognitive and mental maps with sacred
spaces (graveyards, battlefields) to which people become attached.6 For Israel
the natural borders of the state of Israel were issues of contention even within
the Jewish community. Were these the borders promised to Abraham in the
Torah (very expansive borders from Egypt to the Euphrates) or those con-
comitant with the land of Canaan, the narrower borders of the Return from
Babylon and the two kingdoms or the wider borders attained by King David?
In 1918 the Zionists prepared a brief for the Versailles Peace Conference with
broad borders, but political realities led by 1922 to dropping claims over
southern Lebanon, Transjordan and the Golan Heights.7
Surrounded by five largely hostile Arab neighbors (save for Jordan), Israel
was geographically isolated from friendlier Western countries, which were not
bound by treaty to come to its aid in time of war.8 Things were even worse
with Jerusalem, the capital. The Jordanians occupied East Jerusalem (includ-
ing the Old City) from 1948 to 1967. As a volume on Hadassah in Jerusalem
depicted the situation:
Jerusalem offered no easy locations. Fashioned by nature in the shape of

an outstretched hand – of ridges and valleys – the city was further limited
for reasons of security. Jewish Jerusalem was the end of a salient that
began in the Judean foothills to the west and stuck out like a thumb, in
the gut of the heavily populated sections of Arab Palestine that had
recently been annexed by Jordan. Arab military positions dominated the
city from high points to the south and north. On the eastern border, which
cut through the middle of Jerusalem’s commercial section, Jordanian
sentries sat perched on rooftops. Few sites anywhere were at that time
beyond the effective range of Arab guns.9
The separation of Jordan from Palestine in 1921 left the future state of
Israel exposed to danger. For, as Howard Sachar has observed:
The accord represented a painful setback for the Jews. To the north and
northeast the country was deprived of its most important potential water
Israeli issues 113
resources, including the Litani River, a key fount of the Jordan, the
spring arising from Mount Hermon and the greater part of the Yarmuk
. . . Moreover by failing to approximate any natural geographic frontiers,
the borders left the country perennially exposed to armed invasion. This
heritage of economic and military vulnerability was to curse the Palestine
mandate and later the entire Middle East, for decades to come.10
Israel’s tiny size and vulnerable frontiers represent a serious liability that
cannot be overcome by modernization and development. Israel lacks the
strategic depth of the United States (shielded by the Pacific and Atlantic
Oceans), Great Britain (protected by the English Channel), Russia (with
6.5 million square miles) or France (enclosed by the Atlantic Ocean and
Pyrenees). The nuclearization of the Middle East threatens Israel as the
majority of its Jewish population lives in three metropolitan areas (Jerusalem,
Tel Aviv and Haifa).
Large countries provide regional insurance, redistributive schemes, larger
markets, economies of scale, better defense and lower cost of public goods
per capita. Larger states are able to afford such public goods as defense,
finance, judiciary, monetary institutions and infrastructure such as embassies,
health facilities, police, parks, community services and crime fighting. With
no economies of scale, small states such as Israel are forced to provide a higher
relative level of government spending. Without homogeneity, Israel lacks a
major benefit of many smaller states.11
Numbers were also a major problem. In 1948 Israel had 650,000 Jews,
while the surrounding Arab states had 27 million Arabs. By 2007 Israel had
5.4 million Jews, and the 22 Arab states had 285 million Arabs.
Israel’s small size and awareness of the explicit Arab threat to throw Israel
into the sea led Israel to undertake preemptive actions in its first three wars
(1948, 1956 and 1967). In its major wars Israel faced an imbalance in numbers
and weapons. The Arab states fielded bigger armies with a strong quantitative
preponderance.12 As Yaacov Lifshitz summed up the permanent security
dilemma facing Israel:
There is a great different in human and material resources between Israel

and the Arab states. This absolute fact, and its far-reaching economic
implications, have been and remain of first importance in formulating
Israel’s national security . . . As Ben Gurion noted in the 1950s, “Our
trouble is that we cannot afford defeat, because then we are finished . . .
they can be defeated once, twice, if we defeat Egypt ten times it means
nothing” . . . in victory, however great, Israel could not anticipate that the
security problem would be solved . . . even after victory it was necessary
to prepare for another round of war.13
This also dictated an approach focused on human resources, high technology

and offensive doctrine. Sophisticated manpower was needed to maintain
sophisticated military weapons systems. It promoted an Israeli military with a
small permanent career service nucleus, mass conscription of both men and
women and a large reserve corps.
From 1964 to 1997 Israel’s Arab and Persian antagonists imported roughly
$300 billion and Israel $45 billion of weapons from the United States and
Russia, a 7:1 edge for Israel’s foes. At its height the Middle East from 1974
to 1989 imported $15 billion in weapons every year, of which Israel imported
$2 billion.14
Economic backwardness of Palestine

There were serious obstacles to the creation of a viable economy. The Jewish
homeland, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, had to be built “under
exceptionally difficult circumstances.” Palestine for 400 years was ruled by the
Ottoman Turkish Empire through an authority in Damascus that ruled three
sanjaks in Jerusalem, Acre and Nablus. Palestine before 1920 was so danger-
ous that towns were walled and closed at night. In 1900, when there were
no wheeled vehicles or metallic roads, it took nine hours to travel 40 miles by
train from Jaffa to Hadera. The train after 1892 took four to six hours to
travel less than 60 miles from Jaffa to Jerusalem. In 1914 there were no paved
roads, telephones or electricity and a lone motor car in Ottoman Turkish
Palestine. Only 17 percent of the industries used any kind of engines. Apart
from a couple of workshops and mills and basic agricultural industries such
as soap making, tanning and shoe making there was no modern industry. A
1928 British study found that machinery “was almost unknown” in Palestine,
150 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.15
Israel is located in one of the least modern areas of the world. Apart from
oil and natural gas, the level of development, apart from sub-Saharan Africa,
is the lowest of the major regions of the world. Entrepreneurial capitalism,
high technology and commercial capitalism are very weak. Local regional
markets were unavailable due to the Arab boycott, which limited Israeli ability
to trade and import technology from abroad.
Zionism, as Baruch Kimmerling has shown, was not economically profit-
able. Much that the Zionists needed to do for political purposes was eco-
nomically irrational.16 The period from 1881 to 1950, despite enormous
Zionist efforts, saw “extremely slow” economic progress that left the validity
of the Zionist economic experiment “in doubt.”17
The development of the land of Israel was an expensive proposition.
Centuries of Ottoman Turkish neglect had led to massive soil erosion, made
worse by the marauding habits of large numbers of goats and frequent raid-
ing and village wars between fellahin and the Bedouin. From 1881 to 1948 the
price of land in Palestine under Ottoman Turkey and the British Empire was
very high. In 1936 poor land in Palestine sold for $128 per acre when better
land was selling for $31 per acre in the United States. By 1944 poor land in
Palestine sold for $1,050 per acre in Palestine but richer land was selling for
Israeli issues 115
$35 per acre in the United States. The land needed another 50 percent of the
purchase price for draining and irrigation before it was ready for use.18 Even
then the land was often unprofitable.
By 1937 the Jews owned 5 percent and, in 1947, 7 percent of the land of
Palestine.19 Only after the flight of 500,000–700,000 Palestinian Arabs during
and after the War of Independence did the Jewish state gain control of the
great majority of the land.
Labor, like land, which historically is cheap in the Third World, was rather
expensive. Given the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, Arab labor
became expensive and hard to find. Jews preferred to use more expensive
but reliable Jewish labor. In 1936, 15 percent of the employees of the Jewish
economy were Arabs: the number dropped precipitously after the Arab
Revolt.20
Terrible health and sanitary conditions made the cost of preparing the
stony and poor land for modern production a long and arduous process. In
1878 the settlement at Petach Tikvah was started, and four years later it was
abandoned after recurrent bouts of malaria had devastated the workers and
harvests were poor. That year the settlement at Rosh Pinah was started, only
to be abandoned two years later for the same reasons plus active Arab hostil-
ity. In 1890 a settlement was started in Hadera: by 1910 the majority of the
workers had died from malaria. Only an idealistic commitment to overcome
these objective conditions could make Zionism work.21
Another key factor of production missing was natural resources. In a
region famous for vast natural resources, the state of Israel has almost no oil
or gas, minimal minerals, a shortage of water and a vast desert that needed
huge economic investment.
Another factor was education. While the Jews were better educated than
the Arabs, they still lagged well behind the West. With the stress on farming,
pioneering and socialism and wars, there was little emphasis on universities. A
backward economy could not attract well-educated immigrants, who (except
for the German Jews in the 1930s) had more attractive opportunities in the
West. While the American Jewish community in the 1950s numbered hun-
dreds of thousands of college students and graduates, there were 700 Jewish
university students in Palestine in 1948 – and one-third of them were killed in
the 1948 War of Independence.22
Then there was the lack of modern transportation and infrastructure.
There were few modern roads even by the 1920s. In the 1920s Bedouin raids
across the Jordan were “still a constant trouble.”23 In 1917 when David Ben
Gurion proposed to his future wife, Paula, he declared, “You will have to
leave America and journey with me to a small, impoverished country without
electricity, gas or motorized transport.”24
Yet another problem was the military burden. After the declaration of the
state of Israel in May 1948, this burden fell on the Jewish sector. By the 1970s
Israelis spent 5.5 times more per capita on military expenses than comparable
states. Men were taken for three years of service from 18 to 21 and remained
eligible for combat duty until 40 and military service until 53. Women were
taken for two years of service from 18 to 20. This removed prime manpower
from the labor force 5 to 8.5 times more than in other states.25
Capital imports were another problem for economic development. Arab
hostility, a weak economic base, the Great Depression of the 1930s, World
War II and then the massacre of European Jews during the Holocaust con-
tributed to weak capital inputs before 1948. Total capital investment was less
than $300 million. Agriculture, industry and transportation received less than
50 percent of investment.26
Foreign capital, until the 1990s, was largely absent in Israel’s development.
Lack of natural resources, thin population, poor agricultural endowment,
high wages, a small domestic market, frequent wars and intifadas, the Arab
boycott, isolation from the region and the lack of a strong domestic capitalist
class slowed FDI to a trickle until recently. The Zionists found some capital
from wealthy Diaspora Jews, initially Baron Edmond de Rothschild and more
recently a group of Western businessmen. While foreign capital was largely
absent from Palestine before 1948, from 1948 to 1988 foreign capital invested
a paltry $2 billion in Israel. Only after the end of the Cold War in 1991 did
billions of dollars of foreign capital begin to flow into Israel. The threat to
the Zionist enterprise was palpable. As Michael Barnett has commented:
The lack of capitalist interest in Palestine presented . . . [a] threat to the

very viability of a Jewish homeland; the Zionist mission was premised on
attracting other Jews to Palestine, which was dependent on having a
dynamic economy, and economic and political conditions were so severe
that some years saw more Jewish immigration from, than to, Palestine.27
Owing to the security situation, World War II and resultant 1948 war,
tourism was virtually non-existent before the 1950s. In 1952 only 32,000 tour-
ists came to Israel. The victory in the Sinai Campaign, a more peaceful home
front, Western prosperity, and the advent of jet planes boosted this number to
100,000 by 1959 and several million by the 1990s, before the second intifada
derailed it, a situation reversed only with its end.28
Security for the economic system, usually a near free product, was expen-
sive for the Zionist effort. Although it shared expenses with the Ottoman
Turks or the British Empire, security before 1947 required outlays for guards,
arms and defense organizations. After the formation of the state, Israel
became a virtual garrison state with huge expenditures on defense. Ilan Troen
showed how security and ideological considerations trumped economic
rationality in building up the state. Jerusalem, the holy city, had to be built up
and defended against all costs, although surrounded by the Jordanians, for:
Israel’s Jerusalem is not typical of how contemporary cities have been

planned. The city was intended to serve religious and political purposes,
as it did when it was first established by King David 3,000 years ago. With
Israeli issues 117
the city’s function so defined, the economic irrationality of developing a
modern metropolis in the Judean Mountains was a problem that had to
be overcome. In the ancient world, as in the modern world, the Mediter-
ranean coast is where great cities developed far more naturally. Centers
of ritual and political capitals were removed from the coast and thereby
from the dangers of attack from the sea . . . if a political compromise
were reached, there would be little justification for maintaining Jerusalem
as a modern metropolis.29
For security, it was necessary to build large numbers of villages on the

country’s borders at great expense and far removed from the center of
the country and international trade routes. To cover the 400-mile border, the
Zionists had to build 650 new villages from 1881 to 1967 without regard to
economic rationality. With socio-political ideological concerns and security
concerns replacing economic concerns, a core of professional planners, archi-
tects and organizational officials displaced normal market forces. Dozens of
development towns were established with great cost and little economic basis.
For Kiryat Shemona over 75,000 immigrants have gone there and left.30
Even successful new towns and villages came at great cost. Beersheva, the
capital of the Negev, in 1900 was an oasis for nomad Bedouins and in 1948
it was a ghost town 84 miles from Tel Aviv after the local Arabs fled. Only
massive government aid helped to build a modern city.31
In 1949, when Golda Meir went to the new Knesset for approval to build
35,000 new apartments for new immigrants pouring into the country she
emphasized that the apartments would have one large room per family and
that the state had no money to build them. Many immigrants in the 1950s
wound up in tents and shacks that provided an abominable lifestyle. The
arrival of hundreds of thousands of poorly educated impoverished immi-
grants doubling the population of the country in three years left the economy
on “on the verge of collapse.”32 In 1949 exports were $43 million while imports
were $263 million. In 1950 exports edged up to $46 million while imports were
$328 million. GNP was a tiny $1.3 billion.33
The security primacy led to the building of over 200 kibbutzim, with strong
strategic and military functions. Israel was the only non-Communist state to
support collective farming. In the 1948 war it was kibbutzim that slowed the
Egyptian advance in the south (as at Yad Mordechai and Kfar Darom) and
on the Lebanese, Jordanian and Syrian borders.34 For, as Ilan Troen has
shown:
The socialist villages (kibbutzim and moshavim) were a unique village

ideal, comparable to American family homesteading and European
estates and plantations in distant colonies. Built on the model of medieval
Europe, they stressed self-sufficiency and opposition to all modern eco-
nomic nostrums: mechanization, large farms and use of cheap Arab
labor. In a romantic vision, they were to turn the most urbanized people
in the world into rural farmers on remote pieces of land far from urban
centers.35
The arrival of massive waves of new immigrants, poorly educated and

largely destitute, caused huge short-term economic difficulty. Many of these
urbanites were transformed into farmers with great difficulty. In the early
1950s Dov Joseph imposed austerity which prevented the purchase of new
appliances and sharply decreased the standard of living. Total exports brought
in only 11 percent of the cost of imports, while the annual foreign exchange
deficit was $200 per capita.36
By 1936, with the immigration of wealthier German Jews, the Jewish eco-
nomy produced 64 percent of needed goods and was worth £37 million.37 From
1936 to 1944 the Arab economy barely grew 20 percent while the Jewish
economy doubled in size, largely from immigration and British war con-
tracts.38 From 1950 to 1974 almost $20 billion of capital investment flowed
into Israel. Fully 63 percent represented transfer payments to individuals
and institutions, mainly from German reparations and the United Jewish
Appeal. Another 30 percent came in the form of medium- and long-term
loans, mainly Israel Bonds. Only 7 percent ($1.3 billion) came in the form
of private FDI. Two-thirds of all investment flowed to the government, only
one-third to private individuals.39 Only in the 1990s did major FDI begin
to pour into Israel. But by 2005 the defeat of the second intifada, the death
of Arafat and global recovery saw the Israeli economy beginning to pick up.
In 2006 the Israeli economy grew over 5 percent and received $14 billion
of FDI.
Problems specific to Israel – Arab semi-encirclement, lack of factors of
production (expensive labor, weak natural resources, minimal foreign capital
until the 1990s), long and often unrecognized vulnerable borders, limited
tourism, cities and villages built for security and not economic reasons,
millions of poorly educated immigrants, the historical economic backward-
ness of Palestine, and the virtual garrison state (eight wars and two intifadas)
– have posed serious economic, political and social issues for the development
of the state of Israel. While many states, especially in the Third World, have
some of these issues (often worse than Israel), few states have faced such a
large and deep number of enduring problems in their development. The
unavailability of a strong regional market (save for secret and limited trade
with the Arabs) further has intensified these problems. These specifically
Israeli issues then are also a significant obstacle to the development of Israel,
facing the serious regional and international obstacles elucidated in earlier
chapters.
Part III
Revolutions and the rise

of Israel
In Part III we will examine how, especially with the help of two revolutions,
Israel overcame so many and such large- and medium-sized obstacles to its
existence and development. A number of factors, including the rise of a
friendly democratic West, the demise of Arab international allies, historical
accidents and strange bedfellows, also aided success. But, without the great
power unleashed by first the socialist and then the ongoing capitalist revolu-
tion, Israel would likely never have been created or sustained itself.
We begin by looking at the historical roots of these two revolutions and
their foundations. Then we look at a series of revolutionary military-security
factors (the will to fight, the revolutionary army and the secret police) and
revolutionary civilian factors (aliyah, education and the revolutionary
government and party) that helped transform Israeli power and capabilities.
We conclude Part III by looking at the broader international factors that
helped overall to sustain Israel. These revolutionary factors, often ignored in
the case of Israel, not only made great powers out of other previously lagging
countries, such as Russia, China and Vietnam, but also have the capability to
transform the ability of medium to small powers as well. Yet Israel also
largely (but not totally) avoided the very high costs borne by many otherwise
“successful” revolutions. This part will show the workings of the revolutions
in Israel in detail.
10 Historical roots of
the revolutions
The Jews for almost 2,000 years were a dispersed, powerless and passive
people. Ignited by the failure of the nineteenth-century Emancipation and
European nationalism, the Zionists offered a revolutionary national and
socialist solution to the Jewish masses. The first Israeli revolution was a social/
economic/cultural revolution that re-created the Jews as a nation, and the
second Israeli revolution integrated Israel into the global, capitalist revolution
sweeping the world in the last several decades. Arthur Hertzberg wrote that
Zionism is:
indeed the heir to the messianic impulse and emotions of the Jewish
tradition . . . it is the most radical attempt in Jewish history to break
out of the parochial molds of Jewish life in order to become part of the
general history of man in the modern world.1
Religious roots
Although the First Zionist Socialist Revolution revolved around socialist and
national themes, it had deep religious roots. This seems paradoxical on first
sight, as the socialist Zionist stress on collective secular nationalism, stinging
critique of the Diaspora, notions of national autonomy, and worldly goals of
physical survival and cultural regeneration without divine will or intervention
separated them from the Orthodox believers.2 The ultra-Orthodox, seeing
Zionism as a sharp break with Jewish tradition, the Talmud, Oral Law and
God, often fought Zionism in Palestine and Israel.3
Most immigrants before the 1980s came from traditional religious homes
against which they rebelled but from which they were not cut off. The social-
ists substituted the Torah for the Talmud, infused religious holidays with
socialist meaning and created a “holy community” with hidden layers of religi-
ous meaning and charisma. Socialist Zionism, with its stress on the Bible,
Israel, the Homeland, the Return to Zion from Exile, the Jewish National
Fund and the Hebrew language, had sanctified and binding roots in Jewish
religion. It extensively used traditional symbols to speak to the non-socialist
masses. Too, socialist Zionism was more congenial for the Jewish masses than
122 Revolutions and the rise of Israel
Bundism or Communism. The socialists preserved an age-old separate identity
that many were willing to jettison. As Irish and Polish nationalism were linked
with Catholicism, Russian nationalism to Orthodoxy and Arab nationalism
to Islam, so too was Jewish nationalism tied to Judaism in fostering a Jewish
national and social identity.4 As Emanuele Ottolenghi argued, the role of
religion fit in as “Zionism was born in the midst of a prolonged struggle for
the reinterpretation of Jewish identity” produced by the Enlightenment,
Emancipation and the rise of modern anti-Semitism.5 In the early days
of Zionism (Mizrahi) a small religious Zionist movement arose to bridge
the gap.6
Much of Judaism revolves around the land of Israel, Jerusalem and the
Temple. The 24 holy books of the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, Writings) con-
tain over 700 references to Jerusalem. The Jewish calendar and the major
holidays (Passover, Chanukah, Sukkoth, Shavuoth) revolve around the land
of Israel. The Passover seders end every year with the final words, “Next year
in Jerusalem.” Jewish prayers focus heavily on Jerusalem and the land of
Israel. Jews prayed facing Jerusalem five times a day in antiquity, three times
a day more recently. In the morning service Jews pray, “Bring us in peace
from the four corners of the earth and lead us upright to our land.”
Jewish ritual events focus heavily on Jerusalem and Zion. During the cir-
cumcision of a boy at eight days old, the reader recites Psalm 137, “If I forget
thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand wither.” Even during weddings, a glass
is broken to remember the sadness of losing Jerusalem and the Promised
Land. The groom seeks to “elevate Jerusalem to the forefront of our joy.” On
Tisha B’Av, religious Jews fast for the day and lament the destruction of
Jewish sovereignty in the Promised Land. The grace after meals ends with a
prayer for the rebuilding of “Jerusalem, the Holy City, speedily and in our
days.” In times of mourning, the mourners are comforted with the prayer,
“Blessed are You, O Lord, Consoler of Zion and Builder of Jerusalem.”
Prose and poetry reinforced this message in Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino.7
The dreaming of Zion is focused on Jerusalem, the Western Wall and the
Temple Mount. The coming of the Messiah is to be preceded by the return of
the Jews to the Promised Land from the four corners of the earth. The final
redemption of the Messiah is expected to take place in the Old City of
Jerusalem. Harvard scholar Ruth Wisse declared at Bar Ilan University that
“No hero of chivalry or romance was ever truer to his beloved than the
Jewish people to the Land of Israel” for over 2,500 years.8
Non-religious roots
As Howard Sachar observed, throughout the period of Exile the land of
Israel:
functioned as a binding integument of the Jewish religious and social

experience. Rabbinic and midrashic literature, the prayer book, medieval
Historical roots of the revolutions 123
literary treatises, all displayed a uniform preoccupation with the Holy
Land. Poets, philosophers, mystics, liturgists . . . traditionally vied with
one another in expressing the yearning of the People of Israel for the
ravished cradle of its nationhood . . . for Russian Jews . . . the Holy Land
was no mere featureless idol, to be embellished in lullabies and fireside
tales. The recollection of its loss was a visceral wound . . . Russian Jews
continued to nourish the vision of a future apocalypse, the redemption of
sacred soil.9
Abraham, the first Jew, is told by God to leave Ur and “Go forth from your
native land and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”
Abraham journeyed to the Promised Land, where he lived in Beersheva and is
buried, with his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, in Hebron at the Cave of the
Machpela. Under Moses the Jews left Egypt and wandered for 40 years in the
Sinai desert before entering the Promised Land.10 About 1000  King
David made Jerusalem his capital. His son King Solomon built the First
Temple, making Jerusalem the political and religious center of the nation.
About 400 years of independence under David’s descendants followed before
the Babylonians in 586  destroyed the Temple and sent the Jews into exile.
Psalm 137 expressed their acute sense of loss:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept

As we thought of Zion . . .
If I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour
May my right hand wither11
Within 50 years the Persian King Cyrus had restored the Jews to their land,
later under Ezra and Nehemiah. They built the Second Temple and enjoyed
some self-rule under the Persians (528–333 ) and Hellenistic rulers
(322–142 ). Independence came through the Maccabee revolt (Hanukkah),
which led to the Hasmonean dynasty (142–63 ). Then Roman repression
beginning in 63  led to Jewish revolts. After four years of fighting, in 70 
Rome crushed the Jewish Revolt, destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, killed
300,000–600,000 Jews and sent 300,000 Jews into slavery and exile. After
crushing the Second Jewish Revolt under Simon Bar Kochba in 135  the
Romans evicted Jews from Jerusalem and renamed the country Palestine.12
The remaining Jewish community recovered and replaced the Temple
services and high priests with rabbis and synagogues. Arab rule (636–1096)
seriously reduced the size of the community. The Crusader period (1099–1187)
further reduced the Jewish presence in the land. There was a revival with
trickles of immigration fleeing persecution from North Africa (1191–98),
Spain (1492 onward) and the Ukraine (1648 onward). Followers of the false
messiah Shabbtai Zvi (1666 onward) and then hundreds of Hasidic families
came in the seventeenth century. By 1800 there were only 6,000 Jews eking out
a living in the four holy cities (Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias).13
In the twelfth century, Judah Halevi during the Golden Age of Spain wrote
of the Holy Land. In his Kuzari, Halevi demonstrated how the Exile had
eliminated the critical ties between Jewish Law, the People of Israel and the
land of Israel. Only with the coming of the messiah could these critical links
be re-established, for:
My heart is in the east

And I am in the far off west
How can I find an appetite for food?
How shall it be pleasing to me?
How shall I render my vows and my bonds?
While Zion lies beneath the fetters of Edom?
And I in Arab chains?
It would seem to me to be easy to leave all the
Ground of Spain as the dust and destruction of the sanctuary
Has become precious to my eyes.14
Before the Emancipation brought about by the French Revolution and the
1830 and 1848 revolutions west of the Elbe, European Jewry had a strong
religious culture and communal organization with an intense attachment to
Judaism, intellectual freedom and various communal organizations. The Jews
suffered in Exile until Redemption to Zion.15
Modern Zionism begins with the failure of the Emancipation of European
Jews from the ghetto and second-class status. West of the Oder Emancipation
and Enlightenment were carried through in the nineteenth century, but
east of the Oder (especially in Russia, Poland and Rumania) there was no
Emancipation. The French Revolution of 1789, confirmed through the meet-
ing of the Sanhedrin (rabbis and Jewish notables) with Napoleon in 1806, gave
Jews as individuals equal rights and citizenship, but the Jewish community lost
its traditional, national autonomous rights. The hope for the Return to Zion
had to be discarded for the new loyalty to the French state. The Emancipation
of Jews accelerated with the dissolution of the ghetto after the 1848 Revolu-
tion, as many Jews were attracted to liberalism, socialism and nationalism.
Full equality came in the 1850s and 1860s in Britain, Germany, Hungary and
Italy. Even in Russia under Tsar Alexander II there were symbols of liberal-
ization. Assimilation and Reform Jewry were the main intellectual currents of
the mid-century. In Russia the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement was the
Eastern image of Western Reform Judaism.16
Given the hopes of the emancipated masses for entry into European soci-
ety, proto-Zionism was a weak movement. Emancipation seemed to triumph
everywhere. Lord Rothschild was the leader of European finance, Benjamin
Disraeli (a convert) was the British prime minister, Adolphe Crémieux was
influential in France, and Ferdinand Lassalle was emerging as a leader of
German socialism. Anti-Semitism would seemingly fade away as modern
society would jettison feudal religious fanaticism.
Proto-Zionism never died out. Heinrich Graetz (1817–91) focused on the
geographical, political and national aspects of Judaism, the Jewish people
and the land of Israel.17 His history starts with the entry of the Israelites
into the land of Canaan. Shlomo Avineri argued that “the pragmatic signifi-
cance of Graetz’s position is enormous and revolutionary; the Jews are a
people, a nation, not just a community of faith . . . the messianic dimen-
sion of Judaism has clear political connotations inextricably connected with
Palestine.”18
Moses Hess (1812–75), a colleague of Karl Marx, penned Rome and
Jerusalem (1862).19 Hess, stressing the land of Israel as the birthplace of Israel
and the Diaspora as Exile, wrote, “Two periods of time shaped the develop-
ment of Jewish civilization: the first, after the liberation from Egypt, and the
second the return from Babylon. The third shall come with the redemption
from the third exile.”20 Viewing Jews as a people in terms of national liber-
ation movements and upset by anti-Semitic European nationalism, Hess
argued for a Jewish socialist commonwealth in Palestine.
While most Orthodox rabbis opposed Zionism in the nineteenth century,
a few promoted the return to Jerusalem. Both Rabbi Yehuda Hai Alkalai
(1798–1878) and Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874) spoke of the
need for the land of Israel to be built up before the Messiah would come to
Jerusalem. Rabbi Alkalai, who emphasized speaking Hebrew, buying land in
Palestine and electing a Jewish assembly, immigrated to Palestine in his old
age. Rabbi Kalischer, arguing for a slow Return to Zion, purchasing land and
redefining the idea of redemption, opened the door for religious Zionism.21
For, as he wrote in Seeking Zion (1862):
Why do the people of Italy and of other countries sacrifice their lives for
the land of their fathers while we, like men bereft of strength and cour-
age, do nothing? All the other peoples have striven only for the sake of
their own national honor; how much more should we exert ourselves, for
our duty is to labor not only for the glory of our ancestors but for the
glory of God who chose Zion!22
The Dreyfus Affair in Paris, the Lueger election in Vienna, and Russian
pogroms in the 1880s and 1890s showed the limitation of hopes for Emanci-
pation. In Russia, Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev, many college students and
newspapers and the leftist Narodnaya Volya did not condemn pogroms. In
France much of the elite either did not condemn the attack on Dreyfus or
even supported it. The same was true in Vienna. In Eastern Europe the masses
began to look to America and Palestine for hope of redemption.23
After the shock of the 1881 Russian pogroms, Peretz Smolenskin (1842–85)
foresaw the need for Jewish immigrants to Palestine to change occupations.
The 1897 Russian census showed that 74 percent of Russian Jews were in
trade or manufacture while less than 4 percent of Jews were in agriculture.24
Moshe Lilienbaum (1843–1910) saw the rise of European nationalism creating
a new and virulent anti-Semitism. He saw the redemption and liberation of
the Jewish people coming through the impoverished masses.25
Leo Pinsker (1821–91), in his Autoemancipation (1882), attacked both the
liberals who looked to Emancipation and the religious who maintained their
passivity in the face of oppression. Pinsker called for political activism, build-
ing national institutions and stress on the fate of the nation over the indi-
vidual. Though uncertain as to where the Jewish home should be, “we may
give up our endless life of wandering and rehabilitate our nation in our own
eyes and in the eyes of the world.”26 Pinsker headed the first proto-Zionist
group, the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion), which had 8,000–15,000 members
in the 1880s. It raised $25,000, not enough to settle 20 families a year in
Palestine.27
The eccentric Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858–1922) transformed Hebrew into a
modern language for Israel. For, as he understood:
The Hebrew language can only live if we revive the nation and return to
its fatherland . . . The nation cannot live except on its own soil: only on
this soil can it revive and bear magnificent fruit as in the days of old.28
In 1897, Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), the flamboyant Hungarian journal-

ist, turned these intellectual musings into the calling of the First Zionist
Congress in Basel. Although an assimilated Central European Jew, his prin-
cipal followers were the more traditional and oppressed Jews of Russia,
Poland and Rumania. In The Jewish State (1896) and Alteneuland (Old-New
Land) (1902), Herzl envisioned a populist and quasi-socialist Jewish state
in Palestine, with public ownership of land, cooperative rural settlements,
advanced technology, universal and free schooling, radical transformation
of Jewish social structure, public housing for workers and a seven-hour
day. Herzl foresaw a tolerant and universally humanitarian Zionism. The
Emancipation of the Jews could be effectuated only in Palestine.29 Meeting
with world leaders (sultan, kaiser and pope) to no avail, Herzl, without
money or political muscle, made Zionism an international political actor. As
Herzl said at the First Zionist Congress:
We are here to lay the foundation state of the house which is to shelter
the Jewish nation . . . Anti-Semitism has given us our strength again. We
have returned home . . . Zionism is the return of the Jews to Judaism even
before their return to the Jewish land.30
Eastern European Jews, after Herzl’s death, emphasized socialism, revolt

against the ghetto, and land development in Palestine.31 Max Nordau (1849–
1923) argued that there was a tension in Western European society between
the Emancipation of the Jews and public attitudes towards them. The
Emancipation, by liquidating the ghetto, put an end to Jewish national iden-
tity. While Eastern European Jewry faced economic misery, Western European
Jewry faced moral poverty. The revolutionary phase of Zionism in Palestine
would entail a mammoth project. As Nordau wrote in 1902:
The Zionists know that they have taken upon themselves a task of
unprecedented difficulty. Never has it been attempted to uproot, peace-
fully and in a short time, millions of people from different countries and
integrate them in a new country; never has it been attempted to trans-
form millions of feeble, unskilled proletarians into peasants and shep-
herds, to link to the plow and Mother Earth shopkeepers and peddlers,
brokers and seminarians, all of them city-dwellers alienated from nature.
It will be necessary to acquaint Jews from different countries with each
other, to educate them in practice towards national unity and to over-
come the enormous drawbacks stemming from the difference in lan-
guage, culture, modes of thinking, prejudices and deviations grafted
from alien nations, which all of [the immigrants] will bring from their old
homeland.32
Nachum Syrkin (1867–1924) produced the first systematic formulation of

socialist Zionism, arguing that it:
has its roots in the economic and social position of the Jews, in their
moral protest, in the idealistic strivings to give a better content to their
miserable life. It is borne by the active, creative forces of Jewish life.33
Only socialism could unify the Palestinian Jewish community, for “what is
utopian in other contexts is a necessity for the Jews. The Jews were historic-
ally the nation which caused division and strife; it will now become the most
revolutionary of nations.”34
A. D. Gordon (1856–1922), who immigrated to Palestine at 47 to be an
agricultural laborer, became the ideological seer of the Labor Zionist Party.
His stress on the centrality of manual labor to personal and national salva-
tion and rejection of decadent urban culture meant a radical rejection of the
urban petty-bourgeois Jewish Diaspora. Only revolution could end the Exile
period and create a new Jewish existence.35
Zionism was more than a political revolution but rather a socio-economic,
cultural and psychological revolution as well. The center of world Jewry
would change from the Diaspora to Palestine and, within Palestine, from
the middle-class Diaspora Zionist leaders to the Palestinian Jewish Labor
movement.
Religious Zionism emerged under Rabbi Abraham Kook (1865–1935), the
first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate. The traditional religious
view that Zionist socialism was a false messianic movement began to change
in reaction to new circumstances. Rabbi Kook stressed the religious centrality
of the terrestrial and not merely the heavenly land of Israel, dialectic between
Judaism and secular Zionism and universal meaning in the Jewish renaissance.
Living in the Diaspora meant a life of unholiness that could be remedied by
returning to the land of Israel. He saw the People of Israel, the Torah and the
land of Israel as one, for “The hope for the return to the Holy Land is the
continuing source of the distinctive nature of Judaism.” Rabbi Kook argued
that secular Zionists were doing Godly work by reviving the land of Israel.
The rebirth of Israel and ingathering of exiles would have not only Jewish
significance but universal significance.36 These thinkers laid the intellectual
groundwork for the first socialist revolution (1881–1977), which established
Israel and transformed Jewish society.
Jews and socialist revolution

The First Zionist Socialist Revolution was embedded in the attraction of many
Jews from 1880 to 1940 towards socialism.37 In 1896 the Russian Marxist
leader Georgi Plekhanov told a conference of the Socialist International that
“the Jewish workers may be considered the vanguard of the labor army in
Russia.”38 Lenin told Maxim Gorkii that “An intelligent Russian is almost
always a Jew or a man of Jewish blood.”39
The early Marxist socialists included many of Jewish origin (Karl Marx,
Ferdinand Lassalle, Edward Bernstein). By 1904 Jews, only 3 percent of the
Russian population, were 40 percent of Russian radicals.40 Many Bolsheviks
(Leon Trotsky, Grigorii Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Karl Radek), Mensheviks
(Jules Martov, Theodore Dan, Pavel Axelrod, Martynov) and Socialist
Revolutionaries (Isaac Sternberg, Marc Nathanson) were of Jewish origins.
In August 1917, 47 percent of the members of the Menshevik Central Com-
mittee were of Jewish origins, while 30 percent of the members of the
Bolshevik Central Committee were Jews.41 Many Polish (Rosa Luxemburg)
and Austrian (Otto Bauer) leaders were also Jews. As Kaul Kautsky wrote in
1914, “the Jews have become an eminently revolutionary factor.”42
In the 1919 Hungarian Revolution Bela Kun and over 60 percent of
48 people’s commissars and 79 percent of 203 top state officials were of
Jewish origin.43 The 1919 Bavarian Revolution was led by Kurt Eisner,
Eugene Levine, Gustav Landauer and Ernest Toller. The 1919 Vienna Upris-
ing was led by Egon Kisch.44 After World War II, despite Stalin’s anti-
Semitism, Jews were major leaders in Communist parties in Poland (Jacob
Berman, Hilary Minc, Roman Zambrowski), Romania (Ana Pauker, Vasile
Luca), Hungary (Matyas Rakosi, Ernst Gero, Mihaly Farkas, Joszek Revai)
and Czechoslovakia (Rudolf Slansky, Bedrich Geminder).45
These leaders represented a small element of alienated Jewish intellectuals
assimilated into the Russian or European revolutionary parties and heavily
internationalist. They were doubly alienated people, shunning the Jewish
community and being shunned by the Gentile community.46 Most European
Jews refused to follow these alienated (and often converted) Jewish intel-
lectuals into radical utopias thought to be dangerous by most Jews and
non-Jews. As Jacob Talmon has depicted their fate:
At the end of a Shakespearian tragedy, the stage is strewn with corpses.
Leon Trotsky has his skull split by the axe of a Stalinist agent; Rosa
Luxemburg’s battered body is dragged out of a river; Kurt Eisner and
George Landauer fall victims to assassin’s bullets; Zinoviev, Kamenev
and so many others are hanged in the small hours in some cellar; Slansky
perishes as a traitor; the Paukers, the Bermans, are dying in oblivion and
obloquy. The survivors live not only to be dismissed from their posts and
abused but to be told . . . that no self-respecting movement could allow a
disproportionate number of the members of an alien race to have an
undue influence on its national policies.47
The continuity between Labor Zionism and mainstream Russian socialism

was striking. These themes echoed Lenin’s 1902 volume What Is to Be Done,
which called for a small intellectual party elite to bring socialist conscious-
ness to the workers who were incapable of more than working-class con-
sciousness.48 They echoed the Russian Mensheviks and the German Social
Democrats in stressing sacrifice and democracy. The call to go to the land
represented an echo of the rural populist socialist narodniki movement of the
1870s. Finally, they echoed the 1860s earlier work by Chernyshevsky that
called for self-sacrifice of a self-conscious elite to radically transform Russian
society.
The Zionists were a powerful force on the Jewish and Russian streets.
During and after the 1905 Revolution, the two Zionist socialist parties (Poalei
Zion and Zionist Socialist Workers Party) had 42,000 members (Table 10.1),
almost as many as the entire Bolshevik Party (46,000) and more than the
Menshevik Party (33,000 members) and Bundists (33,000). In 1917 there were
300,000 Russian Zionists, compared to 23,500 Bolsheviks in February 1917
and 400,000 in October 1917.49
Unlike the doubly alienated Jewish radicals, they had strong roots in their
Table 10.1 Jewish members of Russian radical parties, 1905–07
Parties Jewish members
Zionist socialists* 42,000

Jewish Bund 33,000
Jewish Socialist Workers Party 13,000
Mensheviks** 8,000
Bolsheviks** 5,000
101,000
Source: R. Brym, The Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism: A Sociological Study of
Intellectual Radicalism and Ideological Diversity, New York: Schocken Books, 1978, p. 79.
* The Zionist socialist parties were the Poalei Zion and the Zionist Socialist Workers Party. The
Jewish Socialist Workers Party (not counted in the bloc) was supportive of a territorial solution
to the Jewish problem in Russia.
** Estimates.
own community. They borrowed revolutionary forms and adapted them
to a nationalist program of building a socialist society in Palestine that
could attract the support or sympathy of most Jews. For, as the anti-Zionist
Isaac Deutscher conceded, while Eastern European Zionism in general was
“implicitly anti-revolutionary,” in fact:
It breathed the air of the Russian revolution . . . On Zionism that move-

ment of ideas left an indelible mark. The young Jew who in Kiev, Odessa
and Warsaw distrusted the Russo-Polish revolutionary ideologies and
longed to pioneer for the Jewish State in Palestine was as a rule hypno-
tized by the ideologies from which he fled: and he found this out after he
landed in Palestine. He came to Palestine with the crumbs from the table
of the Russian revolution; and he used those crumbs as the seed with
which to sow the sacred desert of Galilee, Samaria and Judea.50
The Zionist power on the Jewish street represented its attachment to Jewish
values. The least popular party (the Bolsheviks) was the most Russian party
that rejected religion and tradition, including Jewish religion and tradition.
The most popular were the Zionists and Bundists, who incorporated aspects
of Jewish tradition with a modernizing socialist blend. On a 1–4 scale of
being embedded in the Jewish community, those Jews with minimal attach-
ment (3.5) were Bolsheviks, with modest attachment (3.0) were Mensheviks,
with significant attachment (2.0) were Bundists and with strongest attach-
ment (1.4) were socialist Zionists.51 The socialist Zionists were neither inter-
nationalists nor alienated from their Jewish roots. Their social democracy was
close to Bundism and Menshevism.
The Jews were stronger in Menshevism, where they played an “enormous
role,” than in Bolshevism. Socialist Zionism grew out of democratic Russian
socialism before it was destroyed by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 October
Revolution. The democratic socialist emphasis on internationalism, indus-
trialization, modernization, the working class and egalitarianism appealed to
Jews who suffered from pogroms, reaction, obscurantism and chauvinism.52
Thus, the socialist Zionists had a strong base among Russian and Eastern
European Jews to carry forth their revolution in Palestine.
The Zionist revolution had a strong historical and political base among the
Jewish masses in Europe. It had both religious and non-religious roots, fusing
the two initially in a modern version of the Return to Zion (religion), creation
of a new/old state (nationalism) and social transformation of the Jews (social-
ism). The power of the Zionist revolution was a response to the political
realities of the failure of the Emancipation of the Jews east of the Elbe
(Poland, Rumania and Russia), growing anti-Semitism inspired by the entry
of the masses into politics and attendant growth of European exclusivist
nationalism. All this laid the basis for a Zionist revolution, in its first form a
socialist revolution, in Palestine.
11 Two modern Zionist revolutions
Israel carried out two nationalist revolutions, a socialist Zionist revolution

(1882–1997) and a second, incomplete, semi-capitalist, globalizing revolution
(1977–2007).
The great revolutions in history created powerful armies, states, economic
systems and social identities, which defeated more powerful enemies.1 The
English Revolution of the 1640s laid the basis for Oliver Cromwell’s New
Model Army and the later rise of Britain to superpower status. The American
Revolution (1776–81) led to independence from Great Britain and created a
future superpower.2 The French Revolution (1789–99) saw Napoleonic armies
dominate Europe before 1814 and its ideas become the salient values of
Europe. The Russian revolutions (1917 February and October revolutions)
transformed a weak Russia into a superpower Soviet Union that defeated
Nazi Germany. The Chinese revolutions (1911 Nationalist Revolution and
1949 Communist Revolution) transformed a weak and often defeated China
during a century of “shame and humiliation” (1838–1945) into a powerful
China by 2025.
The Zionists carried out two revolutions in a once dependent colony that
brought victories over a larger Arab world, a First World economy and
regional military predominance.
First Zionist Socialist Revolution (1882–1977)

The First Zionist Socialist Revolution (1882–1977) was a successful, demo-
cratic socialist revolution that, under the Labor Party (in all its forms), created
the state, won five wars, absorbed millions of immigrants, fostered egali-
tarianism and new social forms and created a vibrant economy. Given the
unprofitability of the settlements, urgency of the tasks and necessity against
major obstacles, socialist collective methods were ideologically and politically
sound. As Jacob Talmon has trenchantly observed:
This idealistic social endeavor is sure to remain the most distinctive, most
original and most precious aspect of the Zionist effort in Palestine . . .
That ferment of social ideas, that intensity of feeling, that sustained
dedication to a chosen way of life, that wealth of experience (the kibbutz,
the moshav, the Histadrut) in the field of social organization – all this is
probably without precedent, especially when we consider the exiguous
number of men and the paucity of assets with which everything had to
work itself out. An egalitarian puritanical society emerged, combining in
a fine blend the virtues of individual self-reliance and an enthusiastic
readiness to join in cooperative endeavor. This has been the main secret
of every success scored by the Yishuv – in agriculture, in the struggle for
survival and growth and finally in armed victories.3
The revolution was based on Russian socialism brought over by its Russian-
born leaders. The schools, military, ceremonies, myths, monuments and
parades of the Yishuv and the state reflected the revolutionary ethos. Moshe
Shamir declared that the nation was “born from the sea,” without tradition,
freed from the yoke of Exile which was left at sea.4
As Shlomo Avineri has written of the revolutionary nature of Socialist
Zionism:
Zionism was the most fundamental revolution in Jewish life. It substi-

tuted a secular self-identity of the Jews as a nation for the traditional and
Orthodox self-identity in religious terms. It changed a passive, quietist
and pious hope of the Return to Zion into an effective social force,
moving millions of people to Israel. It transformed a language relegated
to mere religious usage into a modern, secular mode of intercourse of
a nation-state . . . It is the quest for self-determination and liberation
under the modern conditions of secularization and liberalism. For the
Zionist revolution is very basically a permanent revolution against
those powerful forces in Jewish history, existing at least partially within
the Jewish people, which have turned the Jews from a self-reliant com-
munity living at the margin of and sometimes living off of alien com-
munities . . . Zionism is a revolution against those trends in the Jewish
people, which enabled the Jews to accommodate as individuals even to
the harshest realities of Exile in situations of almost total powerlessness,
yet perpetuated Exile as a way of life for the Jewish people as a whole.
Zionism is an attempt to bring back into Jewish life the supremacy of the
public, communitarian and social aspects at the expense of personal ease,
bourgeois comfort and good life of the individual.5
The models were the apparatchiki running the socialist movement –

Mapai, Mapam, Achdut Haavodah parties, kibbutzim, moshavim, Histadrut,
Haganah and Palmach. The revolutionary transformation promoted social-
ist avant-garde figures to replace scholars and rabbis as authority figures
and leaders. The old bourgeoisie, large and petty, were demoted as hostile
to the new socialist vision. The “strong, reformist, utopian qualities” of
Zionism “contained within it a revolutionary ethos that sought to make
Two modern Zionist revolutions 133
radical changes in the social, economic and cultural structures of European
Jewry.”6
The modern Zionist Socialist Revolution did not merely copy models
from earlier revolutions. Socialist Zionism represented a revolt against the
nineteenth-century European bourgeois establishment that would restore
nationhood to the Jews and liberate them from perceived religious-based
passivity.
The revolution proclaimed by Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress
in 1897 meant that the political, diplomatic and concrete tasks of obtaining
and building a state were now at hand. There would be a number of distinctive
features to the revolution:
Unlike earlier national and social revolutions, the First Zionist Socialist
Revolution involved no transfer of the state machinery from one elite to
another, no civil war and almost no internal violence. Much of the important
action occurred outside of the territory in which the revolution occurred.
Yet the re-creation of a Jewish state, and a socialist one at that, represented
a radical transformation of Jewish life.7
Unlike most national liberation movements, where social, cultural and
economic aims were subordinated to the national struggle, Zionism, starting
from outside the land it sought to liberate, had to operate in a different
manner. As Jehuda Reinharz has observed:
Owing to the anomalies of the Jewish position, all Jewish ideologies since
the eighteenth century Enlightenment had to define cultural, social and
economic, as well as purely political aims and adopt humanitarian
reform or revolutionary rather than purely civil, political methods. This
necessity caused not only Zionism but all modern Jewish ideologies to
assume a character distinctly different from comparable movements
among other peoples.8
The Zionist revolution was unique in a number of ways: it focused on rural

revolution rather than urban revolution. Most earlier revolutions (the 1640s
English Revolution, the 1789 French Revolution, the 1848 European Revolu-
tion, the 1917 Russian revolutions) were heavily urban in nature. The First
Zionist Socialist Revolution, with its agrarian populist romanticism, rooted
the urban Jews in the land and created a new productive class. This would be
radical, for Jews in much of the world were barred from owning land or being
farmers. The new rural commune replaced the small-town urban shtetl as the
ideal mode of life for the Jewish masses.
While other nations had their land, religion, culture and history, the Zionist
revolution called on a people who had been expelled from the land 1,800
years ago to return and build a new nation in a country they had imagined
in their dreams. Jewish nationalism in Palestine was radical, since it replaced
the Jewish alienation from oppressive anti-Semitic states (Eastern Europe, the
Middle East and North Africa). It transformed Jews from a traditional
religious community to a national community and Jewish holidays from
religious celebrations into national celebration.
It focused on physical labor rather than mental labor. The new radical ideal
was the kibbutznik or moshavnik who worked the land and the industrial
worker who worked with his hands. Traditional Eastern European Jewish
society deprecated manual labor and praised scholarly activities, epitomized
by rabbis and yeshiva bokhers, who held the highest-status positions in the
traditional Jewish community.
There was a romantic glorification of the land of Israel. The socialist
Zionists saw the Bible as the literary record of Jewish national glory in Pales-
tine during the first and second Jewish commonwealths. The first Israeli prime
minister, David Ben Gurion, frequently studied with Biblical scholars and
interpreted contemporary events in a Biblical mode. Israeli culture has stressed
an intimate association with the land through extensive hiking and physical
contests.9
There was a physical transformation of the landscape by eliminating the
old, traditional, pre-modern structures and building a revolutionary, modern
new country. The kibbutzim and moshavim were to be the new, socialist,
egalitarian rural forms of the future. Deganya (founded in 1909) was to be the
model socialist kibbutz, Haifa the gleaming new international port city and
Tel Aviv (founded in 1909) the Vienna on the Mediterranean, the symbol of
urban Zionism.10
There was the need for sacrifice and heroism. Historically, immigrants
moved from more economically and politically retarded countries to more
modern ones. Here the reverse would be true: Palestine was more backward
than Russia or Eastern Europe.
It was explicitly socialist in form rather than capitalist. Since there was
not yet a socialist state in the world (the Soviet Union was not created
until the 1917 October Revolution), this would require new communal
forms. These would be the communal kibbutz (created at Deganya in the
Galilee in 1909) and the partly communal moshav (first created before
World War I in Palestine). In cities this would be the role of Histadrut
(trade union), which would operate many companies, provide a social wel-
fare state and guarantee the workers owned the means of production.
There would also be various socialist parties, including Mapai, Mapam
and Achdut Haavodah and youth groups such as Hashomer Hazair.
This would be a radical change for Jews, who were historically seen as a
capitalist stratum and passive political force in society. Socialism was built
around the concept of social justice and a simple lifestyle as key to a new
Jewish personality.
There were popular, universal, voluntary, decentralized military organiza-
tions. Rather than the standing armies, seen as repressive agents of the state,
there would be new revolutionary, egalitarian military forms. Formed around
the Hashomer watchmen before World War I, this would morph into the
Palmach and Haganah. This would be radical, since Jews had been largely
barred from military service for centuries or, more recently, from serving as
officers in national armies.
There were communal forms of child rearing rather than parent-oriented
child rearing. This was pioneered in the kibbutzim where children were raised
in children’s homes by communal teachers rather than by parents. This would
be continued by Youth Aliyah, which brought more than 100,000 orphans
and semi-orphans to Palestine and Israel for communal boarding school
education. In the 1970s and afterwards the principle would be extended
to include youths with parents who were living in Israel in disadvantaged
circumstances largely from the Middle East and North Africa.
There was a strong emphasis and even “veneration” for secularism and
modern technology achieved through social engineering rather than romanti-
cism. Technical expertise would direct the social restructuring of the immi-
grants to Palestine and represented the secular knowledge that would create a
new Jewish nation.11 This was a radical change from the religiously oriented
traditional society that venerated traditional learning, not modern secular
learning and technology.
Ideal types of collective farmers, literary figures, political organizers, war-
riors and technicians transformed reality rather than passively accepting their
fate. These ideal types represented the pragmatic needs of settling the land,
organizing the settlement of the land, inspiring those who settled the land,
making the economy grow and defending it. They represented a radical
change from the traditional ideal types of rabbis, yeshiva scholars, pious
individuals, luftmenschen and charitable individuals in Eastern Europe, none
of whom either worked the land or did physical labor.
There was a new type of counter-cultural lifestyle featuring equality, wom-
en’s rights, physical activity, simple attire, forthright honesty, community
orientation and plain speaking. Rituals were nationalistic and communal and
focused on the land, the Bible and Hebrew.12 This new lifestyle was a radical
change from Eastern Europe with its emphasis on pilpul interpretations of
the Talmud (discussions on fine intellectual points), a strong religious hier-
archy of status, special dress (for rabbis and Hassidim), male predominance,
religious holidays and family and synagogue centrality.
It stressed a secular society with nationalism, action, merit and secular ideas.
This was a radical change from a religious, traditional society with stress on the
supernatural, religious belief and passivity. The messianic belief in the end of
days and Return to Zion now in the secular world would be accomplished
through rational acts of man rather than through supernatural intervention.13
It revived an ancient language (Hebrew) that had been used mainly in
synagogues and not in daily life for nearly 2,000 years. Hebrew was vital
because it was the language of Jewish sovereignty back to the First Temple
and could unify immigrants from over 100 countries. In 1900 the vast major-
ity of world Jews spoke Yiddish, Arabic, Ladino or other languages. Almost
none could speak Hebrew. Eliezer Ben Yehuda created thousands of words
for the modern world.14
Vital institutions to carry out the revolution were created, including the
Anglo-Palestine Bank, the Jewish National Fund, the World Zionist Organ-
ization and local institutions such as kibbutzim, moshavim, Histadrut, Youth
Aliyah, Hebrew University (1925), Technion (1924), Weizmann Institute
(1934) and other organizations key to creating the state. The universities were
important in creating the trained manpower needed for the creation and
maintaining of the state and in producing those cultural artifacts important
in the language of imagination to the creation of the mythic claims at the core
of nationalism.15
There was a lack of economic integration into the region. The Arab–
Persian rejection of Israel, even when peace treaties were signed, meant that
Israel would forgo the natural benefits of comparative advantage enjoyed by
European states (the EU), the United States (NAFTA) and Asian states
(ASEAN).
The lack of a pre-state territorial base for Zionism was unusual and
important. Anthony Smith has stressed the importance of territory not just
as borders dividing nations but in the territorialization of memory for emo-
tional physical identification (battlefields, temples, heroes, saints, rivers,
mountains) and for the sanctification of territory (holy deeds of ancestors,
quest for liberation, “holy people”).16 All of this would be important in the
development of Israel.
The socialist revolution stressed collective action, self-sacrifice, secularism,
asceticism, the sabra man and state ownership of the means of production.
Large state-owned and -run companies, subsidies of basic commodities,
extensive state intervention in the economy, limitations on the private econ-
omy, state planning and high taxation of income, inheritance and luxury
goods defined the economy. The ideal types were the pioneer (halutz), kib-
butznik, military officer, trade union organizer and party apparatchiki.
The Zionist Socialist Revolution occurred despite a paucity of socialists.
Most immigrants after the Second Aliyah (1904–14) were not socialists. The
1920s Polish immigrants and 1930s German immigrants were largely middle-
class refugees. The Sephardim after 1948 came from nationalist and religious
motives. The European refugees after 1945 had little socialist motivation, and
Soviet immigrants in the 1970s disliked socialism.17
The Labor Zionists built an infrastructure to absorb and re-socialize the
immigrants. Many, after their terrible experiences, were open to the notions
of a socialist utopia. The lack of a strong indigenous structure allowed build-
ing a new society from a clean slate. The socialists, accepting some capitalism,
foreign aid from the bourgeois West and alliances with Great Britain and the
United States, were practical. They changed from socialism to revolutionary
constructivism, from class to state, in the battle for survival.18
From 1882 to 1948 the Israeli economy was a pre-emergent market econ-
omy with a small, dispersed and weak private sector. Power resided after the
1920s mainly in the Histadrut, Mapai Party, kibbutzim and other collective
organizations. Nearly all the main power institutions were founded from 1901
to 1925 – the Jewish National Fund (1901), Bank Leumi (as Anglo-Palestine
Company, 1902), the first kibbutz, Deganya (1909), Histadrut (1920), Bank
Hapoalim (1921), Solel Boneh (1923) and Hasneh (1924). After 1948 the
Histadrut controlled Bank Hapoalim and Koor, the Jewish Agency controlled
Bank Leumi, and private interests controlled the Israel Discount Bank.
Mapai and Histadrut controlled jobs, social services, culture and ideology.
During the interwar period the future class of wealthy capitalists – the
Hacohen, Ruppin, Shertok and Elyashar dynasties – established themselves.19
During the first three decades after 1948, the Labor movement dominated
the state while politicians and parties dominated public life, which had only
weak autonomous social groups. The party ran a powerful government with a
large public sector. The prime ministers (David Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett,
Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin) were from the Labor Party, which dominated the
Histadrut (leading trade union and employer of workers), the Jewish Agency
(director of Jewish immigration and absorption), kibbutzim and moshavim.
In the eight Knessets from 1949 to 1976 the Labor camp received 53–75 of the
120 seats. The Labor Party ran all the key ministries, set the political agenda,
passed 93 percent of all laws, directed the Histadrut, the Jewish Agency and
many municipal and local governments, and formed what Medding called
“government by party” until 1967.20
The Labor movement developed a powerful statism throughout the
socialist period. The state played a major role in running the economy and
society, kept inflation low, maintained a high growth rate and established a
manageable balance of payments deficit in the 1950s. The state developed a
generous universal welfare network in an expanding economy. Its austerity
program in the 1950s laid the base for a new economy and polity.21 In the
1950s the state dominated capital formation, credit allocation, setting prices,
establishing exchange rates, regulating foreign trade and directing industrial
and agricultural development. The state, controlling Diaspora donations
and investments, German Holocaust payments, American loans, govern-
ment concessions, abandoned Arab land and the domestic budget, ran the
economy.
The state owned over 90 percent of the land. The land, property, businesses
and fields of the 600,000 Arabs who fled Israel during the 1948 War of
Independence amounted to 30 percent of its territory and increased state
land by one-third. The abandoned land was worth $300 million, or 50 percent
of the Israeli GNP. The state allocated 1–2 million acres to kibbutzim, Jewish
organizations and industries.22
The state controlled most of the capital. As in East Asia, with foreign
investors scared away by political and economic instability, MNCs accounted
for 5 percent of FDI in the early decades. No less than 70 percent of Israel
investment came from foreign capital, much of it funneled directly or
indirectly through the state.23 Most Diaspora capital, cash flows and German
reparations went through the public sector. Fully 75 percent of capital
imports were directed to the public sector, which financed 65 percent of
investment. Foreign capital inflow was modest, ranging from 0.5 percent to
1.7 percent of GDP, while capital outflow was minimal.24
The state controlled labor, with half of the workers being employed outside
of the private sector. The tripling of the population in the first decade gave
the government control over the labor force. The state promoted egalitarian-
ism, with the top 20 percent earning 3.3 times more income than the bottom
20 percent, compared to 9.5 times in the United States.25
The state controlled much of the economy. In 1948 the Histadrut, which
owned most of the key industrial, manufacturing and banking companies,
was the leading source of scarce capital.26 In 1960 Histadrut enterprises
accounted for 35 percent of the GNP.27 From 1950 to 1976 the government
budget was 50 percent of GNP.28
The identification of the Labor Party with the state, the deference of new
immigrants, the awareness of the benefits provided by the party, the recruit-
ing of new members and the imperatives of survival allowed the Labor Party
to maintain its dominance despite major immigration and social and eco-
nomic change. So too did the small size of autonomous groups outside the
powerful party system. The Labor Party provided security through a strong
military, self-reliance and current borders, a powerful government and social
welfare network, a significant role for the private sector, the status quo on
religion and a pro-Western foreign policy which were widely popular. In the
Eastern European tradition, the party was powerful and oligarchic.29
Numerous family-owned enterprises run by Eastern European shopkeepers
promoted a capitalist sector that produced 60 percent of domestic GNP in
1948.30 Israel had a mixed economy, especially since two forces (small local
businesses and foreign Jews) supported a more Western, capitalist economy.
In the 1950s and 1960s foreign investors were given tax exemptions, specific
privileges, exclusive business rights and access to the privatizations of state
assets.31
The base was laid for the future transition to capitalism. By the 1970s
statism was in decline, as the five dominant capital groups (Bank Leumi,
Bank Hapoalim, Israel Discount Bank, Koor and Clal) ran 46 of the top 100
companies and 14 of the 20 top companies. The power of wealthy Jewish
foreign investors (Armand Hammer, Nissim Gaon, Meshulam Riklis, Robert
Maxwell, Edgar Bronfman, Isaac Wolfson, Shaul Eisenberg and the Roth-
schilds) produced a web of friends, retainers and managers, drawn from
government, the military and security. Many foreign companies, such as
IBM, Hewlett-Packard, TRW and Intel, opened in Israel. The government
sold such companies as Paz, Arkia Airlines, Shekem Oil and Jerusalem
Economic Corporation. The 1967 war reintroduced a significant free Pales-
tinian labor market which eroded the Histadrut monopoly. By 1977 a strong
new middle class and Jewish labor aristocracy emerged.32 Yet capitalism,
hampered by the Arab boycott, the priority to security, the absorption of
huge numbers of immigrants, the strength of the socialist sector, the constant
wars, terrorism and the weak level of Israeli technology, remained limited.33
The socialist economy registered impressive gains of 11 percent a year in
the 1950s and 8 percent a year in the 1960s. This was aided by rapid popula-
tion growth (4.7 percent a year in the 1950s, 3.5 percent a year in the 1960s)
and by major foreign capital inflow, German Holocaust payments, American
grants, Diaspora donations and the distribution of Arab property. The 1967
Six Day War brought 900,000 Palestinians under Israeli control, while
140,000 Palestinians worked in Israel, accounting for 14 percent of the labor
force. By 1973 significant American loans had been brought into the mix.
Large-scale arms production boosted the economy. By 1977 primary exports
dropped to 14.7 percent of exports, while manufacturing and heavy industry
rose to 32.7 percent. This promoted a form of state capitalism.34
Second partial capitalist revolution (1977–2007)

Israel, beginning with the Likud victory in 1977, entered into a partial
capitalist revolution. Dozens of countries, from China and India to Hungary,
Poland and Mexico, abandoned Communist or autonomous, autarkical, often
socialist, economies for global capitalist integration. Many factors promoted
the new revolution. The demise of Communism in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe, the defeat of Saddam Hussein in Kuwait and massive immi-
gration from the former Soviet Union played key roles. The success of the
First Zionist Socialist Revolution promoted the rise of Sephardim in society,
lessening their allegiance to the Labor Party. By 1981 almost 70 percent of the
Sephardim were voting for Likud.
Success in the 1967 Six Day War and economic integration into GATT and
then the EU freed Israel from its isolation before the war. The end of military
government over the Arabs promoted their partial integration into Israeli
society. The inclusion of the Herut Party in the government and the role of
Labor Party defector Moshe Dayan as defense minister on the eve of the Six
Day War foreshadowed the end of Labor dominance. The failures in the early
days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War played a role. In 1977, when Menachem
Begin became the first non-Labor Party prime minister, he took Dayan,
elected by the Labor Party to the Knesset, as the foreign minister.35
Internal changes within the Labor Party also led to its downfall. The
retirement of David Ben Gurion in 1963 and the failure to find an adequate
successor was a major failing. The Lavon Affair in the 1960s and battling
between Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin in the 1970s weakened the party.
The rise of apparatchiki signified the end of ideology. The rise of nationalism
after the Six Day War and the issues of the territories moved the central issue
away from class and nation towards tradition and religion, the stronghold of
the Likud Party of Menachem Begin. The provision of government services
outside the party lessened its role and importance. So did the lack of new
Eastern European immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s, and the arrival of anti-
Communist immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s
dried up the pond for a revival.
The base for the second revolution was created in the 1960s. Universities
taught the power of the market to a new generation of future bureaucrats. The
state began dismantling economic protectionism in 1962 with increasing trade
liberalization and the elimination of import controls. After 1967, planners
began to replace import substitution with stress on an East Asian-style sophis-
ticated export economy. The role of the private sector rose as the statist direc-
tion of the economy faded. The state supported a growing military industrial
sector, first state run and then increasingly private and independent.36
By 1977 a new class of elite bureaucrats, trained in neo-classical economics
and the Chicago school of economics (Milton Friedman), was ready to
support capitalism and trust the market to allocate resources. Despite the
great success of socialism, they felt that global and local conditions needed
economic liberalism, more decentralization and competition in place of
government statism. The 1965–67 recession also promoted the transition to
supporting the private sector.37
There has not been a dominant Likud revolution but a change from a
dominant Labor Party model to a competitive party system.38 After the
Likud domination from 1977 to 1992 under Menachem Begin and Yitzhak
Shamir (with an interlude of a national unity government), the Labor Party
ruled for six years (1992–96, 1999–2001) and the Likud for six years (1996–
99, 2001–05) and then Kadima (2005–07), a spinoff of Likud with admixtures
of both parties under Arik Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Strong military and
demographic pressures have enhanced the role of traditional state institutions,
the army and the government. External forces, particularly the peacemaking
process, threats of terrorism and the emergence of a potentially nuclear Iran,
have overwhelmed the more “normal” forces at work here.
The transition period from 1977 to 1990 was difficult. By 1984, with high
military expenditures, inflation hit 400 percent. During the 1976–89 period,
economic growth slowed from 10 percent per year to 3.2 percent per year, hit
by a slowdown in immigration and high fuel prices. Government spending
rose from 50 percent of GDP in the 1950s to 75 percent by 1982. Net external
debt rose from $.5 billion in 1964 to $17.7 billion in 1983. A national unity
government in 1985 slashed domestic spending, imposing price and wage
controls and devaluing the currency. By 1992 inflation was barely 9.2 percent
and in 2006 zero.39
During the 1990s the economy, aided by mass immigration from the former
Soviet Union, saw a 42 percent rise in GNP from 1990 to 1995. By 1995 Israel
had a GNP of $86 billion with a strong First World economy of $15,500 per
capita. The government budget declined to 49 percent of GDP, defense to less
than 10 percent of GDP and unemployment to only 6 percent.40
The second partial capitalist revolution (1978–2007) has created a more
nationalist, globally integrated First World capitalist economy, integrated
2 million Sephardim and 1 million Russians into the new society, and allied
itself with the United States. The revolution (mahapakah or reversal) has
stressed traditional and religious cultural values, capitalism, nationalism,
free markets, the rise of the ethnic underclass (Sephardim and Russians),
individualism, gratification, emotionalism and business. The government has
lessened government intervention in the economy, hailed the free market,
decreased subsidies of consumer and producer goods, sold off governmental
enterprises, eliminated limitations on foreign currency holdings, floated the
shekel and lifted the stock market. The Histadrut has disintegrated as a major
power, several hundred thousand guest workers have come from abroad,
labor has lost most of its power, the role of government has shrunk, and solid
fiscal and monetary policy is on the rise. The 1975 agreement to create a free
trade zone with the European Economic Community was a forerunner of
these changes, as was the free trade zone with the United States.41
The new era witnessed a sharp decline in ideological and party fervor, the
rise of the importance of the personality of the leaders and a strong pragma-
tism. The decline in the role of traditional ideological blocs and traditional
elites, and of party power over individuals, led to a rise in new capitalist
actors (industrialists, bankers, lawyers, doctors, professors) as well as mayors
and the rise of new interest groups. Wealth replaced egalitarianism as a factor
in public discourse. Electoral fluidity and diffusion of power within and
between parties led to political surprises, such as the rise of Benjamin Netan-
yahu in 1996 and Arik Sharon in 2001. By 1992 the party bosses had lost their
grip with party primaries in both the Labor and the Likud parties. The
media, courts and interest groups became important in the political process.
The rule of law and administration saw a diffusion of political power and
increasingly decentralization of power. A new liberal corporatism replaced
the old socialist monism, with consensus on the needs of society and the
economy. Parties, lacking direct control of resources, lost their role in politi-
cal socialization, interest articulation and interest aggregation.42
And yet, even in the 1990s, 60 percent of the population favored social-
ism.43 The government controlled 50 percent of the economy, with the state
budget equaling 40 percent of the GNP. Fully 33 percent of Israelis were
employed under government direction, including the IDF, the Jewish Agency,
Kupat Holim, municipalities, national government, and government corpor-
ations, not including Histadrut companies.44
The kibbutzim and moshavim survived financial crises, and the Histadrut
and welfare state were still significant forces. The Labor movement came
to power under Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. But it
dropped socialism, opposed large-scale state intervention in the economy
and promoted liberalization, individualism, pluralism and privatization.
Labor movement leaders too had close ties to wealthy Israeli and Diaspora
businessmen and Israeli economic, commercial and financial elites.45
The level of trade rose sharply during the 1990s globalization. In the 1970s
imports equaled 37 percent of the GDP, while in the 1990s imports rose to
greater than 50 percent of the GDP. While FDI remained quite modest in the
1980s and 1990 (0.5 percent of GDP in 1980), it accelerated in the 1990s to
2.0 percent of GDP by 2000.46
Israel entered on the path of globalization and export-led economies in the
1970s, accelerating this process in the 1980s and especially in the 1990s. By
the 1990s it had created a centralized transnational ruling elite that was part
of the transnational capitalist class. Massive capital inflow in the 1990s,
attracted by the peace dividend, high technology and capital flight elsewhere,
promoted the conversion of the Israeli economy to globalism and trans-
nationalism.47 The older ideal types have been replaced by new ideal types of
entrepreneur, high technologist and lawyer. Egalitarianism has given way to
a highly differentiated socio-economic structure where the top 10 percent of
the population make almost $7,000 a month and the bottom 10 percent a
mere $323 a month. Admiration of socialist sacrifice has been replaced by an
open admiration for wealth and the United States.
There has been a growing concentration of power and wealth in a new
ruling class. The high-technology boom and massive foreign investment of
the 1990s promoted the predominance of a small number of firms in the
economy. A few giant conglomerates, a few focused companies and large, self-
liquidating government firms in the process of being privatized dominated
the economy.48 Five private groups (Israel Discount Bank, Ofer Group, Koor,
Dankner Group and Arison Holdings) owned companies worth 41 percent of
the capitalization of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). By the late 1990s
foreigners owned 14 percent of the value of the TASE companies.49
The non-socialist alternative (the Irgun)

The triumph of the semi-capitalist, national second revolution after 1977 did
not come in a void or solely from external globalizing forces and the rise of a
new high-tech elite and Sephardim in Israel. Its seeds lay in the significant
role of the relatively small capitalist nationalist forces embodied in the Jewish
underground (the Irgun) from 1943 to 1948 in the fight against British coloni-
alism. They were the followers of the Polish revisionist leader Vladimir
Jabotinsky, who favored a non-socialist, capitalist revolution in Palestine. The
Irgun commander Menachem Begin (1943–48), a recent arrival from Poland
with no significant military background, in 1944 declared a revolt against
Great Britain.
The small size of the Irgun (200–3,000 fighters) compared to the Haganah
(40,000 fighters in 1947) dictated urban guerrilla warfare against the British.
The Irgun tried to kill the British high commissioner, Sir Harold MacMichael,
and did kill the British resident in Cairo, Lord Moyne, in 1944. In July 1945
the Irgun destroyed the main link of the Cairo–Haifa railroad. In October
1945, 700 Irgun fighters (and 150 Lehi Stern Gang fighters) together with the
Haganah mounted 250 attacks across Palestine. By the winter of 1946
the British had evacuated all dependants and non-essential civilians, moved
the rest into Bevingrads and built up their forces to over 90,000 men. From
October 1946 to April 1947 Irgun actions killed 80 British soldiers and civil-
ians, making Palestine ungovernable for the British. The blowing up of the
King David Hotel in 1946 (91 British, Arab and Jewish dead) and the death
of 100–200 Arab civilians in the battle of Deir Yassin in April 1948 at the
expense of 38 Irgun dead and wounded remain quite controversial. So too
does the Altalena Affair in May 1948, when the Palmach shelled a ship bring-
ing in weapons for the Irgun. Although the Irgun was dissolved in September
1948, there is little doubt that it was a significant factor in driving out the
British from 1945 to 1947 and terrifying the Arabs in the War of Independ-
ence. Amos Perlmutter calls its achievements “considerable and complex . . .
but not crucial,” while Martin van Creveld spoke of “the considerable roles
that Etsel [Irgun] and Lehi [Stern Gang] played in ejecting the British [but]
both were strictly underground organizations with extremely limited capacities
for overt military action.” It also lay the basis for the second semi-capitalist
globalizing revolution under Prime Ministers Begin and Shamir after 1977.50
In the end, the combined efforts of the Irgun and Stern Gang (together at
times with the Haganah) inflicted limited losses on the British. They suffered
125 dead and 259 wounded in a force of 100,000 men from the summer of
1945 to the summer of 1947.51
The modern Zionist revolutions thus provided enormous change to the
Jewish world. The first socialist revolution was distinctive in many ways: its
urban orientation, the focus on return to a land not seen by many for almost
two millennia, the romanticism of physical labor, the land and modern tech-
nology, communalism, voluntary military service, socialist forms (kibbutz,
moshav, Histadrut) and sacrifice. Political changes, military setbacks, the
university education of the bureaucrats, global trends and the incessant need
to maintain a qualitative edge over the Arabs all pushed towards a second,
semi-capitalist globalizing revolution. In this, the hitherto peripheral role of
the Irgun, with its nationalist and capitalist emphasis, emerged as more salient
and provided a leadership role for its leaders, such as Begin, Shamir, Netan-
yahu and Sharon, in the last 30 years.
12 Revolutionary military-security
factors
There are few explanations how Israel overcame so many obstacles to indepen-
dence and creating a First World state. With the correlation of forces strongly
favoring their enemies, the Jews had to make a conscious political effort on
a scale unknown in other national independence struggles. For, as Nathan
Rotenstreich has written:
The creation of the State of Israel . . . [was] accompanied by catastrophes,

difficulties and stresses, by demographic and international problems . . .
The State of Israel, as such, is first of all the culmination of conscious
decisions taken by Jews. It is not a reality created by force of circum-
stances but a reality which we wanted to create and establish from the
outset . . . The asserted element of artificial construction should, I sug-
gest, be seen as an essential element. Essential is surely the opposite of
artificial.1
The twin revolutions in radically transforming Israeli society and infusing

it with a powerful will to fight created a more powerful state, army, secret
police, government institutions and economy that led them to victory over
more powerful enemies.
Given the Hobbesian state of war that continues to exist in the inter-
national arena, revolutionary military-security factors are critical to survival
in the world. There are a number of key military-security factors. First
among them is a strong will to fight.
Revolutionary will to fight

The willingness to fight and die, to sacrifice for a cause, has often been vital in
changing history. Napoleon Bonaparte remarked that in war the mental is to
the physical as 3:1.2 George Patton demurred that the mental to the physical
is closer to 5:1. In many revolutions (English, American, Russian, Chinese,
Vietnamese and Iranian), the side weaker in weapons and numbers but
superior in will to fight triumphed. This will to power, as Friedrich Nietzsche
has asserted, was critical to success.3 Alon Peled observed that, in modern
Revolutionary military-security factors 145
armies, the most important factors for success are internal cohesion and
the dedication of its soldiers.4 Mossad chief Meir Amit asserted that “The
human factor is the biggest and most crucial for our society and our security
services.”5
A weak will to fight has repeatedly led to disaster.6 In 1940, the French,
despite equal numbers of tanks and manpower to the Germans, lacked a
will to fight and were defeated in a six-week campaign. In 1975 the South
Vietnamese army, despite massive qualitative and quantitative advantage,
was rapidly routed by an inferior North Vietnamese army which lacked air-
planes, tanks or sophisticated equipment – but had a greater will to fight.
In Afghanistan in the 1980s the Soviet Union had tremendous qualitative
superiority but lost to the Islamic radicals who had a much stronger will to
fight.
After millennia of persecution, the Holocaust and Arab terrorism, the Jews
had a very strong will to fight. They were well aware that they had nowhere to
go. They saw the struggle as a life-and-death one determining the fate of the
Jewish people. David Ben Gurion told his commanders that “We will not win
by military might alone. Even if we could field a larger army, we could not
stand. The most important thing is moral and intellectual strength.”7 Yigal
Yadin, Israel’s first chief of staff, assessed the will to victory as the most
important factor in the victory in 1948, for:
If we are to condense all the various factors, and there are many, which
brought about victory, I would not hesitate to credit the extraordinary
qualities of Israel’s youth, during the War of Independence with that
victory. It appears as if that youth has absorbed into itself the full meas-
ure of Israel’s yearning, during thousands of years of exile, to return to
its soil and to live in liberty and independence, and like a giant spring
which had been compressed and held down for a long time to the utmost
measure of its compressibility, when suddenly released – it liberated.8
During the 1945–48 period they fought against the British Mandatory
government and then the Arabs. The British had almost 100,000 soldiers and
police, first-class equipment, international legitimacy, Arab support and the
halo of their great successes in World War II. The far fewer Jews, unable to
mobilize openly, with little military experience, without uniforms or heavy
equipment, fought off first the British and then the numerically superior
Arabs to achieve independence in May 1948. They showed a strong will to
fight.
In May 1948 at Yad Mordechai near the Gaza Strip, the Egyptians deployed
2,000 trained soldiers, 32 cannons, airplanes, tanks, armored cars, a battery
of mortars and 18 smaller mortars and 12 machine guns. On the first day they
fired several thousand shells at 115 Israeli defenders with no heavy weapons
and 37 rifles, 6 machine guns, 2 mortars, 1 anti-tank gun, 400 hand grenades
and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Only 24 had been trained in the Haganah
and British army and a few others in the Polish and Russian armies. One-third
of their force were young boys as young as 14 to 16 years old. Lacking
fortified positions or even helmets, they fought behind barbed wire, a pill box,
some mines and cover in trenches amidst inflammable wooden buildings.
The contest over the kibbutz, which was named for the commander of the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Mordechai Anilewicz, should have been over in
a day or even hours. The Israelis repelled over a dozen infantry attacks as
they held out for six days and inflicted 300 Egyptian casualties. The Israelis
came with “exceedingly high morale” and willingness to fight and die. Before
retreating after losing 26 dead, they delayed the Egyptian advance long
enough to move the Givati Brigade into the region.9
The Egyptians, fighting on foreign soil with low morale and no stake in the
outcome, were reluctant to press their advantage.10 At Deganya in the Galilee,
the kibbutzniks, lacking any heavy weapons, allowed the Syrian tanks to enter
the compound and then set them afire with Molotov cocktails thrown at close
range.11
In eight wars the Israelis have shown a strong will to fight and won six of
the wars against superior foes. In 1948 the Israeli army mobilized 16 percent
of the population (100,000 soldiers) in a country of 650,000 Jews. Israel
suffered 6,000 killed and 30,000 wounded. Since 1947 Israel has suffered
22,000 killed and over 60,000 wounded in war.12
The revolutionary army

For thousands of years, international wars, civil wars, genocide, terrorism and
violence have driven international politics. In the last century over 100 million
people died violently in conflicts which have transformed the map of the
world, for “the history of international relations has not been much more
than the history of war.”13 Charles Tilly has stressed that in Europe states
made war and wars made the state, with war making for centuries often
accounting for the majority of state budgets.14 John Mearsheimer’s statement
about the pressure felt by great powers in international politics could be
applied to Israel in a more hostile environment than that faced by great
powers:
The sad fact is that international politics has always been a ruthless and
dangerous business and is likely to remain that way . . . the structure
of the international system forces states which seek only to be secure
nonetheless to act aggressively toward each other.15
Facing a ring of hostile Arab states led policy-makers for decades to stress
the doctrinal idea that “the central aim of Arab countries is to destroy the
state of Israel whenever they feel able to do so.”16 Israel’s first prime minister,
David Ben Gurion, emphasized the importance of the revolutionary Israeli
army, “The State of Israel exists only thanks to the Jewish people and first
and foremost thanks to the Israel Defense Forces.”17 For Israeli Jews, remem-
bering their history as well as their current predicament, the need for a
powerful army was obvious. Jews from 1800 to 2000 lost 50 percent of their
population, mainly to massacres and the Holocaust.18 Henry Kissinger put it
best: “Israel’s margin of survival is so narrow that its leaders distrust the
great gesture or the stunning diplomatic departure; they identify survival with
precise calculation.”19
There would be no savior, no deus ex machina, to protect the Jewish state
from being driven into the sea. The Jews had been alone for almost 2,000
years and still were – and they knew it. The Western arms embargo of the late
1940s, after the limited British protection was gone, made this an urgent
matter. Before 1967, when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem, the main high-
ways between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were a few miles from the border. Even
in 2007 Israel is in places less than 10 miles wide and Tel Aviv is less than
40 miles from the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah rained down 4,000 katyushas on the
Israeli north in the summer of 2006. Hamas since 2001 has fired or allowed to
be fired more than 4,000 Qassam rockets at Sderoth, one kilometer from the
Gaza Strip, and now is beginning to fire longer-range katyusha rockets at
Israel.20
Revolutions have historically created modern armies with tremendous
capabilities.21 The English Revolution created Oliver Cromwell’s New Model
Army, which in the 1650s was the most powerful English land army in his-
tory. The French Revolution created the Napoleonic army that conquered
most of Europe and was defeated only by four coalitions of superior enemies
after more than ten years of warfare. The 1917 Russian Revolution created a
Red Army that won the Russian Civil War (1918–20) against much better-
officered White armies. In World War II the Russian Red Army, despite
massive early reverses, went on to defeat the elite German army and occupy
Berlin, Budapest, Bucharest and Prague. The Chinese revolutions (1911,
1946–49) helped create a strong Chinese Red Army that swept to victory
in 1949, pushed the American army out of North Korea in the fall of 1950
and then stalemated the American army in Korea for three years until the
armistice.22
Founded on Leninist organizational principles, extensive politicization and
party hegemony, the revolutionary Israeli army was quite removed from more
conventional Western armies.23 As in the Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese and
Yugoslav revolutions, so too in Israel did the army create the state and bring
the revolutionaries to power.24 The revolutionary army became an integral
part of Israeli society, a nation in arms, and remains so to this day. As Sara
Helman has written:
The construction of the Israeli army as a popular army and of Israel

as a “nation in arms” have been instrumental in the pursuit of the
logic of the Israeli state . . . Military service and war management
became the main integrative mechanism in a state and society made up of
settler-immigrants. Jewishness was redefined in light of war and conflict
and the army became the utter expression of the nation. The construc-
tion of the military service in terms of a community that both embodies
and shapes Israeliness and that mediates between the individual and
[national] society is one of the utmost expressions of the capacity of the
Israeli state to shape society . . . Ongoing participation in the reserves,
and especially in combat roles, is experienced as a token of commitment
and willingness to live a full and meaningful life in Israel . . . a world
suffused by military service.25
David Ben Gurion in 1938 indicated the importance of building a mili-

tary, for:
The time we are living in is one of power politics. Moral values no longer
have any force. The ears of the leaders are closed and all they can hear is
the sound of cannons. And the Jews of the Diaspora have no cannons.26
In 1946 Ben Gurion began preparations for a life-and-death struggle with the
Arabs as to when independence would be declared. In 1948 he was both
prime minister and defense minister.27
The Jews needed a revolutionary army that would harass the British after
World War II, survive the War of Independence against superior Arab forces,
win six wars and establish predominance in the Middle East against larger
and better-equipped armies. The Israeli army had numerous revolutionary
features:
1 universal conscription, with predominance to civilian reservists (provid-

ing 65 percent of all elite combat units), men serving in combat to 40 and
in the military to 55;28
2 extensive reserve service, able to mobilize the bulk of the army engaging
enemies within 72 hours, providing the majority of all combat soldiers;
3 extensive use of women (including instructors, pilots, bureaucrats, oper-
ations and intelligence and technical operators) and minorities (Druze,
Bedouins, Circassians);29
4 universal conscription for paramilitary Gadna (youth battalion) training
from 14 to 18;30
5 careers open to talent (promotion from below and without admission to
elite academies), with soldiers and NCOs playing a role in the selection
of officers;
6 with early retirement, the bulk of the officer corps remaining strikingly
youthful (in 1967 most brigade commanders were in their late 30s and in
1948 in their 20s);
7 egalitarianism, group orientation, socialism and kibbutznik officers;
8 informality, without real saluting, parade ground discipline, drill, resplen-
dent uniforms, dress uniforms and martial posturing;31
9 stress on volunteerism, leadership and self-sacrifice;
10 strategic doctrine stressing the role of the few against the many, speed,
short and offensive war, war of survival, a strategy of attrition, geographic
pressure and the time factor, preemptive attack, offensive, fighting at
night and in darkness, blitzkrieg, and the preeminent role of the air force,
armored forces and intelligence;
11 extensive combat experience, improvisation and combat flexibility, with a
strong role for junior officers;
12 officers expected to lead from the front by example (“After me”) rather
than the rear;
13 Nahal (pioneering farming youth corps);32
14 predominantly civilian ethos and culture despite the powerful role of
security threats and the military.33
Creating a strong military was a difficult task for the Jews. Often excluded
from serving in armies in European Christendom and in the Islamic Middle
East in the preceding 1,800 years, Diaspora Jews were almost defenseless
against pogroms and massacres. In 1900 Jews were barred from most officer
positions in Central and Eastern European and Ottoman Turkish armies.
They were stereotyped as weak, effete scholars and merchants unwilling to
fight. The Jews were not found on the list of “martial nations.” Reviving the
fighting spirit of the Maccabees (Hanukkah), Masada, Simeon Bar Kokhba
(leader of the Second Jewish Revolt in  135) and the first and second
Jewish commonwealths, when Jews were prized as fighters and soldiers, was
central to the Zionist enterprise.
In 1909 the secret association of watchmen known as Bar-Giora (after the
famous Jewish leader in the revolt against the Romans in 70 ), created a
loose public organization known as the Hashomer (watchmen), whose Jewish
guards provided defense against Arab marauders. An elitist secret society of
fewer than 100 watchmen, the Hashomer was a response to robberies, law-
lessness, village land wars, blood feuds and frequent Bedouin raids. They
wore no uniforms, affected Circassian and Arab dress, and provided guard
services, escorts and recovery of stolen property.34
During World War I the Ottoman Turks outlawed the Hashomer. In
March 1915, 500 Palestinian Jews were expelled to Egypt, under the leader-
ship of Vladimir Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor, formed the Zion Mule
Corps, which carried food and supplies for the Allies at Gallipoli in April
1915. Their badge was that of the Star of David. The unit was disbanded
after it refused to suppress the Irish rebellion.35 In 1917 the British created a
5,000-man Jewish Legion (including David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-
Zvi), which was disbanded only in 1920. Constituting one-sixth of the British
army under General Allenby, it helped drive the Turks out of Palestine.36
But after 1920 the British banned the bearing of arms. Vladimir Jabotinsky
initiated the Jewish legion, a self-defense effort, during the 1920 riots, but his
efforts were suppressed by the British government and he was arrested and
deported from the country. Hashomer was disbanded after it failed to cope
with the Arab riots. Joseph Trumpeldor, with six fighters, died defending the
isolated outpost of Tel Hai in the Galilee. While three other settlements had
to be abandoned, Trumpeldor became a model for the future Jewish fighter,
and his alleged last words – “No matter, it is good to die for our country” –
became famous for generations to come.37
In the wake of the 1920 Arab riots a new, secret, underground, mainstream
broad defense effort (Haganah) was started by the Achdut Haavodah Party
and later taken over by the Histadrut. In 1921, when Jaffa Arabs attacked Tel
Aviv, there were 300 Haganah men armed with sticks out of a population of
10,000 Jews in Tel Aviv. Training courses were held for officers and secret
armories established to make light weapons. The stress was on “self-restraint”
and “purity of arms.” On a Marxist model a permanent military structure
was created with the Trumpeldor Battalion, which performed agricultural,
construction and mining work and military functions.
The 1929 Arab riots, which included the killing of 59 yeshiva students in
Hebron and over 90 Jews across the country, forced the abandonment of old
Jewish communities.38 Haganah members were subject to long jail sentences
if found with forbidden weapons. By 1929 the Haganah had grown to several
tens of thousands of men, who drilled and trained and hiked twice a week.
Weapons were stored in underground chambers, commanders were appointed
for every town and settlement and each community had its own defense unit.
Yet nationwide there were only 12–24 full-time soldiers and most Haganah
members had no military experience.39
After the 1929 riots, the Haganah planned a nationwide defense. The
British military and Haganah’s limited capabilities forced the creation of
defense blocs and buying weapons abroad from Austrian socialists. A small
underground arms industry was created in 1929 and formalized in 1933. The
Haganah in 1929 had a budget of less than $10,000 for defense.40 The Arab
Revolt (1936–39), led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
killed 520 Jews and wounded 2,500 Jews. The British, also under Arab attack,
distributed weapons to 3,000 ghaffirs, who were uniformed Jewish auxiliary
troops but actually Haganah members, to crush the revolt. By 1939 the
Supernumerary Police included 22,000 Jews and 8,000 rifles, a basis for the
later army.
In 1938 British Captain Orde Wingate, commander of the ghaffirs, created
special night squads to guard the oil pipeline and other vital objects. He
carried out audacious raids, fast patrols, long marches, short sharp attacks at
night, decoys and feints marked by surprise, tricks and good reconnaissance
and intelligence. Although he was shipped back to England, Captain Wingate
left behind a strong legacy that would transform the Jewish forces into a
successful and creative offensive force. Future commanders such as Moshe
Dayan and Yigal Allon developed their professional expertise under Wingate,
while Yitzhak Sadeh developed the Plugot Sadeh that same year.41
By 1939 Haganah had become an increasingly professionalized and
enlarged paramilitary force directed by the Jewish Agency. Its general staff
and centralized command had a chief of staff (Professor Yohanan Rathner),
talented officers (Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon and Yitzhak Sadeh) and oper-
ational plans. With 15,000 members (200–300 full time), 6,000 rifles, 24,000
hand grenades and 1 million rounds of ammunition, the Haganah often
mounted ambushes and spoiling attacks. In 1937 it developed Plan Avner in
case the British should leave the country. This foresaw reorganizing Haganah
into divisions with an army of 50,000 men and garrison forces of 17,000 men.
Fifty-two settlements were built, and many kibbutzim, which provided the
majority of top commanders, became paramilitary bases. By 1939 the skeleton
of a national army was in place.42
During World War II the Jewish Brigade (3,500 men), established by
Winston Churchill in 1944, provided extensive training. Over 32,000 Palestin-
ian Jews fought in the British Army, providing many commanders for the
1948 war. Over 750 Palestinian Jews were killed in World War II. The 32,000
Jewish volunteers outnumbered the 9,000 Arabs in the British army. Almost
no Jews deserted, while over 50 percent of the Arabs deserted or were dis-
charged.43 The Irgun military force (Etzel), under Menachem Begin, numbered
5,000 men and provided leadership and future officers.44
The Palmach, created in 1941 with two years’ professional training for its
soldiers, was a revolutionary volunteer force dedicated to socialist revolution.
By 1948 it contained political commissars and sang Soviet marching songs,
and soldiers were called “comrade.” By 1949 80–90 percent of the 9,000
Palmachniks belonged to the Mapam Party. Its slogan was “We are always
first.”45
During the height of the German threat to Palestine (1940–42) the British
created an informal, deniable and secret alliance with the Haganah. They sent
Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers to Palestine, trained Jewish guer-
rillas and gave arms, radios and explosives to the Haganah. This stopped in
the later stages of the war as the threat to Britain and Palestine receded.46
After World War II, the Jews faced a new task: before they took on the
Arabs, they needed to expel the British. This seemed hopeless. Britain emerged
from World War II as one of the three great powers that had defeated Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan. Britain had modern weapons, support from
40 million Arabs and a determination not to give up the empire. In Palestine
the British deployed 100,000 troops and police (one for every six Jews in the
country) and formed a naval blockade (to prevent new immigrants coming
into the country). Its high commissioner had the power to declare martial
law, impose collective punishment (Tel Aviv was closed down for four days),
search without warrant and censor the press. The British hanged Irgun terror-
ists, created heavily defended security enclaves (Bevingrads) and sought to
crush the resistance through numerous roadblocks, arrests, deportations,
curfews and fenced-in areas.47
The poorly armed Jewish forces, divided among the Haganah, Irgun and
Lehi, often worked together and inflicted 500 casualties on the British. This
occurred despite their inability to organize and drill publicly. They repeatedly
attacked British military and civil infrastructure, including the headquarters
in the King David Hotel, and wreaked severe damage on the transportation
and communications infrastructure of the country, pushing the British to
yield the Mandate by 1947. The rise of the Soviet Union as a new enemy,
the financial weakness of Great Britain, other colonial problems (especially
India), a cold and difficult British winter, dependency on the United States
and British malaise weakened determination to hold onto the empire and
facilitated this process.48
By 1947 the Haganah had mobilized 45,000 troops from a Jewish popula-
tion of 650,000 Jews. Many of the leading officers (Yitzhak Sadeh, Moshe
Dayan, Yigal Allon) were kibbutzniks. There were 3,100 soldiers in the elite
Palmach, 2,000–2,500 troops in the Irgun and several hundred members in
the right-wing Stern Gang. The establishment of the state in May 1948 under
a provisional government led in 1949 to the integration of the Haganah,
Palmach, Irgun and Stern Gang into the Israel Defense Forces, in which
the Haganah was the backbone. From the Haganah and Palmach they
took revolutionary features such as democracy, civil control of the military,
informality, flexibility, ideological currents, melting pot, ties to agricultural
settlements and anti-militarism.49
The process of building an arms industry in the country was difficult. In
the 1920s and 1930s small-scale arms production started in Palestine. By 1948
these workshops produced explosives, mortars, submarines, grenades and
small arms ammunition. In the mid-1950s Israel began manufacturing small
arms and ammunition and assembling weapons systems from scrap. Then,
over the coming decade Israel began under French license to produce foreign
weapons systems such as the Fuga Magister training jet. In the next stage it
altered foreign systems and upgraded them. After that, it began to develop its
own subsystems of foreign systems such as the Nesher version of the Mirage
5 jet or upgrading of the British Centurion. By the late 1960s Israel had
reached a new level with the developing and production of major weapons
systems. The great leap forward came from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. In
the 1970s it began producing fighters, tanks, missile boats and unmanned
aerial vehicles. By the mid-1980s exports were ten times greater than only ten
years before.50
By 2000 Israel was producing sophisticated weapons systems with the
advantage of extensive practical military experience in using them. Israel
built a first-rate military industry that by 2004 was the number three arms
exporter in the world, only after the superpower United States and the former
superpower Russia. By 2006 its arms exports were estimated at $4 billion, a
large figure for such a small state (Table 12.1).51
Israel’s record in fighting eight wars against the Arabs has been chronicled
earlier in this book in Chapter 6. The impact of the revolutionary army was
dramatically seen in so many victories against major Arab enemies.
Table 12.1 Level of Israeli military exports
Year Level of military exports ($ million)
1965 12–15
1972 70
1975 170
1979 480
1982 800
1985 1,000
1989 1,500
2000 2,000
2004 4,000
2006 4,000
Sources: Y. Lifshitz, The Economics of Producing Defense Illus-

trated by the Israeli Case, Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Press,
2003, p. 302; Haaretz articles.
Revolutionary secret police

Israel needed a strong revolutionary secret police to defend the beleaguered
state against its powerful enemies. Intelligence provided the time to mobilize
the reserves, which formed the bulk of the army. Israel with scant resources
has built world-class intelligence services. Israel has spent less than $2 billion
a year compared to $40 billion for the United States.52 A 1976 CIA report,
later published by Iranian militants after the embassy takeover, praised the
capabilities of Israeli intelligence services, which synthesized elements from
American, Russian, French and British services and developed strong human
intelligence capabilities, for “Their expert personnel and sophisticated tech-
niques have made them highly effective, and they have demonstrated strong
ability to organize, screen and evaluate information obtained from agents,
Jewish communities and other sources throughout the world.”53
Why were the Jews able to build a successful revolutionary secret police
consisting of Mossad (external intelligence), Aman (military intelligence)
and Shin Beth (internal intelligence) with a small budget and with significant
disadvantages? Over 560 Israeli intelligence agents and operatives, including
over 70 Mossad agents, have been killed since 1948. Strong intelligence organ-
izations, such as the Soviet KGB, Chinese, Eastern European and Arab intel-
ligence organizations, ex-Nazis and Palestinian guerrilla groups, operated
against them. The immigration of millions of refugees opened up possibilities
to infiltrate their own enemy agents and informers into Israeli society.
Israel, after 1948, was short of money to deal with major immigration and
security needs. From 1950 to 1970 Shin Beth had only several hundred mem-
bers. While other organizations might need 30 operatives to watch a person,
Israel could only afford ten people. Salaries and budgets were low and the risk
was high.54 A significant number of agents had extensive foreign experience
and numerous foreign languages and could blend into the crowd creating
excellent human intelligence. The agents had a shared background that pro-
moted teamwork. The high cost of failure promoted intense allegiance to
task and hard work. They focused largely on the Middle East and environs.
The small size promoted daring, experimentation, teamwork and profes-
sionalism (three years of intense training) with only a small bureaucracy.
There was strong élan, panache and esprit de corps, with dedication to
the task.
Agents were treated as part of a small and intimate family, whose leaders
often went abroad to scout out operations. The leaders, who were often ruth-
less with significant military experience, had personal experience of running
resistance organizations and made extensive use of cutting-edge scientific
and technical capabilities. After the Holocaust there were few Jewish traitors.
There were a number of foreign intelligence friends (William Stephenson,
James Jesus Angleton, Maurice Oldfield) and good relations with their organ-
izations. Diaspora Jews contributed a number of helpers (sayanim).55
Leaders, such as Reuven Shiloah, Isser Harel, Yuval Neeman, Aharon
Yariv, Meir Amit, Yehoshofat Harkabi, Yitzhak Hofi, Efraim Halevy and
Chaim Herzog, provided outstanding leadership. Neeman, the 1969 winner
of the Einstein Prize for theoretical physics, modernized the intelligence ser-
vices and put it on the cutting edge of science and technology. Chaim Herzog
went to Sandhurst, served as a major in the British Army after 1945 and
district governor in Germany and ended up as the president of Israel.56 Meir
Amit went on to a distinguished career as the head of Koor.
The Israeli secret service began in the early 1930s. After the 1929 Arab riots,
Chaim Arlosoroff, the head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department,
sent Reuven Shiloah to Iraq to build ties with Jews, British and Arabs.57 In
1937 Jewish Agency intelligence groups bugged the Peel Commission hear-
ings.58 In 1937 the Haganah founded the Mossad to promote illegal (ha’apala)
immigration to Palestine. Eliahu Golomb and Shaul Avigor played a major
role in the Mossad, which expanded to espionage, buying arms and counter-
espionage. By 1942 it was running secret courses at Mikveh Israel in map
reading, cryptography, marksmanship and escape routes.
In 1940 the Haganah, after massive British raids, founded Shai (Sherut
Yediot or Intelligence Service) for screening Haganah members, checking
credentials, watching Arab agents, informing on the British police, checking
on the Jewish Left and planting agents in customs, police, postal services and
transport. While Shai accomplished a great deal, it was plagued by illegitim-
acy from the lack of a state, British repression, lack of personal and profes-
sional expertise, lack of state tradition, a strong sense of personal mission
and often recklessness and dilettantism.59
In 1941 the Palmach created an Arab Section. By 1945 there were Jewish
agents passing as Arabs in Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem and numerous towns and
small villages. These deep-penetration agents were valuable intelligence assets
for the future Jewish state. Palmach scouts served as guides, saboteurs and
reconnaissance leaders on missions for the Allies in the Middle East in World
War II.60 During the war there was limited cooperation with the British
against the Germans. In the winter of 1941 the British SOE ran a course on
amphibious landings and salvage for 30 Jews in Tel Aviv. In 1942 the British
ran a camp at Mishmar Haaemek on explosives and sharp shooting. In 1941
23 Haganah men left on a failed mission to Tripoli. In 1944, 7 of 26
Jews (including Hannah Senesh) sent into Nazi-occupied Europe to rescue
downed air crews were killed.61
At the end of the war Shai gathered significant quantities of weapons left
in arms depots in the Middle East, as well as buying surplus arms. By
December 1947 the services had bought in Italy and France 1,500 rifles, 378
Bren machine guns, 193 Bren guns and a million rounds of ammunition.62
British General Barker, commander of British forces in Palestine, com-
mented, “the Jews knew all government secrets and military plans within
a day of our making a decision. Their intelligence system is uncanny.”63
The Haganah monitored and intercepted British telephone, telegraph and
post messages. A. J. Sherman called the Jewish intelligence service “highly
efficient.”64
At the end of World War II the secret service created a secret organization
to smuggle Jewish Holocaust survivors out of Europe and into Palestine.
Operation Bricha (Escape) rescued concentration camp survivors and pro-
vided manpower for the future state. Shai brought 71,000 illegal immigrants
from Europe to Palestine. It created a far-flung organization working with
soldiers of the Jewish Brigade and part of the Allied occupation forces
in Germany and Austria. The service established escape routes through
Rotterdam, Antwerp, Marseilles, Genoa and Bari. In Greece the Jewish
Agency created a training camp to prepare Jews in both self-defense and
agriculture.65 They faced, as Yigal Allon wrote, enormous problems and
overcame them, for:
The sheer weight of the details upon which the success of each single
voyage depended would have discouraged any less committed group.
Each party of refugees had to be moved, concealed under tarpaulin, in
military vehicles, which stood a chance of getting past European frontier
checkpoints, and taken to secret transit stations from which, in convoys,
they were later driven to the ports of sailing; each voyage meant that
documents, blankets, provisions had to be obtained in suitable amounts
without attracting undue attention; each convoy had to be made self-
sufficient in terms of spare parts and fuel; each ship had to be bought or
chartered, repaired, disguised, turned into a floating dormitory and
manned; and each ship had to find its way, past British radar, planes and
eventually the might of the British navy, to Palestine, there to be met by
the Haganah landing parties at exactly the right beach at exactly the
specified time. All told in the thirty-odd months of the ma’avak [struggle],
some seventy ships, bearing Jews, left Europe and arrived in Palestine.66
When the British in June 1946 carried out Operation Broadside (a mas-
sive roundup of Jewish Agency personnel), the majority of senior Haganah
members escaped. The Haganah stole the black CID book (which reached
hundreds of pages) which had dossiers on the thousands of Haganah mem-
bers it wanted to arrest.67
Shai in 1941 created an Arab Department in two rooms. By 1943 the
department was studying the Arab press and in 1944 Isser Harel organized its
archives. In 1945 an expanded Arab department surveyed 600 of 800 Arab
villages, including photographs and agent reports. The Palmach Arab Platoon,
formed in 1943 under Yitzhak Sadeh, infiltrated many Arab villages and
towns for reconnaissance.68
During the 1945–48 period the secret service built secret explosives factor-
ies in Palestine69 and smuggled weapons and airplanes from Czechoslovakia
to the American zone in Germany to Belgium to Palestine. It transferred
captured German and Italian weapons from North Africa to Palestine in the
mid-1940s. The Rekhesh operation stole arms from British and Allied bases,
bought weapons on the black market, imported arms from legitimate sources
in Europe and shunted Allied supply trains off to sidings. It learned to mod-
ify, dismantle, cannibalize and pack weapons, to enter Palestine without
detection by the British, and to store them away from British and Arab eyes.
Undercover, it learned to manufacture grenades, Sten guns, mortars, shells
and bullets.70
By 1948, with 68 full staff members, 60 British and Jewish agents and
80 Arabs, Shai spent almost $700,000 a year. The Haganah ran courses for
intelligence officers and prepared dossiers on every Arab village in Palestine.
It began to operate in a number of Arab countries. Shai protected Ta’as (the
arms industry) and Rekhesh (the search for arms). It created an underground
radio station that the British were never able to find.71
During the war the small intelligence agencies did some important work.
Shai wiretapped local calls through Jaffa, Ramle and Jerusalem, international
calls to local Arabs, the lines of the British military and other headquarters
and the British CID’s own telephone-tapping headquarters in Jerusalem.
Secretaries provided carbons of British documents.72
In 1948 the extensive Shai network, which included strong village files
on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, collapsed when the borders were closed
and the war ensued. While some intelligence came through, the Israelis were
in the dark on such questions as British intentions in May 1948, Arab
military movements and other key information.73
After the 1948 war, Ben Gurion built a unified intelligence service. He
disbanded the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, Shai and the Palmach
in 1948 and the Political Department of the Foreign Ministry in 1951.74 The
core of the new intelligence services was the Mossad (foreign intelligence),
Shin Beth (domestic intelligence) and Aman (military intelligence).75 Minimal
resources ($100,000 budget per year), lack of procedures, fights between vari-
ous organizations and often poor leadership plagued the intelligence services.
Israel Beeri, Shin Beth’s first director, was fired for involvement in the murder
of a Jew (Captain Meir Toubianski) and Arab (Ali Kassem), as well as torture
of Jules Amster, a friend of the mayor of Haifa, Abba Hushi.76
Reuven Shiloah, with intelligence experience from the 1930s, was the first
director of the Mossad (1951–52), followed by Isser Harel and Meir Amit.
Mossad started with three small rooms, 12 employees and an empty treasury
in 1951.77 Mossad built a good relationship with the CIA and European,
Turkish and Iranian intelligence organizations.78 In 1951 David Ben Gurion
met in Washington with President Truman and General Walter Beddell Smith
to cement the relationship. CIA official James Jesus Angleton, who worked as
an OSS agent in Italy with Aliyah Beth agents after the war to uncover fascist
spy rings, was the American liaison with Mossad.79
Israeli intelligence, as a revolutionary secret police, had to create itself
without external help. In 1948 no intelligence organization provided technical
aid to the Israeli secret service. As Isser Harel, the second head of the Mossad,
put it:
Contrary to the army and various ministries and other of the govern-
ment departments, we have practically no chance of benefiting from the
experience of others. By their very nature the methods of special services
like ours are kept a closely guarded secret. Whatever and wherever those
services may be, they are not going to open their headquarters, their files
and their training schools to a young country that wants to learn from
their experience. Moreover, why should they do so for Israel especially,
since the appearance of our country on the map of the world has not
exactly pleased several other nations?80
It also had unusual additional tasks, such as protecting Jews all over the
world and bringing them to Israel and fighting Nazis abroad. Using diverse
methods such as bribes and political deals, it mounted rescue operations to
bring Jews in large numbers from Romania, Ethiopia, Iraq, Morocco and
Algeria. In 1962 it spent enormous effort to find a ten-year-old boy, Yosef
Schumacher, who had been abducted by ultra-Orthodox elements and taken
to Brooklyn. In 1950 the Shin Beth was fruitlessly tasked to smash the black
market.81 Another unique responsibility was to punish Nazis (such as Adolph
Eichmann) responsible for persecuting and killing Jews. An unusual role was
to develop relations with countries with which Israel did not have diplomatic
relations. It focused on relations with Middle East minorities (Iraqi Kurds,
Lebanese Christians, Syrian Druze and Sudanese Christians) and developed
secret ties with some non-Muslim countries (Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia) and
Muslim countries (Jordan, Morocco and Indonesia).82
The three main intelligence organizations often cooperated with each other.
For special operations they cooperated with the elite Sayeret Matkal (Israeli
military’s general staff reconnaissance team) trained for special missions.
The intelligence agencies drew agents from a wide range of backgrounds,
including the former Haganah, Palmach, Stern Gang and Irgun. Its first
undisputed leader, Isser Harel, like many of his predecessors, often went
abroad on assignments with his agents.83 Israeli intelligence has known some
major triumphs.
At the time of the Czech arms sales to Israel in 1948, the Syrians ordered
6,000 rifles, 8 million rounds of ammunition and hand grenades from the
Skoda Works. In Operation Thief, a Palmach underwater demolition team in
April 1948 sank the SS Lino off the coast of Italy. The Syrians under Colonel
Mardun raised the ship, salvaged most of the cargo, cleaned the weapons and
ammunition and stored it in warehouses in Bari. They hired an old Italian
corvette, the SS Argiro, to take the arms shipment to Syria. When the ship
arrived in Bari in August 1948, two Italians working for the Mossad LeAliyah
Bet (which organized the illegal immigration to British Mandated Palestine
during and after World War II) were on board. After setting sail, they rendez-
voused with another Israeli ship, whose agents took over the SS Argiro, sank
it and transferred the arms to Israel in time for the Etzioni Brigade to use
them in the war.84
The transition to self-rule in Morocco (1956) endangered 100,000 Jews
who had not left for Israel from 1948 to 1956. Facing strong anti-Zionism and
official hostility, the Mossad used extensive bribery, safe houses, organiza-
tions, Spanish and British help and visits by Isser Harel to move nearly all the
remaining Jews to Israel by 1963.85
The intensification of fedayeen (guerrilla) raids in the middle 1950s threat-
ened to disrupt the fabric of Israeli life. After the limited success of the
retaliation missions led by Arik Sharon, in 1956 Israeli intelligence killed
Colonel Mustafa Hafex, the chairman of Egyptian military intelligence in the
Gaza Strip, who was in charge of the fedayeen. Next they killed Colonel
Salah Mustapha, the Egyptian military attaché to Jordan. In both cases a
book bomb was the chosen weapon and the impact reduced fedayeen raids.86
Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech in February 1956 was a blow to the
Communist cause, as it denounced Stalinist errors. Israel, operating perhaps
through an Eastern European diplomat, obtained the speech and provided it
to the United States.87
Deceiving the Egyptians into believing that the 1956 Sinai Campaign
would be fought against Jordan and not Egypt was a signal accomplishment
for Aman. Aman gained good knowledge of the Egyptian, Jordanian and
Syrian orders of battle down to the company level before the start of the war.
Key members of the Egyptian army were Israeli agents. After the war, inter-
rogation of thousands of Egyptian POWs revealed useful information on
the functioning of the army. Aman broke the Egyptian codes and stole the
officers’ book of the Egyptian army.88
Mossad ran many spies in the Arab world in the 1950s. One of the most
successful was Jacques Thomas, a charming Armenian businessman from
Egypt who spoke perfect Arabic, English, French and German. Originally
recruited to work against Nasser under a false flag operation (he thought he
was working for NATO), Thomas continued to work for Israel. He posed as
an exporter of upscale objets d’art. Having passed valuable information
about the Egyptian military for three years, he was caught and hanged
with two others in 1962. His frequent business trips to the Suez Canal Zone
provided invaluable information on Katyusha rockets.89
The arrest in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, the chief organizer of the
Holocaust, was a major coup for Mossad. The problems were numer-
ous: operating many thousands of miles away from home, heavy expenses
($250,000), government opposition, few photographs of Eichmann, his eva-
sive moves and the Nazi network in Latin America. The help of Nazi hunters
Simon Wiesenthal and Tuviah Friedman, the passive cooperation of the new
Argentinian government and the reluctance of other governments to get
involved paid off. Eichmann was seized in 12 seconds and transported to
Israel in 1960 where, after an extensive trial, he was found guilty and became
the only man executed in Israeli history in 1962.90
The use of hundreds of former Nazi scientists and technicians in Egypt in
the early 1960s raised the specter of an Egyptian rocket program that could
bring massive destruction to Israel. In 1962 Egypt launched four rockets
175–350 miles and displayed these rockets in an Egyptian military parade,
where Egyptian President Nasser boasted that they could destroy any target
“south of Beirut.” A series of factories were built in Egypt with the help
of German scientists and technicians. Mossad, using threats, letter bombs,
kidnappings and killings, ended the Egyptian program. By 1964 Germany
had quietly lured a number of these scientists home with the promise of
higher salaries. Given the mediocre nature of the German scientists, the lack
of a guidance system, the age of the rockets and the minimal amount of
cobalt, the threat was probably exaggerated, but, less than 20 years after the
Holocaust, the Israeli government had to deal with the threat.91
Given its precarious security situation, the Holocaust and the Arab inva-
sion of 1948, Israel from the onset was interested in building an “equalizer”
such as the atomic bomb. Israel had a strong scientific base with work at
Weizmann Institute of Science, Technion and Hebrew University under the
scientific direction of Ernst Bergmann and the political direction of Shimon
Peres. Israel contributed to calculations about the atomic bomb, development
of short-range ballistic missiles and the Mirage supersonic jet fighter.92
France, then an ally of Israel (1955–66), first aided Israel’s nuclear pro-
gram. Upset over their failure in the 1956 Sinai Campaign and fearful of
Egyptian involvement in Algeria, in 1957 French Prime Minister Guy Mollet
sold a 24-megawatt heavy water nuclear reactor to be built in Dimona in
the Negev. Later a small second research reactor was built as well. The
5-megawatt American reactor, which came with a technical library, training
in nuclear matters and provision of fuel and even sponsored research, was
provided by the Eisenhower administration in 1955. It unwittingly advanced
the Israeli quest for nuclear weapons. French–Israeli collaboration was further
aided by a number of French scientists.93
While it could produce enough plutonium for one 20-kiloton bomb each
year, Israel needed a reprocessing plant to extract the plutonium from the
reactor’s spent fuel rods. France in the early 1960s allowed a private company
to sell its technology and plans to the Dimona reactor. Norway sold 21 tons of
heavy water to Israel and South Africa evidently sold uranium. An American
company seemingly was involved in the indirect export of almost 600 pounds
of enriched uranium to Israel. South Africa, Argentina and Belgium evi-
dently sold uranium to Israel, which had completed the Dimona basic plant
in 1961 and put the reactor into operation in 1964.94
In 1967, after the French ended collaboration with Israel and American aid
remained limited, Israel decided to go nuclear. In 1968 a Mossad and Lakam
team spirited away 200 tons of uranium oxide needed as fuel for the reactors
and shipped it to Israel.95 By the mid-1970s Israel was estimated to have
10 nuclear weapons, by the mid-1980s 100 nuclear weapons, by 1990 200
nuclear weapons and today somewhere between 200 and 300 nuclear weapons.
Some claimed that Israel had developed sophisticated varieties of nuclear
weapons suited to the Middle East.96
The Israeli spy Wolfgang Lotz acquired significant information before
being uncovered by the Egyptians. A German Jew who had come to Palestine
in the 1930s, Lotz ran an equestrian academy whose clients included the head
of security of the Suez Canal Zone and the deputy head of Egyptian military
intelligence. For two years he learned details about Egypt’s defenses and a full
list of Nazi scientists working with Egypt on poison missiles. After he was
uncovered, he was eventually released to Israel.97
Israeli spy Eli Cohen, after the rise of Hafez Al-Assad in 1963, frequently
entertained ministers and leaders of Syria in his villa under the guise of
being a rich export/importer. An Egyptian Jew expelled after the 1956 Sinai
Campaign, Cohen obtained detailed information about the Syrian military
and politics. An honorary major in the Syrian army, he visited closed military
zones and was friendly with many generals and colonels. He traveled with the
prime minister to Cairo. He was uncovered by accident when an old school
friend turned him in after encountering him on the street. He was sub-
sequently hanged in the main square of Damascus in 1965, but he had passed
much information of value to Israel in the Six Day War.98
By the mid-1960s the arrival of the Soviet MIG 21 in Arab arsenals posed a
threat to Israel, which needed to know vital information on the airplane. An
Iraqi Jew (Joseph) had a girlfriend whose brother-in-law was a pilot for the
Iraqi air force. The defecting pilot demanded in addition to $1 million that his
large family be spirited to safety. The pilot, Munir, was moved to a base near
Baghdad with fuel enough for the 600-mile flight complex operation that
took several years to come to fruition. The pilot flew the plane to Israel, and
his family, through Kurdistan, reached Iran.99
The intelligence services played a major role in the Six Day War. They
wiretapped conversations, carried out aerial reconnaissance, interrogated
POWs, used computers and broke secret ciphers. Mossad had informers and
operatives in each Egyptian air base and military headquarters, including
three staff officers at the general headquarters. Israeli intelligence broadcast
false orders to Egyptian pilots and deceived the Egyptian army into thinking
the assault was in the south. During the war Israel issued false orders to
Egyptian army units. They made extensive use of humint (human intelligence),
photint (photo intelligence) and sigint (signal intelligence).100
As Moshe Dayan observed, “All I can say is that the role of Intelligence
had been all as important as that of the Air Force or the armored corps.”101
The IDF knew, when the planes were on the ramps for 9–15 minutes of service,
which planes were real and which were dummies, what were the names of the
Arab pilots and even to mimic Egyptian air force dispatches to tell them to
bail out when hit. Israel broke Egyptian and Jordanian codes while protecting
its own.
For 20 years Shin Beth, with help from the army, maintained relative quiet
on the West Bank and Gaza Strip with over 1 million Palestinians in areas
taken in 1967. After the war the Palestinians, emulating the Vietnamese
and Algerian revolutions, tried to launch revolutionary warfare to liberate
the territories from Israeli rule. How did the Shin Beth, which had only
500 members in 1967 and little experience in this area (save for a short time
in the Gaza Strip after the 1956 Sinai Campaign), do this?
Many factors helped: the lack of ground cover (except around Hebron),
the small size of the Gaza Strip (140 square miles), trading help in meeting
the basic needs of the population for intelligence information and compliance
with the authorities, the lenient occupation policy (seven new universities,
free travel to Israel, 140,000 jobs in Israel), weakness of the PLO located
outside the territories, and the positive attitude of Jordan. The extensive use
of informers and secret agents speaking Arabic, demolition of houses, cap-
tured Jordanian documents on the West Bank, military deployment, signifi-
cant repression, expert use of internal divisions among families and clans,
computerization of records and recruitment of capable people prevented
“no-go zones” and “liberated zones,” and provided relative quiet until the
outbreak of the first intifada in 1987. So too did the division of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip into clusters of one or several villages, each under a
single agent who knew many of the residents by name.
After the Six Day War, most Palestinians preferred peace and employment
to revolution. The weakness of the PLO, which used simple codes, no com-
partmentalization, large groups, commanders knowing large numbers of cell
members, and lack of escape routes, aided the arrest of 200 Palestinian guer-
rillas by December 1967. By 1968 on the West Bank and 1971 in Gaza (after
tough action by Arik Sharon), the areas were relatively quiet. Good leader-
ship, such as that of Avraham Avituv (1974–80), played a role. In 1980 Shin
Beth solved 85 percent of its terrorist cases in the territories.102
In 1969 intelligence allowed an Israeli raiding party to blow up 13 planes in
29 minutes without casualties at Beirut International Airport.103 After France
cancelled the sale of 50 Mirage III planes in 1967, Israel feared it could take
ten years to build its own version. Israeli intelligence found a collaborator in
Alfred Frauenknecht, the senior development engineer for the Swiss Mirage.
After he sent nearly two tons of blueprints to Israel, he was sentenced to four
and a half years in jail but served only one and a half years.104
After several failures in the mid-1960s, Shin Beth reformed procedures
to protect El Al airlines. El Al flew through dozens of foreign airports over
which it had no control and was a visible and accessible target for Palestinian
terrorism. Yet not a single successful hijacking or bombing of El Al has
occurred since 1968, when an El Al flight from Rome to Tel Aviv was hijacked
to Algeria. By spending close to $100 million a year, El Al has become
the model for international airline security. Its luggage compartments are
reinforced, the pilots have flown in the Israeli air force, there are special doors
to prevent entry into the cockpit, and armed agents fly on board each plane.
El Al offices at the airport hand-inspect luggage, screen passengers and screen
again in the departure lounges. Penetration of Palestinian guerrilla organiza-
tions provided further security.105 Israeli embassies are fortified with secure
dead rooms for entrance, television cameras, sensors, Israeli and local guards,
and use of intelligence sharing against threats.
During the 1969–70 War of Attrition along the Suez Canal, Israeli com-
mandos, operating with strong intelligence, took over a radar site east of the
Gulf of Suez, cut loose a seven-ton Soviet-built radar station and lifted it
with the help of two helicopters back to Israel. The information was shared
with the United States.106
After the French embargo, the Israelis wanted to obtain delivery of the five
French gunboats for which they had paid. Working on Christmas Eve in
1969, the Israelis whisked the gun boats out of Cherbourg and to Haifa.
For Operation Noah’s Ark, the Israelis created a dummy company, brought
120 sailors to Cherbourg, arranged supplies for eight days at sea, secured
250,000 liters of fuel, braved winter weather and took the ships on a 1,000-mile
journey. The five boats made their way to Israel at the end of 1969.
After Palestinian guerrillas killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich
Olympics, the intelligence services sought to destroy Black September. In
1972 and 1973 Mossad agents killed five leaders in Europe. In April 1973
in Operation Springtime of Youth, Israeli commandos killed three leaders
(Kamal Adwan, Kamal Nasser and Muhammed Najjar) in Beirut and air-
lifted their filing cabinets by helicopter to Israel. They used 6 Mossad agents
on the ground, and 6 rubber Zodiacs to ferry 30 paratroopers and Aman
agents arriving from the seas. Israel lost 2 men who were killed while kill-
ing over 100 Palestinian guerrillas. By June 1973, 14 top leaders had been
eliminated, with Black September commander Ali Hassan Salameh killed in
1979.107
On the two-hundredth anniversary of American independence, Israeli
forces in Operation Jonathan, flying over 2,500 miles from Israel, rescued
over 100 Israeli hostages from a kidnapped airliner held at Entebbe Airport
in Kampala, Uganda. With the loss of a single Israeli soldier (commander
Yonatan Netanyahu) and four hostages (including the hospitalized Dora
Bloch), all the hostages were flown to Israel. Using intelligence gathered from
released French passengers, the plans for the airport built by Solel Boneh,
Mossad agents inside Uganda and Kenya, airplane photographs and aid
from Kenya, the plan worked well. After a meticulous rehearsal, Israeli forces
on four C–130 Hercules transports carrying elite paratroopers overcame 100
Ugandan troops and killed all but one of the terrorists and 35 Ugandan
troops in 53 minutes. The airborne troops brought along armored cars, a
medical team and a black Mercedes to deceive the Ugandans into thinking
that Idi Amin had arrived.108
In 1981 eight F–16 fighter bombers and six F–15 fighter-interceptors as
flying cover reduced the French-built Osirak nuclear reactor at Al Tuweithan
near Baghdad to a pile of rubble. With the reactor set to go hot in the next
several months, this set back the Iraqi nuclear program by decades. Both the
French and the Americans had refused to help. The planes had to fly over
Saudi Arabia and Jordan for one hour before reaching the reactor. But,
afterwards, France refused to supply more weapons-grade uranium to Iraq.109
In October 1985 Israeli F–15s destroyed PLO headquarters in Tunis. The
problems were many: a 2,500-mile round trip, alien territory, precise intelli-
gence and penetrating the PLO. Israeli jets hit the targets and destroyed the
buildings, killing 75 Palestinians.110
Although Israel had excellent relations with Ethiopia for decades, the
ouster of Haile Selassie and the 1973 Yom Kippur War severed those ties and
endangered the Ethiopian Jewish community. In 1980 in Operation Moses,
Mossad began to run the Ethiopian emigration effort and by early 1985 had
20 agents in Sudan. There they bribed Sudanese officials to allow Jewish
emigrants to transit Sudan. Mossad agents dealt with Sudanese officials,
forged or bought travel documents, rented vehicles and safe houses and pro-
vided money to help the tide of Jewish refugees. Perhaps 8,000 Falashas, with
help from the United States, reached Israel at the end of 1984 and beginning
of 1985.111
In 1988 the Mossad killed Arafat’s deputy, Abu Jihad, in Tunis in an
operation that took 13 seconds. The Israelis used a Boeing 707 command
ship, listening and jamming devices and silent plastic explosive. Extensive
practice was required. Seven Mossad agents brought in three vehicles with
teams of Sayeret Matkal (IDF general staff elite reconnaissance men), who
launched rubber dinghies from an Israeli missile boat.112
From 2000 to 2005 the security service, mainly Shin Beth, faced a powerful
challenge in the second Palestinian intifada, which took the lives of over
1,000 Israelis. Without a fence separating the Palestinians and Israelis and
with significant Arab and Iranian money flowing to the Palestinians, the task
was daunting. Only by 2003 and 2004 had the security services gained the
upper hand and reduced the number of terrorist attacks by over 80 percent.
They mixed old techniques (trading favors, detailed knowledge of villages
and towns, 20,000 Arab collaborators, strong repression of terrorist cells,
hundreds of roadblocks) with new techniques (building a sophisticated bor-
der fence, preemptive military strikes against guerrilla bases, raids aimed at
decapitating the guerrilla leadership and their agents). Their actions led to a
powerful downturn in the Palestinian economy, which helped bring the inti-
fada to a halt. The isolation of Yasir Arafat in the Muqata in Ramallah until
his death in November 2004 also played a role.
In September 2007 the Israeli air force, coordinating with special forces
operating with extensive intelligence, evidently may have destroyed a budding
Syrian nuclear facility in the northeast of the country with a precision air
strike. Months earlier Israeli special forces evidently penetrated the base and
brought back samples that allegedly showed that the facility was an integral
part of a nuclear weapons program.
Israel also suffered many intelligence failures. Five of the first eight chiefs
of Aman (military intelligence) – Isser Beeri, Benjamin Gibli, Yehoshofat
Harkabi, Eli Zeira and Yehoshua Saguy – were fired.113 From 1948 to 1951
Mossad, together with the local Shura self-defense organization and Mossad
LeAliyah Bet under Shlomo Hillel, brought 104,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel. Near
the end of the airlift, two Mossad agents and over 80 Jews were arrested. The
Iraqis captured the Shura arms caches, printing presses, membership lists and
typewriters. Two agents were killed and significant information about Israel’s
penetration of the Iraqi military may have been garnered.
Operation Suzanne, which in 1954 sought to carry out bombings in Cairo
and Alexandria to undermine Anglo-American confidence in Nasser, failed
disastrously. Poorly conceived and badly run, it was uncovered by Egyptian
intelligence, who executed two agents while two committed suicide. Defense
Minister Pinchas Lavon, refusing responsibility, caused a scandal that brought
him down and harmed Ben Gurion.114
The arrest of Soviet spy Israel Beer, who was close to Israeli leaders, was a
major intelligence failure. Beer, who came to Palestine in 1938 from Vienna,
served in the 1948 war as head of Haganah operations in the Galilee and
wrote an official history of the 1948 war. In the first three months of 1961 he
met his Soviet controllers over 20 times and passed on diagrams, blueprints,
classified military plans and detailed lists of Israeli military purchases to the
Russians. He was given a ten-year sentence and died in jail.115
In 1973 the Israeli secret service killed an Arab waiter (Ahmed Bouchiki)
in a remote Norwegian town instead of a leading Palestinian terrorist, Ali
Hassan Salameh. Six operatives were captured in the aftermath of the botched
operation. They were easily noticed in a small remote town and subjected to
humiliating capture and interrogation.116
Aman, operating from fixed ideas about the Egyptians – a significant num-
ber of troops in Yemen, a weak economy, lack of Soviet support after the
expulsion of advisers in 1972, lack of air cover and an anti-aircraft network,
the greater power of Israel, Sadat as a buffoon – argued that there was a
“low” likelihood of war before the Yom Kippur War. It failed to see, until the
day before the attack, an elaborate Arab plan to deceive Israel and deny it the
crucial 48 hours to mobilize its reserves before the war. The Agranat Com-
mission found a lack of coordination between Mossad and Aman and that
Aman provided misleading or erroneous information about Arab deploy-
ments, advances, intentions, Sagger missiles, SAM missiles and the movement
of the Iraqi army. In the second phase of the war Aman did better in under-
standing enemy moves. The failure led to thousands of casualties and the
firing of the chief of Aman (Meir Zeira) and his deputy (Aryeh Shalev) and
others, including the chief of staff, David Elazar.117
Jonathan Pollard, a civilian intelligence agent working for the United States
Naval Intelligence Anti-Terrorist Alert Center, in 1985 passed over 1,000
highly classified documents to Israel. Pollard, with a “courier card” that
allowed him to borrow secret documents from top intelligence services, pro-
vided information on everything from Syrian chemical weapons to the Iraqi
nuclear project and Arab weapons. He was arrested. His arrest outside
the Israeli embassy and life sentence damaged Israeli–American relations.
Inquiries led by Abba Eban and Zvi Zur led to the disbanding of Lakam, the
Scientific Liaison Bureau running Pollard.118
In 1997 an Israeli Mossad effort to kill Khalid Meshal, the leader of
Hamas in Amman, failed and led to the arrest of several Israeli agents in
an embarrassing operation given Israeli–Jordanian friendship. In 1998 the
Israelis failed to kill Abdullah Zein, the leading fundraiser for Hezbollah in
Switzerland.119
The role of revolutionary factors has been strong in the military-security
sector. Here, where the life or death of the people and nation was at stake, the
revolutionary army and secret police and powerful will to fight manifested
themselves clearly. Against armies with more men and equipment, only a
revolutionary force could propel the Israeli army to repeated victories. There
was no alternative to victory in such a tiny country. The will of the Jews to
fight was, and remains (if diminishing some), strong, considerably stronger
than that of its enemies. The Israel Defense Forces, drawing on revolutionary
features, a strong will to fight and high technology, has won nearly every war
or drawn at best (the summer of 2007 war in southern Lebanon). Mossad,
Shin Beth and Aman, with their revolutionary features, have regularly drawn
praise for their work.
13 Revolutionary factors
Aliyah, education, government
and party
The building of key civilian institutions (especially party and government),

massive immigration to Israel and education were also central to ultimate
success.
Massive revolutionary immigration to Israel

Immigration and population flows have played a vital role in world history.
Immigrants have often wrought a revolutionary transformation in a country
through their contact with foreign and alien ideas and peoples. They are the
ultimate marginal and alien people who can succeed only through hard work
and utilizing their acquired ideas and skills.
Apart from Latin American countries, many immigrant societies have
been highly successful. The four British settler colonies (the United States,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and two Chinese immigrant destin-
ations (Singapore and Hong Kong) have become First World areas against
great odds.1
Leaving one’s home, culture and language behind is a revolutionary act
which the great majority of people have refused to do even under adverse
circumstances. The persecuted Jews have been a disproportionate percentage
of the world’s immigrants. Most of the 5.4 million Israelis today reflect
immigration to Israel within the last century. In 1900 less than 1 percent of
the Jewish world lived in Israel; in 2007 40 percent do so.
In Israel’s case they imported revolutionary socialism from Eastern Europe
and Russia, and nationalism from Western Europe, fusing the two in a special
way. Agriculture minister Pinchas Lavon asserted that for Israel immigration
was a “bloodless revolution, proceeding at a much lower price than any other
revolution in history. There could be no slackening in the Ingathering pro-
cess.”2 Massive immigration before 1948 was critical to success. Over 500,000
Jews, despite restrictions, immigrated to Israel from 1900 to 1948. By 1929
there were 170,000 Jews in Palestine and, by 1948, 650,000 Jews. Without
this immigration Israel could not have been created or flourished.3 After 1948
over 2.5 million Jews immigrated to Israel. More than 1 million came from
the former Soviet Union between 1989 and 2007.4 The Jewish population of
Revolutionary factors: aliyah, etc. 167
Israel soared from 650,000 in 1948 to 5.4 million in 2007. Again, aliyah was
central to success.
There was an important moral and psychological factor. The arrival of
millions of persecuted Jews legitimated Israel as the homeland and protector
of the Jews. The arrival of Jews from Ethiopia, Russia, Eastern Europe,
European concentration camps, North Africa, South Africa, Western Europe,
North America and the Middle East showed the centrality of Israel for world
Jewry and the fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy of the return to the Promised
Land from the four corners of the earth.
Revolutionary socialist party

For the First Zionist Socialist Revolution, a revolutionary party was required.5
There would have been no October Revolution without the Bolsheviks, no
Chinese Revolution without the Chinese Communist Party. Only a revolu-
tionary mobilizing party could overcome major external and internal obs-
tacles.6 The Labor Party was the vanguard party creating a Zionist socialist
society whose slogan was “from class to nation.”7 It would fulfill Maurice
Duverger’s image of a dominant party, for:
Domination is a question of influence rather than strength [whose] . . .

doctrines, ideas, methods [and] style came to be identified with an epoch
. . . in every period some doctrine has provided the basic intellectual
framework, the general organization of thought, with the result that even
its adversaries have been able to criticize it or destroy it only by adopting
its method of reasoning.8
The Labor Party was an elite party of 6,000 members in 1930, 24,000
members in 1941 and 41,000 members in 1948. With no state authority or
bureaucracy and opposition from Jewish landowners and the ultra-Orthodox,
the Labor party, representing those who opposed the old Yishuv dependent
on foreign charity, small-scale capitalism, exploitation of Arab labor and a
neo-colonial plantation economy, mobilized society in a democratic revo-
lutionary manner.9 The weak society and modest colonial authorities in the
early twentieth century allowed the parties to shape the society, rather than
the other way around. For the parties preceded the society, just as labor
preceded capital and even created capital. This allowed the Labor Party to
create authority to build common ideological goals, political mobilization
and patterns of institutionalization.10
This movement created a socialist economy and innovative socialist organ-
izations such as youth villages, youth aliyah, Nahal (pioneer youth villages),
kibbutzim, moshavim, Histadrut trade unions and publicly run companies.
This was rooted in a blend of Russian socialism and populism and Jewish
nationalism. It created a viable and functioning rural socialist base which
would provide leadership for the revolutionary movement. The new society
was grounded in national revival, egalitarianism, supremacy of the com-
munity over the individual, education, sacrifice, universal military service and
technology.
Revolutionary kibbutzniks dominated the party. In the 1930s, though less
than 10 percent of the population, they made up over 60 percent of the mem-
bers of the Labor Party in the 1930s and almost 40 percent in the 1940s. In a
largely urban society, rural people made up two-thirds of the party. If Mapai
was the pioneering Zionist socialist party, the kibbutz, with its economic
equality, collective ideals, reclamation and settling of the land and military
functions represented the values of labor pioneering and hard selfless work.11
The Zionist Left emerged from 1897 to 1906 in Palestine in a neo-feudal
colony without significant bourgeoisie, proletariat or Jewish population. Its
highly charged ideological goals were to redraw the political, psychological,
economic and physical boundaries of the Jews. In 1905 the Poalei Zion under
Berl Borokhov was founded in Jaffe to integrate Marxism and Zionism. The
non-Marxist Ha Poel Ha Tsair, supporting A. D. Gordon’s religion of labor,
calling for pioneers to build a Jewish agricultural proletariat, was founded
in the same year.12 Most Second Aliyah veterans (1904–14) were politically
affiliated, almost half were fluent in Hebrew and 55 percent were the children
of merchants. Zionism thus became the only major migratory movement with
ideology championing the working class that represented strongly downward
social mobility.13
Tens of thousands of leftist Jews between 1904 and 1914 founded Kupat
Holim health clinics, Hamashbir, labor exchanges, Ha Shomer and coopera-
tives. The nation was remade in the image of the universal working class. The
lack of capitalism allowed socialism to become the dominant ethos. Although
the gap between high class consciousness and low class reality was large, the
pioneers became the vanguard for the new state. The Labor Party built a
national consensus and led the democratic system with degrees of institutional
and ideological separatism. In 1939 the non-Labor sector of the economy
encompassed 55 percent of the population, but the Labor Party, “by its
organization, dedication, dynamism and ideals,” ruled over the religious and
private sectors.14
In 1918 it founded the Achdut Haavodah Party and in 1920 the Histadrut
(general confederation of Jewish labor), which became the predominant insti-
tution of the future socialist state. It ran health care, banks, newspapers,
schools, labor exchanges, trade unions, education, public works and worker
kitchens. By 1926, 70 percent of Jewish workers were enrolled in the Histadrut.
By the middle 1930s, under David Ben Gurion the Histadrut ran banks,
kibbutzim, a building company (Solel Boneh), schools, newspapers (Davar),
culture and the defense forces.15
Ben Gurion rejected re-creation of Diaspora society and wanted a revo-
lutionary socialist state. He wanted to replace the religious and political
quiescence of Diaspora Jewry with a secular, democratic, socialist state. As he
declaimed in “The Worker in Zionism”:
In its essence, Zionism is a revolutionary movement. One can hardly
imagine a more profound and fundamental revolution than that to which
it aspires in the life of the Hebrew nation. It is not a question of a
revolution against a political or economic regime but a revolution in the
mode of life of our people.16
The modern Labor Party was born in 1930 as Mapai (Land of Israel’s
Workers Party), a union of Achdut Haavodah and Ha Poel Ha Tsair. In 1931
Mapai won 61 percent of the Palestinian Jewish vote for the Zionist Organ-
ization and obtained a majority of the Jewish Agency executive. In the New
Yishuv, Mapai represented the hegemonic pillar with its own institutions in a
segmented pluralism with four pillars (Labor, Religious, General Zionists,
Sephardim). Mapai sought to carry out a socialist and political revolution.
By 1930 the Labor Party had gained control of the Jewish Agency, which had
departments for labor, finance, trade and industry, agricultural settlement,
organizations, statistics and politics. By 1935 David Ben Gurion was the
chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive.17
Its major competitor in the pre-war era was the Revisionists, formed in
1925 by Vladimir Jabotinsky. The Revisionists focused on nationalism rather
than socialism, on the nation rather than class. As the founder of the Jewish
Legion, Jabotinsky failed to build a mass base in Palestine. There were no
settlements, institutions or economic enterprises associated with his move-
ment. Instead of the worker, the Revisionists championed the cause of the
shopkeeper, the middle class, the artisans and private settlers.18
By 1948, the role of the Labor Party was so powerful that Benjamin Akzin
called Israel a party state.19 The Labor Party ruled Israel for almost 30 years
after the creation of the state (1948–77). It gained the greatest number of seats
in every election, held all or most of the key Cabinet posts, provided the prime
minister, dominated the Histadrut and ruled most local governments. As an
integrative and aggregative party, it incorporated diverse forces, provided
interest articulation and opened the door to rising forces in society.
The Labor Party eschewed ideological purity or pure radical socialism. In a
politicized environment it conquered the middle ground with modest tilts to
the left. Labor supported coalitions with the conservative religious parties
and the General Zionists, a mixed economy, the use of private capital, not
nationalizing industries and class cooperation.20
The demise of the domination of the Labor Party paralleled the demise of
other one-party dominant parties, such as the Mexican PRI and Indian Con-
gress Party. It showed the relevance of Duverger’s dictum that the dominant
party “wears itself out of office.”21 As Robert Michels has argued, such polit-
ical dominance is doomed by the corruption and immobilism that develop
within such a party.22
The changing nature of Israeli society (increasingly Sephardi, capitalist
and religious) provided opportunity for other parties to represent the rising
forces. Its failures (the run-up to the 1967 War and the 1973 Yom Kippur
War) damaged the party’s image. So too did its internal struggles (the Lavon
Affair, the retirement of Prime Minister Ben Gurion in 1953 and 1963) and
failure to create an adaptive second generation. The arrival of television and
commercial radio in the mid–1960s, combined with the advent of investiga-
tive journalism, undermined its control over the media. Gaining control over
the territories in the Six Day War opened the door to ideological debates in
which the Herut Party seemed to gain traction with its territorialism.
The creation of the state, while enhancing Mapai power, also drained it.
The state stressed universalism, achievement and centralization, which ran
counter to the Labor Party need for particularism, ascription and competing
structures. It lost its selfless, creative idealism. While retaining some functions
(such as the Kupat Holim health fund), it transferred such Labor-dominated
institutions as the armed forces, labor exchanges, school system and partially
civil service to the state. The new state did not require the high degree of
politicization provided by the Labor Party for the Yishuv in defense, labor
exchanges, education, literature and culture.23
The Labor Party changed over time. While in the early 1940s urbanites
constituted barely one-third of the party, by the mid–1950s, after mass immi-
gration, 70 percent of the party were urbanites. The kibbutzim and moshavim
proved economically unviable. By 1959 government subsidies provided 35 per-
cent of the net income of the established moshavim and 52 percent of the
net income of the new moshavim. Engineers, scientists and lawyers rose in
esteem, while workers and farmers lost status.24
The demise of Labor Party socialist dominance in retrospect seemed
inevitable but for almost a century it played a powerful role in the creation of
modern Israel.
Institutionalization of the revolution: government and

the social system
Every revolution has thrown up a galaxy of talented leaders who have trans-
formed the power of the state. The American Revolution, with leaders such
as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson,
James Monroe, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, had a brilliant core
of revolutionary leaders.25 The Russian Revolution produced such luminaries
as Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Yakov Sverdlov, Grigorii Zinoviev and
Nikolai Bukharin. The Chinese Revolution was led by Mao Zedong, Zhou
Enlai, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi. Revolutions attract leaders
who normally would not have gone into politics but were attracted by the
revolution.
The Zionist Revolution produced leaders such as David Ben Gurion,
Chaim Weizmann, Moshe Sharett, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Abba Eban
and Menachem Begin. The leaders were people of intellect, modernity and
cosmopolitanism. Ben Gurion wrote over 30 books, kept a diary that covered
30 volumes and left behind an archive of 750,000 items. Like other leaders, he
had lived in Russia, the United States, Palestine, Israel and Ottoman Turkey.26
Chaim Weizmann was a scientist who developed a variant of acetone of
importance to the British in World War I. David Ben Gurion retired to a two-
room cottage in Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev, while Golda Meir had a
two-bedroom apartment in Tel Aviv as well as her apartment in Kibbutz
Revivim.
Its organizations – the Jewish Agency, Haganah, Palmach, kibbutzim,
moshavim, Histadrut, the Labor Party, later the Likud Party, Youth Aliyah –
were relatively modern, flexible organizations mobilizing and extracting
resources from the society.
Revolutions also transform regimes lagging behind the world in political,
economic, cultural and military power. The English, American, French,
Russian and Chinese revolutions took lagging states and made them great
powers over time. The Zionist Revolution transformed the power of the Jews
as well. The Middle East and Palestine lagged far behind the level of the First
World. Most Jews living in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle
East had their own autonomous communal organizations led by traditional
secular (notables) and religious (rabbis) elites. The Jews were bound together
by the rule of law, conservatism and tradition, consensual decision making,
freedom from internal coercion and sanctions (deriving from law, public
opinion, values and concern for continuity) against the ruling oligarchies.
The leaders were answerable to public criticism in small traditional societies.27
The revolution transformed these communities in Palestine and Israel and
created much more powerful and capable institutions.
The flexibility, pragmatism and willingness to compromise of the leaders
echoed that of the first Zionist leader, Theodor Herzl, who was prepared
to meet any leader and try any program that might advance his goal. In
Alteneuland Herzl envisaged good relations with the Arabs, a modern state,
tolerance and a peace palace.28 Only in 1942 did the Zionists define their task
as creating a state.29
Chaim Weizmann carried out extensive negotiations with Prime Minister
Lloyd George, Foreign Secretary Arthur Lord Balfour, Mark Sykes, South
African Prime Minister Jan Smuts and Lord Cecil that produced the Balfour
Declaration in October 1917. His biographer Jehuda Reinharz called his vol-
ume The Making of a Statesman.30 In the United States, Zionist leaders such
as Louis Brandeis and Stephen Wise, working with liberal and progressive
Protestants, secured the active support of President Wilson, who expressed
his “deep interest in Zionism.”31
During World War I the flexible Zionists supported Arab nationalism. In
1917 Weizmann indicated his willingness to go to Palestine to negotiate with
Arab leaders. In 1918 he met with Arab leaders and in 1919 with Emir Faisal,
who stated that:
Arabs and Jews are cousins . . . and have by happy coincidence been able
to take first steps together towards the attainment of their national
ideals. We Arabs . . . look on the Zionist movement with deepest sym-
pathy . . . We will wish Jews a hearty welcome home and we will, so far as
we are concerned, do our best to help them through.32
In 1917 the Jews accepted the Balfour Declaration even though it used the
words “Jewish homeland” instead of “Jewish state.” David Ben Gurion in
1918 declared that:
Both the vision of social justice and the equality of all peoples that the
Jewish people has cherished for three thousand years, and the vital inter-
ests of the Jewish people in the Diaspora and even more so in Palestine,
require absolutely and unconditionally that the rights and interests of
the non-Jewish inhabitants of the country be guarded and honored
punctiliously.33
From the beginning the Jews were willing to negotiate with the Arabs, pay a
market price for the land, buy only British, waste and unoccupied land and
respect holy sites.34 From 1921 to 1947 the Haganah stressed the need for
havlagah (restraint) with defensive actions against the Arabs. Organizations
such as Brith Shalom and Ichud emphasized cooperation with the Arabs.35
In 1922 the Zionists reluctantly accepted the severing of 75 percent of the
Palestinian Mandate, which was given to Transjordan.36 In the early 1920s
they bargained with Emir Faisal, supported Arab versus French claims to
Syria, spoke of areas of Arab autonomy within Palestine, and discussed
economic benefits for Arabs who would live in the Jewish homeland. During
the 1920s the diaries of Colonel Kisch, the head of the Palestine Zionist
Executive (1923–31), frequently discussed negotiations with the Arabs. The
Jews reluctantly accepted the reduction of the size of Palestine at the hands
of the French in southern Lebanon.37 In the 1930s David Ben Gurion held
extensive discussions with Arab leaders to find a compromise. During the 1936
Arab Revolt David Ben Gurion gave orders “not to touch innocent Arabs.”38
In 1937 the Jewish leaders considered the truncated state of 1,554 square
miles (20 percent of the land of West Palestine) offered by the Peel Commis-
sion. The Jews would not get Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Negev, Aqaba,
Tiberius, Safed, Nazareth, Acre and Haifa. The mini-Jewish state, with a
40 percent Arab minority, lacked defensible borders or access to the Jordan
River or the Yarmuk River. Yet, the Twentieth Zionist Congress voted
300–158 to explore the British offer. The leading political pragmatists were
Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.39
In August 1939, a Zionist Congress meeting in Geneva sharply criticized
the White Paper but refused to condemn Great Britain. Chaim Weizmann
reassured the British that “their war is our war.”40 During World War II and
the Holocaust, David Ben Gurion said that he would fight against the Nazis
as though there were no White Paper and fight the White Paper as though
there were no war against the Nazis.41
In 1942 the Zionist Biltmore Program “based itself on practical grounds
rather than on an interpretation of the original intent of the Balfour Declar-
ation, when it refrained from raising an issue concerning Transjordan.” In
1947 the Zionists accepted a United Nations-backed state that lacked defens-
ible borders, did not include Jerusalem, Jaffa, Nazareth or Beersheba and
placed 100,000 Jews in an internationalized enclave in Jerusalem surrounded
by the Arab state. The Jews accepted an Arab minority equal to 40 percent of
the population of the Jewish state and gave up 30 Jewish settlements, western
Galilee, western Negev and the coastal strip from Ashdod to Rafah.42 As
Ben Halpern wrote:
In order to gain the most essential sovereign rights needed to solve the
post-war problem of the Jews, the Zionists swallowed not only the sub-
stantive restrictions on their authority in other respects but the symbolic
denial of their historic claim to restoration in Zion represented by the
proposed internationalization of Jerusalem.43
The plan denied the Jewish state economic sovereignty by intertwining the
Jewish and Arab state with a ten-year customs union, providing for Jewish
subsidy of the Arab economy and setting of a common tariff by a Joint
Economic Board. Between the November 1947 United Nations resolution
supporting the creation of Israel (and a parallel Arab state) and the proclam-
ation of the state of Israel in May 1948, the Israelis were the only entity to
collaborate with the United Nations Palestine Commission.44
This pattern of compromise and pragmatic accommodation continued
after independence. Since 1948 Israel has withdrawn from all or part of
the Sinai desert three times (1949, 1956 and 1982), from parts of southern
Lebanon four times (1949, 1978, 1985 and 2000), from the Gaza Strip four
times (1948, 1957, 1994 and 2005) and part of the Golan Heights (late 1980s).
It did not annex either the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.45
In 1949 Israel carried out armistice talks on the island of Rhodes with four
states and offered to take in 100,000 Arab refugees to end the conflict. The
Arabs refused to negotiate anything beyond a temporary armistice.46 In 1957,
under heavy American and international pressure and threats of international
sanctions, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion withdrew Israeli forces back to
the armistice lines in exchange only for promises.47 After 1967 they were
willing to return the bulk of the territories (especially Sinai and the Golan
Heights) for peace.
In 1981 Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin returned the Sinai pen-
insula (three times the state of Israel), with its oilfields, resorts, air bases and
11 upgraded settlements in return for a peace with Egypt. In 1994 Israel
reached a peace agreement with Jordan. In 2000 Labor Prime Minister Ehud
Barak withdrew entirely from the security zone in southern Lebanon. He
offered, at Camp David in July 2000, 100 percent of the Gaza Strip, 94 per-
cent of the West Bank, East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods, sovereignty over
the Temple Mount and 4 percent of Israel in return for keeping the main
settlement blocs in the West Bank. In 2005 Israeli Prime Minister Arik
Sharon withdrew from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements. In
2007 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke of a liberal peace plan with the
Palestinians to resolve the conflict.
The leaders were willing to make compromises. After the 1948 war, Israeli
leaders, hoping for support from Moscow and the Third World, refused to
send troops to South Korea during the Korean War. In 1953 they were pre-
paring to open an embassy in Beijing until American pressure prevented this
move.48 The close relationship with the great powers (today the United States)
has been maintained ever since. Prime Minister Arik Sharon (2001–06) made
12 visits to Washington for frequent consultations.
Israeli leaders have made domestic concessions to the religious bloc ever
since the beginning of the Zionist immigration. This was not easy given the
frequent religious hostility towards Zionist socialism. The religious bloc (save
for the National Religious Party) castigated mainstream Zionism as an evil
and heretical secular nationalism, trying to create a Jewish state without
waiting for the messiah and using the sacred language of Hebrew.
The largely secular Zionists understood that the religious dominated
the Old Yishuv, enjoyed a moral stature in the Jewish community and
were granted a special role by the British (rabbinical courts and the Chief
Rabbinate). In 1897 at the First Zionist Congress the secular Theodor Herzl
attended a synagogue in Basel and encouraged the growth of a religious
Zionist movement (Mizrahi). In the 1920s Chaim Weizmann, president of the
World Zionist Organization, integrated religious Jews into the movement by
providing money, influence and a sense of participation and benefits for
religious Zionists. In 1934 an agreement on power sharing with the religious
Zionists formalized the relationship.
In 1949 David Ben Gurion and the National Religious Party made the
status quo agreement accepting Shabbat as an official day of rest, providing
army deferment for yeshiva students, maintaining the status quo on Shabbat,
buses and restaurants, giving control of marriage and divorce to the religious,
and keeping all official functions kosher. The Labor Party agreed to fund
religious institutions and yeshivas and two tracks in the educational system,
one secular and another religious. Proportional representation in the elect-
oral system promoted a significant role for the religious parties (holding
10–20 percent of the seats) in any governing coalition. The anti-Zionist
Agudath Yisrael Party, weakened by the Holocaust, signed the Declaration
of Independence, sat in the provisional government and received a seat in the
first Cabinet in 1949. For several decades the Labor Zionists ruled with the
more conservative National Religious Party, which had two Cabinet seats
in the first government in 1949.49
Before 1948 they put enormous efforts into national integration (absorbing
500,000 immigrants), economic and educational modernization and creating
a modern society and economy.50 The Zionist organizations were elected
through a democratic parliament with a small bureaucracy. The Histadrut
trade union created a strong economy with a major role for the workers. The
Jewish Agency, a function of the World Zionist Organization, conducted
relations with the Diaspora, represented the Yishuv abroad and coordinated
immigration and settlement. Going back to 1920 its elected bodies levied
taxes and supported institutions. The Jewish Agency, established by the
League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, was the central political motor
force. Dependent on public support, it was the peak of a network of inter-
locking social, financial, educational, economic and military institutions.
Political parties provided schools, banks, papers, loan funds, health care, youth
movements, sports clubs, housing and welfare. Political parties, religious bod-
ies, educational and cultural groups, burial societies, charity and social welfare
groups, economic guilds, workers groups and private companies played sig-
nificant roles. Efraim Karsh spoke of the extensive institution building and
democratic mass mobilization of the Zionist movement from the beginning:
The main source of strength of the Jewish national movement had been
its ability to organize itself from an early stage as a “State in the making”
based on democratic-parliamentary principles. It was all there, set up
and running, within a year of two of the calling of the first Congress of
Zionists in 1897: free elections on a constituency basis; universal suffrage
. . . a fully representative assembly; a political leadership responsible to
that assembly; open debate on all major issues; and before long what
might usefully be called a loyal opposition too . . . [in the 1930s] the
Jewish Agency Executive evolved into the foremost decision-making
body of the Zionist movement and the “de facto” government of the
Yishuv, managing its affairs, from the more mundane aspects of daily
life to the critical political issues of the day.51
The Yishuv created a plethora of institutions before 1936:
• Mikveh Israel, 1870;

• Hebrew as a national language, 1889;
• the World Zionist Congress, 1897;
• the Jewish National Fund, 1901;
• Technion, 1914;
• Histadrut, 1920;
• the Jewish Agency, 1921;
• Hebrew University, 1925;
• Mapai, 1930;
• the Palestine Post, 1932;
• the Palestine Orchestra, 1936;
• the Maccabi Olympic Games, 1936.
The Jews created a strong social democratic economy. In the 1950s the state
and public sector controlled nearly 50 percent of the economy. Even by 2007
the state budget accounted for over 50 percent of the economy.52
The Yishuv under the British Mandate created all the proto-government
institutions for the state that emerged in 1948. Ever since the First Zionist
Congress in 1897 the annual proceedings have followed the rules of parlia-
mentary democracy with parties as the main actors. At that congress each
delegate represented 100 Zionists. All the Jewish communities worldwide were
represented with different and opposed views – tradition versus revolution,
secular versus religious, political Zionism versus cultural Zionism, socialist
versus non-socialist. Without any state power for the first 50 years, they
learned to accommodate each other with “power-sharing, decentralization,
mutual-veto, coalition-building, multidimensional politics.”53
In 1948 the Jews created a state from scratch. The British left with no
ceremonies, lowering of flags, marching bands, dignitaries or changing of
the guard. The Jews drew on their own institutions and on centuries of
experience in running their own affairs.54 By early 1948 a Jewish inter-party
committee had appointed a provisional Zionist Council of State under the
leadership of David Ben Gurion. Its 13-member Council of Government
collected taxes, while Jewish Agency and Va’ad Leumi officials assumed new
ministerial responsibilities. A temporary capital was created in North Tel
Aviv, offices were found for the new government with secretaries and clerks,
and new postage stamps and paper currency were printed. The government in
April 1948 expanded to include Sephardim, ultra-orthodox Jews (Agudath
Yisrael) and the Revisionists (Herut) in the expanded 37-member People’s
Council.55
After 1948 Ben Gurion subordinated Labor Zionist institutions to the
state, transferring many of their functions to the state. He nationalized many
Labor party institutions (schools, army, education) and emptied them of
socialist content. Ben Gurion chose not to expropriate the bourgeoisie or
increase the socialist sector. He put nationalism and state power (mamla-
khtiut) above socialism. He postponed socialism because of the urgent tasks
of aliyah, defense and building the land. Even though Mapai and Mapam
together had a majority of all seats in the Knesset after 1948 (65 out of 120 seats),
he did not use this majority to press for socialism but rather for national
goals.
After 1948 Ben Gurion sought to integrate the religious (status quo agree-
ment), the Palmach (dissolved into the new army) and the Irgun (dissolved
into the new army) in the new state. In the Irgun case there was the highly
controversial bombing of the Altalena ship providing French arms to the
Irgun. The goal was to create a unified nation state.56
Despite the socialist nature of the state, the private sector was alive and
well. From 1881 to 1948 the main available capital was private capital from
Diaspora Jews. During this period 85 percent of all capital was private cap-
ital, invested outside the framework of various Zionist organizations.57 In the
1950s the private sector was not nationalized, and some private capitalism
was allowed. To attract foreign investment and maintain full employment,
capitalism was a necessity.58 Ben Gurion said in 1957:
The stories of our forefathers 4,000 years ago; the acts and life of
Abraham; the wanderings of Israel in the desert after the Exodus from
Egypt; the wars of Joshua and the judges that followed him; the lives and
doings of Saul, David and Solomon; the deeds of Uziyahu, King of
Judah, and Jeroboam II, King of Israel, all of these have more actuality,
are closer, more edifying and meaningful for the younger generation
maturing and living in the Land of Israel than all the speeches and
debates of the Basle Congresses.59
In the 1950s the majority of the population worked in some form of social-
ist sector – the Histadrut cooperative sector, the national sector or the muni-
cipal sector. Numerous institutions were critical to the success of the Zionist
Revolution – the Jewish Agency, the National Committee (Va’ad Leumi),
the People’s Council (Minhelet Ha’am), the Labor Party, Histadrut (trade
unions), kibbutzim, moshavim, Kupat Holim (the medical fund) and leading
universities (such as Hebrew University and Technion). All were brought up
to the Western level with their capacity to train, mobilize and enact programs
vital for national infrastructure development. The Hebrew language was
revived, a vibrant press of dozens of newspapers arose and culture flourished,
especially in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
By 1948 the Jewish national economy (£169 million) was bigger than the
Arab national economy (£67.7 million). The Jewish economy on a per capita
basis was almost five times larger than the Arab economy. In 1948 Jewish
cities had budgets ten times the size of Arab cities. Jews owned 83 percent of
bank deposits or ten times more per capita than the Arabs.60
The economic dynamism of the Yishuv was remarkable. From 1921 to
1939 the Jewish economy, despite the Great Depression, grew 13.2 percent a
year, the sixth best performance in the world. The massive development of
new enterprises and services and large-scale immigration had transformed
Palestine by World War II. By 1941, despite the fact that Arabs outnumbered
Jews more than two to one, Jewish income was 25 percent greater than Arab
income.61
Building a modern education and technological system

The pre–1948 Jewish educational system had many tracks: yeshivas, the Zionist
Organization, the Alliance Française, Hebrew and Baron de Hirsch schools.
The new state integrated them into a two-track system, one secular and one
religious. It derived from such early pioneers as the Evelyn Rothschild Girls
School (founded in 1860) and the Mikveh Yisrael Agricultural School
(founded in 1870), both run by the Alliance Israélite Universelle. By 1920 the
majority of schools in Palestine educated in Hebrew.62 The emerging state
created Technion (1913), Hebrew University (1925) and Weizmann Institute
(1932) long before independence.
Israel relentlessly promoted technological development to overcome its
small physical size, population and resources. This great emphasis in the first
socialist revolution would, together with a technical emphasis in the uni-
versities and army and massive immigration of technically skilled manpower
from the former Soviet Union, play a powerful role in promoting the second
partial capitalist revolution.
From 1948 on, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion venerated the role
of science and technology as providing the qualitative edge to overcome its
quantitative inferiority. Ben Gurion’s “boys” (Moshe Dayan and Shimon
Peres) were powerful supporters of technocratic developments in Israeli soci-
ety.63 By 2004, 70 percent of Israeli households already had computers and
57 percent were linked up to the Internet.64
The Zionists stressed education and technology as multiplier forces that
could overcome inferiority in numbers and supplies. The idea for Hebrew
University originated in the 1880s. In 1918 a university committee bought
25 acres on Mount Scopus from the estate of Sir Norman Hill. Chaim
Weizmann spoke at a cornerstone-laying ceremony in 1918 to an enthusiastic
crowd of 6,000 people. The university itself opened in 1925.65
In the critical areas of civilian institutions, building, immigration and edu-
cation, the Jews created revolutionary forms that helped the state to come
into existence and flourish. The immigration of 3 million Jews in the last
century has made Israel a new society continually remaking itself. The record
of building key voluntary, open, modern socialist institutions in a Third World
colony before 1948 and sustaining themselves after 1948 as they transformed
themselves under changing conditions also had a strong revolutionary tone.
The Israeli Labor Party led the socialist revolution until the late 1970s and
then was able to play a significant role in the new second semi-capitalist
globalizing revolution still under way in Israel. Few countries have been able
to manage both a socialist and a capitalist revolution – Israel has done far
better than most of the socialist world in doing so.
14 International factors
Many of the explanatory factors of the Jewish victory and success derive
from their position in the international arena: the role of the Jewish Diaspora,
the role of non-Jews, alliances with the democratic West and temporary alli-
ances with unlikely allies such as the Soviet Union and for a while the British
Empire.
The role of the Diaspora

The Jewish Diaspora, initially cool to the idea of Zionism, became increas-
ingly energized to support Zionism after the Holocaust, the creation of the
state of Israel, the ingathering of millions of exiles, the 1948 and 1967 wars
and the two intifadas that killed over a thousand Israelis. These traumas
rallied the Diaspora, especially the Anglo-American Diaspora, to action on
Israel’s behalf. As early as 1950 David Ben Gurion called the Diaspora “a
great political, economic and moral factor.” The first director general of the
Israeli foreign ministry observed that, unlike diplomats in other diplomatic
services, the Israeli diplomat played a dual role: “He is Minister Extraordinary
to the country to which he is accredited – and Envoy Extraordinary to its
Jews.”1
Many of the early leaders who created Israel from 1881 to 1948 were
Diaspora leaders, from Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann to Louis
Brandeis, Rabbi Stephen Wise and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. “Hatikvah,” the
anthem of the state of Israel, was written by a Diaspora Jew (Naftali Herz
Imber) to music by a Diaspora non-Jew (Bedrich Smetana). After 1948, the
Diaspora role diminished considerably, although reviving in recent years dur-
ing the second intifada. Abraham Ben-Zvi has written that American Jewry
was a “highly significant factor in constraining successive administrations”
and “frequently successful in promoting favorable policies and legislation.”2
The role of the Diasporas has been important, especially for small com-
munities like the Jews. The Diaspora “greatly helped in establishing the Jewish
community in Israel and was the most important external partner in the
creation of the Jewish state.”3 Gabriel Sheffer has concluded that, without the
Jewish Diaspora work in the 1930s and 1940s in terms of money, manpower,
weapons, political and diplomatic support and morale boosting, there prob-
ably would not have been a state of Israel. Its work thus was “essential” to
creating Israel in May 1948. David Ben Gurion asserted that the Diaspora
was “Israel’s only absolutely reliable ally,” while Michael Brecher found
that the Diaspora was the “most important component” in Israel’s global
perception.4
Before 1948 the Israelis were heavily dependent on the Diaspora financially
and politically. In the 1920s and 1930s wealthy British Jews, such as Albert
and Frederick Stern (bankers), Waley Cohen (Shell Oil) and Alfred Mond
(Imperial Chemical Industries) joined with wealthy American Jews (such as
Felix Warburg and Herbert Lehman) to invest in Palestine. Leading Diaspora
leaders, such as Abba Hillel Silver and Stephen Wise, were not offered Cabinet
posts, while Chaim Weizmann found himself the president with little real
power. The Western Jews gained ethnic, psychological and religious pride,
while the Israelis received material, political and moral support. After 1948
the creation of Israel generated new energy into the Diaspora which saw Israel
as arising from the ashes of the Holocaust, ending the shame and guilt of the
past with new sabra heroes and victories and showing the vitality of the Jews.5
The Diaspora has been under siege from a variety of directions. Anti-
Semitism, propagated by the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the Arab
world, has been a threat to the community. Seven million Western Jews face
significant assimilation, alienation from the community and low birth rates.
In the 1990s the American Jewish community, despite Russian Jewish immi-
gration, lost 300,000 Jews. In the last 20 years, the domestic needs of protect-
ing the community in the West have conflicted with providing support for
Israel. It also opens up the powerful question of whether Israel or the United
States (the homes of the two strongest Jewish communities) is the center of
the Jewish world.6
Mass aliyah (immigration) from the Diaspora has been decisive. Without it
Israel would have 1 million Jews and be non-viable. The aliyah of over
3 million Jews (representing 60 percent of the non-North American Jews in
the Diaspora) to Israel in the last 80 years has allowed the Jewish population
to leap from 650,000 in 1948 to 5.4 million by 2007. It has brought enormous
technical skills (50 percent of the employees in Silicon Wadi are from the
former Soviet Union) and great entrepreneurial capabilities and provided a
strong base for military victories and economic accomplishments.
Diaspora financial contributions, especially in the early years, were con-
siderable. In 1948 Golda Meir in six weeks raised $50 million in the United
States to buy arms for the fledgling state during the Israeli War of Independ-
ence. In the early years after independence Israel received 65 percent of the
general funds raised by the American Jewish community. From 1948 to
1979 the United Jewish Appeal and the Joint Distribution Committee sent
$3.7 billion to Israel. By the 1990s this had fallen to 30 percent of Diaspora
money raised. In 1990 Diaspora donations to Israel totaled $300 million,
investments $600 million and non-American donations $200 million, making
International factors 181
a total of $1.1 billion. A similar pattern continued at the beginning of
the twenty-first century. In 2006 the Israel Emergency Campaign raised
$300 million during and after the war with Hezbollah.7
American Jewish political involvement, involving a complex maze of roles
by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Conference
of Major American Jewish Organizations, other Jewish organizations (the
Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Zionist
Organization of America, Hadassah, etc.), political action committees (PACs),
interest groups and Jewish and non-Jewish friendly voters promoting Ameri-
can political, economic and military aid to Israel, has been considerable.
AIPAC (the pro-Israel lobby) is often rated one of the top three most effective
lobbies on Capitol Hill. Its detractors, such as Stephen Walt and John Mear-
sheimer, see it and its allies as almost all powerful, dictating American policy
in this area.8 The Jewish Diaspora has a 2,000-year history of caring for Jews
in distress around the world. As Selwyn Ilan Troen has observed:
The bonds that hold modern Jewry together have been severely tested to
reach out over vast geographical distances and across diverse political
systems. Even though Jews may speak a different language and participate
in a different culture, they have continued to understand themselves as
brethren and, as such, accept responsibility for one another. The com-
mitment to act on behalf of fellow Jews has its roots in the centuries-old
traditions that have always been part of the Diaspora experience.9
The rise of modern nationalism and capitalism brought the masses into
politics and changed the ways that the Diaspora looked after other Jews.
Before the 1850s the primary role was played by wealthy Jewish shtadlanism
(notable intermediaries) such as Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Crémieux.
By the latter nineteenth century, with the rise of modern anti-Semitism, the
response became broader and new institutions were formed. These included
the French Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paris, 1860), the Anglo-Jewish
Association (London, 1870), the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of
Directors (London, 1878), the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (New York,
1884) and the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden (Berlin, 1901).10
The Western Diaspora, while providing few immigrants to Israel, has
played an important political, economic and social role. Before 1920 Western
Diaspora help was provided mainly by the British, French and German
communities. In the interwar period, and after the Holocaust, the Diaspora
came to mean the United States (and to some extent Canada). From a popu-
lation of 600,000 Jews in 1870, the American Diaspora grew to 2.6 million
Jews in 1914 and 5 million Jews by 1945. The rise of the United States to
superpower status during World War II, as well as the destruction of the
German Jewish community, partial destruction of the French Jewish com-
munity and decline in size and power of the British community after 1945
reinforced this trend.11
Initially, as we have seen earlier, the Diaspora was not very supportive of
Zionism. The proclamation of the Balfour Doctrine in 1917 and the creation
by future Justice Louis Brandeis of an American Zionism infused by progres-
sive ideals transformed the situation. He attracted both Russian Jews and a
small but influential German Jewish elite. The parallels between the Puritans,
who knew Hebrew and saw themselves as the spiritual descendants of ancient
Israelites, and the drive to create a new Zion in the wilderness had a natural
appeal. American and Jewish values of democracy, justice, individuality and
group responsiveness were very close. Zionism could be presented as a pro-
foundly American movement on behalf of a persecuted minority, in this case
the Jews. Too, Americans could sympathize with Jewish refugees fleeing
oppression, especially if they wanted to go somewhere other than America.
By 1919, after the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration, the number had
rocketed to 175,000 members, only to fall precipitously to 17,000 in July
1921.12
Western leaders such as Stephen Wise, Louis Brandeis and Chaim
Weizmann played a powerful role in the creation of Israel. By the end of
World War I the American Diaspora, with 3.5 million Jews, provided the
great majority of funds for the efforts in Palestine. Their efforts led to the
support of President Woodrow Wilson.13
British Jewish leaders, such as Chaim Weizmann and Lord Rothschild,
were key players in early Zionism. They were critical to the issuing of the 1917
Balfour Declaration to Lord Rothschild. Weizmann issued a communiqué
with Emir Faisal in 1919 on Arab–Jewish cooperation in Palestine. At the
Paris Peace Conference in Versailles in 1919, Chaim Weizmann, who met
with President Wilson and Colonel House, led the Jewish delegation that
gained American and British support for the Jewish state. Western Jews
were essential to the 1922 wording of the British mandate for Palestine
that incorporated the Balfour Declaration and called for recognition of the
Zionist Organization.
In April 1920 the San Remo Conference approved the British Mandate for
Palestine to carry out the Balfour Declaration. In 1921 the United States
Congress passed a resolution, signed by President Wilson, supporting a
Jewish homeland in Palestine.14 In 1922 the League of Nations approved the
British Mandate for Palestine.15
In 1926 Louis Brandeis and Louis Marshall founded the PEC Israel
Economic Corporation to supplement Keren Hayesod to provide technical
expertise and investment capital. In 1934 the Jewish Agency founded Rassco
(Rural and Suburban Settlements Company) to develop settlements for
middle-class immigrants. In 1942 Labor Zionists founded AMPAL (American
Palestine Corporation) to guarantee loans for financial projects. After 1945 it
financed construction of basic industries, utilities and housing.16
Many wealthy non-Zionists, such as Jacob Schiff, became attracted to the
cause. Chaim Weizmann in 1920 became the leader of the new Zionist Organ-
ization at the London Conference which created Keren Hayesod to gain
Diaspora resources for Palestine. In 1929, after the Arab riots, the Diaspora
raised $4 million to rebuild destroyed settlements and build patrol roads,
fences, searchlights and shelters for the Yishuv.17 By 1931 the World Jewish
Congress was founded.18
The anti-Zionists and non-Zionists were still powerful and even a majority
in the American Jewish community, the new center for Zionist activity after
World War I. During the 1920s and 1930s the New York Times, led by pub-
lisher Adolph Ochs, was hostile to the Zionist cause. During the 1920s the
American non-Zionists (the Jewish Distribution Committee, JDC) had far
more money than the Zionists. In the 1920s several Jewish organizations
spent $6 million to resettle over 200,000 Russian Jews on fertile soil in the
Soviet Union, rather than Palestine.19 The two sides argued intensely over
European Jewish rehabilitation projects, which were supported by the JDC
but opposed by the Zionists, who wanted the money to go to Palestine. They
argued over the protection of Jewish rights in the Diaspora and the implica-
tions of work in Palestine. The anti-Zionists were divided into incompatible
groups such as the religious Agudath Yisrael, the leftist Bundists, the radical
Communists and wealthy American Jewish liberals.20
In the early 1930s, the Great Depression reduced the number of members
of the Zionist Organization of America to only 8,800, even though dues were
a mere $3 a year.21 But the rise of Nazi Germany and mild economic recovery
in the United States revived the fortunes of American Zionism. In May 1942
the proclamation of the Biltmore Program in New York supporting the cre-
ation of a Jewish state was an important step towards the creation of Israel.
In November 1942, 58 senators and 194 congressmen voiced their support on
the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.22
In the late 1940s its financial and political support played a key role in
Israel’s ultimate success against great odds. In 1945 Ben Gurion met with
20 American Jewish businessmen, who provided millions of dollars each year
(the Sonnenborn Fund) to buy arms, much of which was kept abroad until
after independence was declared, and to fund the cost of immigration. In 1946
they bought boats, planes, jeeps, arms, radio stocks, tents, mobile kitchens
and warehouses from American surplus stocks at cheap prices.23
From 1945 to 1948 American Jews raised $400 million ($4 billion in today’s
terms) to support Holocaust survivors and the future state of Israel. The
American Zionist Emergency Council, under Rabbis Abba Hillel Silver and
Stephen Wise, secured vital American support for the creation of the state of
Israel. Most American Jews and many non-Jewish leaders, such as Charles
Beard, Eleanor Roosevelt, Reinhardt Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, John Dewey,
Mark von Doren and Carl Friedrich, and the American Federation of Labor
(AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) joined the effort.
After the war and the Holocaust, American Zionists, with strong public sym-
pathy, showed an “unparalleled ability to galvanize American Jewish public
opinion in times of crisis and its cultural viability and political diversity.”24
Canadian Jews in 1947 played a major role in successfully lobbying Lester
Pearson and Justice Ivan Rand, member of the United Nations Special
Committee on Palestine.25
Facing strong opposition from the American State and Defense depart-
ments, British Foreign Office and Western anti-Zionist groups, who were
influenced by pro-Arab sentiment, fears of Russia and desire for oil, from
1945 to 1948 American Jews launched “one of the most intense and suc-
cessful lobbying efforts in American politics, that led to the de facto recogni-
tion of the Jewish state 11 minutes after its birth.”26 After the European
Holocaust, American Jewry became the leading Diaspora to fight for a
Jewish state. While in the 1930s American Jews had been divided and largely
indifferent to Zionism, a flood of new recruits brought the number of
American Jews joining Zionist organizations to over 500,000 members in the
late 1940s.
After the 1942 Biltmore Conference, the American Zionist Emergency
Council created 76 state and regional branches and over 400 committees. By
1945, 411 senators and congressmen had endorsed a Jewish commonwealth.
Forty-one state legislators and hundreds of municipalities endorsed Zionism,
while 67 senators, 143 congressmen and 22 governors were members of the
American Palestine Committee.27 Indeed:
the American public overwhelmingly supported partition . . . The success

of the Zionist effort in 1947 represented nearly five years of work, organ-
ization, publicity, education and the careful cultivation of key people in
different fields. While the politicians may have reacted to the alleged
existence of Jewish bloc-voting in major cities and states, the real power
of the American Zionists resulted from their ceaseless and ultimately
successful efforts first to win over the Jewish community and then the
American public to its side, thus securing the help of influential men and
women in the press, the Church, the arts and above all the government.
In the process the plight of the displaced persons of Europe played an
ever-present role.28
Eddie Jacobson, Truman’s former business partner, played a key role in

allowing Chaim Weizmann to meet with President Truman in March 1948.
Both parties supported the creation of the state of Israel.
Since 1948 the Diaspora has provided major support for Israel. Politically,
it has been a strong lobby for Israel. In 1954 a “Circle of Friends” of leading
American Jews (including Philip Ehrlich, David Zellerbach and Eli Ginzberg)
worked to reduce the hostile attitude of the Eisenhower administration
towards Israel.29 In late 1955 the efforts of the Eisenhower administration
to divide the Jewish community failed, and Congressional leaders and public
opinion leaders blunted the drive for sanctions.30 In the 1967 Six Day War,
American Jews raised $240 million for Israel. During the 1973 Yom Kippur
War, American Jews pledged to raise $750 million, for food, medicines and
goods.31
The American Diaspora played a major role in rallying American presi-
dents. On the other side have stood oil companies, anti-Semites, the State
Department and liberal Christian groups. But American Jews, who historic-
ally have voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, have given their
time, support and money. From Harry Truman and John Kennedy to Lyndon
Johnson, the relations were often close.32 Since the middle 1990s the Repub-
licans have become increasingly sympathetic to Israel as well.
The Diaspora has rallied world and American opinion in favor of helping
Jews to immigrate to Israel. Its battle on behalf of 2 million Soviet Jews was
symbolized by the passing of the Jackson–Vannik Amendment (289–78) in
1974 tying most favored nation status for the Soviet Union to emigration of
Soviet Jews. This helped push the Brezhnev and Gorbachev regimes to allow
some and then many Soviet Jews to emigrate. Yeltsin and Putin have continued
free emigration and allowed the Israeli government in Russia to operate freely
to reach, educate and help Jews immigrate to Israel.
In the 1967 Six Day War Americans favored Israel over the Arabs by 55:4.33
During the 1973 Yom Kippur War Americans favored Israel over the Arabs
by 7:1, rather than blaming Israel for the Arab oil embargo or following the
lead of oil companies and the Arab states. Only 1 percent of Americans
blamed Israel for the 1973 Arab oil embargo after the war, while 75 percent
saw Israel’s survival as important to the United States. In the 94th Congress,
259 congressmen and 70 senators favored Israel.34 In 2006 Americans by
54:5 favored Israel over the Palestinians.35
The first chairman of Israel Bonds, founded in 1950, was Henry Mor-
genthau, Jr., Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury. From 1951 to 1967, when
Israel had trouble borrowing money in the international market place, Israel
Bonds sold $1 billion worth of bonds, 85 percent of them in the United
States. By 1963 Israel had shown its creditworthiness by redeeming $170
million in bonds. From 1948 to 2006 Israel Bonds sold $24 billion of bonds
for Israel in the West. Jews, non-Jews, governmental organizations and trade
unions have bought these low-interest bonds, which have gone to drain the
Hula swamps, start the National Water Carrier, build oil pipelines to Eilat
from Haifa, Ashdod and Ashkelon, explore for oil, develop solar and alterna-
tive means of energy and improve Ben Gurion Airport. Israel Bonds annually
have raised more than $1.2 billion.36
Founded in 1901 by Theodor Herzl at the Fifth Zionist Congress, the
Jewish National Fund by 1948 owned over 235,000 acres in Palestine, more
than all Jewish-owned land. It prepared settlements and reforestation, espe-
cially in the Galilee, Samaria, Huleh Valley, Negev and Jezreel Valley.37 It
has built 150 water reservoirs, planted over 240 million trees, built over
40 recreation areas, as well as security roads in the north, and helped new
immigrants settle in the Negev.
Founded in 1933 by Recha Freier, Youth Aliyah helped over 300,000
Jewish disadvantaged children to come to Palestine and Israel or to live more
rewarding lives. Founded to bring children escaping the Holocaust (initially
the cost was $180 a year), in its first 25 years (1933–58) it brought 50,000
youths to Israel, including 20,000 orphans after the war. From 1958 to 1970 it
brought another 85,000 children from 80 countries.38
Named for its founder, Henrietta Szold, who settled in Palestine in the
early 1920s, Hadassah, founded in 1912, is the Women’s Zionist Organiza-
tion, with over 300,000 members in the United States. In the 1920s it created
welfare clinics, dispensaries, medical clinics and a nurses’ training school and
set the cornerstone for the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. It is the largest
Jewish women’s membership organization in the United States. In the United
States it promotes the American–Israel relationship and advocates for Israel.
In 1947 Hadassah lobbied hard for international support of the creation of
the state of Israel and in 1948 worked diligently to help the new state survive.
Its Hadassah Medical Organization provides modern health care to 600,000
patients a year, both Jewish and non-Jewish, Israeli and foreign. Its annual
budget for its two hospitals with 1,000 beds in Jerusalem and other facilities is
over $400 million. It provides modern technical training at its Hadassah
College of Technology and is a major supporter of both the Jewish National
Fund and Youth Aliyah.39
Friends of Hebrew University, Technion, Tel Aviv University, University
of Haifa and Ben Gurion University, Friends of Israel Museum, the Jerusalem
Foundation and Friends of Sharei Tzedek Hospital have raised several billion
dollars for their institutions since 1948.
Level of modernization of the Jews

The Jews historically have been a modern, even revolutionary, people. As
Paul Johnson has observed:
For the Jewish impact on humanity has been protean. In antiquity they
were the great innovators in religion and morals. In the Dark Ages and
early medieval Europe they were still an advanced people transmitting
scarce knowledge and technology. Gradually they were pushed from the
van and fell behind until, by the end of the eighteenth century they were
seen as a bedraggled and obscurantist rearguard in the march of civilized
humanity. Breaking out of their ghettos they once more transformed
human thinking; this time in the secular sphere. Much of the mental
furniture of the modern world too is of Jewish fabrication.40
The Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatol Lunacharsky, claimed

that Jews had created six great religions, with Karl Marx representing “the
last in the succession of the great Jewish prophets.”41 Thorsten Veblen in 1934
wrote an article entitled “The Intellectual Pre-eminence of the Jews in Modern
Europe” in which he asserted that Jews “count particularly among the van-
guard, pioneers, the uneasy guild of pathfinders and iconoclasts in science,
scholarship and institutional change and growth.”42 The Western culture,
called Judeo-Christian civilization, reflects the powerful role of the small
Jewish minority, for as Thomas Cahill wrote in The Gifts of the Jews:
The Jews started it all – and by “it” I mean so many of the things we care
about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and gentile, believer
and atheist, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through dif-
ferent eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings . . . the
role of the Jews, the investors of Western culture, is also singular: there is
simply no one else remotely like them: theirs is a unique vocation.43
Even their enemies have conceded this. Stalin, in 1952, called the Jews
“rootless cosmopolitans.” Malaysian Prime Minister Muhammad Muhatir,
at the Organization of the Islamic Conference in October 2003, proclaimed
with exaggeration that “We are up against a people [i.e. the Jews] who think.
They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back but by thinking.
They invented and successfully promoted socialism, communism, human
rights and democracy . . . We must use our brains too.”44 These revolutionary
ideas included monotheism, man made in God’s image, social progress and
justice, the perfectibility of mankind, free will to choose good over evil,
human responsibility for one’s own acts, a divine role in history as partner of
mankind, messianism and the Sabbath day of rest and holiness.45
Once liberated from the ghettos of Europe in the first half of the nine-
teenth century, the Jews again became the symbol of modernity.46 Jews made
up 0.2 percent of the world’s population and less than 2 percent of the
population of the West, yet Time magazine’s “Man of the Century” was
Albert Einstein, a German Jewish physicist later asked to be the first president
of Israel. Jews won 22 percent of Nobel prizes (160 prizes) in the twentieth
century.47 Constituting 1 percent of Germans in 1933, they won 33 percent of
all Nobel prizes won by Germans. Forming 2 percent of Russians, they were
over 30 percent of the leading physicists (Igor Kurchatov, Lev Landau) in the
Soviet Union.
In Vienna, as early as the 1880s, Jews, who were 10 percent of the popula-
tion, accounted for 75 percent of the lawyers, 69 percent of the leading literary
figures and over 50 percent of the doctors.48 In Hungary in 1920, Jews, who
were 5 percent of the population, accounted for 51 percent of the lawyers,
46 percent of the physicians and 39 percent of the engineers.49 In the United
States today, Jews, who are 2 percent of the population, have been 83 percent
of the founding fathers of the movie industry,50 61 percent of the songwriters
and lyricists for the top ten movie songs of the first 100 years51 and 58 percent
of directors, writers and producers of the most highly rated television series
and best-grossing motion pictures. Jews have been 60 percent of the leading
100 intellectuals,52 40 percent of American Nobel prize winners,53 40 percent
of the ten donors of the largest philanthropic gifts,54 28 percent of the stu-
dents in Ivy League schools and 20 percent of the members of the Forbes
400.55
Israel, the small Jewish nation, has achieved the cutting edge of modernity
and pioneered in so many areas. In communal forms, they created kibbutzim,
moshavim, youth aliyah villages and Nahal military settlements. In educa-
tion, they have four elite universities (Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University,
Weizmann Institute and Technion) and have created a new education form,
the mechina program for advancement of underprivileged youth to the col-
lege level.56 In technology they are in the world’s elite in biotechnology (1,500
startups, number three in the world), high technology (4,000 high-tech com-
panies with $10 billion in exports) and military technology (UAV, Arrow
ABM system, Uzi machine guns, Tactical High Energy Laser program, Boost
Phase Intercept). Israel’s scientific papers are cited more often than those of
India or China and at a higher rate per capita than any other country in the
world.
Palestinian Jews early on embraced modernization and education. In 1930,
78 percent of Palestinian Jewish youth from 5 to 14 were in primary school, a
level higher than in West Germany and Italy and equal to that of Austria. In
1950 the Israeli literacy rate of 97 percent exceeded that of Italy, equaled that
of the First World and far exceeded that of neighboring countries such as
Egypt (24 percent) and Lebanon (47 percent) and even Taiwan (47 percent).57
Non-Jewish support for Israel

Despite strong international support for the Arabs and Palestinians, there has
been a significant amount of non-Jewish support for Israel. While this is weak
in the Third World and modest but growing in Europe, it remains strong in
the United States. Christian Zionists, motivated by a Restorationist ideology
that sees the return of the Jews to Israel as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy
presaging the End of Days, have been a powerful pro-Israel force in the
United States. Christian Zionists represent 40–60 million evangelical and
fundamentalist Christians. They see Israel as one of the keys to survival of
Judeo-Christian civilization, are impressed by the Orthodox revival in Israel
and overwhelmingly support Israel.58 A 1999 poll found that 93 percent of
Americans have a Bible at home, 79 percent of children get religious instruc-
tion, 66 percent believe that Jesus will return to earth and 46 percent believe
that God promised the land of Israel to the Jews.59
The roots of the religiosity of Americans lie in the lack of a state Church,
the separation of Church and state and the massive migration of religious
minorities and dissidents to the United States. Early American history is
suffused with the role of the Puritan dissidents, the two Great Awakenings
and numerous revivals. The Puritans, through strict Sabbath laws, devotion
to reading the Bible, stress on the Old Testament, interest in the Hebrew
language and often seeing the Jews as the key to their hopes of a return to
Palestine, saw themselves as the Children of Israel. The early British Protestant
fascination with the restoration of the Jews to the Promised Land was brought
to the New World.60
The first Great Awakening (1734) was followed in the next century by many
clerics seeing the Jews as the forerunner of the Second Coming. American
experiences of coming to a new land and conquering the wilderness gave rise
to frequent parallels with the experience of the ancient Jews in the Promised
Land. John Darby in the 1830s preached dispensational pre-millennialism in
the apocalyptic tradition which would influence Cyrus Scofield, William
Blackstone and Dwight Moody. The fundamentalist Darby stressed to the
Plymouth Brethren that the ingathering of Jews to Israel was a necessary
prelude to the End of Times. Darby asserted that human history is a succes-
sion of dispensations with the covenant, with the current one preceding the
Second Coming. True Christians are prepared by God for the rapture of
the true Church.61
Cyrus Scofield produced the fundamentalist Scofield Study Bible which
since 1909 has been printed in 10 million copies as the primary tool of religious
instruction in the United States. Jesus Is Coming (1878), written by William
Blackstone, sold over 1 million copies. In 1891 he produced the first memorial
for President Benjamin Harrison, signed by 413 prominent Americans,
including John Rockefeller, Cyrus McCormick, J. Pierpont Morgan, the
Chief Justice of the United States, the Speaker of the House and leading
journalists, writers and editors. In reaction to the 1881 pogroms in Russia, the
memorial asked:
What shall be done for Russian Jews? Why not give Palestine back to
them again? According to God’s distribution of nations, it is their home,
an inalienable possession, from which they have been expelled by force.
Let us now restore them to the land of which they were so cruelly
despoiled by our Roman ancestors.62
A second memorial was given to President Wilson in 1916.63

Two leading fundamentalist seminaries have played a key religious and
political role. The Moody Bible Institute, founded by Dwight Moody in 1886
in Chicago, has 30,000 graduates, most of whom have gone on to careers
ranging from pastors to missionaries. Many leading authors have attended
this institute, which publishes 60 books and almost 3 million copies of the
Bible every year. The Moody Institute stresses the inerrancy of the Scriptures,
the Virgin Birth, the miracles, Jesus Christ atoning for sins and his bodily
resurrection. The Dallas Theological Seminary, founded in 1924, which also
believes in the inerrant Bible and dispensational pre-millennialism, has over
8,000 alumni and graduates such as Hal Lindsey, whose The Late Great
Planet Earth (1970) was the bestselling novel of the decade.64
Several figures have played a notable role. First, there was Dr. Douglas
Young, who founded in 1957 the Holy Land Institute that became the
Jerusalem University College and in 1971 the International Christians for
Israel Movement. His successor, Clarence Wagner, who also saw Israel as a
Jewish state legitimized by Biblical, historical and moral mandate, founded
the Bridges for Peace and issued Updates from Jerusalem. They distributed
teaching videos, media material, aid for the hungry and support for Israel in
offices in dozens of countries. Then there was Jan Willem van der Hoeven,
who in 1980 in response to a United Nations Security Council resolution
calling on all states to withdraw their embassies from Jerusalem, founded the
International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. This embassy, representing
Christian Zionists around the world, encouraged Christian visitors, Jewish
aliyah and helping immigrants. In 1985 it staged the First Christian Zionist
Congress in Basel, declaring its powerful support for Israel. Other significant
groups include Christian Friends of Israel, National Christian Leadership
Conference for Israel, Voices United for Israel, the Religious Roundtable,
Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, Christian Israel Public Action
Campaign and Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary (Germany).65
Politically, a number of fundamentalist Protestants have played an import-
ant role in mobilizing American support for Israel. They have included
Pat Robertson, John Hagee (Christians United for Israel) and other leading
forces in the Church.
The alliance with the democratic West and defeat of its enemies
Much of the Arab world has repeatedly chosen to ally itself with the enemies
of the West – Ottoman Turkey, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Nasser’s
Egypt, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Islamic fundamentalism. The Jews, by
nature modernizers and Westerners, have repeatedly allied with the demo-
cratic, revolutionary West – Great Britain (the Balfour Declaration), France
(1955–67) and the United States (1962–2007). The Israelis, who had internal
democratic elections even before statehood, agreed with their first prime
minister, David Ben Gurion, who declared in 1941:
There is an external precondition for Zionist policy – democracy. Zionist

policy is inconceivable under dictatorship . . . In Russia, Germany and
Italy . . . Jews ceased to be a factor and these countries ceased to be an
address for Zionist policy . . . Wherever you do not have free speech, free
thought, free press, free communications, free entrance and free exit . . .
there is no possibility whatsoever for the implementation of Zionist pol-
icy . . . Zionist policy is based upon the action of the masses . . . Zionism
is built upon the fact that part of the world is democratic.66
While in the 1930s Ben Gurion sought an alliance with the United States,
Chaim Weizmann sought an alliance with Great Britain. From 1955 to 1966
Israel was aligned with France and then from 1967 until today with the United
States. While in 1750 Europe and North America contributed 25 percent of
world industrial production, by 1913 this figure had risen to 90 percent. As
Michael Mann observes, “Industry could be converted into massive military
superiority.”67 In the last 60 years the rise of the American Century has meant
that Israeli alliance with the West and especially the United States has paid
great dividends.
Equally important was the international arena. Had Ottoman Turkey
survived World War I, had Nazi Germany won World War II or had the
Soviet Union won the Cold War, there would have been no Israel. The Arabs,
who mostly favored Ottoman Turkey in World War I, Nazi Germany in the
1930s and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, would have been the winners.
If the United States had not ended open immigration after 1924, most
migrating European Jews would have found their way to New York and not
Tel Aviv.68
But Israel backed the democratic Western winners while the Arabs backed
the losers. This gave Israel the space to survive and flourish. In the Cold War
and post-Cold War era, a democratic, increasingly capitalist Israel could find
its place in the sun. By backing losing authoritarian and repressive regimes,
the Arabs lost a great deal.
The alliance with democratic France brought great benefits. In 1955 Israel
broke the Western arms embargo by buying from France 24 Ouragon fighters
and 30 modern AMX 13 tanks.69 In a 1956 arms deal with France worth
$80 million, Israel bought 300 Super Sherman tanks and 36 Mystere 4A jet
fighters. Israel established the Dimona nuclear reactor and program with
French help.70 During the 1956 Sinai Campaign, 3,000 French soldiers
arrived in Israel, two French battleships guarded the Israeli coast and two
French air squadrons deterred attack on the Israeli homeland. Although the
slow British–French advance started on the Egyptian mainland eight days
after the first Israeli paratroop drop at the Mitla Pass, it helped Israel win the
Sinai Campaign.71 From 1962 to 1966 Israel imported $107 million worth of
arms annually from France.72
In 1948 American recognition of Israel was of vital importance. While not
directly providing economic or military aid in the first decade of Israel’s
existence, the American Import–Export Bank provided a $100 million loan in
1949, and in the first few years the majority of Israeli capital imports came
from public and private sources in the United States.73 John Kennedy in 1960
spoke for the first time of a “special relationship” with Israel. In 1962
President Kennedy, assuring Foreign Minister Golda Meir of aid if Israel
were attacked by an aggressor, sold six batteries of Hawk anti-aircraft mis-
siles to Israel. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson sold 210 American Patton
M48A tanks to Israel and, in 1966, 48 Skyhawk fighter-bombers.74
After the victory in the Six Day War in 1967 the alliance with the United
States became a strong one. From 1967 to 1969 the United States exported
$290 million worth of arms a year to Israel; from 1970 to 1972 the figure rose
to $550 million a year.75 After the 1973 Yom Kippur War the United States
provided $1.8 billion in arms and $1.2 billion in economic assistance to its
ally in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. This figure declined only in the
late 1990s when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began a ten-year
phase-out of economic aid. But in 2007 it may begin to increase, as President
Bush has proposed a ten-year program of providing $3 billion worth of
military aid a year to Israel for ten years.
Unlikely alliances
The international political and security system frequently provides strange
bedfellows. In World War I the democratic British and French allies (former
enemies for 750 years) united with autocratic Tsarist Russia to form the
Entente. In World War II the democratic British and American allies joined
with the despotic Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
When Lord Palmerston declared that Britain had no permanent allies, only
permanent interests, he spoke for all nations, not just Britain.
One unlikely Israeli ally has been Jordan. Given that its Arab Legion,
trained, armed and officered by the British, represented the greatest potential
threat to Israel in 1948, its decision to reach a “secret political alliance” in
1948 was a gift of the first magnitude for the Jews. These “two seemingly
unlikely partners,” even more so because Jordan had a Palestinian majority,
found much to push them together – fear of a Palestinian Arab state that
would threaten their survival, distrust of the radical Palestinian leader Haj
Amin Al-Husseini, fear of the intentions of other Arab states, the need to
preserve their new states and worry of the consequence of total war. While
Golda Meir did not prevent Transjordan from seizing the West Bank and
East Jerusalem in 1948, King Abdullah refrained from attacking Israel within
the borders set by the 1947 United Nations Resolution 181. In 1951, when he
was assassinated, he had worked out a potential peace treaty with Israel. In
1967 King Hussein reluctantly attacked Israel and in 1973, at a critical junc-
ture, refrained from attacking Israel. In turn, in 1970 Israel helped to prevent
a Syrian victory when its forces invaded Jordan after Black September. From
1970 to 1994 the two sides met frequently in secret and in 1994 signed the
Israel–Jordan Peace Treaty.76
In 1948 the Israelis found that the West would not sell them the arms
needed to win the War of Independence. The increasingly anti-Semitic and
Communist Soviet Union, which had destroyed Zionism and repressed
3 million Soviet Jews, seemed an unlikely source of help. But Stalin saw the
British Empire as the greatest rival of the Soviet Union.77 The creation of
Israel would harm the empire and cause conflict in the region. The power
of the Israeli Left (Mapam, Palmach and kibbutzim) suggested that Israel
might become a Soviet satellite.
This was not the first time that the Soviet Union was objectively pro-Jewish.
The major role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany in World War
II was a powerful contribution to the creation of the state of Israel. Without
this victory, there could have been no Israel in 1948. The survival of 2.5 million
Soviet Jews and 1.8 million European Jews was due significantly to the Red
Army. During the height of Soviet support for the Arabs (1967–91), the
Soviet Union urged the Arabs not to go to war (the War of Attrition and
the Yom Kippur War, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) and seek a peaceful
solution.78
The brief Soviet flirtation with Israel (1947–48) was important. Foreign
Minister Andrei Gromyko in May 1947 supported the passage of Resolution
181 providing for the partition of Palestine. As he declared:
A large number [of survivors] are in camps . . . and are continuing to

undergo great privations. The fact that no Western European state has
been able to ensure the defense of the elementary rights of the Jewish
people . . . explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own
state. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny
this right of the Jewish people.79
Gromyko’s speech exploded “just like a bomb” with great influence not
only on the Communist bloc but on the Americans as well. Superpower
competition was unleashed with a dynamic that favored the Jews. At his first
meeting with Jewish Agency representatives, Soviet delegate Tsarpkin toasted
“the Jewish state that will come.” Jewish Agency delegates shuttled daily
between Soviet and American offices, leading Moshe Sharett to declare that
“What happened to us with the Soviet Union was nothing but a miracle.” On
November 29, 1947 it was the Soviet Union that pressed for the vote that gave
Israel the right to declare a state and pushed for UN troops to implement
the resolution. After the vote, it opposed efforts by UN mediator Count
Bernadotte to shrink the area allocated to a Jewish state.80
From 1945 to 1950 the Soviet Union allowed 280,000 Polish, Hungarian,
Romanian and Czechoslovak Jews to board refugee ships to Palestine. In
May 1948 the Soviet Union recognized Israel four days after its declaration
of independence. Soviet and Eastern European votes for the creation of the
state of Israel in November 1947 at the United Nations and the transfer of
Czechoslovak weapons to Israel in 1948 were important to the creation of the
state of Israel. In 1948 Israel bought $23 million worth of weapons from
Czechoslovakia, compared to $2 million for Syria and a minimal amount for
Egypt. This included 46,800 rifles, 6,100 machine guns, 80 million rounds
of ammunition and 89 airplanes.81 David Ben Gurion said, “They [Soviet
weapons] saved the State. There is no doubt of it. Without these weapons, it’s
doubtful whether we could have won. The arms deal with the Czechs was the
greatest assistance we received.”82
However, the Soviet Union generally fought Zionism, tried to prevent the
creation of Israel and, after a brief flirtation in 1948, by 1955 had begun
arming Arab armies and training terrorist groups seeking to destroy the
Jewish state. It was responsible for powerful anti-Semitic and anti-Israel
campaigns over decades. As early as October 1948 it asked Czechoslovakia to
stop selling military equipment to Israel.83
While the British Empire was in the late 1930s and 1940s hostile to the
Jews, it also made a major contribution from 1917 to 1937. Initially, the
British Empire had been friendly towards the Jews and a Jewish state. This
sentiment built on the support of such nineteenth-century Christian Zionists
as George Eliot (author of Daniel Deronda), Lord Palmerston and Benjamin
Disraeli (author of Tancred), who wanted to see a Jewish return to Palestine.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1920 San Remo Conference support for
a British Mandate in Palestine based on the Balfour Declaration, and the
1922 League of National Mandate for Palestine calling for establishing a
Jewish national home in Palestine were very positive. In 1922 the House
of Commons even approved the British government Mandatory policy by
292 to 35.84
Much of the British elite, for a mixture of religious Biblical sentiment,
minimum cost and practical reasons (a pro-British Jewish buffer region in
the Middle East and guarding the route to India, the desire for Russian and
American Jews to support the Allied war effort, a desire to oust the French
from Palestine, fear of a preemptive German recognition of Jewish rights in
Palestine, gratitude for Weitzman’s war and diplomatic efforts), was support-
ive of the Zionist endeavor in the critical 1917–22 period. This was true after
the end of the hostile Asquith government and rise to power of the friendly
government of Prime Minister Lloyd George (December 1916 until October
1922) and Foreign Secretary Arthur Lord Balfour. Their support for the
Zionists coincided with the dissolution of the Ottoman Turkish Empire
and British liberation of Jerusalem in December 1917. The issuance of the
Balfour Declaration at the end of October 1917, a mere six weeks before
General Edmund Allenby’s army marched into Jerusalem, was a result of
exquisite timing.85
The British conquest of Palestine in late 1917 and 1918 crushed the hostile
Ottoman Turkish Empire and opened the door for the realization of the
Zionist dream. The appointment as British high commissioner to Palestine of
Viscount Herbert Samuel, a British Jew supportive of the Zionist enterprise
(1920), seemed to symbolize the British embrace of Zionism. In the early
1920s the British envisioned a Jewish state with 3–6 million Jews, created
through immigration of 50,000–80,000 immigrants per year.86
During the 1920s and 1930s, the British authorities allowed the immigra-
tion of 400,000 Jews, belatedly repressed the 1929 Arab riots and Arab Revolt
(1936–39), built a port in Haifa, constructed roads, schools, hospitals, ports,
railways and electric power and recognized Hebrew as an official language of
the Mandate.87 The British Mandatory government also created a legal sys-
tem, solid bureaucracy and equitable treatment of all groups that benefited
the Jewish community in Palestine. The British authorities allowed the Yishuv
to create a democratic assembly (1920), legally recognized Knesset Israel
(1926, with separate recognition for the Orthodox) and permitted the Yishuv
and local councils to collect their own taxes (1930), build key institutions and
gain 30 years of party experience by all segments of the Jewish world. During
the 1930s and 1940s the Jewish community built a state within a state that ran
its own economy, health care, education and, quietly, defense forces. During
the Arab Revolt and World War II it tolerated some limited and semi-legal
development of military units (Haganah, Palmach) for fear of the Arabs and
the Germans.88
During World War II the British army and navy protected the Jews of
Palestine from the Nazi panzer divisions of Erwin Rommel and smashed
support for the forces of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. British victories in
the Middle East in World War II and the crushing of pro-Axis forces in Syria
(1940) and Iraq (1941) were central to the future creation of the Jewish state.
The British military informally worked with the Haganah, even training
Jewish guerrillas, handing over arms and explosives when the German threat
to Palestine was palpable in 1942.89 The Jews, as part of the British colony,
enjoyed participation in the sterling bloc, manufacturing for the British war
effort (Solel Boneh became the biggest such company in the region), an open
market for Jaffa oranges and pounds from British tourists and military and
civilian personnel. Even the form of government run by the British was
superior to anything else in the region.90
The British played a significant role in the creation of the state. Unlike
in most of their colonies where they supported traditional strong men, in
Palestine even in the 1930s they supported or did not oppose strong Jewish
institutions. For, as Migdal observed:
Perhaps the single most important event in the formation of what would
become Israeli society was the British hewing of Palestine out of the
larger Ottoman Empire . . . Only with the beginning of British rule . . .
did the local Jews begin to develop autonomous institutions . . . The
array of new British and Zionist organizations in Palestine was critical in
Jewish society formation, bridging some of the previous cleavages among
Jews and thus preventing social fragmentation . . . British state organiza-
tions were entirely new, of course, and lent a whole new dimension to
Jewish society . . . The new coherence to Jewish society created by the
demarcation of a country called Palestine by the British allowed Zionist
leaders to challenge domination by Jewish institutions from outside
Palestine . . . British control, then, provided a framework for the estab-
lishment of a Jewish society whose outer social boundaries were those of
the newly mandated territory. The critical elements that the colonial
state provided, besides the boundaries themselves, were the rights of the
Zionists to create countryside institutions for all Jews and of Jews
worldwide to immigrate to Palestine.91
Even during the height of British hostility to the Jews from 1945 to 1949, a
British Empire weakened by World War II and the Cold War did help the
nascent state of Israel. It withdrew from Palestine, refused to provide signifi-
cant arms supplies to the Arabs for 18 months after April 1948 and never
implemented its October 1948 Plan A and Plan B to aid the Arab Legion and
destroy the Israeli air force and armored units.92
Too, even the Holocaust did have one residual effect (if anything of this
kind can be said of such an horrific event). For Diaspora Jewry, it:
did shatter all hopes of remaining in the European or Middle Eastern

Diasporas for those who remained. For North American Jews and
Palestinian Jews, the Zionist ideology of the ineradicable hostility of
the non-Jews seemed totally true and the only solution a Jewish state. For
the few hundred thousands of Holocaust survivors there now was only
one dream: to go to Palestine. After the war a United Nations Relief
Agency survey in the camps found that 97 percent wanted to go to
Palestine.93
British Biblical romanticism

An important religious ideological component in the success of Zionism has
been provided by British Protestant Biblical romanticism in the last 400 years.
With the invention of the printing press (1450s), the Protestant Reformation
(1517) and relative freedom during and after the twin English revolutions
(1640s, 1688–89), British Protestants focused on reading the Bible and apply-
ing it to their lives. Jews themselves were banned from Great Britain from
1290 to 1656, anti-Semitism among British Protestants remained quite strong
for centuries, and current British Protestant thought is often markedly anti-
Israel. Yet much of American fundamentalism and international sentiment in
favor of the Jews returning to their ancient homeland is owed to British
Protestant thought starting in the seventeenth century. As Gerhard Falk has
observed, “The influence of English Protestantism on the restoration of the
Jewish people to their ancient land cannot be exaggerated.”94
English literature, while replete with harsh depictions of Jews (Shylock in
Shakespeare, Fagin in Charles Dickens, Fernandez in Trollope), also has fea-
tured a number of positive portrayals of the Promised Land and calls for
Jewish restoration to Palestine. John Milton and William Blake respectively
wrote poems about the Promised Land and Jerusalem. In the nineteenth
century Walter Scott in Ivanhoe called for Jewish restoration and George
Eliot in Daniel Deronda wrote the first Christian Zionist novel.95
During the English Revolution, the Puritans, led by Oliver Cromwell (who
approved the return of the Jews to Great Britain in 1656), were sympathetic
to the Hebraic idealism of the Bible and Jewish suffering and hoped to fulfill
the prophecy of the Jewish restoration to Palestine. Puritans, as we have seen
earlier, often hoped for the Jewish return to Palestine as the key to their hopes
of the End of Days. There could be no kingdom of Jesus without the Jewish
return to Palestine. Reading the Bible in the vernacular led many Protestants
to identify with the Jews of the Holy Scriptures. The emergence of a nation
state in Great Britain led many to nationalize the New Israel as the elect
nation. The end of universal Christendom led them to view themselves as the
elect people, as the Children of Israel. Even many Anglicans and realists were
philo-Semitic as well. John Locke and Isaac Newton learned Hebrew and
favored Jewish restoration to Palestine.96
In the nineteenth century an evangelical revival propelled many Protestants
in the Anglican Church towards the Jews and Zionism. John Darby and his
Plymouth Brethren in 1831 provided the religious basis for later American
fundamentalism and Armageddon theology. William Hechler, chaplain to the
British embassy in Vienna, favored the Jewish return and was active in Zionist
movements and a friend of Theodor Herzl in the 1890s. He thought a return
would hasten the Last Days foretold in the Bible. The seventh Earl of Shaft-
esbury, who influenced Lord Palmerston, expected the End of Times after the
Jews returned to Palestine. As late as 1906, 6 million children were studying in
Sunday schools, half of them run by non-conformists.97
Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who had in his youth been tutored by
a part-time Baptist preacher uncle, declared that “I was taught far more
about the history of Israel than about the history of my own people.” Foreign
Secretary Arthur Balfour, who sent the declaration to Lord Rothschild, in a
1922 House of Lords debate declared that he supported the British Mandate
in Palestine:
in order that we may send a message to every land where the Jewish race
has been scattered, a message that will tell them that the Christian domin-
ions . . . [are] not unmindful of the service that they have rendered to
the great religions of the world, and most of all to the religion that the
majority of Your Lordships’ house profess.98
This tradition also impacted some Labor leaders. In the 1920s a religious
Labor prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, wrote a book called A Socialist
in Palestine (1921). Labor Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson was an early
Zionist.99
So many diverse international factors thus played a role in the survival
and successes of Israel. Some were deliberate and logical, such as democratic
Israel’s support for the winning Western allies in the last 60 years, and the
support of the Diaspora for Israel before and after statehood in all its ramifi-
cations. Others were fortuitous parallel relationships, in which Israel’s needs
wholly or partly coincided with those of its otherwise rivals and enemies, such
as the Soviet Union after World War II or the British Empire during and after
World War II. Some were totally fortuitous, such as the British Protestant
romantic fascination in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with
the Biblical return of the Jews to the Holy Land and the strong American
Christian Zionist fundamentalist support for modern Israel. All played a role
in helping revolutionary Israel overcome great obstacles to its existence, some
of them ironically caused by some of these same forces – the Soviet Union,
the British Empire after 1937 and British Protestantism after 1948.
15 Conclusions
Harry Truman once said that the only thing new in this world is the history
that you don’t know. About no country is this truer than for Israel.
For several decades before and after the creation of the state of Israel,
there was recognition that something unusual had occurred in the inter-
national arena. The word “miracle” was used to describe how a people had
arisen from the ashes of the Holocaust to create a state. A small, weak,
persecuted and dispersed people, after almost 2,000 years of Exile, had
returned to their homeland, fulfilling a Biblical prophecy, and overcome great
powers to create a state. In the decades after 1948 they had created a strong
First World country in the midst of the mostly Third World Middle East that
largely shunned them and started numerous wars to destroy them.
This should have led to an outpouring of works about this remarkable
feat. This would be even more likely since Third World success stories, until
recently, have been few and far between. And yet, as we have seen, the story
has been widely ignored.
The importance of the Israel story for the world

Political science, informed by theories from Marxism to structural functional-
ism, has tended to be rather deterministic. Many deep geographic, demo-
graphic, economic, political, military and cultural factors have structurally
determined the world order of the last hundred years. The demise of multi-
ethnic empires, the rise of the Third World, the transition to democracy and
capitalism and the rise and fall of great powers reflected these deep trends. So
too did the victory of the West over Communism in the Cold War and the
Allied triumphs in both world wars reflect the correlation of forces.
Yet structural determinants, while favoring certain outcomes, have not
totally determined them, especially in times of crises during and after World
War I and World War II. Nor could they predict the future, because of the
idiosyncrasies of human nature and the human ability to learn from the past.
In the interstices created by the crises a number of voluntarist factors dis-
cussed in this book could play a key role. The structural factors – economic,
political, military and ideological – did not favor the creation of Israel. But
Conclusions 199
voluntaristic, human and individual factors – the will to power, the willing-
ness to fight and die, the presence of capable leaders, pragmatic short-term
decisions, ideas, consciousness and even accidents – could turn unlikely prop-
ositions into solid realities.
This was true of the outcomes of wars and revolutions often unpredicted
by sage observers working within the structural and deterministic constraints.
Wars and revolutions, seen by Hannah Arendt as the leading forces of
the twentieth century, have often gone in unforeseen directions. In a post-
modernist world that often deprecates wars and revolutions, their occurrence
and outcomes have been decisive both in the world at large and in the creation
and flourishing of Israel.
Major wars have often gone in unforeseen directions. Soviet victories in
front of Moscow in 1941 and Stalingrad in 1942, the Chinese victory over the
United States in Korea in 1950, the Vietnamese victory over the United States
in 1975 and the Afghan victory over the Soviet Union in 1988 all shared one
thing – they had been predicted by very few observers and were not totally
explicable in terms of deep structural forces.
Revolutions also have gone in largely unexpected and unpredicted direc-
tions. Who in the 1640s expected the English Revolution or the decapitation
of King Charles I? Who in 1777 thought the ill-armed and ill-financed
American rabble could hold out against the redcoats of the world’s strongest
power? Who in 1848 thought that the verdicts would soon be reversed on the
triumphant revolutions sweeping Europe? Who in February 1917 thought
the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty would soon fall? Who in 1978 thought the
Iranian Revolution was possible or worse inevitable?
The answers come not simply from political structuralism but from the
historical voluntarism that gave rise to the creation and flourishing of Israel.
For it was the strong will to power and the willingness of men to fight and die
that brought all the radical movements to power over the opposition of
stronger forces. This created what Trotsky called “the samurai” of the revolu-
tion in the Russian civil war. It was seen by the greater willingness of Chinese
Red Army soldiers and Vietnamese soldiers to fight and die in their respective
struggles against the Guomindang and the Americans. In the great revolu-
tions it was the willingness of the English rebels to be the “saints” of the
1640s and of the American soldiers to survive at Valley Forge, and the will
to fight of the Russian crowds in February 1917 that brought down the
Romanovs.
Then there was the role of the individual. Could there have been an
October Revolution without Lenin rallying the radicals in his “April Theses”
and “Letters from Afar” against the cautious majority of party leaders?
What would have happened to the Chinese Revolution after repeated defeats
of urban insurrection in 1926 and 1927 without Mao’s turning to peasant-
based insurrection? Individuals and small groups can matter and especially in
times of crises.
Organizational skills, with discipline, organization and unity, mattered as
well. The strong organization of the Bolsheviks, the Chinese Communists
and the Vietnamese Communists mattered in their ultimate victory. Look at
all the revolutionary failures, from Russia in 1825 and 1905, China during the
Taiping Rebellion, Europe in 1848 to France in 1871 to see how improbable
victory was without such skills.
Ideas and consciousness played a strong role. The rallying of Communism
and nationalism in Russia and China and the power of Islamic fundamental-
ism in Iran were important to victory. So too in World War II did the nation-
alism and patriotism of the Russian masses, reinforced by Nazi barbarism,
help turn the tide in 1941 and 1942.
Even accidents mattered in history. Had Lenin died in August 1918 when
he was shot by Fanya Kaplan, had Mao Zedong succumbed as so many
others did during the Long March, had Oliver Cromwell not survived the
three civil wars of the 1640s, the course of history might well have been
altered.
In short, the Israeli story of success, in overcoming great odds through
rallying the human and voluntarist element, showed the power of will, lead-
ership, organization and consciousness to triumph over the seemingly inevit-
able big battalions of history. The Israeli story thus helps us to understand
not only Israel but much that matters in world history. It also helps us to
understand the Arab story, which was lacking in will to fight and die, good
leadership, organizational skills and modernizing ideas.
Israel: the success story

Israel, despite being ridiculed by the left and despised by the anti-Semitic
right, is one of the rare countries in the world that has been a success both
from the socialist and the capitalist perspective. Israeli socialism was in many
ways more successful than its more authoritarian socialist counterparts in
the Communist world.
Unlike Russia, China, Vietnam and Yugoslavia, Israel, despite being sur-
rounded by enemies, created a vibrant tolerant democracy that included even
its Arab minority. In Israel, there were no Russian gulags, no Chinese re-
education camps or great proletarian cultural revolutions, no Cambodian
killing fields, no Eastern European show trials, no North Korean famines and
no reigns of terror. Its socialist leaders (1949–77) did not have large villas,
tolerate massive corruption, live sumptuously in private, hold lavish banquets
or give costly gifts to their children as in Communist and many Third World
states. Rather they, like David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir and Levi Eshkol, led
lives of Spartan simplicity.
They created new socialist forms marked by egalitarianism, sacrifice, ideal-
ism and sacrifice for society. The kibbutz, moshav, youth aliyah village and
nahal (military pioneering youth village) testified to the power of the socialist
ideal in Israel for many decades. The great success of the kibbutz in Israeli
society for decades stood in stark contrast to the miserable failure of the
Conclusions 201
Russian kolkhoz and sovkhoz and the Chinese commune, which had to be
dismantled in the 1980s.
Despite the higher burdens of security and terrorism, Israeli socialist leaders
were able to produce a considerably more successful economy than Russian
(1917–91), Eastern European (1947–87) and Chinese (1949–78) Communists.
By the end of the 1970s Israel was already poised to become a First World
economy with a strong high-tech sector. In the agricultural area, ever an
Achilles heel for the Communists, the Israelis were not only successful but
frequently exported their produce and technically proficient manpower
abroad. Israel made the transition from socialism to capitalism at a much
lower cost and more successfully than the Russian and Chinese Communist
regimes.
And yet, like the Communist states, Israel was able to win improbable
victories in wars against superior enemies, create a powerful state out of a
weak state and maintain a vast social welfare network to support the less
fortunate in society. It also propagated socialist values on as wide a scale
as, or a greater scale than, the Communist states.
Israel’s second partial capitalist revolution (1977–2007) has been successful
as well. Israel has vaulted into the First World with an $18,000 GNP per
capita, exports of $34 billion and production of over $10 billion of high-tech
goods. Its Silicon Wadi and military industry are in the top five in the world.
Its intelligence services and military services, together with its Arrow ABM
system (co-developed with the United States), are on the cutting edge of
global technology. Its agriculture remains world-class, as do its four leading
universities. In 2006 its FDI, thanks to large investments by Hewlett-Packard
(Mercury) and Warren Buffett (Iscar Metals), reached $13.6 billion.1 Israel
has been a major success story, especially when the backwardness of the
region and high burden of security and terrorism are taken into account.
Invisibility of the Israeli achievement

History, it is often said, is written by the winners. Clearly, this is the case for
the history of the major powers and most Third World countries. But, as in so
many other ways, the history of Israel is different. Its numerous accomplish-
ments have rarely received significant attention in the world of academia or
popular writing. And even the mainstream Israeli historians tend to focus on
smaller issues than the bigger issues. Thus, Israeli successes in the face of
great obstacles have often been ignored or even derided.
Especially after the Six Day War in 1967 and occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza Strip, liberal, radical, Communist, neutralist and Third World
opinion turned against Israel. One can search in vain for works that explain
the success of the Jews in creating a state in 1948 and flourishing by the first
decade of the twenty-first century.
There is great talk about other success stories – shining India, the Four
Tigers of Asia, the Celtic Tiger (Ireland), the Chinese century. While these
countries were remarkable success stories, none of them had to overcome
what the far-flung Jews had to overcome to create their state or make
it flourish. The great majority of Third World countries achieved their
independence against largely nominal colonial resistance (save for Algeria,
Vietnam and the like) in the territory where they had lived for centuries
in large numbers with distinctive cultures, languages, religions and ethnic
groups. The Israelis had none of these advantages and more dangerous
enemies.
A seeming miracle
But, if the current global configuration was structurally determined, then
how can we account for the rise and flourishing of Israel? For the correlation
of forces in the world was strongly negative for the rise and flourishing of
Israel. No other state succeeded against powerful and active resistance from
key central states (Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, the British
Empire 1937–49, the Ottoman Turkish Empire), regional powers (the Arab
states), major religious movements (Islam, Roman Catholicism, much of
mainline Protestantism) and most Third World states (the Muslim world,
China, India).
Against these forces, the Jews, decimated by the Holocaust and scattered
all over the world, constituted 0.2 percent of the world’s population. Unlike
the situation in all newly independent states, the great majority of the world’s
Jews did not live in the homeland. In 1900 less than 1 percent of the world’s
Jewish population (50,000 Jews) lived in Palestine and even in 1948 less than
7 percent (650,000 Jews) lived in Israel. Prosperous Jews in North America
were not interested in going to Israel, while immigrants to Israel were largely
poor and lacking education. It is no wonder that the Arab world has
remained in a state of shock that the Jews created a state in the heart of the
Arab Middle East and thrived.
Any objective marshalling of the evidence would suggest that most Israelis
are right when they see their history as miraculous. How could Israel, with
tiny numbers, minimal territory, no strategic depth, some Christian sympa-
thizers, no great power allies until after 1967 (except for France from 1956 to
1967) and unprecedented obstacles create a state, win seven wars and flourish
in the last six decades? How could a people so long oppressed, persecuted and
stigmatized as weak, passive and effeminate suddenly rise up, return to Israel
and create a modern powerful state in Zion after almost 2,000 years?
Given the correlation of force regionally and globally, Israel should never
have come into existence and certainly never have flourished. Rather, the
Holocaust in 1941–45 and the destruction of the nascent state of Israel in
1947–48 should have been seen as a process of the elimination of the Jews
from history.
Conclusions 203
The lasting legacy
The powerful and active resistance of central and Third World states and
religious movements damaged the position of Israel for decades. The Nazi
Holocaust devastated the future Jewish state by killing 6 million Jews, or
over 40 percent of all Jews in the world, the majority of those interested in
immigrating to Israel.
With 5 million North American Jews unwilling to go to Israel, those killed
in the Holocaust made up 60 percent of those interested in immigrating to
Israel and 75 percent of all Jews west of the deepest German penetration into
the Soviet Union. At least 2–3 million Eastern and Central European Jews,
who probably would have immigrated to Israel from the historical centers of
Zionism in Vilna, Kishinev, Odessa, Warsaw, Krakow and communities in
Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics, were now dead. They represented the most
Zionist stratum of world Jewry, those with the highest Jewish identification
and the highest family size outside of Middle East Sephardim. And now they
were gone. They left the new state with 650,000 Jews to fend off 27 million
hostile Arabs in the region.
The Soviet Union, which after the October Revolution in 1917 had the
strongest Zionist contingent in the world, seriously damaged the Jewish
cause. In 1917, 300,000 Russian Jews, often fervent in their beliefs, belonged
to the Zionist movement, which was quintessentially Russian and led pre-
dominantly by Russian Jews. In the 1920s the Soviet Union destroyed the
Zionist movement and from 1917 to 1978 allowed barely 100,000 Russian
Jews to go to Israel. But, although Stalin supported Israeli independence,
sent arms through Czechoslovakia and allowed 280,000 Eastern European
Jews ultimately to immigrate to Israel, he banned Russian Jewish immigra-
tion. In 1948 only one family of five people was allowed to go to Israel. Had
1–1.5 million Russian Jews been allowed to go to Israel, the impact would
have been huge. Their ranks would have included as many as 100,000 Russian
Jewish war veterans, including generals, colonels and majors, who had served
in the Red Army in World War II. With their help, Israel would not have lost
East Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, Latrun and the potash works in the Dead Sea.
Israel would have been more powerful in the 1950s than its rather weakened
state.
The third legacy was that left by the British Empire. While Great Britain
did in the early years follow the Balfour Declaration and allow 400,000 Jews
to immigrate to Palestine, in the late 1930s the British Empire slammed the
door on Jewish immigration. At a time when over 70 percent of German and
Austrian Jews fled abroad in the face of the oncoming Holocaust, the door
was closed to 7 million European Jews living west of the Soviet Union. With
almost all doors closed to Jewish immigration, perhaps 1–3 million European
Jews would have been saved and gone to Palestine in the late 1930s. This
would have transformed the situation of the Jews after World War II. Barely
10 percent of that number made their way to Israel, as most of the rest
perished in the Holocaust. After the war the British tried hard to keep
hundreds of thousands of European Jews from reaching Palestine and even
interned tens of thousands in Cyprus and elsewhere. Their contribution to
the war would also have been great.
The fourth legacy was left by the Ottoman Turkish Empire. It did
reluctantly allow tens of thousands of Jews to enter Palestine from 1881 to
1917 as the number of Jews rose from 25,000 in 1881 to 85,000 in 1915. But,
if the Turks had not repeatedly banned immigration and land sales and
imposed other restrictions, at least tens of thousands of Jews and possibly
100,000–200,000 Jews might have chosen Palestine over North America.
Their numbers, although small, could have been very important in the struggle
for power after 1918. But it was not to be.
Finally, there was the legacy of the Arabs. Their unremitting hostility (save
for Egypt and Jordan) and willingness to foment riots, revolts and intifadas
and participate in eight wars against Israel inevitably drained the state of
significant vitality and harmed its economy. Israel became a virtual garrison
state, could barely trade with its neighbors and had to stand ready to ward off
serious attack, on either its homeland or its offices abroad, at any time.
How many Jews decided to go to the United States rather than Israel
because of the security situation and the economic situation? We know that
their number had to be in the hundreds of thousands. When we add in the
roughly 750,000 Israelis who emigrated abroad from 1948 to 2007, the total
cost (there is always some emigration from every country) could easily have
been in the 300,000–500,000 range, a huge burden for a state that started in
1948 with 650,000 Jews.
The power of revolution

Many factors help explain Israeli success against steep odds. The two revolu-
tions, one socialist and one capitalist, played a powerful role in making Israel
a success story. Yet these revolutions were carried out despite many obstacles
that did not exist for central states in revolution. The central states did not
have to contend with small size and vulnerability, powerful external threats
to annihilate the state, the urgent need for foreign allies, the extreme hetero-
geneity of the population and massive immigration swamping the original
Yishuv. These factors helped Israel limit the radical, violent, repressive nature
seen in central state revolutions, like the Russian and Chinese revolutions,
and eased the transition to the capitalist nature of the second revolution
after 1977.
The revolutionary nature of the state produced a revolutionary party,
state, government and aliyah which radically transformed Jewish history
and changed a weak and dispersed, largely petty-bourgeois people into a
strong First World state with significant capabilities. In this way the twin
Israeli revolutions emulated the great societal impact of the English, French,
American, Russian and Chinese revolutions. The revolution, with its radical
Conclusions 205
ideas, organization, modernity and democracy, created a new Jewish world in
Israel, one far removed from the Eastern Europe shtetlakh or North African
and Middle East mellahs.
Second, there was the power of individuals, the power of human will,
leadership and sacrifice for a cause. The Israelis were more willing to fight,
sacrifice and die for their cause than the Arabs and Palestinians were for their
cause. This powerful will to fight, reinforced by the Holocaust and the Arab
proclaimed desire to throw the Jews into the sea, was seen in numerous Israeli
victories, self-sacrifice, voluntarism, collectivism and dedication to such
institutions as the army and the secret police. Israeli leaders such as David
Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Chaim Weizmann, Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon
were critical to ultimate victory.
There was the role of international alliances, historical accidents and
strange bedfellows. The democratic nature of Israeli society proved vital to
ultimate success. Time and again the Arabs sided with the authoritarian,
repressive and ultimately losing powers, from Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and at times Islamic fundamentalism. Israel
allied itself with democratic Great Britain (1918–45), France (1956–67) and
the United States (1962–2007), the winners in international politics. Israel,
with its democracy, socialism and then capitalism, allied itself naturally with
the democratic winners, who contributed greatly to both Israeli historical
success and Israeli economic development, high technology and education.
There was the role of historical accidents. Imperial German intervention to
save the Yishuv in Ottoman Turkey during World War I was important in
preserving the remnant in Palestine. The 1924 Johnson Act ending mass
immigration to the United States pushed many Jews towards Palestine rather
than the more attractive choice of the United States. British victories in the
Middle East in 1941 and 1942 preserved the Yishuv from Rommel’s Panzer
divisions ready to destroy the British colony of Palestine. Soviet and United
Nations support during the short but vital period from 1947 to 1952 was
improbable but vital to the Israeli declaration of statehood and victory in the
1948 War of Independence.
Finally, Israel flourished in large part because of the creativity, drive and
determination of the Jews, who had survived for 4,000 years. The techno-
logical and scientific success of Israel also reflects the traditional Jewish
values of education, learning and hard work. Today few echo the recent
words of Emanuelle Ottolenghi that:
Despite opposition, Zionism’s astonishing success – the fulfillment of its

goals within fifty-four years, its establishment achieved despite formid-
able challenges and tragedies faced by world Jewry in the twentieth cen-
tury – bears witness to the potency of ideas and the strength of its
appeal. . . Zionism revised the Jewish self-image, Jewish identity and the
place of Jews in the world in unforeseen ways. . . a veritable success. . . it
not only gave Jews a safe haven from persecution, it fostered the revival
of an original and modern national culture, and enabled Jews, in think-
ing and acting like a collective bestowed with national attributes, to be
masters of their own identity and, for better or worse, to be a people like
all other people.2
But this work has shown the power behind these rarely heard words. What
does all this mean for the future? This is not to say that Israel did not suffer
many failures. It has failed, in achieving real peace in the region, in treating its
minorities (Sephardim in the 1950s and 1960s, Arabs from 1948 to 1965 and
Russians in the 1990s) as well as it should have and in working out a modus
vivendi with the Palestinians. The gap between rich and poor is huge and
poverty is a major problem. Despite its accomplishments, Israel’s small popu-
lation and size, its long borders, the growing menace of a future nuclear-
armed Iran and 3 million Palestinians in the territories leave it at risk in the
future. The frantic nature of Israeli society, its ability to often overlook
unpleasant truths, and its willingness to at times repress those not part of the
debate also reflect the negative impact of revolution as well as the positive one.
Yet the factors that brought victory in the past – a strong will to fight,
revolution, democracy, the support of major world powers, strong high-tech,
biotech and nanotech capabilities, excellent Internet usage, and the first-rate
Silicon Wadi, military and intelligence services and educational system –
augur well in a world transiting to the New World Order. Sometimes a simple
fact – that oil-poor Israelis, who form 2 percent of the oil-rich Middle East,
account for 33 percent of the richest people in the region – shows the power
of the second capitalist revolution.3
For how much longer can the Arab–Persian Middle East remain the black
hole of the New World Order, virtually devoid of democracy, capitalism, civil
society, entrepreneurism, gender equality and the Internet? In the 1970s no
one imagined that, after a century of “shame and humiliation” and 25 years
of Maoist radicalism, China would dramatically move towards a powerful
capitalist economy. In the late 1980s no one saw authoritarian Eastern
Europe or neutralist India on the verge of joining the New World Order. But
that is what happened. Despite the surfeit of oil and lack of reform of Islam,
this may yet occur in the Middle East, ridden as it yet is by Islamic funda-
mentalist regimes ruling in Iran and Gaza and threatening to take power
throughout the region.
Israel, reviled in the region and around the world, through its numerous
attributes of a successful First World country may yet be showing the face of
the future to a region that has long scorned the Jewish state.
Notes
1 Introduction
1 See K. Phillips, The Cousin’s Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-
America, New York: Basic Books, 1999; J. Buchanan, The Road to Valley Forge:
How Washington Built the Army that Won the Revolution, New York: John Wiley
& Sons, 2004; E. Snow, Red Star over China, New York: Grove Press, 1968; and the
New York Times, October 26, 1917.
2 Herzl wrote in his diary after the First Zionist Congress at Basel in September
1897, “At Basel I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would
be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years and certainly in fifty,
everyone will know it.” See M. Gilbert, Israel: A History, New York: William
Morrow and Company, 1998, p. 15. Isaiah Berlin concurred that in 1900 “most
sane, sensible reasonable people, both Jews and gentiles, who heard of this [Herzl’s]
plan, regarded it as quite insane.” See I. Berlin, Personal Impressions, ed. H.
Hardy, New York: Viking Press, 1980, p. 33.
3 This is a quote from a leading Islamic thinker, Rashid Rida, in 1898. See
N. Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism before World War I, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1976, p. 45.
4 In 1882 Zeev Dubnov wrote to his brother (the historian Simon Dubnov) at the
time of the Bilu (First Aliyah pioneers in Palestine) about a Jewish state, “Don’t
laugh, it is not a mirage . . . there will come that splendid day whose advent was
prophesied by Isaiah in his fiery and poetic words of consolation . . . It does not
matter if that splendid day will only come in fifty years’ time or more.” See
D. Vital, The Origins of Zionism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 85. As
late as 1914 the Jews and the Zionists had no real international power. See
D. Vital, Zionism: The Crucial Phase, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987,
p. 190.
5 Even in 1908 religious Jews (Old Yishuv) outnumbered new socialist Jews (New
Yishuv) by as much as 50 percent. See Mandel, Arabs, p. 28. A. Ruppin, the
overseer of Jewish settlement development, in 1907 said that the majority of
Jews were still dependent on halukah (foreign charity). See W. Laqueur, A History
of Zionism, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972, pp. 152–4.
6 Imagine what an analyst would have written in 1800 when there were only 5,000–
10,000 Jews (mainly religious Sephardi Jews) in Palestine, constituting 3–7 percent
of the local population and an even tinier 0.2 percent of the 3 million Jews in
the world! See I. Troen, Imagining Zion, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2003, p. 6, and Vital, Origins, p.16.
7 The reference is to population figures for 1900. See Mandel, Arabs, pp. 48, 90.
Walter Laqueur referred to the Zionist movement in 1917 as being “of no political
importance” and provided the data on agricultural workers belonging to the
208 Notes
socialist parties. See Laqueur, History, pp. 287, 590. For the ownership, see Vital,
Zionism, p. 64.
8 Walter Laqueur spoke of the total isolation of the Zionists by 1939. See Laqueur,
History, p. 523.
9 American military analysts (including Marshall) concurred that the Yishuv “could
not withstand a concentrated military assault from an Arab world numbering over
50 million and in the early months of 1948 the Haganah seemingly fared poorly.”
See M. Urofsky, We Are One! American Jewry and Israel, New York: Doubleday,
1978, p. 170. For Montgomery, see Z. Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army, New
York: Macmillan, 1985, p. 32; and for Yadin, see I. Black and B. Morris, Israel’s
Secret Wars, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 39. For the CIA see Haaretz,
October 22, 2004, and for British intelligence officers see Gunther Rothenberg,
Anatomy of the Israeli Army: The Israel Defense Forces, 1948–1978, New York:
Hippocrene Books, 1979, p. 36. Their American patron, seeing the prospects for
success as “so dark,” spoke of delaying partition and creating a United Nations
trusteeship to replace the British Mandate. During the war, no fewer than 77,000
Jews were ousted from their homes, mainly in mixed cities like Jaffa, Jerusalem and
Tiberias. See Troen, Imagining Zion, p. 210.
10 D. Raviv and Y. Melman, Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of the Israel
Intelligence Community, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1990, p. 211.
11 Berlin, Personal Impressions, p. 37.
12 The calculation is that Jews, who formed 7–10 percent of the known world
1,700–2,000 years ago, should today be a similar percentage of 1.0–1.4 billion
people in Europe, Russia, North Africa and European fragments (United States,
Canada, Australia). This would yield a Jewish population today of roughly 100
million Jews. See H. Rubinstein, D. Cohn-Sherbok, A. Edelheit and W. Rubin-
stein, The Jews in the Modern World: A History since 1750, London: Arnold, 2002,
pp. 413–14.
13 Laqueur, History, p. 72. Moses Hess, who wrote Rome and Jerusalem, in 1851
declared that the Jews were “a soul without a body, wandering like a ghost through
the centuries” (Laqueur, History, p. 72).
14 Ibid., p. 57.
15 Vital, Zionism, pp. 1–2.
16 A. Oren, “Inside Track: A Disaster Waiting to Happen,” Haaretz, October 22, 2004.
17 M. Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 8th edn., London:
Routledge, 2005, p. 132.
18 S. Teveth, Ben Gurion: The Burning Ground 1886–1948, Boston, MA: Houghton
Mifflin, 1987, p. 591. Winston Churchill that same year proclaimed that “A Jewish
state is a mirage” (p. 597).
19 Ibid., p. 721.
20 Laqueur, History, p. 590.
21 Report of a 2004 conversation at the State Department at which Mossad was
considered to be the best by experts.
22 Business Week, October 11, 2004, p. 102.
23 Haaretz, January 11, 2007, and Industrial Cooperation Agency, High-Tech Leads
Israel Strong Economic Performance, Israel: Ministry of Trade, Industry and
Labor, 2007.
24 A. Arian, The Second Republic: Politics in Israel, Chatham, NJ: Chatham House
Publishers, 1998, p. 3.
25 Another Israeli study argues that the Four Tigers of Asia performed better than
Israel, which in turn did better than the bulk of the Third World. See E. Helpman,
“Israel’s Economic Growth: An International Comparison,” Israel Economic
Review, 1, 2003: 1–10. For further data, see A. Maddison, The World Economy:
Historical Statistics, Paris: OECD, 2003.
Notes 209
26 B. Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1969, pp. 56–8, 90–2.
27 So deep was the Jewish aversion to authority that the hit musical about the Jewish
shtetl Fiddler on the Roof featured a leading song entitled “God bless the Czar and
keep him far away from us.”
28 P. Medding, The Founding of Israeli Democracy, 1948–1967, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990, pp. 3–4. Other states, such as India and Costa Rica, had
non-democratic interludes. See also G. Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A
Framework for Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 151–5,
where he argues for the uniqueness of Israeli democracy.
29 P. B. Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire,
New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977. Two events famous in Jewish
history, the 1492 statement by Ottoman Turkish Sultan Bayezid II welcoming
Spanish Jewish exiles to emigrate to the Ottoman Turkish Empire and the trials
and tribulations of the First Aliyah in Ottoman Turkish Palestine, rate not an entry.
While they loom large in the Jewish imagination, they do not merit mention in a
general history of the empire. Palestine does not rate an entry in the seven-page
index.
30 E. Karsh (ed.), Israel: The First Hundred Years, London: Frank Cass, 2000. The
chapters that each deal with this subject are: E. Karsh, “Introduction,” Israel’s
Transition from Community to State, vol. 1, pp. 1–2; D. Tal, “The Forgotten War:
Jewish–Palestinian Strife in Mandatory Palestine, December 1947–May 1948,”
vol. 2, pp. 3–4; M. Nisan, “Israel 1948–98: Purpose and Predicament in History,”
vol. 3, pp. 4–6; and S. Sofer, “Towards Distant Frontiers: The Course of Israeli
Diplomacy,” vol. 4, p. 2. See also E. Karsh, Rethinking the Middle East, London:
Frank Cass, 2003, Preface, p. 191.
31 E. Said, Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
32 E. Karsh, Rethinking the Middle East, Preface, pp. 196–8.
33 D. Wheeler, “Does Post-Zionism Have a Future?,” in L. Z. Eisenberg, N. Caplan,
N. Sokoloff and M. Abu-Nimer (eds.), Traditions and Transitions in Israel Studies,
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003, pp. 159–80.
34 For a critique see D. Hazony, Y. Hazony and M. Oren (eds.), New Essays on
Zionism, Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2006.
35 A. Eban, My Country: The Story of Modern Israel, New York: Random House,
1972; M. Gilbert, Israel; L. Stein, The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel,
Westport: Praeger, 2003; A. Bregman, A History of Israel, Houndsmill, Basing-
stoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; and H. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the
Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 3rd edn., New York: Alfred Knopf, 2007.
36 B. Halpern and J. Reinharz, Zionism and the Creation of a New Society, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1998; Laqueur, History; M. Oren, Six Days of War: June
1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002; and Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State.
37 M. Barnett, “The Politics of Uniqueness: The Status of the Israeli Case,” in Israel
in Comparative Perspective, ed. M. Barnett, Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1996, p. 4 and Ch. 1.
38 M. Barnett, “Israel in the World Economy: Israel as an East Asian State?,” in
Israel in Comparative Perspective, ed. M. Barnett, Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1996, pp. 107–8.
39 R. Kook, “Between Uniqueness and Exclusion: The Politics of Identity in Israel,”
in Israel in Comparative Perspective, ed. M. Barnett, Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1996, pp. 199–200.
40 M. Barnett (ed.), Israel in Comparative Perspective, Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1996.
41 R. Hazan and M. Maor (eds.), Parties, Elections and Cleavages: Israel in
210 Notes
Comparative and Theoretical Perspective, London: Frank Cass, 2000. Gabriel
Sheffer, for example, showed that many emerging features of the Israeli political
system paralleled those emerging in Europe: a new social and political openness,
decline of old grassroots politics, increasingly assertive individualism, weakened
parties, decline in party mobilization, reliance on the state for finance, increasingly
flexible campaigns, increased volatility of voting, the professionalization of polit-
ics and rising role of religion and the right wing (p. 167).
42 James Burk compared Israel and the United States in his chapter “From Wars
of Independence to Democratic Peace: Comparing the Cases of Israel and the
United States,” in Military, State, and Society in Israel, ed. D. Maman, E. Ben-Ari
and Z. Rosenhek, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001, Ch. 2.
43 B. Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist
Politics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
44 Troen, Imagining Zion.
45 S. Cohen (ed.), Democratic Societies and their Armed Forces: Israel in Comparative
Context, London: Frank Cass, 2000.
46 A. Peled, A Question of Loyalty: Military Manpower Policy in Multiethnic States,
New York: Cornell University Press, 1998.
47 D. Horowitz, “Dual Authority Politics,” Comparative Politics, 14, 1982: 329–49.
48 D. Maman, E. Ben-Ari and Z. Rosenhek (eds.), Military, State, and Society in
Israel, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001.
49 J. Migdal, Through the Lens of Israel, Albany: State University of New York Press,
2001, p. 6; and M. Cohen, Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of
Modern Israel, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, p. xi.
50 The Taif Accords ended the Lebanese civil war in 1989 in which 150,000 people
died.
51 Y. Dror, “Weaving the Future of Israel,” in Global Politics: Essays in Honor of
David Vital, ed. A. Ben-Zvi and A. Klieman, London: Frank Cass, 2001, p. 367.
52 Burk, “From Wars of Independence to Democratic Peace,” p. 88.
53 S. Huntington, “Revolution and Political Order,” in Revolutions: Theoretical,
Comparative, and Historical Studies, 2nd edn., ed. J. Goldstone, Fort Worth, TX:
Harcourt Brace, 1993, p. 38.
54 See for example C. Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, New York: Vintage, 1965;
B. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Boston, MA: Beacon
Press, 1968; T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979; T. Gurr, Why Men Rebel, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1968; J. Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern
World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991; C. Tilly (ed.), The Formation
of the Modern European State System, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1975; and N. Keddie (ed.), Debating Revolution, New York: New York University
Press, 1995.
55 A. Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia
and the Middle East, 1914–1923, London: Routledge, 2001.
56 Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Ch. 1.
57 J. Frankel, “The Crisis as a Factor in Modern Jewish Politics, 1840 and 1881–1882,”
in Organizing Rescue: National Jewish Solidarity in the Modern Period, ed. S. I.
Troen and B. Pinkus, London: Frank Cass, 1992, p. 33.
58 J. Goldstone, “The Outcome of Revolutions,” in Revolutions: Theoretical, Com-
parative, and Historical Studies, ed. J. Goldstone, Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace,
1994, p. 194.
59 R. Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood,
Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2007, pp. xxvii–xxviii, xlvii, 203.
60 Interview with Saul Singer in the Jerusalem Post, February 16, 2004.
61 A. Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, New York: W.W. Norton,
Notes 211
2000, p. 597; and Z. Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s
Security and Foreign Policy, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
2 Controversy over Israel

1 For an excellent work on failure in the Middle East, see Bernard Lewis, What
Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
2 Unlike mainstream Western Jewish scholars (Bernard Lewis, Elie Kedourie,
Efraim Karsh) who have written extensively on Middle Eastern history, few Arab
scholars have written on the rise of Israel.
3 R. Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood,
Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2007, pp. 216–17; and J. Kovel, Overcoming Zionism:
Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, London: Pluto Press, 2007,
pp. 184, 233, 237.
4 J. Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
5 I. Troen, Imagining Zion, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, p. xiv.
6 H. Gerber, “Foreign Occupiers and Stepchildren: Zionist Discourse and the Pales-
tinians, 1882–1948,” in Arab–Jewish Relations: From Conflict to Resolution?, ed. E.
Podeh and A. Kaufman, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005, pp. 23–4, 93; and
H. Cohen, “Why Do Collaborators Collaborate? The Case of Palestinians and
Zionist Institutions, 1917–1936,” in Arab–Jewish Relations: From Conflict to
Resolution?, ed. E. Podeh and A. Kaufman, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press,
2005, pp. 40–5.
7 G. Shafir, “Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach,” in Israel in
Comparative Perspective, ed. M. Barnett, Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1996, Ch. 9.
8 E. Karsh, “Introduction,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years: Israel’s Transition
from Community to State, vol. 1, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass, 2000, p. 4.
9 For an excellent critique of the Arab and Israeli leftist version of Israel as a
colonialist society, see A. Bareli, “Forgetting Europe: Perspectives on the Debate
about Zionism and Colonialism,” in Israeli Historical Revisionism: From Left to
Right, ed. A. Shapira and D. Penslar, London: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 99–120.
10 In 1939 Europe had 10 million Jews, 7 million of them outside the Soviet Union.
In the one country (Germany) that allowed relatively open emigration from 1933
to 1939, 73 percent of all Jews emigrated abroad. Given the tight restrictions then
in place for Jewish emigration (the failure of the 1938 Evian conference), several
million would be a reasonable number.
11 D. K. Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires from the Eighteenth Century, New York:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966, pp. 11–22, 372; and G. Fredrickson, “Colonialism
and Racism: The United States and South Africa in Comparative Perspective,” in
The Arrogance of Race, ed. G. Fredrickson, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University
Press, 1988, pp. 218–21.
12 The estimated 10 million native Americans in 1750 today have dwindled to 1–2
million people.
New York Press, 1996, pp. 212–13. Only after the end of the colonial period did the
Jewish National Fund buy over 1,100 square miles of largely abandoned Arab land
from 1948 to 1951 and by the late 1950s control over 90 percent of the land of Israel.
14 Shafir, “Zionism and Colonialism,” pp. 232–3. In fairness to Shafir, the remainder
of his argument points to considering Israeli settlement colonial (or neo-colonial)
and accelerated after 1967. But many of the facts he cites can be used in the
manner above.
212 Notes
15 Gerber, “Foreign Occupiers and Stepchildren,” pp. 23–4.
16 Shafir, “Zionism and Colonialism,” p. 232.
17 This does not include the 3.4 million Arabs in Jordan, which was originally part of
historical Palestine and the mandate until severed from the original mandate by
the British in 1922 to give a kingdom to the Hashemites in Transjordan.
18 D. Penslar, Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in
Palestine, 1870–1918, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 7.
19 J. Mearsheimer and S. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
20 Kovel, Overcoming Zionism.
21 M. Oren, Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present,
New York: W.W. Norton, 2007, p. 488.
22 B. Reich, “The United States and Israel: The Nature of a Special Relationship,” in
The Middle East and Israel: A Historical and Political Reassessment, 3rd edn., ed.
D. Lesch, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003, Ch. 17.
23 B. Kimmerling and J. Migdal, The Palestinian People: A History, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, p. 322.
24 S. Spiegel, The Other Arab–Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Middle East Policy,
from Truman to Reagan, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985; and W.
Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab–Israeli Conflict since
1967, Washington, D.C. and Berkeley: Brookings Institution Press and University
of California Press, 1993.
25 M. Gazit, “The 1956 Sinai Campaign: David Ben Gurion’s Policy on Gaza, the
Armistice Agreement and French Mediation,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years:
From War to Peace?, vol. 2, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 47–8.
This embargo may have prevented a greater export of British arms to the Arab
side, but this point remains inconclusive.
26 Reich, “United States and Israel,” p. 251.
27 M. Nisan, “Israel 1948–98: Purpose and Predicament in History,” in E. Karsh
(ed.), Israel: The First Hundred Years: Israeli Politics and Society since 1948: Prob-
lems of Collective Identity, vol. 3, London: Frank Cass, 2000, p. 10; and Oren,
Power, Faith and Fantasy, pp. 524–70. Kissinger said that “We could not make our
policy hostage to the Israelis” (p. 533). But, later in the war, President Nixon said,
“Whatever it takes, save Israel” (pp. 533–4).
28 W. Laqueur, A History of Zionism, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972, p. 564.
29 H. Ben-Yehuda and S. Sandler, The Arab–Israeli Conflict Transformed: Fifty Years
of Interstate and Ethnic Crises, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002,
p. 124.
30 New York Times, September 27, 2006.
31 E. Karsh, “Introduction,” in E. Karsh (ed.), Israel: The First Hundred Years:
Israel’s Transition from Community to State, vol.1, London: Frank Cass, 2000. p. 2.
32 “Few Large Donations Go to Jewish Causes,” Forward, April 4, 2003.
33 Kovel, Overcoming Zionism, p. 207.
34 A. Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, New York: W.W. Norton,
2000, p. 598.
35 C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990–1990, Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell, 1990.
36 For a strong case made for the neo-realist opposition to idealism and pacifism, see
J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York: W.W. Norton,
2001.
37 This is not to deny the post-Zionist assertion that a significant number of Palestin-
ians were driven out during the 1948 war. There is no question that this is true but
for the majority of Palestinians, as in Haifa, this happened largely on their own
accord.
Notes 213
38 A. Cordesman, The Israeli–Palestinian War: Escalating to Nowhere, Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2005, p. 18.
39 Although in 1967 the Israelis ultimately preempted the Arab attack, the Egyptian
movement of 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks into the Sinai and closing the Straits
of Tiran precipitated the war.
41 Cordesman, Israeli–Palestinian War, pp. 3–8. Critics rightly point to the limita-
tions of this offer – leaving in place the majority of settlement blocs, no right
of return, no control over the Temple Mount, and a demilitarized state. See S.
Telhami, The Stakes: America and the Middle East, Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
2002, p. 119. Yet, in the history of international negotiations (such as the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk in 1918 or Versailles in 1919), this was a remarkably generous start-
ing offer to an oft defeated people, likely to be improved even further if Arafat had
responded positively.
42 At Taba in the “non-paper” Israel offered to give the Palestinians 100 percent of
Gaza and 94 percent of the West Bank, make Jerusalem an open city and divide
the Old City, take in 40,000 refugees in five years and support family reunification.
See Cordesman, Israeli–Palestinian War, pp. 78–91.
Routledge, 2005, p. 129; and Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinian People,
pp. 276–94. So bad was the economic crisis in the West Bank under Jordanian rule
(1948–67) that 400,000 Palestinian left it before 1967 (p. 295).
44 A. G. Frank, “The Sociology of Development and the Underdevelopment of
Sociology,” Catalyst, 3, Summer, 1963: 20–73; I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist
World-Economy, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979; and L. S. Stavri-
anos, Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age, New York: William Morrow and
Company, 1981.
45 E. Chowder, “The Zionist Revolution in Time,” in New Essays in Zionism,
ed. D. Hazony, Y. Hazony and M. Oren, Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2006,
pp. 142, 151.
Israel in Comparative Perspective, ed. M. Barnett, Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1996, pp. 113–17.
47 Zeev Maoz, for instance, makes frequent reference to some of these factors in his
work Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Security and Foreign
Policy, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
48 A. Shlaim, Iron Wall, pp. 21–2, 187, 229–30.
49 Ibid., pp. 40, 59, 221, 376.
3 The rise of Israel in comparative perspective

1 See J. Migdal, Through the Lens of Israel, Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2001, Ch. 2.
2 For the classic work on European fragments and new societies, see L. Hartz (ed.),
The Founding of New Societies, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964,
with contributions by Kenneth McRae, Richard Morse, Richard Rosecrance and
Leonard Thompson.
3 M. Ma’oz and G. Sheffer (eds.), Middle Eastern Minorities and Diasporas,
Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2002, p. 31.
4 J. McCarthy, The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001, pp. 82–3.
5 Ma’oz and Sheffer, Middle Eastern Minorities and Diasporas, pp. 32–7, 234–45;
and A. Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe,
Russia and the Middle East, 1914–1923, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 192–3.
214 Notes
However, in 1943 Muslims, through the new regions added to the state, were
already 40 percent of the state and Maronites made up only 32 percent.
6 A. Hourani, Minorities in the Arab World, London: Oxford University Press, 1947,
p. 37.
7 D. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, New York: Avon Books, 1989, p. 48.
8 M. Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, New York:
Random House, 2002, pp. 445, 449–50.
9 Ibid., pp. 453–4.
10 Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, Washington, D.C.: CIA, 2003,
chapter on Lebanon; Ma’oz and Sheffer, Middle Eastern Minorities and Diasporas,
pp. 36–7; and R. D. McLaurin (ed.), The Political Role of Minority Groups in the
Middle East, New York: Praeger, 1979, p. 276.
11 CIA, World Factbook, chapter on Armenia.
12 P. B. Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire,
New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977, pp. 553–63.
13 Macmillan, Paris 1919, pp. 378–9.
14 M. Weber, “What Is the State?,” in Political Thought, ed. M. Rosen and J. Wolff,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
15 As Mordechai Nisan depicted the Kurds, “Tribal life inhibited integral Kurdish
national unity while augmenting Kurdish particularism in relation to other groups,
the Kurds were unsuccessful in forging an adequately strong and coherent national
community.” See Nisan, Minorities in the Middle East, London: McFarland &
Company, 2001, pp. 34, 53.
16 Macmillan, Paris 1919, p. 445.
17 B. Brentjes, The Armenians, Assyrians and Kurds: Three Nations, One Fate?,
Campbell, CA: Rishi Publications, 1997, p. 130.
18 Nisan, Minorities, pp. 41–2.
19 Hourani, Minorities, p. 38.
20 McCarthy, Ottoman Peoples, p. 77.
21 Hourani, Minorities, pp. 96–7.
22 McLaurin, Political Role of Minority Groups, Ch. 7.
23 Fromkin, Peace, p. 400.
24 McLaurin, Political Role of Minority Groups, Ch. 7.
25 Hourani, Minorities, Ch. 9. The addition of Beirut and the coastal towns
enhanced the economic viability of the new state. But it endangered the Christian,
mainly Maronite, hold over Lebanon, a control which it lost in 1989 and 1991.
26 Ibid., pp. 95–6.
27 Ma’oz and Sheffer, Middle Eastern Minorities and Diasporas, p. 242.
28 Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism, p. 186.
29 Hourani, Minorities, p. 63.
30 McCarthy, Ottoman Peoples, p. 123.
31 See E. Shils, “On the Comparative Study of the New States,” and L. Fallers,
“Equality, Modernity and Democracy in the New States,” in Old Societies and
New States, ed. C. Geertz, New York: Free Press, 1963, pp. 1–26, 158–219.
32 For the India–Israel reference, see J. Mendlikow, Ideology, Party Change and Elect-
oral Campaigns in Israel, 1965–2001, Albany: State University of New York Press,
2003, Ch. 8.
33 For typical Third World societies, see C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New
States, New York: Free Press, 1963.
34 Hartz, Founding of New Societies.
35 Ibid., pp. 1–12, with quotes on pp. 4, 6.
37 Ibid., pp. 278–80, 309. In more recent post-socialist times, the 1 million immigrants
from the former Soviet Union have brought a new wave of Russianness to Israel.
Notes 215
38 M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power: The Rise and Classes of Nation-States,
1760–1914, vol. 2, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 660.
39 H. Rubinstein, D. Cohn-Sherbok, A. Edelheit and W. Rubinstein, The Jews in the
Modern World: A History since 1750, London: Arnold, 2002, p. 417.
40 Louis Hartz, “United States History in a New Perspective,” in The Founding of
New Societies, ed. L. Hartz, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964, Ch. 4.
41 Mann, Sources, pp. 136–63.
42 R. Rosecrance, “The Radical Culture of Australia,” in The Founding of New
Societies, ed. L. Hartz, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964, Ch. 8.
43 C. Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, New York: Vintage Press, 1965, p. 29.
44 K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1967.
45 B. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Boston, MA: Beacon
Press, 1968.
46 T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1979.
47 J. Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1991, p. 33.
48 T. Gurr, Why Men Rebel, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968.
49 For the frontier and metropole concepts, see M. Barnett, “Israel in the World
Economy: Israel as an East Asian State?,” in Israel in Comparative Perspective, ed.
M. Barnett, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996, pp. 120–2.
50 Ibid., p. 122.
51 Ibid., Ch. 5.
52 S. Telhami, “Israeli Foreign Policy: A Realist Ideal-Type or a Breed of its Own?,”
New York Press, 1996, Ch. 2.
53 M. Lissak, “Paradoxes of Israeli Civil–Military Relations: An Introduction,” in
Israeli Society and its Defense Establishment, ed. M. Lissak, London: Frank Cass,
1984.
54 M. Lissak, “Epilogue,” in Military, State, and Society in Israel, ed. D. Maman, E.
Ben-Ari and Z. Rosenhek, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001,
pp. 410–16.
4 Jewish issues
1 Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons, New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1971.
2 This helps us to understand the irony, often noted in Israel, that, even with Likud
or Kadima in power, their major ideas (such as withdrawal) were often Labor
Party ideas. The Labor Party has often continued to promote and legitimize the
second, semi-capitalist revolution, often without missing a step. It has thereby
legitimated a powerful change in Israeli society, a change away from the socialist
order that it ran for so many decades.
3 Many of the critics of Israel are often not wrong about some significant aspects of
their criticism, but they fail to put their criticism into a comparative context and
appreciate the achievements of the state. They ignore the context in which these
failures have developed and often been overlooked by a leadership and population
concerned with more pressing issues (such as survival). They also have failed to
look at the revolutionary nature of the system and its resultant costs.
4 J. Talmon, Israel among the Nations, New York: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 130–2.
216 Notes
Publishers, p. 31.
7 D. Vital, The Origins of Zionism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975,
pp. 72, 168.
8 D. Vital, Zionism: The Crucial Phase, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 3.
9 I. Howe, The World of Our Fathers, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1976.
11 S. M. Rubinstein, The Communist Movement in Palestine and Israel, 1919–1984,
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984, pp. 203, 211; and Z. Gitelman, Jewish Nation-
ality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CSPU, 1917–1930, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972, pp. 434–5.
13 M. Gilbert, From the Ends of the Earth: The Jews in the 20th Century, London:
Cassell, 2001, p. 30.
15 Ibid., pp. 407–13.
16 Ibid., pp. 9, 394.
17 B. Rubin, Assimilation and its Discontents, New York: Random House, 1995,
p. xiv.
18 Rubin, Assimilation; Laqueur, History, pp. 25, 592. For the 2000 National Jewish
Population Survey, see the North American Jewish Data Bank on the Internet.
19 Vital, Zionism, p. 36. The rate remained low even though only baptism in the
Russian Orthodox Church could open the door to positions in the judiciary, officer
corps, middle and high bureaucracy, secondary and university education and even
seats in secondary and higher education.
20 Ibid., p. 75.
21 D. Hazony, “Zionism and Moral Vision,” in New Essays on Zionism, ed.
D. Hazony, Y. Hazony and M. Oren, Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2006, p. 168.
22 A. J. Sherman, Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918–1948, Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, p. 229.
23 Ibid., p. 40.
24 M. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust, New York: Doubleday,
1975, p. 266.
Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 47.
26 M. Levin, It Takes a Dream: The Story of Hadassah, Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing
House, 2002, pp. 31, 70, 75, 106.
27 Sherman, Mandate Days, pp. 38, 51.
28 Ibid., pp. 43, 65; and B. Kimmerling, Zionism and Economy, Cambridge, MA:
Schenkman Publishing, 1983, p. 56.
29 M. B. Zohar, Spies in the Promised Land: Iser Harel and the Israeli Secret Service,
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1972, pp. 11–12.
New York Press, 1996, p. 202.
31 B. Kimmerling, “Making Conflict a Routine,” in Israeli Society and its Defense
Establishment, ed. M. Lissak, London: Frank Cass, 1984, pp. 22–39.
32 A. Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia
and the Middle East, 1914–1923, New York: Routledge, 2001, p. 141.
33 D. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, New York: Henry Holt, 1989, p. 294; and
Vital, Zionism, pp. 272–7.
34 M. Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of Jewish History, New York: William Morrow
and Company, 1993, p. 76.
Notes 217
35 Vital, Origins, p. 80.
36 Arian, Second Republic, p. 20.
37 Ibid., p. 24. Also see J. Parkes, A History of Palestine from 135 A.D. to Modern
Times, New York: Oxford University Press, 1949, p. 307.
38 By 1967 250,000 Israelis, by 1990 600,000 Israelis and by 2007 over 750,000 Israelis
had emigrated abroad. Given the higher standard of living in the West, easier life,
greater cosmopolitanism, lack of terrorism or constant war and military service,
and the tendency of Jews to live in the Diaspora, this was hardly surprising. The
fact that over 22,000 Israelis had died since 1947 in war or terrorism was clearly a
factor. For the earlier statistics, see H. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of
Zionism to Our Time, 2nd edn., New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002, pp. 1005–8.
39 Vital, Zionism, p. 372.
40 Ibid., pp. 96–7.
41 2003 Pew Global Attitudes Poll.
42 Ibid., pp. 159–62.
43 Indeed, the very word for absorption (klita) indicates the depth of the problem.
There is no comparable phrase that I am aware of in the United States or other
countries for taking in new immigrants.
44 R. Kark and J. Glass, “The Jews in Eretz-Israel/Palestine: From Traditional
Peripherality to Modern Centrality,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years: Israel’s
Transition from Community to State, vol. 1, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass,
2000, p. 103.
45 S. Schecter, “Literature as a Response to Paradox,” in Traditions and Transitions in
Israel Studies, ed. L. Z. Eisenberg, N. Caplan, N. Sokoloff and M. Abu-Nimer,
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003, pp. 204–5.
47 Vital, Origins, pp. 326, 355.
Mifflin, 1987, p. xiii.
49 Z. Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army, New York: Macmillan, 1985, p. 59.
50 R. Mahler, Politics and Government in Israel: The Maturation of a Modern State,
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, p. 93.
51 J. Talmon, Israel, pp. 151–2.
52 D. Hacohen, “Mass Immigration and Demographic Revolution,” in Israel: The
First Hundred Years: Israeli Politics and Society since 1948: Problems of Collective
Identity, vol. 3, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass, 2000, p. 179.
53 M. Bregmann and M. Jucovy (eds.), Generations of the Holocaust, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1982, p. 57.
54 M. Urofsky, We Are One! American Jewry and Israel, New York: Doubleday,
1978.
55 This was one factor in their later strong support for the Likud Party starting in the
1970s.
56 D. Newman, “Controlling Territory: Spatial Dimensions of Social and Political
Change in Israel,” in Traditions and Transitions in Israel Studies, ed. L. Z. Eisen-
berg, N. Caplan, N. Sokoloff and M. Abu-Nimer, Albany: State University of
57 D. Raviv and Y. Melman, Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s
58 For the Yemenites, see H. Lewis, After the Eagles Landed, Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1989, pp. 57–60, 77, 144–9; Urofsky, We Are One!, pp. 195–6; and Rubin-
stein et al., Jews in the Modern World, p. 105.
59 Hacohen, “Mass Immigration,” p. 184.
60 I. Zangwill, Children of the Ghetto, Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society,
1892.
218 Notes
61 Gilbert, Routledge Atlas of Jewish History, p. 89.
62 S. Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish
State, New York: Basic Books, 1981, p. 214.
63 For an excellent exegesis of this view, see J. Migdal, Through the Lens of Israel,
Albany: State University of New York, 2001, Ch. 2.
66 Ibid., pp. 140, 159, 179.
67 Ibid., pp. 464, 503.
68 Ibid., p. 512.
69 Ibid., pp. 549, 594.
5 Hostility of the major powers

1 M. Oren, “Ben-Gurion and the Return to Jewish Power,” in New Essays on
Zionism, ed. D. Hazony, Y. Hazony and M. Oren, Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2006,
pp. 406, 408, 414.
2001, p. 46.
Press, 1969, pp. 105–8.
4 N. Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism before World War I, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1976, Chs. 1–2.
5 Ibid., pp. 1–90.
6 Ibid., pp. 19, 90.
7 D. Vital, Zionism: The Crucial Phase, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987,
pp. 76, 126–7. In Jerusalem, for example, only 6,300 Jews out of 50,000 Jews had
the right to vote.
Cassell, 2001, pp. 84–5.
9 H. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, New York:
Alfred Knopf, 2002, pp. 89–92.
10 Ibid., p. 113.
11 Ibid., p. 113.
12 D. Vital, The Origins of Zionism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 30.
13 A. Vaksberg, Stalin against the Jews, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1994, p. 6. A
similar statement was made by the liberal Count Sergei Witte to Theodor Herzl in
1903 in Saint Petersburg: “I used to say to the late Tsar Alexander III, ‘Majesty, if
it were possible to drown the six or seven million Jews in the Black Sea, I would be
absolutely in favor of that. But if it is not possible, one must let them live.’ ” In
another part of the conversation, Witte remarked that “One has to admit that the
Jews provide enough reasons for hostility. There is a characteristic arrogance
about them. Most Jews however are poor and because they are poor they are filthy
and make a repulsive impression. They also engage in all sorts of ugly pursuits,
like pimping and usury. So you see it is hard for friends of the Jews to come to their
defense. And yet I am a friend of the Jews.” See P. Johnson, A History of the Jews,
New York: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 364.
14 Vital, Origins, pp. 37–50.
15 Ibid., pp. 109–11. Yet 400,000–500,000 Russian Jews served in the Tsarist army in
World War I.
16 Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State, pp. 319–21; and Migdal, Through the Lens of
Israel, p. 72.
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, pp. 16–27.
Notes 219
18 D. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, New York: Henry Holt, 1989, p. 198. Many
British officials were openly anti-Semitic.
19 Ibid., p. 322.
20 J. Parkes, A History of Palestine from 135 A.D. to Modern Times, New York:
21 Fromkin, Peace, pp. 447, 515; and Sherman, Mandate Days, p. 53.
22 J. Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Statesman, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993, p. 354; and Sherman, Mandate Days, p. 62.
23 Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State, pp. 294–6.
24 Ibid., pp. 319–20.
25 Fromkin, Peace, Ch. 6.
27 W. Laqueur and B. Rubin (eds.), The Israel–Arab Reader, New York: Penguin,
2001, pp. 36–41.
28 M. Gilbert, Israel: A History, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1998,
p. 92.
29 M. Kolinsky, Britain’s War in the Middle East: Strategy and Diplomacy 1936–43,
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999, Ch. 7. The Axis threat to the Middle East
and Palestine was real. By May 1943 the defeated Axis had lost 1 million men
(70 percent Italian), 8,000 planes and 2,500 tanks in the region.
30 Ibid., p. 80. Colonial Secretary Ramsay Macdonald similarly observed the need to
make concessions to the Arabs in order to placate them (p. 81).
31 M. Brown, The Israeli–American Connection: Its Roots in the Yishuv, 1914–1945,
Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1996, p. 228.
32 Kolinsky, Britain’s War, p. 85.
33 There is no way to know how many Jews might have come to Palestine. But, given
a European Jewish population of over 7 million Jews outside the Soviet Union, a
figure of 1–3 million would have been plausible at that time. In this way the British
had a degree of complicity (together with other Western countries that closed their
doors to Jewish immigrants) in the ultimate fate of European Jewry in the
Holocaust.
Mifflin, 1987, pp. 531, 779.
35 Y. Allon, Shield of David, New York: Random House, 1970, p. 109.
36 Kolinsky, Britain’s War, Ch. 10; H. Eshed, Reuven Shiloah: The Man behind the
Mossad, trans. D. Zinder and L. Zinder, London: Frank Cass, 1997, pp. 44, 72; and
Gilbert, Israel, p. 109.
37 Kolinsky, Britain’s War, pp. 194–206, 189; and Parkes, History, p. 342.
38 S. I. Troen and B. Pinkus (eds.), Organizing Rescue: National Jewish Solidarity in
the Modern Period, London: Frank Cass, 1992, Part 2 and especially p. 223.
39 Parkes, History, p. 346.
40 E. Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History: The “New Historians,” London: Frank Cass,
1997, p. 185.
41 W. Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951, Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1984, p. 534. This was hardly the worst. Sir John Trotbeck, the head
of the Middle East Office in Cairo, in June 1948 characterized Israel as a gangster
state (p. 532).
42 Sachar, History, Chs. 11–12.
43 Parkes, History, pp. 358–62.
44 E. Karsh, Rethinking the Middle East, London: Frank Cass, 2003, p. 181.
45 M. Urofsky, We Are One! American Jewry and Israel, New York: Doubleday, 1978,
pp. 150, 154; and J. Burk, “From Wars of Independence to Democratic Peace:
Comparing the Cases of Israel and the United States,” in Military, State, and
Society in Israel, ed. D. Maman, E. Ben-Ari and Z. Rosenhek, New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001, p. 97.
220 Notes
46 Z. Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army, New York: Macmillan, 1985, p. 32; and
Allon, Shield of David, pp. 198–202.
House, 2002, pp. 219–43.
48 Sachar, History, Ch. 12; Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State, p. 390; Gilbert, From
the Ends of the Earth, p. 256; and Schiff, History, p. 26.
49 Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History, Ch. 5.
50 Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State, pp. 382–3; and Urofsky, We Are One!, p. 186.
51 Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State, p. 427.
52 Eshed, Reuven Shiloah, p. 217; and M. Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza: Israel’s Road to
Suez and Back, 1955–1957, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 208.
53 On the centrality of destroying the Jews to Hitler, see L. Davidowitz, The
War against the Jews, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975; and D.
Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996.
54 Teveth, Ben Gurion, p. 834.
55 B. Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 154.
and Company, 1993, pp. 98, 103.
57 Ibid., p. 135.
58 P. Celan, “Death Fugue,” in Voices within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets, ed.
H. Schwartz and A. Rudolf, New York: Avon Books, 1980, pp. 937–8.
59 M. Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn, Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1994, p. 50.
60 Quoted from Tom Segev in J. Nitzan and S. Bichler, The Global Political Economy
of Israel, London: Pluto Press, 2002, p. 101. In 1941 and 1942, before they knew
about the Holocaust, David Ben Gurion and other Jewish leaders estimated that
2 million European Jews might reach Palestine. Now they were nearly all gone,
save for the survivors. See B. Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The Socio-
Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983, p. 56.
61 A post-war poll by the United Nations Relief Agency found that less than 1
percent of the camp survivors wanted to stay in Europe: fully 97 percent wanted to
go to Palestine. See Urofsky, We Are One!, pp. 100–2.
62 A. Diskin, The Last Days in Israel: Understanding the New Israeli Democracy,
London: Frank Cass, 2003, p. 1.
63 D. Vital, The Survival of Small States: Studies in Small Power/Great Power
Conflict, London: Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 4, 52–4, 78.
64 R. Wistrich, “Marxism and Jewish Nationalism: The Theoretical Roots of Con-
frontation,” in The Left Against Zion, ed. R. Wistrich, London: Vallentine Mitch-
ell, 1979, p. 1. Wistrich pointed out that many Eastern European Communist
leaders opposed to Zionism were of Jewish origin.
65 Ibid., Ch. 1.
66 G. Goldman, Zionism under Soviet Rule, New York: Herzl Press, 1960, p. 15.
68 Z. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the
CSPU, 1917–1930, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972, pp. 75, 77.
69 Ibid, pp. 77–80.
70 Ibid., p. 78.
71 For an excellent discussion of the Evsektsiia, see Gitelman, Jewish Nationality.
72 Y. Gilboa, The Black Years of Soviet Jewry, trans. Y. Shacter and D. Ben Abba,
Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1971.
73 Gilbert, Israel, pp. 226–7.
74 Vaksberg, Stalin against the Jews, p. 197.
Notes 221
75 Bar-On, Gates of Gaza, p. 269.
76 J. Glassman, Arms for the Arabs: The Soviet Union and the War in the Middle East,
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.
77 Vaksberg, Stalin against the Jews, p. 112. A public opinion poll several years ago
said that 64 percent of Russians would not vote for a Jewish president (compared
to 5 percent in the United States).
78 Ibid., p. 120.
79 M. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East,
New York: Ballantine Books, 2003, pp. 27–9.
80 Ibid., pp. 115–19.
81 Glassman, Arms for the Arabs, Ch. 3; and Oren, Six Days of War, pp. 294–304.
82 Glassman, Arms for the Arabs, Ch. 4.
83 Ibid., Ch. 5.
84 Ibid., Ch. 6.
85 G. Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War II to Gorbachev,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Ch. 9.
6 Enmity of the Arab world and Iran

New York: Ballantine Books, 2003, p. 293.
2 Z. Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Security and
Foreign Policy, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, p. 5.
3 Robert Rotberg, Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History’s Double
Helix, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006, pp. vii, 6, 180.
4 H. Ben-Yehuda and S. Sandler, The Arab–Israeli Conflict Transformed: Fifty Years
p. 93.
5 A. Kacowicz, Y. Ben-Siman-Tov, O. Elgstrom and M. Jerneck (eds.), Stable Peace
among Nations, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, pp. 220–30.
6 Ben-Yehuda and Sandler, Arab–Israeli Conflict Transformed, Ch. 1, pp. 181–95.
7 M. Bard, Will Israel Survive?, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
8 Maoz, Defending the Holy Land, pp. 574–9.
9 B. Rubin, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the
Middle East, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 151–2.
Greenwood Press, 2005, pp. 234–6.
11 M. Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza: Israel’s Road to Suez and Back, 1955–1957, New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 210.
12 M. van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense
Forces, New York: Public Affairs Press, 1998, p. 66.
13 Ibid., p. 96; and Ben-Yehuda and Sandler, Arab–Israeli Conflict Transformed,
p. 99.
14 Z. Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army, New York: Macmillan, 1985, Ch. 10; and
M. Urofsky, We Are One! American Jewry and Israel, New York: Doubleday, 1978,
pp. 159, 182.
15 Schiff, History, pp. 21–4; Y. Allon, Shield of David, New York: Random House,
1970, pp. 186–7; and van Creveld, Sword and Olive, p. 101.
16 E. Luttwak and D. Horowitz, The Israeli Army 1948–1973, Cambridge, MA: Abt
Books, 1983, p. 124.
17 A. Ilan, The Origins of the Arab–Israeli Arms Race: Arms, Embargo, Military
Power and Decision in the 1948 Palestine War, New York: New York University
Press, 1996, Ch.2; and, for the broader issues, J. Adelman, The Revolutionary
Armies, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.
222 Notes
18 D. Tal, “The Forgotten War: Jewish–Palestinian Strife in Mandatory Palestine,
December 1947-May 1948,” in E. Karsh (ed.), Israel: The First Hundred Years:
From War to Peace?, vol. 2, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 9–17.
19 Luttwak and Horowitz, Israeli Army, Ch. 2.
20 Van Creveld, Sword and Olive, p. 78.
21 Schiff, History, pp. 24–6.
22 Ibid., pp. 26–31.
23 Ibid., pp. 39–45. The breakdown was as follows: 2,000 killed (November 1947 –
May 1948), 1,200 killed (May 15, 1948 – June 10, 1948) and 2,500 killed (July 1948
– January 1949). No less than 4,500 of those killed were in the military and 1,200
were civilians. At Latrun 383 Israelis were killed. See van Creveld, Sword and Olive,
pp. 98–9.
24 For the Russian and Chinese armies, see Adelman, Revolutionary Armies.
25 S. Helman, “Militarism and the Construction of the Life-World of Israeli Males,”
in The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society, ed. E. Lomsky-Feder and
E. Ben-Ari, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999, pp. 171–2.
26 Schiff, History, Ch. 5.
27 M. Golani, “The Limits of Interpretation and the Permissible in Historical
Research Dealing with Israel’s Security: A Reply to Bar-On and Morris,” in
Traditions and Transitions in Israel Studies, ed. L. Z. Eisenberg, N. Caplan,
N. Sokoloff and M. Abu-Nimer, Albany: State University of New York Press,
2003, p. 28.
28 Ben-Yehuda and Sandler, Arab–Israeli Conflict Transformed, pp. 104–5.
30 Ben-Yehuda and Sandler, Arab–Israeli Conflict Transformed, pp. 106–8.
32 Allon, Shield of David, p. 258; and Oren, Six Days of War, pp. 304–5.
34 Ben-Yehuda and Sandler, Arab–Israeli Conflict Transformed, p. 108.
36 Ibid., Ch. 15.
37 R. Gal, “Organizational Complexity: Trust and Deceit in the Israeli Air Force,” in
Military, State, and Society in Israel, ed. D. Maman, E. Ben-Ari, and Z. Rosenhek,
New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001, Ch. 13.
38 J. Lutz and B. Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution, New York: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2005, p. 7.
39 Rubin, Long War for Freedom, p.181.
40 For an excellent overview of the history of the Palestinians and their current
plight, see B. Kimmerling and J. Migdal, The Palestinian People: A History, Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
41 Ibid., Ch. 4; and D. Divine, “The Imperialist Ties that Bind: Transjordan and
the Yishuv,” in Israel, the Hashemites and the Palestinians: The Fateful Triangle,
ed. E. Karsh and P. R. Kumaraswamy, London: Frank Cass, 2003, p. 25.
42 I. Bickerton and C. Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 4th
edn., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002, pp. 55–6.
43 Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinian People, pp. 154–65.
Routledge, 2005, p. 59.
45 Ibid., p. 276.
46 Gilbert, Routledge Atlas of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, pp. 72–9.
47 Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinian People, p. 275.
48 Ibid., pp. 240–68.
49 Ibid., pp. 296–307.
50 A. Merari and S. Elad, The International Dimensions of Palestinian Terrorism,
Notes 223
Jerusalem: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies Press, 1986; and Gilbert, Routledge
Atlas of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, p. 99.
51 Of course in land the results were strikingly different. After Oslo II, the Palestin-
ians had sole control of 3–4 percent of the territories, the Israelis still controlled
70 percent of the land with control of the Jordan Valley and settler areas and there
was joint control of 27 percent of the territories. See Kimmerling and Migdal,
Palestinian People, p. 332.
52 Ibid., pp. 332–54.
53 S. Shaq, The Shahids: Islam and Suicide Attacks, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2004, pp. xi–xv, Ch. 1, p. 54. Suicide attacks were not confined to Israel
but occurred in Iraq, Syria, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Tunisia, Kashmir, Afghanistan,
Algeria and Egypt (Ch. 3).
54 Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinian People, pp. 359–97.
Greenwood Press, 2005, pp. 53–8.
56 S. Shaq, Shahids, pp. 12–22.
57 M. Levitt, Hamas, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 20–2.
58 Ibid., pp. 53, 174–98.
59 Y. Alexander, Palestinian Religious Terrorism: Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Ardsley,
NY: Transnational Publishers, 2002, pp. 1–34; and Levitt, Hamas, Ch. 1.
60 Levitt, Hamas, p. 6, Chs. 6–7.
61 Gilbert, Routledge Atlas of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, pp. 130, 165.
62 Ibid., p. 26.
63 A. Norton, Hezbollah, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
64 Cordesman, Israeli–Palestinian War, pp. 180–3.
65 A. Sarna, Boycott and Blacklist: A History of Arab Economic Warfare against Israel,
Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986, p. 190.
66 Ibid., Ch. 12.
67 Ibid., pp. 4–69. Arab boycott activity against Palestinian Jews started in the 1890s
and in places like Haifa was implemented as early as 1910. For this aspect and the
numbers in 1970 in the Boycott Office, see G. Feiler, From Boycott to Economic
Cooperation: The Political Economy of the Arab Boycott of Israel, London: Frank
Cass, 1998, pp. x, 21.
68 Sarna, Boycott and Blacklist, pp. 46–51; and Feiler, From Boycott to Economic
Cooperation, pp. 26–7.
69 Sarna, Boycott and Blacklist, Ch. 11.
70 Ibid., pp. 144–53; and Feiler, From Boycott to Economic Cooperation, pp. 209–19.
71 Sarna, Boycott and Blacklist, Ch. 10.
72 Ibid., pp. 51, 81–113.
73 Feiler, From Boycott to Economic Cooperation, pp. 49–60, 281–8.
74 Ibid., pp. 118–29.
75 Sarna, Boycott and Blacklist, pp. 58–72; Feiler, From Boycott to Economic Cooper-
ation, p. 280. The Central Boycott Office estimated the cost to Israel at over $100
billion (Feiler, From Boycott to Economic Cooperation, p. 282).
76 Ben-Yehuda and Sandler, Arab–Israeli Conflict Transformed, p. 111.
77 A. Klieman, Statecraft in the Dark: Israel’s Practice of Quiet Diplomacy, Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1988, p. 6.
7 Major international and religious organizations

1 P. Merkley, Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2001, p. 220.
2 The Church was indeed responsible for saving some Jews but there was no strong
224 Notes
Catholic stance against the Holocaust that might have saved millions of Jews in
World War II.
3 A. Kenny, Catholics, Jews and the State of Israel, New York: Paulist Press, 1993,
pp. 1–19.
4 G. Irani, “The Holy See and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict,” in The Vatican,
Islam and the Middle East, ed. K. Ellis, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,
1987.
5 F. Khouri, “The Jerusalem Question and the Vatican,” in The Vatican, Islam and
the Middle East, ed. K. Ellis, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987.
6 S. Minerbi, The Vatican and Zionism: Conflict in the Holy Land 1895–1925, trans.
A. Schwarz, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 97.
7 Ibid., p. 97; and Merkley, Christian Attitudes, p. 138.
8 A. Kreutz, Vatican Policy on the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict: The Struggle for the
Holy Land, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990, p. 33; and Minerbi, Vatican and
Zionism, p. 100.
9 Kreutz, Vatican Policy, pp. 33–40; and Minerbi, Vatican and Zionism, p. 131.
10 Minerbi, Vatican and Zionism, pp. 158, 165; and Kreutz, Vatican Policy, pp. 40–1.
11 Minerbi, Vatican and Zionism, p. 181.
12 Kreutz, Vatican Policy, pp. 49, 60–1, 69.
13 Ibid., pp. 77–80; and Merkley, Christian Attitudes, p. 139.
14 Merkley, Christian Attitudes, pp. 149, 147.
15 A. Lopez, “Israel’s Relations with the Vatican,” in Jerusalem Letter, Jerusalem:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 1999.
16 Merkley, Christian Attitudes, pp. 147–8, 157.
17 Kreutz, Vatican Policy, Ch. 7, especially p. 138.
18 Ibid., Ch. 8.
19 Y. Manor, To Right a Wrong: The Revocation of the UN General Assembly Reso-
lution 3379 Defaming Zionism, New York: Shengold Publishers, 1996, p. 273.
20 Merkley, Christian Attitudes, pp. 151–9.
21 M. Breger and G. Weigel, “Special Policy Forum Report: The Vatican and the
Middle East – Pope John Paul II’s Trip to the Holy Land,” in Peace Watch, 250,
Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, March 17, 2000.
22 H. Genizi, The Holocaust, Israel and Canadian Protestant Churches, Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, pp. 3–5.
23 Few Arabs actually converted to Christianity and specifically Protestantism. In
1954 only 4 percent of the Christians in Israel (or 1,700 people) were Protestants.
See Uri Bialer, Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign
Policy, 1948–1967, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005, p. 125.
24 H. Fishman, American Protestantism and a Jewish State, Detroit, MI: Wayne State
University Press, 1973, p. 176.
25 Ibid., pp. 21–6.
26 Ibid., Ch. 1, especially p. 28.
27 Ibid., pp. 31–2, 37, 41, 43, 49.
28 Ibid., Ch. 6.
29 Ibid., Chs. 8, 9.
30 Ibid., Ch. 6, especially pp. 154–5.
31 Ibid., Ch. 11.
32 Ibid., pp. 172–5.
33 Genizi, Holocaust, Israel and Canadian Protestant Churches, pp. 8–11; and
Merkley, Christian Attitudes, Ch. 8.
34 Genizi, Holocaust, Israel and Canadian Protestant Churches, pp. 10–15.
35 E. Nelson and A. Wisdom, Human Rights Advocacy in Mainline Protestant
Churches (2000–2003), Washington, D.C.: Institute on Religion and Democracy,
2004, p. 27.
Notes 225
36 Ibid. pp. 27–30.
37 G. Falk, The Restoration of Israel: Christian Zionism in Religion, Literature and
Politics, New York: Peter Lang, 2006, p. 194.
38 R. Stockton, “Presbyterians, Jews and Divestment: The Church Steps Back,”
Middle East Policy, 13 (4), Winter 2006: 102–24.
39 Merkley, Christian Attitudes, pp. 126–32; and Pew Global Attitudes poll, 2006.
40 Merkley, Christian Attitudes, pp. 110–26.
41 R. Israeli, Fundamentalist Islam and Israel, Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 1993, Ch. 4.
42 A. Beker, The United Nations and Israel: From Recognition to Reprehension,
Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988, pp. 82–3.
43 Manor, To Right a Wrong, pp. 6–7, 16.
44 Ibid., pp. 1–3.
45 Ibid., pp. 236–61.
8 Western unwillingness to help Israel in crises

1 S. Spiegel, The Other Arab–Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Middle East Policy,
from Truman to Reagan, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985, Ch. 1.
2 M. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust, New York: Double-
day, 1975, pp. 216, 229.
Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988, p. 27.
4 M. Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn, Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1994, p. 227.
Press, 1969, p. 377.
6 W. Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951, Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1984, p. 518.
7 Ibid., Chs. 6–8; and A. Oren, “Inside Track: A Disaster Waiting to Happen,”
Haaretz, October 22, 2004.
9 H. Eshed, Reuven Shiloah: The Man behind the Mossad, trans. D. Zinder and
L. Zinder, London: Frank Cass, 1997, pp. 148–9.
10 Ibid., p. 103.
New York: Ballantine Books, 2003, pp. 8–10; Eshed, Reuven Shiloah, pp. 221–2;
and M. Urofsky, We Are One! American Jewry and Israel, New York: Doubleday,
1978, p. 306.
13 H. Ben-Yehuda and S. Sandler, The Arab–Israel Conflict Transformed: Fifty Years
p. 102.
Press, 1996, p. 1.
15 M. Bar-On, “Seeking a War?,” in Traditions and Transitions in Israel Studies, ed.
L. Z. Eisenberg, N Caplan, N. Sokoloff and M. Abu-Nimer, Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 2003, p. 7.
16 M. Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza: Israel’s Road to Suez and Back, 1955–1957, New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, pp. 141, 152.
17 Ibid.
18 Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State, pp. 426–30; and Urofsky, We Are One!,
pp. 313–17.
226 Notes
19 Eshed, Reuven Shiloah, p. 298.
20 Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State, pp. 431–9; and Oren, Six Days of War, p. 51.
21 Oren, Six Days of War, pp. 112–13, 138–9, 157.
22 J. Nitzan and S. Bichler, The Global Political Economy of Israel, London: Pluto
Press, 2002, p. 247.
23 Spiegel, Other Arab–Israeli Conflict, p. 387.
24 S. Avineri, “Israel: A Normative Value of Jewish Existence,” in The Blackwell
Reader in Judaism, ed. J. Neusner and A. Avery-Peck, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001,
p. 400.
25 C. Roth, The Jewish Contribution to Civilization, Cincinnati, OH: Union of Amer-
ican Hebrew Congregations, 1940, pp. 37–9.
27 Ibid., pp. 38, 43.
28 Ibid., pp. 46–8.
29 P. Johnson, A History of the Jews, New York: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 242.
31 Ibid., p. 49.
32 Johnson, History, p. 309.
34 K. Marx, On the Jewish Question, trans. H. Lederer, Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew
Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, 1958, pp. 39, 40, 42.
35 Johnson, History, p. 382.
CSPU, 1917–1930, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972, pp. 161–2.
37 See my new book, J. Adelman (ed.), Hitler and His Allies in World War I, London:
Routledge, 2007, for more details.
38 H. Evans, The American Century, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998, p. 289.
39 R. Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943, New York:
Henry Holt, 2002, p. 288.
40 H. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 2nd edn.,
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002, Ch. 12.
9 Israeli issues
1 J. Parkes, A History of Palestine from 135 A.D. to Modern Times, New York:
2001, Ch. 6.
3 E. Luttwak and D. Horowitz, The Israeli Army 1948–1973, Cambridge, MA: Abt
Books, 1983, p. 301. By the end of the war Israeli forces were only 25 miles from
Amman, 31 miles from Damascus (occupying the high ground) and 250 miles
from Cairo.
4 I. Black and B. Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991,
Ch. 4.
5 I. Galnoor, The Partition of Palestine: Decision Crossroads in the Zionist Move-
ment, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995, p. 27.
6 G. Biger, “The Boundaries of Mandatory Palestine: How the Past Influences the
Future,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years: Israel’s Transition from Community to
State, vol. 1, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass, 2000, p. 109; and D. Newman,
“Controlling Territory: Spatial Dimensions of Social and Political Change in
Israel,” in Traditions and Transitions in Israel Studies, ed. L. Z. Eisenberg, N.
Caplan, N. Sokoloff and M. Abu-Nimer, Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2003, pp. 71–5.
Notes 227
7 C. Shindler, “Likud and the Search for Eretz Israel: From the Bible to the Twenty-
First Century,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years: Israeli Politics and Society since
1948: Problems of Collective Identity, vol. 3, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass,
2000, pp. 93–8.
8 B. Reich and G. Kieval (eds.), Israeli National Security: Political Actors and
Perspectives, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988, pp. 1–2.
House, 2002, p. 263.
New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002, p. 117.
11 A. Alesina and E. Spolaore, The Size of Nations, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2003, pp. 3–4, 14, 81–2, 155.
12 Y. Lifshitz, The Economics of Producing Defense Illustrated by the Israeli Case,
Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Press, 2003, p. 59.
13 Ibid., p. 42.
Press, 2002, pp. 217, 259.
15 I. Troen, Imagining Zion, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, p. 123.
16 B. Kimmerling, Zionism and Economy, Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing,
1983, p. ix.
17 Ibid., p. 149.
Politics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, p. 12; and Parkes, History,
p. 302.
19 Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory, p. 24. While in 1947 the Jews owned
14 percent of non-desert Palestine, by the early 1960s they owned 95 percent of the
land (p. 100).
20 D. Horowitz, “Before the State: Communal Politics in Palestine under the
Mandate,” in The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers, ed.
B. Kimmerling, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989, p. 54.
pp. 3, 9.
Publishers, 1998, p. 3.
23 Parkes, History, p. 302.
Mifflin, 1987, p. 120.
25 Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory, p. 87.
26 Horowitz, “Before the State,” p. 55; and Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory,
p. 21.
p. 275.
29 Troen, Imagining Zion, p. 258.
30 Ibid., Ch. 1, p. 198.
31 Ibid., pp. 15–198.
32 Urofsky, We Are One!, pp. 195–8.
33 Ibid., p. 196.
34 Troen, Imagining Zion, Ch. 4.
35 Ibid., Ch. 2.
36 Ibid., p. 99.
37 Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory, p. 49.
228 Notes
38 Horowitz, “Before the State,” p. 54.
39 Kimmerling, Zionism and Economy, p. 114.
10 Historical roots of the revolutions

1 A. Hertzberg (ed.), The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, New York:
Atheneum, 1959, p. 20.
2 N. de Lange and M. Freud-Kandel (eds.), Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 55–6.
3 Indeed, until 1944, the majority of eminent rabbis fought Zionism while the ultra-
Orthodox Haredim, condemning Zionism as “apostasy and heresy,” saw David
Ben Gurion as ominous and malevolent. See Y. Rabkin, A Threat from Within:
A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood
Press, 2006, p. 152; A. Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radic-
alism, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 37–8, 182; and Y. Salmon,
Religion and Zion: First Encounters, Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 2002.
4 J. Reinharz, “Zionism and Orthodoxy: A Marriage of Convenience,” and espe-
cially S. Avineri, “Zionism and the Jewish Religious Tradition,” in S. Almog, J.
Reinharz and A. Shapira, Zionism and Religion, Hanover, NH: Brandeis Uni-
versity Press, 1998, pp. xi, 1–7.
5 E. Ottolenghi, “A National Home,” in Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide, ed. N.
de Lange and M. Freud-Kandel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 54. See
also S. Almog, J. Reinharz and A. Shapira (eds.), Zionism and Religion, Hanover,
NH: Brandeis University Press, 1998; and J. Neusner, Judaism: The Basics, Lon-
don: Routledge, 2006.
6 D. Schwartz, Faith at a Crossroads: A Theological Profile of Religious Zionism,
trans. B. Stein, Leiden: Brill, 2002.
7 B. Neuberger, “Zionism,” www.mfa.gov.il.
8 R. Wisse, “Israel’s Answer to the Zionist Dream,” speech, Bar Ilan University,
Ramat Gan, Israel, June 2003.
New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002, p. 5. Sachar points out that the string of false
messiahs had until the nineteenth century soured Eastern European Jewry on any
immediate efforts to redeem the Holy Land.
10 See Neuberger, “Zionism,” for much of the following material.
11 See www.jhom.com (Jewish Heritage Online Magazine).
12 Michael Walzer points out that this story “resumes in the modern period: from
Bar Kokhba to Joseph Trumpeldor with not much in between” and that the sur-
vival of the Jews in the Diaspora is more than suffering and persecution, for “the
real exilic story is not one of persecution and exile (though there was enough of
that) but survival over many centuries, across many countries; and it is a remark-
able story of political adaptability, innovation and collective stubbornness.” See
M. Walzer, “History and National Liberation,” in Israeli Historical Revisionism:
From Left to Right, ed. A. Shapira and D. Penslar, London: Frank Cass, 2003,
pp. 2–3.
13 Sachar, History, Ch. 2.
State, New York: Basic Books, 1981, p. 34.
Press, 1969, p. 5.
16 Hertzberg, Zionist Idea, pp. 33–40; and Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State, pp. 50–8.
17 H. Graetz, History of the Jews, Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society,
1967.
18 Avineri, Making of Modern Zionism, p.35.
Notes 229
19 Moses (Moshe) Hess, who co-edited the radical Rheinische Zeitung with Karl
Marx, was called by Marx “my communist rabbi.” See Avineri, Making of Modern
Zionism, p. 37.
20 Neuberger, “Zionism.”
21 Avineri, Making of Modern Zionism, Ch. 4.
22 Hertzberg, Zionist Idea, p. 114.
23 Ibid., Introduction.
24 S. M. Rubinstein, The Communist Movement in Palestine and Israel, 1919–1984,
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984, p. 33.
25 Avineri, Making of Modern Zionism, Chs. 5–6.
26 Ibid., Ch. 7, and especially p. 81.
27 D. Vital, The Origins of Zionism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, Ch. 6.
28 E. B. Yehuda, “A Letter to the Editor of Hashahar,” in The Zionist Idea:
A Historical Analysis and Reader, ed. A. Hertzberg, New York: Atheneum, 1959,
p. 164.
29 Avineri, Making of Modern Zionism, Ch. 9; Hertzberg, Zionist Idea, pp. 72–3; and
D. Penslar, Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in
Palestine, 1870–1918, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 48.
30 Avineri, Making of Modern Zionism, p. 45 and Ch. 3.
32 Avineri, Making of Modern Zionism, p. 108.
33 Ibid., p. 135.
35 Ibid., p. 154.
36 Ibid., Ch. 16.
37 For a good overview of the subject, see A. Lindemann, Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-
Semitism and the Rise of the Jews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997,
Ch. 13.
38 E. Mendelsohn, Class Struggle in the Pale: The Formative Years of the Jewish
Workers’ Movement in Tsarist Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1970, p. 156. Perhaps one reason for such high political consciousness among
only 3 percent of the Russian population was that, while in 1897 60 percent of
the Russian working class was illiterate, such illiteracy was quite rare among the
Jewish workers (p. 157).
CPSU, 1917–1930, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972, p. 16. Lenin,
personally free of anti-Semitism, had a number of Jewish deputies (Trotsky,
Zinoviev, Kamenev).
40 R. Brym, The Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism: A Sociological Study
of Intellectual Radicalism and Ideological Diversity, New York: Schocken Books,
1978.
41 Gitelman, Jewish Nationality, p. 106.
42 Laqueur, A History of Zionism, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972, p. 420.
43 W. McCagg, Jr., “Jews in Revolutions: The Hungarian Experience,” Journal of
Social History, 6 (1), Fall 1972: 77–105; and R. Burks, The Dynamics of Commun-
ism in Eastern Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961, p. 162.
McCagg explains the prominence of Jews by their primary role as urban modern-
izers in a transitional society.
Cassell, 2001, pp. 106–8.
45 Burks, Dynamics of Communism, pp. 158–70.
46 In addition, the majority of them were men who were not born in the Jewish Pale
or lacked any real identity with the Jewish community. See Gitelman, Jewish
Nationality, p. 109.
230 Notes
47 J. Talmon, Israel among the Nations, New York: Macmillan, 1970, p. 79. Isaac
Deutscher depicted the fate of alienated Jewish radicals (both political radicals
and others, such as Spinoza, Heine and Freud), vulnerable to religious fanaticism
or extreme nationalism: “They were excommunicated by Jewish rabbis; they were
persecuted by Christian priests; they were hunted down by the gendarmes of
absolute rulers and by the soldateska; they were hated by pseudo-democratic phil-
istines; and they were expelled by their own parties. Nearly all of them were exiled
from their countries; and the writings of all were burned at the stake at one time
or another.” See I. Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays, London:
48 V. Lenin, What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement, New York:
International Publishers, 1929.
49 P. Johnson, A History of the Jews, New York: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 448.
50 Deutscher, Non-Jewish Jew, pp. 97–8.
52 See L. Schapiro, “The Role of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement,”
Slavonic and East European Review, 40: 148–67, especially pp. 164–5.
11 Two modern Zionist revolutions

1 T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1979, pp. 161–2.
2 S. M. Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Compara-
tive Perspective, New York: Basic Books, 1963.
3 J. Talmon, Israel among the Nations, New York: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 159–60.
4 N. Sharanksy, “The Political Legacy of Theodor Herzl,” in New Essays on
Zionism, ed. D. Hazony, Y. Hazony and M. Oren, Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2006,
pp. 105–12.
State, New York: Basic Books, 1981, pp. 13, 226.
6 D. Penslar, Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in
Palestine, 1870–1918, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, pp. 1, 7.
7 D. Vital, The Origins of Zionism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 373.
8 J. Reinharz, “Zionism and Orthodoxy,” in Zionism and Religion, ed. S. Almog, J.
Reinharz and A. Shapira, Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1998, p. 116. Only
the rise of modern nationalism, early decay of the traditional community, modern-
izing tendencies and the blocking of Jewish integration into civil society opened
the door for modern Zionism at the end of the nineteenth century.
9 D. Myers, Re-inventing the Jewish Past, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996,
pp. 90, 102.
10 I. Troen, Imagining Zion, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, p. 113. Tel
Aviv, which was founded by 60 merchants and professionals in 1906 forming a
private building society to build a Jewish suburb of Jaffa, was an amazing success.
From no people in 1908, it rocketed to 3,000 people in 1920, 150,000 people in
1939 and 2.4 million people today in the metropolitan area, replete with modernity
and sophistication.
11 Penslar, Zionism and Technocracy, p. 7.
12 A. Shapira, “The Religious Motifs of the Labor Movement,” in Zionism and
Religion, ed. S. Almog, J. Reinharz and A. Shapira, Hanover: Brandeis University
Press, 1998, pp. 254–6.
13 A. Ravitzky, “Munkacs and Jerusalem: Ultra-Orthodox Opposition to Zionism
and Aggudism,” in Zionism and Religion, ed. S. Almog, J. Reinharz and A. Shapira,
Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1998, p. 81.
Notes 231
14 Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past, p. 76.
15 Ibid.
16 A. Smith, “Sacred Territories and National Conflict,” in Israel: The First Hundred
Years: Israel’s Transition from Community to State, vol. 1, ed. E. Karsh, London:
Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 13–29.
17 A. Dowty, The Jewish State: A Century Later, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998, pp. 50–60.
18 Ibid., p. 55.
Press, 2002, pp. 17–20, 92, 108.
20 R. Hazan and M. Maor (eds.), Parties, Elections and Cleavages: Israel in Compara-
tive and Theoretical Perspective, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 151–4, 174–8; and
J. Migdal, Through the Lens of Israel, Albany: State University of New York Press,
2001, pp. 110–12.
21 Nitzan and Bichler, Global Political Economy, p. 137.
22 Ibid., pp. 96–7.
24 Nitzan and Bichler, Global Political Economy, pp. 98, 354.
25 Ibid., p. 351.
26 Barnett, “Israel in the World Economy,” p. 120.
28 Nitzan and Bichler, Global Political Economy, pp. 134–5; and Barnett, “Israel in
the World Economy,” p. 130.
29 Dowty, Jewish State, pp. 67–75.
30 Barnett, “Israel in the World Economy,” p. 120.
32 Ibid., pp. 117–22.
33 Ibid., pp. 276–8.
34 Ibid., pp. 98–101, 122–9; and Barnett, “Israel in the World Economy,” p. 131.
35 G. Sheffer, “Political Change and Party System Transformation,” in Parties,
Elections and Cleavages: Israel in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective, ed.
R. Hazan and M. Maor, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 156–61.
36 Barnett, “Israel in the World Economy,” pp. 125–6.
37 Ibid.
38 M. Aronoff, “Wars as Catalysts of Political and Cultural Change,” in The Military
and Militarism in Israeli Society, ed. E. Lomsky-Feder and E. Ben-Ari, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1999, p. 41.
40 Ibid., p. 127.
1983, p. 133; and Nitzan and Bichler, Global Political Economy, Ch. 6, p. 133.
42 Sheffer, “Political Change,” pp. 156–62; and Dowty, Jewish State, Ch. 6.
43 Dowty, Jewish State, p. 130.
Publishers, 1998, pp. 15, 67.
45 Sheffer, “Political Change,” pp. 162–5.
47 Ibid., pp. 16–17, 354.
48 Ibid., p. 85.
49 Ibid., p. 88.
50 M. van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israel Defense
Forces, New York: Public Affairs Press, 1998, p. 63. The Irgun was so small that in
232 Notes
December 1944 it had only 500 fighters with 60 pistols, 40 hand guns and 2,000
kilos of explosive (A. Perlmutter, The Life and Times of Menachem Begin, Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1987, p. 157). Owing to its attacks that killed many civilians
and its nationalist ideology, the Irgun remained controversial for decades. David
Ben Gurion refused to sit in the Knesset with only two factions: Communists and
Irgun. See Y. Ben-Ami, Years of Wrath, Days of Glory: Memoirs of the Irgun, New
York: Robert Speller & Sons, 1982; G. Rothenberg, Anatomy of the Israeli Army:
The Israel Defense Forces 1948–1978, New York: Hippocrene Books, 1979, p. 34;
S. Sofer, Begin: An Anatomy of Leadership, Oxford: Blackwell, 1988, Ch. 4; and
Perlmutter, Life and Times of Menachem Begin.
12 Revolutionary military-security factors

1 N. Rotenstreich, “The Present-Day Relationship,” in The Blackwell Reader in
Judaism, ed. J. Neusner and A. Avery-Peck, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, p. 400.
Forces, New York: Public Affairs, 1998, p. 125.
3 F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, New York: Vintage Books, 1968.
4 A. Peled, A Question of Loyalty: Military Manpower Policy in Multiethnic States,
New York: Cornell University Press, 1998, p. xvi.
5 D. Raviv and Y. Melman, Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s
6 D. Vital, The Survival of Small States: Studies in Small Power/Great Power Conflict,
London: Oxford University Press, 1971, Ch. 2.
7 Z. Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army, New York: Macmillan, 1985, p. 32.
p. 249.
9 For a full account of the battle, see M. Larkin, The Six Days of Yad-Mordechai,
Givatayim: Peli Printing, 1975.
10 Ibid.
11 Schiff, History, p. 34.
12 J. Burk, “From Wars of Independence to Democratic Peace: Comparing the Cases
of Israel and the United States,” in Military, State, and Society in Israel, ed.
D. Maman, E. Ben-Ari and Z. Rosenhek, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2001, pp. 97–8.
2001, p. 88.
14 C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990–1990, Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell, 1990.
15 J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York: W.W. Norton,
2001, pp. 2–3.
16 M. Handel, Israel’s Political-Military Doctrine, Occasional Paper 30, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Center for International Affairs, July 1973.
Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988, p. 37.
18 B. Rubin, Assimilation and its Discontents, New York: Random House, 1995,
p. 115.
19 H. Kissinger, White House Years, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1979, p. 583.
20 A. Mintz, “The Military-Industrial Complex: The Israeli Case,” in Israeli Society
and its Defense Establishment, ed. M. Lissak, London: Frank Cass, 1984, pp. 115–24.
21 T. Skocpol, “Social Revolutions and Mass Military Mobilizations,” World Politics,
60 (2), 1988.
22 See J. Adelman, The Revolutionary Armies, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.
Notes 233
23 Y. Peri, “Party–Military Relations in a Pluralist System,” in Israeli Society and its
Defense Establishment, ed. M. Lissak, London: Frank Cass, 1984, pp. 46–7.
24 E. Luttwak and D. Horowitz, The Israeli Army 1948–1973, Cambridge: Abt
Books, 1983, pp. vi–vii.
25 S. Helman, “Militarism and the Construction of the Life-World of Israeli Males,”
in The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society, ed. E. Lomsky-Feder and
E. Ben-Ari, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999, pp. 207, 213.
26 M. Cohen, Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel,
New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, p. 183.
27 A. Bar-Or, “The Link between the Government and the IDF during Israel’s First
50 Years: The Shifting Role of the Defense Minister,” in Military, State, and
Society in Israel, ed. D. Maman, E. Ben-Ari and Z. Rosenhek, New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001, p. 324.
28 Helman, “Militarism and the Construction of the Life-World of Israeli Males,”
p. 196.
29 Schiff, History, Chs. 7–8.
30 Gadna (youth battalions) involve most Israeli boys and girls from 14 to 18 in
military drills, basic instruction in handling arms and map reading, touring Israel
on camp excursions. Youth wear military uniforms but do not hold rank. Gadna
was founded in 1940 as a part of Haganah. Tens of thousands of youth were
enrolled in Gadna during the War of Independence and some fought in the battles
for Jerusalem and Haifa. After 1948 it became part of the military and in 1954 was
structured as a nationwide command with six special training camps. In the
schools the Ministry of Education runs the units with IDF officers as advisers.
During the 1967 and 1973 wars Gadna members served as orderlies in the hos-
pitals, took the place of mobilized postal workers and aided in maintaining basic
civilian services. Gadna also works to integrate juvenile delinquents into the army
and society. See Schiff, History, pp. 100–4.
31 Luttwak and Horowitz, Israeli Army, p. 183.
32 For a good description of the mixed agricultural–military units formed formally in
1948, see Schiff, History, Ch. 4. The parallel with the Chinese Army’s Production
Corps is striking. See Adelman, Revolutionary Armies. Nahal created and main-
tain many fortified agricultural settlements in key border regions.
33 M. Lissak, “Epilogue,” in Military, State, and Society in Israel, ed. D. Maman, E.
Ben-Ari and Z. Rosenhek, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001,
pp. 410, 416.
34 Peri, “Party–Military Relations in a Pluralist System,” p. 48; and Luttwak and
Horowitz, Israeli Army, p. 6.
Cassell, 2001, pp. 85–6.
University Press, 1993, pp. 169, 283–4; and Schiff, History, p. 4.
38 Ibid., pp. 10–11.
39 Van Creveld, Sword and Olive, pp. 20–30.
40 Luttwak and Horowitz, Israeli Army, p. 10.
41 Y. Allon, Shield of David, New York: Random House, 1970, Ch. 3; and van
Creveld, Sword and Olive, pp. 38–41.
New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002, pp. 215–16; Cohen, Zion and State, pp. 231–2;
Schiff, History, pp. 11–12; and van Creveld, Sword and Olive, p. 43.
43 Allon, Shield of David, pp. 140–1; and Gilbert, Israel, pp. 119–20.
44 Schiff, History, pp. 15–19.
45 S. Stevens, The Spymasters of Israel, New York: Macmillan, 1980, pp. 51–3.
234 Notes
48 Sherman, Mandate Days, pp. 185–228.
49 Y. Goldstein, “The Ideological and Political Background of the Israel Defense
Forces,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years: Israel’s Transition from Community to
State, vol. 1, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass, 2000, p. 179.
50 Y. Lifshitz, The Economics of Producing Defense Illustrated by the Israeli Case,
Boston: Kluwer Academic Press, 2003, p. 229.
51 See Table 12.1.
52 I. Black and B. Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991,
pp. 321, 491.
53 Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 3, 12.
54 Ibid., Ch. 2.
55 Gordon Thomas estimates that there are 20,000 sayanim in the United States and
Great Britain alone aiding Israeli intelligence agencies in a host of ways. See
G. Thomas, Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1999, p. 68; and Luttwak and Horowitz, Israeli Army, p. 270.
56 R. Deacon, The Israeli Secret Service, New York: Taplinger, 1985, Ch. 14.
57 H. Eshed, Reuven Shiloah: The Man behind the Mossad, trans. D. Zinder and
L. Zinder, London: Frank Cass, 1997, p. 324.
58 Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, p. 12.
59 Eshed, Reuven Shiloah, pp. 110–11.
60 Stevens, Spymasters, pp. 51–3.
61 Eshed, Reuven Shiloah, Chs. 4, 7.
62 Deacon, Israeli Secret Service, pp. 38–40.
63 Cohen, Zion and State, p. 258.
64 Sherman, Mandate Days, pp. 29, 47.
65 Gilbert, From the Ends of the Earth, pp. 243–4.
66 Allon, Shield of David, p. 148. And this lengthy list did not include the earlier
stages of finding, organizing and training the refugees for the harsh trip that lay
before them!
67 Sherman, Mandate Days.
68 Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, pp. 23–30.
70 Allon, Shield of David, Ch. 5.
71 Ibid., p. 166; and Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, pp. 46–8.
73 Ibid., pp. 54–8, 98, 129.
74 Deacon, Israeli Secret Service, pp. 49–51.
75 By contrast, the United States has 16 major intelligence services.
76 M. B. Zohar, Spies in the Promised Land: Iser Harel and the Israeli Secret Service,
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1972, Chs. 6–7.
77 Stevens, Spymasters, Ch. 4.
78 Eshed, Reuven Shiloah, pp. 187–9, 328–33.
79 Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 78–9.
80 Zohar, Spies, p. 66.
81 Ibid., p. 70.
82 In particular, see Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince.
83 Zohar, Spies, pp. 67–8, 106.
85 Ibid., pp. 174–82.
86 Stevens, Spymasters, p. 87.
87 Ibid., p. 96.
Notes 235
88 Schiff, History, p. 194; and Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, pp. 130–1.
89 Zohar, Spies, Ch. 22.
90 Deacon, Israeli Secret Service, Ch. 8.
91 Stevens, Spymasters, Ch. 13; Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, pp. 192–201;
and Zohar, Spies, Ch. 27.
92 E. Cochran, “Israel’s Nuclear History,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years: From
War to Peace?, vol. 2, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 129–34.
93 Ibid., pp. 129–56.
94 Ibid., p. 136.
95 Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, Chs. 4, 9.
96 Cochran, “Israel’s Nuclear History,” pp. 134–41.
97 W. Lotz, The Champagne Spy: Israel’s Master Spy Tells His Story, New York:
Valentine Mitchell, 1972.
100 Schiff, History, Ch. 13; and Thomas, Gideon’s Spies, Ch. 3.
101 Deacon, Israeli Secret Service, p. 167.
102 Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, Chs. 8, 10; and Raviv and Melman,
Every Spy a Prince, Ch. 8.
105 Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, pp. 263–4; and Raviv and Melman,
Every Spy a Prince, Ch. 8.
106 Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, p. 181.
107 Deacon, Israeli Secret Service, Ch. 18; Stevens, Spymasters, Ch. 22; and Black
and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, pp. 269–75.
110 Ibid., pp. 453–5.
111 Ibid., pp. 448–50.
112 Thomas, Gideon’s Spies, pp. 115–17; and Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars,
pp. 469–72.
113 Schiff, History, Ch. 13; and Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, p. 118.
114 Stevens, Spymasters, Ch. 6.
115 Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, pp. 168–72; and Zohar, Spies, Ch. 21.
116 Thomas, Gideon’s Spies, Ch. 6.
117 Van Creveld, Sword and Olive, Ch. 14; Stevens, Spymasters, Ch. 25; and Black
and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, Ch. 9.
118 Thomas, Gideon’s Spies, pp. 88–92; Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars,
pp. 416–29; and Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, Ch. 14.
119 Thomas, Gideon’s Spies, Ch. 17.
13 Revolutionary factors: aliyah, education, government and party

1 Jonathan Adelman, “Tolerance and Development,” Washington, D.C.: Foundation
for the Defense of Democracies, 2003.
p. 275. Later as defense minister Pinchas Lavon was deeply involved and finally
discredited by the Lavon Affair involving a failed intelligence effort in Egypt in
1954 to discredit the Nasser regime.
3 M. Cohen, Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel, New
York: Columbia University Press, 1992, pp. 157, 177.
236 Notes
5 For a good study of the development of the Labor Party, see P. Medding, Mapai
in Israel: Political Organization and Government in a New Society, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1971.
6 At home the battle with the non-socialist General Zionist, the religious Zionist
Mizrahi, the ultra-Orthodox non-Zionist Agudat Yisrael and other strands of
socialism was itself a daunting battle.
7 Medding, Mapai, p. 17.
8 M. Duverger, Political Parties, London: Methuen, 1964, pp. 307–8.
9 Medding, Mapai, pp. 7–11.
10 P. Medding, The Founding of Israeli Democracy, 1948–1967, Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1990, Ch. 2. Even in the last two decades the main ideas of the Likud
– unilateral disengagement from Gaza, the fence, concern over the occupation –
came originally from the Labor movement.
11 Medding, Mapai, Ch. 2.
12 Cohen, Zion and State, pp. 95–101.
13 Ibid., Ch. 4.
14 Medding, Mapai, p. 10.
2001, p. 62.
17 Migdal, Through the Lens of Israel, pp. 60–7.
18 Cohen, Zion and State, pp. 120–9, Ch. 9.
19 B. Akzin, “The Role of Parties in Israeli Democracy,” Journal of Politics, 17 (4),
1955.
20 Medding, Founding of Israeli Democracy, pp. 46–9, 220–1.
21 Y. Peri, “Party–Military Relations in a Pluralist System,” in Israeli Society and its
Defense Establishment, ed. M. Lissak, London: Frank Cass, 1984, p. 61.
22 R. Michels, Political Parties, New York: Free Press, 1968.
23 Medding, Mapai, Chs. 12–13.
24 Ibid., Chs. 1–2.
25 For the American Revolution, see J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary
Generation, New York: Alfred Knopf, 2000, as well as biographies of the founding
fathers.
Mifflin, 1987, pp. xi–xiii.
27 D. Vital, “From ‘State within a State’ to State,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years:
Israel’s Transition from Community to State, vol. 1, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank
Cass, 2000, pp. 35–6.
Cassel, 2001, p. 24.
Press, 1969, Chs. 9–10.
University Press, 1993, pp. 137, 205.
31 Ibid. p. 170.
32 Ibid. p. 272–4.
33 Gilbert, Israel, p. 38.
34 Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann, p. 232.
35 M. Urofsky, We Are One!: American Jewry and Israel, New York: Doubleday,
1978, p. 204.
36 For a detailed discussion of this event, see I. Galnoor, The Partition of Palestine:
Decision Crossroads in the Zionist Movement, Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1995, Ch. 2. The loss of 7,000 square miles initially claimed by the
Zionists in 1919 was a bitter pill for Chaim Weizmann (p. 41).
Notes 237
37 D. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, New York: Avon Books, 1989, p. 521.
39 For a detailed study of the Peel Commission and Jewish decision making, see
Galnoor, Partition; and also M. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the
Holocaust, New York: Doubleday, 1975, pp. 407–9.
Politics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, p. 58.
44 Ibid., pp. 46–8, 372–7.
45 Galnoor, Partition, pp. 293–6.
47 M. Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza: Israel’s Road to Suez and Back, 1955–1957,
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, Afterword.
48 Conversations at the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s think tank (China Institute of
International Relations), summer, 2000.
49 A. Dowty, The Jewish State: A Century Later, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998, Ch. 8; Migdal, Through the Lens of Israel, p. 43; and B. M. Friedman,
“The State of Israel as a Theological Dilemma,” in The Israeli State and Society:
Boundaries and Frontiers, ed. B. Kimmerling, Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1989, Ch. 7.
50 In this effort, they could draw on the traditions of the European Jewish kehilla
(autonomous community) which, for 900 years, had largely governed itself. Euro-
pean Jews constituted a community of adult males in an alien environment where
they had lawmaking authority, immigration control, receptiveness to grievances,
elected leaders and rabbis, a welfare system, notables to deal with the outside
world (shtadlanism), regulated wages and price and control of land acquisition.
This traditional model could be modified for the Jewish community in Palestine
under the Ottoman Turks and the British Mandatory Authority. See Dowty,
Jewish State, p. 21.
51 E. Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History: The “New Historians,” London: Frank Cass,
1997, p. 78.
54 Vital, “From ‘State within a State’ to State,” pp. 32–4.
55 H. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 3rd edn.,
New York: Alfred Knopf, 2007, pp. 308–9.
56 R. Deacon, The Israeli Secret Service, New York: Taplinger, 1985, pp. 48–51.
Indeed, as early as 1944 the Jewish Agency had turned over the names and many
of the addresses of 700 members of the Irgun to try to destroy any threat to Jewish
unity through terrorism. See Gilbert, From the Ends of the Earth, p. 230.
57 I. Troen, Imagining Zion, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, p. 101.
58 Cohen, Zion and State, Chs. 1, 11, 12. Cohen talks extensively about the triumph
of statism over socialism under Ben Gurion. Of course, Mapai, with its dedication
to European social democracy and the West, was considerably more moderate
than the more radical Mapam that venerated the Soviet Union and such Commun-
ist leaders as Stalin and Tito.
59 Ibid., p. 215.
1983, p. 55; and M. van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the
Israeli Defense Forces, New York: Public Affairs Press, 1998, p. 70.
61 Troen, Imagining Zion, pp. 51–2.
238 Notes
63 Cohen, Zion and State, pp. 220–3.
64 Haaretz, September 14, 2004.
65 Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann, p. 258.
14 International factors
1 D. Vital, The Survival of Small States: Studies in Small Power/Great Power Con-
flict, London: Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 57; and D. Kimche, “The Trad-
itional and the Transitional in Statecraft,” in Global Politics: Essays in Honor of
David Vital, ed. A. Ben-Zvi and A. Klieman, London: Frank Cass, 2001, p. 14.
2 A. Ben-Zvi, “The US–Israel Special Relationship,” in Global Politics: Essays in
Honor of David Vital, ed. A. Ben-Zvi and A. Klieman, London: Frank Cass, 2001,
p. 223.
3 G. Sheffer, “Israeli–Diaspora Relations in Comparative Perspective,” in Israel in
Press, 1996, p. 67.
p. 302.
5 E. Glick, The Triangular Connection: America, Israel and American Jews, London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1982, p. 125; I. Troen, Imagining Zion, New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2003, p. 122; and Urofsky, We Are One!, pp. 242–4.
6 Sheffer, “Israeli–Diaspora Relations.”
7 Ibid., pp. 62–72; and Glick, Triangular Connection, pp. 108–10.
8 S. Walt and J. Mearsheimer, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University, Working Paper RWP06–011,
March 2006.
9 S. I. Troen, “Organizing the Rescue of Jews in the Modern Period,” in S. I. Troen
and B. Pinkus, Organizing Rescue: Jewish National Solidarity in the Modern
Period, London: Frank Cass, 1992, p. 3 and Ch. 1.
10 Ibid., p. 7.
11 Ibid., Ch. 1.
12 D. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, New York: Avon Books, 1989, p. 299; and
M. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust, New York: Doubleday,
1975, p. 78.
University Press, 1993, pp. 367, 391; and Urofsky, American Zionism, p. 126.
14 Urofsky, American Zionism, p. 310.
15 M. Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, New York:
Random House, 2002, Ch. 28.
Forces, New York: Public Affairs Press, 1988, p. 31. At a time when the average
Arab peasant family was earning $135 a year, this was a serious Diaspora
contribution.
18 W. Laqueur and B. Rubin, The Israel-Arab Reader, New York: Penguin, 2001.
19 Urofsky, American Zionism, pp. 316, 324.
Press, 1969, p. 180.
23 Van Creveld, Sword and Olive, p. 62; H. Eshed, Reuven Shiloah: The Man behind
the Mossad, trans. D. Zinder and L. Zinder, London: Frank Cass, 1997, p. 96; and
Urofsky, We Are One!, pp. 155–6.
Notes 239
24 M. Raider, The Emergence of American Zionism, New York: New York University
Press, 1998, pp. 3, 203; and Urofsky, We Are One!, p. 125. At the same time, the
American Red Cross raised only $25 million a year.
25 E. Tauber, “The Jewish and Arab Lobbies in Canada and the UN Partition of
Palestine,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years: Israel’s Transition from Community
to State, vol. 1, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 229–46.
26 Urofsky, We Are One!, p. 94.
27 Ibid., pp. 3–4, 31–49.
28 Ibid., p. 147.
29 Eshed, Reuven Shiloah, pp. 194–6.
30 Ibid., pp. 241–2; and M. Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza: Israel’s Road to Suez and
Back, 1955–1957, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, pp. 297–8.
31 Urofsky, We Are One!, pp. 356, 429–30.
32 Ibid., p. 385.
33 Ibid. p. 350.
34 Ibid. pp. 427, 437, 445.
35 See the study by the Israel Project, 2006.
36 Urofsky, We Are One!, pp. 202–3, 356.
38 Ibid. pp. 396–7.
Cassell, 2001, p. 130.
40 P. Johnson, A History of the Jews, New York: Harper & Row, 1987, pp. 585–6.
41 A. Lunacharsky, Religiya i sotsializm, vol. 1, St. Petersburg, 1908, pp. 40, 188–90.
42 T. Veblen, “The Intellectual Pre-eminence of the Jews in Modern Europe,” in
Essays in Our Changing Order, ed. L. Ardzrooni, New York: Viking Press, 1934,
pp. 219–31. Veblen asserted that “the Jewish people have contributed much more
than an even share of the intellectual life of modern Europe. So also it is plain that
the civilization of Christendom continued today to draw heavily on the Jews
for men devoted to science and scholarly pursuits” (p. 221). Max Weber also
looked at this phenomenon in his 1917 work Ancient Judaism, trans. H. Gerth and
D. Martindale, New York, 1952.
43 T. Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews, New York: Doubleday, 1998, p. 3. As Paul Johnson
has written, the Christians took the Torah, Prophets, Wisdom, liturgy, Sabbath,
feast days, incense, burning lamps, psalms, hymns, prayers, priests, vestments, mar-
tyrs, sacred books and synagogue (church) from the Jews. See Johnson, History,
p. 145.
44 Quoted in an Anti-Defamation League press release, New York, October 16, 2003.
45 A. Eban, Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, New York: Summit Books, 1984,
Chs. 1–2; and Johnson, History, p. 15.
46 Of course, the success of Jews abroad as an emigrant minority does not necessarily
have a direct reflection on what would happen to Jews as a majority culture.
Chinese and Indians abroad traditionally did much better than Chinese and Indi-
ans at home.
47 B. Feldman, The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy and Prestige,
New York: Arcade Publishers, 2000, Appendix E.
48 B. Rubin, Assimilation and its Discontents, New York: Random House, 1995, p. 39.
50 These included Louis Mayer and Sam Goldwyn (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Adolf
Zukor (Paramount), Jack Warner (Warner Brothers), Harry Cohn (Columbia)
and Irving Thalberg and William Fox (Fox Films). See N. Gable, An Empire of
their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, New York: Doubleday, 1989.
51 American Film Institute, One Hundred Best Music Songs, Los Angeles: American
240 Notes
Film Institute, 2004. The Jewish songwriters and lyricists helped compose “Over
the Rainbow” (Yip Harburg, Harold Arlen), “As Time Goes By” (Jules Styne),
“Singin’ in the Rain” (Arthur Freed), “White Christmas” (Irving Berlin), “Mrs.
Robinson’ (Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel), “The Way We Were” (Barbra Strei-
sand) and “The Sound of Music” (Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein).
52 R. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001. Six of ten leading American public intellectuals were Jews:
Henry Kissinger, Larry Summers, Robert Reich, Sidney Blumenthal, Arthur
Miller and William Safire. The four non-Jews are Daniel Patrick Moynihan
(now deceased), George Will, William Bennett and Salman Rushdie. See also
C. Silberman, A Certain People: American Jews and their Lives Today, New York:
Summit Books, 1985, pp. 143–56.
53 H. Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Novel Laureates in the United States, New York:
Free Press, 1977, p. 68. These numbers have not changed markedly since this study
and the other two cited above.
54 Chronicle of Philanthropy, December 31, 2003.
55 Forbes 400 website.
56 Three of Israel’s leading universities (Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and
Weizmann Institute of Science) are ranked in the top ten among Asia’s top 100
universities. In addition, two other Israeli universities (Technion and Ben Gurion
University) were listed as numbers 27 and 37 in Asia. See Shanghai JiaoTong
University rankings of leading universities on the Internet at http:/ed.stju.edu.cn/
rank-rank-Asia.
57 C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States, New York: Free Press, 1963,
pp. 255, 268.
58 P. Merkley, Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2001, pp. 200–7.
59 I. Anderson, Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy: The Promised Land,
America and Israel, 1917–2002, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2005,
p. 102.
60 Ibid., pp. 109–10.
61 Ibid., Ch. 7.
62 H. Fishman, American Protestantism and a Jewish State, Detroit, MI: Wayne State
University Press, 1973, p. 20.
63 Anderson, Biblical Interpretation, p. 20.
64 Ibid., pp. 41–5.
65 Ibid., Ch. 7.
66 A. Gal, “David Ben-Gurion’s Zionist Foreign Policy, 1938–48: The Democratic
Factor,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years: Israel in the International Arena, vol. 4,
ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 16–17.
67 M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States,
1760–1914, vol. 2, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 14.
68 In the early 1920s, 70 percent of migrating world Jewry went through the open
gates of New York while only 10 percent went to Palestine. But, from 1932 to 1938,
fully 53 percent of all migrants went to Palestine while a small percentage were
able to go to the United States. See B. Halpern and J. Reinharz, Zionism and the
Creation of a New Society, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 230.
69 Bar-On, Gates of Gaza, p. 33.
70 Ibid., pp. 170–89.
71 Ibid., Ch. 15.
Press, 2002, p. 246.
73 Gal, “David Ben-Gurion’s Zionist Foreign Policy,” p. 26.
74 A. Ben-Zvi, “Influence and Arms: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and the
Notes 241
Politics of Arms Sales to Israel, 1962–66,” in Israel: The First Hundred Years:
Israel in the International Arena, vol. 4, ed. E. Karsh, London: Frank Cass, 2000,
pp. 29–59.
75 Nitzan and Bichler, Global Political Economy, pp. 242–6.
76 E. Karsh and P. R. Kumaraswamy (eds.), Israel, the Hashemites and the Palestin-
ians: The Fateful Triangle, London: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 24–8, 33.
77 M. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, trans. M. Petrovich, New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1962.
78 E. Karsh, Rethinking the Middle East, London: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 74–7; and
Rubinstein et al., Jews in the Modern World, pp. 190–2.
79 Rubinstein et al., Jews in the Modern World, pp. 191–2.
Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988, pp. 32–6.
Press, 1996, p. 180.
82 Z. Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army, New York: Macmillan, 1985, pp. 37–8;
and Ilan, Origins, p. 160.
83 Ilan, Origins, p. 149.
New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002, Ch. 5. Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in 1919
declared that “My personal hope is that the Jews will make good in Palestine and
eventually found a Jewish State.” Winston Churchill called in 1920 for “a Jewish
State by the banks of the Jordan . . . which might comprise three to four million
Jews” (p. 110). For the vote in the House of Commons (which differed from the
vote in the House of Lords), see S. M. Rubinstein, The Communist Movement in
Palestine and Israel, 1919–1984, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984, p. 98. For the
San Remo statement, see A. J. Sherman, Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine,
1918–1948, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, p. 53.
85 For an extensive treatment of this topic, see Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann, espe-
cially the concluding chapter, and D. Vital, Zionism: The Crucial Phase, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1987, Ch. 6.
86 Halpern, Idea of the Jewish State, p. 352. Winston Churchill, then head of the
Middle East Department of the Colonial Office, wrote an article before he took
the post calling the idea of 3–4 million Jews in Palestine “beneficial” to Great
Britain. See Gilbert, From the Ends of the Earth, p. 129.
87 David Ben Gurion’s recognition of the positive role of the British mandatory
authorities in the 1920s and 1930s is quoted in S. Avineri, The Making of Modern
Zionism, New York: Basic Books, 1981, pp. 211–12.
2001, p. 63.
89 Sherman, Mandate Days, p. 154.
90 Sachar, History, p. 313.
91 Migdal, Through the Lens of Israel, pp. 135–6.
92 Ilan, Origins, p. 141. The British enmity with Egypt after October 1946 and Iraq
after January 1948, and its opposition to selling Syria 2,000–3,000 rifles and
machine guns in November 1947, left only Transjordan as a friendly pro-British
ally desirous of receiving British arms. The consequences of this British failure to
consolidate its hold on Israel’s neighbors and to supply them with modern
weapons were clearly momentous for Israel (pp. 27, 54).
94 G. Falk, The Restoration of Israel: Christian Zionism in Religion, Literature and
Politics, New York: Peter Lang, 2006, p. 1 (see also p. 199).
95 Ibid., Ch. 3. William Blake wrote that “I will not cease from mental fight, Nor
242 Notes
shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem, In England’s green
and pleasant land” (p. 160).
96 P. Merkley, The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891–1948, London: Frank Cass,
1998, Chs. 2, 4. Falk, Restoration of Israel, p. vii, Ch. 1; and R. Ruether and
H. Ruether, The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli–
Palestinian Conflict, 2nd edn., Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002, pp. 69–81.
97 Merkley, Politics of Christian Zionism, Ch. 2; and Anderson, Biblical Interpret-
ation, pp. 41, 47.
98 Anderson, Biblical Interpretation, p. 60.
99 Ibid., pp. 55–9.
15 Conclusions
1 Haaretz, January 11, 2007.
2 E. Ottolenghi, “A National Home,” in Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide, ed. N.
de Lange and M. Freud-Kandel, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 64.
3 Forbes, October 1, 2007.
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Index
Aaronsohn spy ring 59 American Jewish Committee 97, 181

Ababa, Addis 53 American Palestine Corporation 182
Abraham 94, 112, 123, 127, 177 American University of Beirut 95–6
Achdut Haavodah Party 38, 132, 134, American Zionist Emergency Council
150; founding of 168–9, 183–4
Adams, John 170 Amin, Idi, Ugandan President 100, 163
Adwan, Kamal 162 Amit, Meir 145, 154, 157
AFL see American Federation of Labor AMPAL see American Palestine
Afrika Korps 65 Corporation
Agranat Commission 165 Amster, Jules 157
Agudath Yisrael Party 174 Angleton, James Jesus 154, 157
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 20 Anglo-Jewish Association, creation of
Akzin, Benjamin 169 181
Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades 86 Anglo-Palestine Bank 59; creation of 136
Al Banah, Hassan 85 Anilewicz, Mordechai 146
Al Husseini, Abdal Qadir 82 Anti-Defamation League 181
Al-Assad, Hafez 160 Anti-Israelism see anti-Semitism
Al-Hussein, Haj Amin 4, 61, 81, 150, 192 Anti-Semitism: British 20, 60, 62;
aliyah 34, 37, 157, 166–78; ban on 81; Eastern European 12; fascist 65; global
Fourth 50; as revolutionary factor 119, 6, 86, 105–9; and immigrants 54;
204; Second 38, 50, 136, 168, 190; modern 122, 124, 126, 128, 130, 180–1,
Youth 6, 135–6, 185–6, 188, 200 196; Russian 38, 59–60, 67–8, 88–9;
Aliyah Beth 157 and UN Durban World Conference
Alkalai, Yehuda Hai 125 101
Allenby, Edmund: army of 194 Anti-Zionism 9, 158; and English
Alliance Française 177 Literature 196; see also Zionism
Alliance Israélite Universelle 177, 181 Antonescu, Marshal 108
alliances, unlikely 192–6 Arab Christian Church 98
Allon, Yigal 77, 150–2, 155, 205 Arab East see Lawrence of Arabia
Alpha peace initiative 103 Arab League 25, 62, 82, 86–7; creation of
Altalena, Affair of 1948 38, 78, 143; military committee 77; summit of 1964
sinking of 31, 176 25
Alteneuland 126, 171 Arab Revolt (1936–39) 61, 81, 89, 172
Aman 153, 156, 158, 162, 164–5 Arafat, Yasir 82–3, 94, 97, 100, 118,
American Federation of Labor 183 163–4
American Friends of the Middle East 96 Arendt, Hannah 199
American Import-Export Bank 191 Arison Holdings 142
American Israel Public Affairs Arkia Airlines 138
Committee (AIPAC) 181 Arlosoroff, Chaim 51, 154
258 Index
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, declaration of the state 75–6; and
creation of 29 Diaspora 180, 183; exile of 59; injury
Army, Israeli 21, 146–8; capabilities of in Operation Suzanne 164; and the
75–81; features of 148–9; officers of 77; Jewish nation 67; on overcoming
victories of 165; see also Revolutionary barriers 50–2; retirement of 139; and
Army the Revolutionary Socialist Party
Arrow ABM system 6, 188, 201 168–74, 176–89; and statehood 54; on
Arthur Henderson Labor Foreign transportation and infrastructure 115;
Secretary 197 and ultimate victory 205; and
Asquith, Herbert, Prime Minister 50; unification of intelligence service
government of 194 156–7; and unification of military
Ataturk 29–30 78–9, 148–9; warning to Felix
attack, Egyptian-Syrian 1973 75 Frankfurter 65; on will to fight 145–6
Attrition War (1969–70) 70, 79, 149, 162, Ben-Yehuda 20, 74
192 Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer 20, 38, 74, 125, 126,
Autoemancipation 4, 126 135
Avigor, Shaul 154 Ben-Zvi, Yitzhak 38, 59, 149, 172, 179
Avineri, Shlomo 125, 132 Berenson, Bernard 48
Axelrod, Pavel 128 Berman, Jacob 128–9
Axis of Evil 75 Bernadotte, Count, UN mediator 78,
103, 193
Balfour, Arthur, Foreign Secretary 171, Bernstein, Edward 47, 128
197 Bevin, Ernest 62
Balfour Declaration 28, 190; and British Bichler, Shimshon 10
Empire 60, 61, 68, 194, 203; and the Biltmore Program 173; development of
Catholic Church 92–3; creation of 183
171–3, 182–3; and the Protestant Birobidzhan 47, 64, 68
Church 95–5 Black Plagues 107
Bank Leumi, creation of 137–8; see also Blackstone, William 189
financial institutions, founding of Blake, William 196
Bar Kochba, Simeon 123, 149 Bliss, Howard 95
Barak, Ehud 23, 25, 41, 141, 173 Bloch, Dora 163
Barghouti, Marwan 86 Bolsheviks: and Russian Zionist
Bar-Giora 149 movement 68; and socialist party 167,
Barker, British General 155 200; and socialist revolution 128–30
Barnett, Michael 10, 24, 116 Bolshevism 37, 130
Barzanis 32 Bonaparte, Napoleon 107, 124, 144;
battle for Deir Yassin 77 armies of 131, 147
Bauer, Otto 128 Boneh, Solel 137, 163, 168, 195
Bavarian Revolution (1919) 128 Boost Phase Intercept 188
Beard, Charles 183 borders, final plans 110–11
Beer, Israel: firing and arrest of 157, 164 Borokhov, Berl 168
Beeri, Israel 157 Brandeis, Louis 171, 179, 182
Beeri, Isser 164 Brecher, Michael 180
Begin, Menachem 25, 139–43, 151, 73 Brenner, Joseph Chaim 55
Begin’s War in Lebanon 20, 31, 111; see Brezhnev, Leonid 70, 71, 185
also Begin, Menachem Bridges for Peace 190
Beha-a-Din, Turkish governor of Jaffa Brinton, Crane 11, 39, 40
58–9 Brith Shalom 172
Beilin, Yossi 21 British Biblical romanticism 196–7
Ben Gurion University 186 Bronfman, Edgar 138
Ben Gurion, David 5, 25, 36–8, 62, 69, Buffett, Warren 21, 201
113, 137, 185–6, 200; and alliances Bukharin, Nikolai 170
190, 193; and the Bible 134; and Bulganin, Nikolai 69
Index 259
Bundism 46, 47, 54, 122, 130 clans: tensions with minorities 31;
Bundists 47, 68, 129–30, 183; Bundist Chamoun, Franjieh, and Gemayel 33;
Movement 8 divisions among 161
Bush, President 20, 105, 191–2 classic militarism, features of 41
Byroade, Henry 103 Coffin, Henry Sloane 96–7
Cohen, Eli 160
Cahill, Thomas 187 Cohen, Waley 180
Camp David II (2000) 23, 25, 74, 89 Cold War 19, 24, 74, 89, 100, 116, 191,
capitalism, transition to 138–42 195, 198
Carter, Jimmy 15, 20, 102, 105 colonialism 9; avoidance of 18, 69, 100;
Catholic Church, Roman 33; and British 36, 39, 142; European 16
hostility toward Jews 5–6; as obstacle Committee for Justice and Peace 96
43, 91–3, 95; and recognition of Israel Communism: and anti-Semitism 107,
94 121; demise of 139, 198; failure of 15;
Catholics 91–4; Armenian, Orthodox, as obstacle 46, 54, 187, 200
Syrian 34; Greek 32, 34 Communist parties of Eastern Europe:
Caucasus 31 Jewish leaders 128
Celan, Paul 66 Communists 25, 183, 201; Chinese and
Central Boycott Office 87 Vietnamese 200
Chamberlain, Neville, Prime Minister concentration camps 64–5; European
61 167
Charles I, King 199 Conference of Major American Jewish
Chatfield, Lord 62 Organizations 181
Chernyshevsky, Nikolai 37, 129 Congress of Industrial Organizations
Chicherin, Georgii 68 (CIO) 183
Children of Israel 188, 196 Conjoint Foreign Committee 50
Children of the Ghetto 54 Constantinople 31, 59
Chinese Red Army 147, 199 Creation of a Jewish state with an
Chmielnicki, Bogdan 107 impoverished Zionist movement 55–6
Chmielnicki massacres 107 Crémieux, Adolphe 124, 181
Chowder, Egal 24 Cromwell, Oliver 196, 200; and New
Christ, Jesus 61, 92, 96, 189 Model Army 131, 147
Christian Century 96–7 Crossman, Richard 62
Christian Friends of Israel 190 Crusades 91, 106
Christian Israel Public Action Campaign
190 Dallas Theological Seminary 189
Christian Zionist International Damascus 5, 34, 59, 80, 83, 87, 111, 114,
Conference 98 160; blood libel 12
Christian Zionists 188, 190, 194 Dan, Theodore 128
Christians 3, 47–8, 50, 91–9, 105–7, 110; Daniel Deronda 194, 196
Arab 33; Eastern 91; fundamentalist Dankner Group 142
188; international 189–90; Judeo- Darby, John 189, 197
187–88; Lebanese 10, 27–9, 32–5, 57, Dayan, Moshe 4, 75, 77–9, 139, 150–2,
157; Maronite 35, 83; Polish 38; 161, 170, 178, 205
Sudanese 157; sympathizers 202; de Gaulle 87
true 189; Zionist 188, 190, De, Zhu 170
194–7 “Death Fugue” 66
Christians United for Israel 190 Deganya 134; creation of 137, 146
Church of England 98 Deir Yassin massacre 63, 77, 143
Churchill White Paper 61 democratic West as alliance 13–14, 119,
Churchill, Winston 93, 151 179, 190–2
CIA 4, 7, 103, 153, 157 Dependency theorists 24
“Circle of Friends” 184 Deutscher, Isaac 130
Civilta Cattolica 92 Dewey, John 183
260 Index
dhimmis 28, 53 emigration to Palestine 48–50
Diaspora 4, 8, 14, 26, 34–6, 41, 126–8; Enlai, Zhou 170
Babylonian 106; and capital 116, 137, Enlightenment 122, 133, 186; French
139, 141; and creation of Jewish State 107; Russian 124
55–8, 77; customs of 50–2; of Egypt Eshkol, Levi 25, 200
and Mesopotamia 46; growing power Etzel see Irgun military force
of 94; and Holocaust 196; Israel as Etzion Bloc 5, 63, 76–8
stepchild of 21–2; and military 148–9, Etzioni Brigade 158
154; and religion 121, 125; and European Economic Committee/Israel
revolutionary state 168, 172, 175–6; Free Trade Agreement (1975) 87
and support for Zionism 179–86, 197 European Economic Community 141
Disraeli, Benjamin 48, 124, 194 Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary 190
Doctors’ Plot 69, 108 Evelyn Rothschild Girls School 177
Dodge, Bayard 96 Evsektsiia 68
Dreyfus Affair 12, 107, 125 Ezra 46, 123
Dreyfus, Alfred 107
Dror, Yehezkel 10 Faisal, Emir 30, 89, 171–2, 182
Drumont, Édouard 108 Falk, Gerhard 98, 196
Druze 28, 148, 157 Falkenhayn, General von 59
Dulles, John Foster 103–4 Farkas, Mihaly 128
Duverger, Maurice 167, 169 Fatah 73, 83; Hawks 86
Fifth Zionist Congress 185
Eban, Abba 9, 19, 165, 170 Financial institutions, founding of 136–7
Economy: Arab 18, 118, 173; Armenian First Christian Zionist Congress in Basel
30; and First Zionist Socialist 190
revolution 131, 135–42, 144; of Gaza First intifada (1987–92) 9, 83, 97, 161
Strip 23; Global 21, 110, 131; and First Socialist Revolution see
immigrants 51; institutionalization of Revolution, First Socialist
Israeli 173–7; investors in Israeli 21; First Zionist Congress 126, 133, 174,
Israeli, general 6–7, 14, 18, 21, 23, 34, 176
118, 194; Jewish 118; and Labor Party First Zionist Socialist Revolution
167–9; modernization of 36; see Revolution, First Zionist Socialist
Palestinian 49, 84, 114–18, 164; role of Ford, Gerald 19, 102, 105,
military in 41; and Second semi- Foreign investors, Jewish 138
capitalist revolution 12; Socialist 34; Forrestal, James 103
success of Israeli 201, 204, 206; of Fosdick, Harry 96
West Bank 23; Zionist 176–7 Four Tigers of Asia and Israel 40–1
Eden, Anthony 60 fragments, European 37; see also Hartz,
Educational system 10, 174, 206; Louis
construction of 177–8 Frank, Andre Gunder 24
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood 85 Frankel, Jonathan 11
Egyptian Third Army 80 Frankfurter, Feliz 65
Ehrlich, Philip 184 Franklin, Benjamin 102, 108, 170
Eichmann, Adolph 157, 159 Frauenknecht, Alfred 162
Einstein, Albert 154, 187 Freier, Recha 185
Eisenberg, Shaul 138 French Alliance Israélite Universelle,
Eisenhower, Dwight 19, 102–4; creation of 181
administration of 159, 184 Friedman, Milton 140
Eisner, Kurt 128–9 Friedman, Tuviah 159
Eitan, Rafael 79 Friedrich, Carl 183
Elazar, David 165 Friends of Hebrew University 186
Eliot, George 194, 196 Friends of Israel Museum 186
Ellis, O. T. 97 Friends of Sharei Tzedek Hospital 186
Elon, Amos 43 Fuga Magister training jet 152
Index 261
fundamentalism and support for Israel Hamilton, Alexander 170
189–90 Hammer, Armand 138
fundamentalism, Islamic 14, 15, 25, Hanukkah 123, 149; see also Maccabee
73–4, 81, 90, 92, 99, 190, 205–6 revolt
Harel, Isser 154–8
Gadna Youth battalions 76 Harkabi, Yehoshofat 154, 164
Gamma peace initiative 103–4 Harmon, Avraham 104
Gaon, Nissim 138 Harrison, Benjamin 189
GATT 139 Hartz, Louis 37
Gemayel, Bashir 80; clan 33 Har-Zion, Meir 79
Geminder, Bedrich 128 Hashomer Hazair 134, 149–50
George, David Lloyd 60, 171, 194, 197 Haskalah 124; see also Enlightenment,
Gero, Ernst 128 Russian
Gibli, Benjamin 164 Hayesod Keren 55, 182
Gildersleeve, Virginia 96 Hebrew as a national language 175;
Ginzberg, Eli 184 revival of 135
Gobineau, Joseph de 108 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society: creation
Goldmann, Nahum 66 of 181
Goldstone, Jack 11, 39, 40 Hebrew University 6, 63, 78, 159, 175,
Golomb, Eliahu 154 177–8, 186, 188; creation of 136
Gorbachev, Mikhail 71, 185 Hebron Accord 25, 74
Gordon, A. D. 38, 127, 168 Hechler, William 197
Gorkii, Maxim 128 Heine, Heinrich 48
Graetz, Heinrich 125 Helman, Sara 147
Grand Mosque in Mecca, seizure of 99 Henderson, Arthur 197
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem 4, 58, 61, 65, Henderson, Leroy 103
77, 81, 89, 150, 159 Hertzberg, Arthur 121
Great Awakenings 188–9 Herut 21, 31, 55, 139, 170, 176
Great Depression 55, 116, 177, 183 Herut Party 25, 31, 55, 139, 154, 170,
Great Purges, Stalinist 68, 108 176
Green Line 24 Herzl, Theodor 3–5, 48, 55, 107, 126,
Gromyko, Andrei 193 133, 171, 174, 179, 185, 197; and
Gurr, Ted 11, 40 calling of the First Zionist Congress in
Basel 126; on opposition of the
Ha Poel Ha Tsair 168–9 Roman Catholic Church 92
Haam, Ahad 55 Herzog, Chaim 154
Habash, George 82 Hess, Moses 125
Hadassah 63, 112, 181; founding of 186 Hewlett-Packard 21, 138, 201
Hafex, Colonel Mustafa: killing of 158 Hezbollah 14, 25, 73; assault against
Haganah 31, 36, 132, 134, 142–3, 145, 80–1, 105; assault on Israel 98, 147;
158, 164, 195; arrest of members 62–3; denial of Israel’s right to exist 73–5;
beginning of 150–2; formation of 134; terrorist group 86, 165, 181
founding of Mossad and Shai 154–6; High Holidays 69
as illegal organization 76–7; and Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden:
institutionalization of revolution creation of 181
171–2 Hill, Sir Norman 178
Hagee, John 190 Hillel, Shlomo 164
Halevi, Judah 124 Hirsch, Baron 46
Halevy, Efraim 154 Histadrut 31, 38, 141, 143, 150; creation
Halpern, Ben 8, 9, 173 of 137; and Revolutionary Socialist
Hamas 14, 25, 73–5, 90, 147, 165, 168; Party 167–9, 171, 175, 177; and Zionist
founding of 85; and second intifada Socialist Revolutions 132, 134, 136–8
84–5 Hitler, Adolf 52, 64–5
Hamid II, Sultan Abdul 58 Hofi, Yitzhak 154
262 Index
Holocaust 4, 12, 31, 154, 159, 172, 174; Islam 5, 6, 85, 206; and Arab nationalism
and anti-Semitism 108; and the 122; and expulsion of Jews in 644 AD
Catholic Church 91, 93, 101; and 106; and opposition to Israel 99;
Diaspora 179–85, 196; and economic organized 101
development 116; and immigrants 53, Islamic Fundamentalism see
55–6, 61, 65–6, 155; Israel as stepchild fundamentalism, Islamic
of 20–1; and Israeli intransigence 25–6; Islamic Resistance Movement see Hamas
and miracle of the Jewish State 198, Israel: as American/Western implant or
202–5; and Orthodox Judaism 47; offshoot 19; Arabist view on creation
Restitution for 20, 137, 139; and will to of 9; bonds 185; as brutalizer of the
fight 145, 147 Arabs 22; centrality and visibility of
Holy Land Institute 189 110; Defense Forces (IDF) 78;
Hourani, Albert 32 Discount Bank 142; Emergency
Hovevei Zion 126 Campaign of 181; as a former colony
Howe, Irving 46 40; and the Four Tigers of Asia
Hungarian Revolution 1919 128 1950–2007 40; and a militarist society
Huntington, Samuel 11 41; and neo-Confucian ideology 40;
Hushi, Abba 157 the population of 45; and
Hussein, King 83, 94, 192 revolutionary context 10; as stepchild
Hussein, Saddam 32, 139, 190, 205 of the Diaspora 21; as stepchild of the
Hutchinson, Paul 96 Holocaust 20; as sub-agent of
imperialism 24; as success story 200–1;
IBM 22, 138 US aid to 19
Ichud 172 Israeli Ministry of Finance study 89
ideology 37–8, 137; Confucian 40; end of Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty 94
139; Marxian 67; Restorationist 188; Israel-Jordon Peace Treaty, signing of
Revolutionary 24; Zionist 8, 11, 103, 192
168, 196 Ivan IV, Tsar 107
IDF 78, 141, 161, 163 Ivanhoe 196
Imber, Herz Naftali 179
Immigration as revolutionary 166 Jabotinsky, Vladimir 61, 142, 149,
Immigration to Israel 166–67 169
Immigration, 1945–1948 34 Jacobson, Eddie 184
Indian Congress Party 36, 169 JDC see Jewish Distribution Committee
Inquisition 91, 107 Jefferson, Thomas 170
institution building 175; and the Jerusalem Economic Corporation 138
economy 34 Jerusalem Foundation 186
institutions and Zionist Revolution 177 Jerusalem University College 189;
integration of immigrants, barriers to 50 see also Holy Land Institute
Intel 22, 138 Jesus Is Coming 189
International Christian Embassy Jewish Agency 31, 63, 66, 137, 141, 151,
Jerusalem 190 154–6, 169, 171, 175–7, 182, 193
International Christians for Israel Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 69
Movement 189 Jewish Brigade 62, 151, 155
International political support 35–6 Jewish Distribution Committee (JDC)
intifada 6, 20, 25, 41, 73, 75, 85, 179, 204; 183
First 9, 83, 161; Palestinian 74, 163–4; Jewish leaders, British and Western 182
Second 6, 22–3, 25, 84–5, 88–9, 116, Jewish Legion 169; creation of 149
118, 179 Jewish National Fund 55, 121, 136, 175;
investors in Israel 21, 137–8, 187 creation of 137; founding of 185, 186
invisibility of Israeli achievement 201–2 Jewish people, divisions within 54–6
Irgun 31, 77–8, 142–3, 151–2, 158, 176; Jewish political involvement, American
dissolution of 143, 176; military force 181
151 Jewish Revolt 123, 149
Index 263
Jewry 46, 48, 60; American 179, 184; Kovel, Joel 15, 19, 22
British 50; Diaspora 21, 168, 196; Krychenko, Trofim 70
European 64, 124, 126–7, 133; modern Kun, Bela 128
181; reform 124; Soviet 69, 108; Soviet Kupat Holim 141, 168, 170, 177
black years 68–9; Western 52; world Kurchatov, Igor 187
50, 96, 127, 167, 203, 205 Kurds 10, 27–36, 57, 157
Jews: Ashkenazim 50; Canadian 183–4; Kuzari 124
as minorities 28; and national
liberation movements 36–7; and new La Libre Parole 108
societies 37–9; and Ottoman Turkey Labor Party 14, 24–5, 36, 39, 43, 131,
28; Palestinian 3–4, 28; Sephardi 16; 137–40, 167–71, 176–8; creation of
and social revolutions 39–40; Spanish 167–70
47; Ukrainian 12 Labor Zionist Party 127
Johnson Act 205 Lakam 160, 165
Johnson, Lyndon 19, 104, 105, 185, 191 Landau, Lev 187
Johnson, Paul 186 Landauer, Gustav 128, 129
Joint Distribution Committee 180 Lansing, Robert 102
Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Laqueur, Walter 6, 9, 20, 23, 38, 51, 55
Directors: creation of 181 Lassalle, Ferdinand 47, 124, 128
Jordan Peace Agreement 25 lasting legacy 203–4
Joseph, Dov 118 Latrun 5, 64, 78, 203
Judaism without Embellishment 70 Lausanne Conference 1949 103
Judaism, Western Reform 124 Lavon Affair 139, 170
Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy 64 Lavon, Pinchas 164, 166
Law of Return 52
Kadima 140 Lawrence of Arabia 60
Kahane Commission 80 leaders, American and non-Jewish 183–6;
Kalischer, Zvi Hirsch, Rabbi 125 Jewish 38; revolutionary 170–1
Kamenev, Lev 128–9 League of Nations 16, 35; approval of
Kaplan, Fanya 200 British Mandate for Palestine 182; and
Karine A affair 105 establishment of Jewish Agency 175;
Karsh, Efraim 8, 9, 21, 175 mandate to Britain 28; and Roman
Kassem, Ali 157 Catholic Church 93
Katznelson, Berl 38 Lebanese Civil War 32, 33, 83
Kautsky, Kaul 128 Lehi 36, 78, 142, 143, 151
Keddie, Nikki 11, 39 Lehman, Herbert 180
Khalidi, Rashid 13, 15; and The Iron Lenin, Vladimir 37, 170, 199, 200; and
Cage 13 condemnation of anti-Semitism 68;
Khartoum summit 82 Leninist organizational principles 147;
Kimmerling, Baruch 9, 10, 114 and socialist revolution 128–9; What Is
King Abdulla 192 to Be Done? 129
King Charles I 199 Levine, Eugene 128
King Cyrus of Persia 46, 123 Lewis, Bernard 65
King David 110, 112, 116, 123, 143, 152 Lichtheim, Arthur 66
King Hussein 192, 194 Lifshitz, Yaacov 113
King Solomon 123 Likud 14, 171, 173; leaders and policies
King, Henry 95 of 25; and permanent revolution 43;
King-Crane Commission 95 and second partial capitalist
Kisch, Egon 128, 172 revolution 139–41
Kissinger, Henry 147 Lilienbaum, Moshe 125
Knesset 25, 117, 137, 139, 176, 194 Lindsey, Hal 189
Kook, Abraham, Rabbi 127–8 Lissak, Moshe 41
Koor 137, 138, 142, 154 Litvinov, Maxim 68
Korean War 24, 174 Locke, John 197
264 Index
Lodge, Henry Cabot 104 Metals, Iscar 21, 201; see also economy;
Lotz, Wolfgang 160 Israeli investors
Lovett, Robert 109 Michels, Robert 169
Luca, Vasile 128 Middle East Council of Churches:
Lueger, Karl 108; election of 125 creation of 98
Lunacharsky, Anatol 186 Migdal, Joel 57, 110, 195
Luther, Martin 107 Mikhoels, Solomon 69
Luxemburg, Rosa 47, 128, 129 Mikveh Israel 154, 175; Yisrael
Agricultural School 177
Maccabee revolt 123 Militarist society, Israel 41–2
Maccabi Olympic Games 175 Milton, John 196
MacDonald, Ramsay 197 Minc, Hilary 128
MacMichael, Sir Harold 142 Minhelet Ha’am see People’s Council
Macmillan, Margaret 31 minorities in Ottoman Turkey 28–30
Madison, James 170 modernization 10–12, 113; and
Madrid Conference (1991) 74 democratic socialism 130; of economy
Mahler, Gustav 48 and education 174; Israeli level of
Mann, Michael 38, 190 35–8; Jewish level of 186–8
Maoz, Zeev 73 Mollet, Guy 159
Mapai Party 25, 38, 175, 176; and Mond, Alfred 180
divisions within the Jewish people 55; Monroe, James 170
and the First Zionist Socialist Montagu, Edwin 50
Revolution 132–7; and national Montefiore, Moses 181
cohesion 31; as a pioneering Zionist Montgomery, Field Marshall 4
party 168–70 Moody Bible Institute 189
Mapam Party 25, 176, 192; and First Moody, Dwight 189
Zionist Socialist Revolution 38, 132, Moore, Barrington 11, 39, 40
134; and Palmachniks 151 Morgan, J. Pierpont 189
Marshall, George 4, 103, 109 Morgenthau, Henry 59, 185
Marshall, Louis 182 Morris, Benny 9
Martov, Jules 128 Mortara, case of 1858 12
Martynov 128 Mossad LeAliyah Bet 158, 164
Marx, Karl 125, 128, 186; on Judaism 67; Mossad 6, 145, 153–60, 162–5
On the Jewish Question 107; and social Mount Lebanon Maronites 28
revolutions 39–40, 47–8 Moyne, Lord 142
Marxism: Russian 129; and Soviet Muhammad 110
hostility 67; as theory 198; and Muhatir, Muhammad 187
Zionism 168 Mura, Falash 53
Maxwell, Robert 138 Musa, Abu 83
McCarthy, Justin 32, 35 Museum of the Extinct People 65
McCormick, Cyrus 189 Muslims 3, 16, 32–6, 43, 53, 58, 60, 83,
Mearsheimer, John 19, 146, 181 150, 195; Eastern 99; as obstacle to the
Meir, Golda 38, 117, 137, 200; arrival in rise of Israel 43; Syrian 28
Moscow of 69; and Diaspora 180, Mustapha, Salah: killing of 158
191–2; as leader 170–1; and victory
205 Najjar, Muhammed 162
Mendelssohn, Felix 48 Narodnaya Volya 125
Mendelssohn, Moses 48 Nasrallah, Sheik Hassan 86
Mensheviks, Russian 128–30 Nasser Gamal Abdel 25, 70, 79, 158–8,
Menshevism 37, 130 190
Mercury 21; see also economy, Israel Nasser, Kamal 162
investors Nathanson, Marc 128
Merkley, Paul 91 National Christian Leadership
Meshal, Khalid 165 Conference for Israel 190
Index 265
national cohesion 31–3; illusory 67 Operation Suzanne 164
National Committee 177 Operation Thief 158
National Council of Churches 96–8 opposition of Islam: overcoming 99
National liberation movements and the Oracle of Omaha 21
Jews 36–7 Organization of the Islamic Conference
National Religious Party 174 (October 2003) 187
National Water Carrier 185 organizations, revolutionary 171
nationalism 7–10, 31–3, 124, 166–9; Arab Ormsby-Gore, W. G. A. 60
15, 33, 122, 171; colonial 36–7; Orthodox Church, Armenian 29
European 121, 125; Jewish 47, 96, 122, Oslo Accords 74, 84; Oslo I and II 25, 84;
133–6; Kurdish 31; modern 181; Polish Peace Process 88, 94, 97
122; Russian 122, 200; secular 121, 174 Ottolenghi, Emanuele 122, 205–6
Nazi Germany, enmity of 64–7 Oz, Amos 14
Nazis 16, 108, 153, 157, 172; and killing
of the Jews 64–5 Pale of Settlement of Tsarist Russia 46
Neeman, Yuval 154 Pale of Settlement, Russian 4
Nehemia 46, 123 Palestine Orchestra: creation of 175
Nekrasov, Nikolai 37 Palestine Post: creation of 175
Nelson, Erik 98 Palestine, economic backwardness
neo-Marcionism 91 114–18
neo-realism 30, 41 Palestinian Islamic Jihad 85
Netanyahu, Benjamin 25, 141, 191 Palestinian Jewish Labor movement 127
Netanyahu, Yonatan 163 Palestinian Mandate 172
New Socialist Jerusalem 38 Palmach 36, 158, 171, 192, 195; Arab
new societies and the Jews 37–9 section of 154–6; creation of 151–2;
Newton, Isaac 197 dissolution of 78; and First Zionist
Nicholas I, Tsar 106 Socialist Revolution 132–4; and the
Niebuhr, Reinhardt 183 Irgun 143; and national cohesion 31; in
Nietzsche, Friedrich 24, 144 new state 176
Nisan, Mordechai 8 Palmerston, Lord 192, 194, 197
Nitzan, Jonathan 10 Pappe, Ilan 9, 22
Nixon, Richard 71, 102, 105 Paris Peace Conference 10, 31, 33, 95,
Nolan, John 94 182
Nordau, Max 126, 127 Parks, James 110
Partition Plan 1947 112
Ochs, Adolph 183 Party of God see Hezbollah
Ofer Group 142 Pasha, Djemal 59
Office of the Islamic Conference 109 Pasha, Sir John Glubb 64
Oil embargo 1973 88 Passfield White Paper 61
Old Testament 49, 96, 188 Pasternak, Boris 48
Oldfield, Maurice 154 Patton, George 144
On the Jewish Question 107 Pauker, Ana: trial 68, 128–9
“On the Jews and Their Lies” 107 Payments, German Holocaust 137, 139
OPEC 100 Paz 138
Operation Bricha 155 Peace Now 41
Operation Broadside 156 Peace Treaty with Jordan 1994 88
Operation Jonathan 162 Pearson, Lester 183–4
Operation Jordon 162 Peasant uprising, Maronite 28
Operation Litani 83 PEC Israel Economic Corporation:
Operation Magic Carpet 53 founding of 182
Operation Moses 163 Peel Commission 61, 73, 81, 96, 111–12,
Operation Nachshon 77 154, 172
Operation Noah’s Ark 162 Peel plan of 1937 25
Operation Springtime of Youth 162 Peled, Alon 10, 144
266 Index
Penkower, Monty 102 Reich, Bernard 19
Penslar, Derek 18 Reinharz, Jehuda 9, 133, 171
People’s Council 176–7 Rekhesh operation 156
Peres, Shimon 94, 139, 141, 159, 178 Religious organizations and opposition
“Perils to America in the New Jewish 91–101
State” 96 Religious Roundtable 190
Perlmutter, Amos 143 Renan, Ernst 108
Persian King, Cyrus the Great 46 Return to Zion 121, 124–5, 130, 132,
Petach Tikvah: settlement at 115 135
Pétain, Marshall Henri 108 Revai, Joszek 128
Pinsker, Leo 4, 126 Revisionists: formation of 169
Pisarev, Dmitri 37 Revolution: American (1776–81) 3, 131,
Plan Avner 151 170; Chinese 3, 11, 131, 147, 167,
Plekhanov, Georgi 128 170–1, 199, 204; and emancipation of
PLO 13, 83–4, 94, 100, 161, 163 Jews 124; European (1848) 107, 133;
Plugot Sadeh 150 first 11, 121; First Socialist 38–9, 121,
Plymouth Brethen 189, 197 128, 131, 133–9, 167; French (1789–99)
Poalei Zion 129, 168 47, 106–7, 124, 131, 133, 147; from
Pollard, Jonathan 165 comparative perspective 11; historical
Pope Benedict 92 roots of 121–30; institutionalization of
Pope John Paul II 94 170–7; Iranian (1979) 11, 99, 199;
Pope John XXIII 94 Israeli 27, 39, 204; non-religious roots
Pope Paul VI 94 of 122–8; and non-socialist alternative
Pope Pius X 92 142–3; power of 204–5; religious roots
Pope Pius XII 93 of 121–2; Russian 3, 37–9, 47, 130–3,
Pope Pius XIII 93 147, 170; second 121; Second Partial
Popular Front for the Liberation of Capitalist 139–42; Zionist Socialist 12,
Palestine 82 38–9, 43, 121, 128, 131–43, 167, 178
Presbyterian General Assembly 99 Revolutionary Army 119, 146–53, 165
Protestant Reformation 196 right to exist 73, 97
Protestantism 39; American 95; Arab 96; Riklis, Meshulam 138
British 196; churches and opposition Robertson, Pat 190
95–9; evangelical 91; fundamentalists Rockefeller, John 189
and support for Israel 190; liberal 43, Roman Catholic Church see Catholic
91; mainline and hostility toward Church, Roman
Israel 91, 98–101, 202; rise of 107; Rome and Jerusalem 125
Zionist leaders of 96–7 Rommel, Field Marshall Edwin 65, 195,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion 108 205
Puritans and support for Israel 188 Roosevelt, Eleanor 183
Roosevelt, Franklin 19, 67, 102, 108, 185
Quandt, William 19 Roshwald, Aviel 11
Rostow, Eugene 104
Rabin, Yitzhak 25, 41, 77, 137, 139, Rotberg 73
141 Rotenstreich, Nathan 144
Radek, Karl 128 Roth, Cecil 106
Rakosi, Matyas 128 Rothschild, Baron 16
Rassco (Rural and Suburban Settlements Rothschild, Lord Edmond de 16, 17, 51,
Company) 182 116, 124, 138, 177, 182, 197
Rathner, Yohanan 151 Rubin, Barry 47, 48, 75
Reagan, President 20, 88 Rusk, Dean 19, 103, 105, 109
recognition of Israel 21; British 194; Russian Council of Ministers 60
German 194; and Khartoum summit Russian Red Army 147
82; Soviet Union 192–3; American 19, Russian Zionist movement 68; see also
103–4, 184, 191–2; Vatican 93–4 Zionism, Russian
Index 267
Sachar, Howard 59, 112, 122 Sherman, A. J. 22, 48, 155
Sadat, Anwar 71, 99, 164 Shertok, Moshe 93, 137
Sadeh, Yitzhak 77, 150–2, 156 Sherut Yediot, founding of 154
Saguy, Yehoshua 164 Shiloah, Reuven 154, 157
Said, Edward 9 Shin Beth 153, 156–57, 161–63, 165
Salameh, Ali Hassan 162, 164 Shiqaqi, Fathi: assassination of 86
Samuel, Viscount Herbert 28, 194 Shlaim, Avi 9
San Remo Conference (1920) 82, 194 Siberian Palestine see Birobidzhan
Sandler 20, 74 Silver, Abba Hillel 179, 180, 183
sanjaks 34, 111, 114 Sinai Campaign 64, 79, 82, 104, 116,
Saud, Ibn, Saudi King 67, 102 158–61, 191
Sayeret Matkal 157, 163 Six Day War 9, 25, 79, 82, 94, 97, 104,
Schecter, Stephen 51 139, 160–1, 170, 184–5, 191, 201
Schiff, Jacob 182 Skocpol, Theda 11, 39, 40
Schumacher, Yosef 157 Slansky, Rudolf 128, 129
Scofield, Cyrus 189 Smetana, Bedrich 179
Scofield Study Bible 189 Smith, Anthony 136
Scott, Walter 196 Smith, General Walter Biddell 157
Second Aliyah (1904–14) 50; immigrants Smolenskin, Peretz 125
after 136; pioneers 38; veterans of 168; Smuts, Jan 171
Second Coming 189 Social Democrats, German 129
Second Jewish Revolt 123, 149 social revolutions 10, 27, 133; literature
Second Temple 46, 95, 123 on 39; and the Jews 39–40; see also
Second Vatican Council 94 Revolutions, Zionist Socialist
secret police, revolutionary 153–65 Socialist party, revolutionary 36, 167–70;
Seeking Zion 125 Zionist 168
Segev, Tom 9 Socialist Revolutionaries 128
Sephardi Jews 16, 203, 206; and First Socialists, Marxist 128–9
Zionist Socialist Revolution 131; Sofer, Sasson 8
immigration of 50–5, 63; inclusion of Solel Boneh 137, 163, 168, 195
in People’s Council 176; and the Irgun Sonnenborn Fund 183
142; and the Revolutionary Socialist Soviet Union: disintegration of 35;
Party 169; and the Russian Revolution hostility of 67; opposition to Israel 6,
37; and the Second Partial Capitalist 193; recognition of Israel 192–3
revolution 139–40 Spanish Inquisition 107
Shafir, Gershon 16 Special Operations Executive (SOE) 151
Shai 154–6; see also Sherut Yediot Spellman, Cardinal 93
Shalev, Aryeh 165 Spiegel, Steven 19
Shalim, Avi 22 SS Argiro 158
Shamir, Moshe 132 SS Lino: sinking of 158
Shamir, Yitzhak 20, 25, 94, 140, 143 SS Patria: sinking of 62
Shaoqi, Liu 170 SS Struma: sinking of 62
Sharansky, Anatoly 70 St. James Conference 62, 82
Sharett, Moshe 38, 137, 170, 193 Stalin, Joseph 68–9, 108, 128–9, 158, 187,
Sharif, Beau 32 192, 199, 203
Sharm el Sheikh 23, 25 Stansky trial 68
Sharon, Arik 25, 41, 77–80, 83–4, 99, Stavrianos, L. S. 24
111, 140–1, 143, 158, 161, 174 Stephenson, William 154
Shazar, Zalman 94 Stern, Albert and Frederick 180
Shefayim 49 Stern Gang 142–3, 152, 158
Sheffer, Gabriel 179 Sternberg, Isaac 128
Sheikh, Sharmel 23 Stolypin, Pyotr 60
Shekem Oil 138 Straus, Oscar 92
Shemona, Kiryat 83, 117 Sunni Arabs 28
268 Index
support for Israel, non-Jewish 188–90 Treaty of Sèvres 10, 28, 29
Sverdlov, Yakov 170 Tripartite Declaration 1950 104
Swiss Mirage 162 Troen, Ilan 10, 116, 117, 181
Sykes, Mark 171 Trotsky, Leon 47, 90, 128, 129, 170, 199
Syrian Protestant College 95–6 Truman, Harry 19, 24, 93, 103, 109, 157,
Syrkin, Nachum 127 184, 185, 198
Szold, Henrietta 186 Trumpeldor Battalion 150
Trumpeldor, Joseph 38, 149–50
Taba 23, 25 TRW 138
Tactical High Energy Laser program 188 Tsar Alexander II 124
Taif Accords 10 Turgenev, Ivan 125
Tal, David 8 Twentieth Zionist Congress 172
Talabani, President of Iraq 32
Talabanis 32 UAV 188
Talmon, Jacob 45, 52, 128, 131 Uniates 33
Tancred 194 United Church of Christ 99
Tanzim 86 United Jewish Appeal 104, 118, 180
Tardini, Domenico 93 United Nations 5, 20, 30, 30, 43, 67–70,
TASE see Tel Aviv Stock Exchange 83, 89, 193, 196, 205; Commission on
Technion: creation of 136 Human Rights 97; Committee for the
technological system: construction of Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of
177–8 the Palestinian People 100; General
Tel Aviv Stock Exchange 142 Assembly Resolution 3379 100;
Tel Aviv University 186, 188 Iranian President Mahmoud
Telhami, Shibley 41 Ahmadinejad’s speech to 20; and
terrorism 23–5, 201; Arab 145–6; and opposition to Israel 99; Palestine
economy 138–40; fundamentalist 99; Commission 173; partition resolution
Jewish 62; and Iran 75; Palestinian 63; Resolution 181 13, 36, 93, 192;
81–3, 105, 162; as unconventional Resolution 3236 100; United Nations
warfare 81–6 Relief and Work Agency 100; vote for
terrorist organizations 81–6 partition of British Mandate in
Thant, U 70 Palestine 30; World Conference
The Gifts of the Jews 187 Against Racism 101
“The Intellectual Pre-eminence of the United States Senate 35
Jews in Modern Europe” 186 University of Haifa 186
The Iron Cage 13 US State Department 75, 102–4, 109, 185
The Jewish State 126
The Late Great Planet Earth 189 Va’ad Leumi see National Committee
The Making of a Statesman 171 Vaksberg, Arkady 69
The Times 50 Van Creveld, Martin 143
“The Worker in Zionism” 168–9 Van der Hoeven, Jan Wilhelm 190
The World of Our Fathers 46 Vatican 92–5
Third Temple 4, 65, 75 Veblen, Thorsten 186
Third World and opposition to Israel Versailles Peace Conference 89, 112
99–101 Vie de Jesus 108
Thomas, Jacques 158, 159 Vienna Uprising (1919) 128
Tillich, Paul 183 Vital, David 4, 46
Tilly, Charles 11, 22, 146 Von Doren, Mark 183
Toller, Ernest 128
Toubianski, Meir, Captain 157 Wagner, Clarence 189
Trade levels, 1990s 141–2 Waldheim, Kurt 100
Trade zones: creation of 141–2 Wallerstein, Immanuel 24
Transjordanian Arab Legion 77 Walt, Steven 19, 181
Treaty of Lausanne 29, 30 War in Lebanon 20, 25, 71, 74, 80, 105
Index 269
War of Independence 3, 30, 115, 137, Yassin, Sheikh Ahmed 85
143, 145, 148, 180, 192, 205 Yehoshua, A. B. 51
War, Vietnam 24, 70 Yiddish 68–9, 122, 135; culturalism 47
Warburg, Felix 180 Yishuv 16, 18, 58, 64, 132, 167, 169–70,
warfare 36, 54, 147, 161; conventional 183, 194, 204–5; institutions of 175–6;
75–81; economic 75, 86–9; guerrilla New 49; Old 50, 59, 174–7
142; political 75, 89–90; tribal 31; Yom Kippur War 9, 19, 71, 80, 88, 139,
unconventional 75, 81–6 163–4, 184–5, 191, 193
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 146 Young, Douglas 189
Washington, George 170 Youth Aliyah 6, 135–6, 167, 171, 200;
Weber, Max 31 founding of 185–6
Weizmann Institute 6, 159, 178–88;
creation of 136 Zambrowski, Roman 128
Weizmann, Chaim 4, 25, 38, 55, 62, Zangwill, Israel 54
170–1, 182–4, 190, 205 Zedong, Mao 170, 200
West and lack of support for Israel 102–5 Zein, Abdullah 165
What Is to Be Done 129 Zeira, Eli 164
Wiesenthal, Simon 159 Zeira, Meir 165
will to fight 13, 63, 77, 119, 144–6, 165 Zellerbach, David 184
199, 200, 205, 206 Zimmerman, Arthur von 59
Wilson, Woodrow 29, 35, 171, 182, 189 Zinoviev, Grigorii 128, 129, 170
Wingate, Orde 150 Zion and the Babylonians 45
Wisdom, Alan 98 Zion, Lovers of see Hovevei Zion
Wise, Stephen 171, 179–80, 182–3 Zionism 5, 6, 10–14, 18, 20, 23, 67,
Wisse, Ruth 122 190–7; as agent of imperialism 24;
Wistrich, Robert 67 American 182–4; anti- 9; British
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 48 194–7; Christian 91, 188, 190, 194; and
Wolfson, Isaac 138 colonial rule 18; and creation of the
Woman Zionist Organization 186; see state 55–6; divisions within 54–5; East
also Hadassah European 130; economic aspects of
Woodhead Commission 82, 111 114–18; and the Holocaust 179–82;
World Council of Churches 5, 6, 96–9; and Islam 99; labor 129; modern 107,
Second Assembly of 97 124–30; and national liberation
World Jewish Congress 66; founding of movement 10; political and cultural
183 176–7; and the Protestant Church
World War II 10, 36, 56, 116, 128, 145–8, 95–9; as racism 89; religious and
151, 155, 158, 172, 177, 181, 191–2, secular 127; as revolutionary ideology
198, 200, 203; and anti-Semitism 108; 27; and the Roman Catholic Church
improvements during and after 30; and 91–5; socialist 121–2; and Soviet
national liberation movements 36; Union 67–72, 130, 192–3; the success
victorious allies of 67–72 of 203–5; and tradition 46–8; and UN
World Zionist Congress 55, 175 Resolution 3379 100–1; and the West
World Zionist Organization 55, 174; 102–5
creation of 136 Zionist Biltmore Program 173
Wye River Accord 1998 25, 74 Zionist Left: emergence of 168
Zionist Organization 55; of America 55,
Xiaoping, Deng 170 181, 183
Zionist socialist parties 129
Yadin, Yigal 4, 77, 145 Zur, Zvi 165
Yariv, Aharon 154 Zvi, Shabbtai 123

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Jonathan Adelman provides a fresh perspective on one of the most controversial

Jonathan Adelman, who teaches at the Graduate School of International Studies at

This series provides a multidisciplinary examination of all aspects of Israeli

1. Peace in the Middle East 8. Israel at the Polls, 1996

7. In Search of Identity 13. A Twenty-Year Retrospective of

15. Parties, Elections and Cleavages 25. A Dissenting Democracy

29. Israel, the Hashemites and the

31. War in Palestine, 1948

23. Jerusalem Divided 34. Trapped Fools

Israel: The First Hundred Years (Mini Series)

1. Israel’s Transition from 4. Israel in the International Arena

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

ISBN 0-203-92829-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–77509–4 (hbk)

10 Historical roots of the revolutions 121

1.1 The economy of Israel, 2005, compared to that of more than

The rise of Israel

Weakness of the Jews

In November 1947 the new CIA in a report on “The Consequences of the

The power and perseverance of their enemies

Great dangers await us on every front . . . Worldwide our strength is next

The unlikely Israeli story

Diﬃcult questions: How was Israel created and why did it

Nation GDP per capita

Table 1.2 Scientiﬁc capabilities of Israel and selected countries, 2005–06

Countries Scientiﬁc papers citations

Source: Scientiﬁc Citation Index, 2005–06.

This leads to a series of diﬃcult questions:

Importance and neglect of the topic

Nowhere has this “victimization culture” been more starkly manifest

Given the Arabist belief in the power of anti-imperialist movements, this

Need for comparative historical studies

The need for placing Israel in a revolutionary context

A revolution is a rapid, fundamental and violent domestic change in the

Numerous works on comparative revolution by Crane Brinton, Barrington

Israeli success: Palestinian failure

Structure of the book

Limitations of the volume

Israel as a racist, colonialist state

the Zionist movement sought to create a society ex nihilo, thereby

Israel as a stepchild of the Holocaust

Israel as a stepchild of the Diaspora

Israel as a brutalizer of the Arabs

Israel as a sub-agent of imperialism

the Allies no longer had any interest in an independent Kurdish state.

Unlike other emerging nations, Kurdistan had no powerful patrons in

Nationalism was not an understood concept . . . Those Kurds, who were

Institution building and the economy

International political support

must judge the Allied treatment of the Armenians as craven. Idealistic

The Jews and national liberation movements

The Jews and new societies

On representation, Russia was at the opposite extreme from the United

The traditional Jewish class structure made a revolutionary utopia in Israel

The Jews and social revolutions

Israel and the Four Tigers of Asia (1950–2007)

Israel and a militarist society

Obstacles to the rise of Israel