Tenacity and Grit

I read the Iranian President's call to wipe Israel out from the map and I was reminded of the book by Elliot Cohen, "Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime", London: Simon and Schuster: 2003. Cohen outlines David Ben Gurion's role in transforming the Israeli Defence Forces in the 1940s. It reminded me that Israel was here to stay regardless of shrill rhetoric to the contrary. The information I refer to is extracted from his book.

In the early 1880s, there were only 25,000 Jews in Palestine. This had increased to 400,000 in 1936. The British published a "White Paper" in May 1939 that provided for an Arab state in Palestine in 1949 and limited continued Jewish immigration. World War II was then raging in Europe and Palestinian Jews watched the extermination of European Jewry with horror. Their attitude to Britain's war efforts in light of that Government's new policy provided an interesting contrast to the Indian National Congress. Ben Gurion declared "we will fight the war as if there were no white paper and the white paper as if there were no war". Tens of thousands of Palestinian Jews served in the British army. Ben Gurion meanwhile focused on strengthening Jewish institutions including the military and spear-headed continued Jewish immigration, illicit or otherwise. In 1945, the Jewish community had increased to 500,000 vis-a-vis the 750,000 Palestinian Arabs. The Jewish community rose to 600,000 one year later.

Ben Gurion realized that the multiple Jewish guerrilla forces such as the Haganah, the Palmach, the Herut and Irgun were ill-equipped and inexperienced to fight the inevitable conventional war with neighboring Arab states. He quietly transformed disparate uncoordinated guerrilla groups into a unified professional army. He reorganized the Jewish Defence Force, clarified the chain of command, ensured civilian leadership and initiated extensive military procurement. The Jewish Defence Forces only had 1,900 machines guns in April 1947. This increased to 31,000 in March 1949. Equipment was imported from Czechoslovakia. He reached out to Jewish World War II veterans and ensured training to transform the inexperienced guerrilla into a professional soldier.

This paid off. Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948 led to the invasion by Egyption, Iraqi, Lebanese, Syrian and Transjordanian troops. The local Arab population rose in revolt. Isolated and widely scattered Jewish settlements were under threat. The Israeli Defence Forces proceeded to defend the coastal stretch between Tel Aviv and Haifa, used that as a platform to evict the Egyptions from the Negev desert in the south, Syrian and Lebanese forces from the Galilee in the north, and Iraqi and Jordanian troops from the Judean Hills in the East. Israel simultaneously leveraged the politics of graft. Later reports suggest that King Abdullah of Transjordan had been given Jewish Agency Funds. Here was an illustration of resolve and forward planning as opposed to empty rhetoric. While this was indeed a joint effort indebted to the contribution of many dedicated Jews in different continents, Ben Gurion's role can not be denied.

Israel had secured its political existence on Palestinian soil after a gap of 2,000 years. Ben Gurion had become Israel's first Prime Minister at the age of 62. He had transformed an underground military establishment into one of the most formidable armies in the world. Founder of the Labor Party and the Histadrut trade union, Ben Gurion had only immigrated to Palestine at the age of 20. He started his life there as a farmer. He inspired a public education system to mold Jews arriving in Palestine from different countries into a unified nation.

A spartan and frugal man, he had a vast collection of books in his Kibbutz apartment. His interests included Eastern Philosophy, European History and Military Science. A later Israeli leader, Shimon Peres, shared his interest in Eastern Philosophy. Ben Gurion had four pictures in his apartment, one of Michelangelo's Moses, one of Abraham Lincoln with the insert of the Emancipation Proclamation, one of veteran Jewish trade unionist Katznelson, Ben Gurion's closest friend, and one of Gandhi, the pacifist who forced the British empire to yield. In many ways, he reminds me of Sardar Vallabhai Patel given the frugality, financial probity, foresight, tenacity and robust common sense. To quote Ben Gurion: "what matters is not what the gentiles will say, but what the Jews will do".

Israel has its challenges ahead of it. The future of a restive Arab population on the West Bank, the volatility in the extended region, the increasing appeal of Islamic fundamentalism committed to Israel's destruction, and the demographic challenge of a Palestinian population cooped up in territory 1/4th the size of Israel will need to be addressed. Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in the early 1990s and from Gaza last month which illustrated the limits to its power. But the winning factor still stands in its favor i.e. indomitable grit and persistence in the face of the insurmountable. Ariel Sharon continues to demonstrate that. Israel, a democratic nation governed by the rule of law, will never be wiped out.