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Subject: How did Israel secure its status as a nation state after WWII?
Yimmy    10/25/2006 5:03:01 PM
Opinions anyone?
 
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Godofgamblers       11/20/2006 12:39:09 AM
There are various answers to your question, yimme, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
 
(1) Arabs see the creation as a form of colonialism, since as is the case with many cases of imperialism, there was immigration of foreign natonals.
 
However, the 'foreign nationals' in this case were not completely alien farmers, as in the case of white immigration to various African countries (Rhodesia, South Africa, etc) (2) but people who were culturally and ethnically part of the Levant.
 
There was also a large population already present in the area that felt they needed protection after WWII, lest they go the way of oppressed minorities in other countries. The state of Israel as a political entity and not just a vague cultural identity became a necessity.
 
(2) The modern state of Israel was born in a baptism of fire. Every nation has its founding myth and Israel has its own, forged in combat. Once the state was a fait accompli, the other nations had to recognize it.
 
These are two reasons that spring to mind (although there are others) as to why Israel has a right to exist and why it came into being. A realpolitik reason and a cultural reason.
 
Does this answer the question?
 
 
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YelliChink       11/20/2006 12:55:03 AM

Has it?
Is there any other nation-state on Earth, which status and legitimacy are being as constantly dicussed and challenged as Israel?
Kiribati? nah!



Taiwan?
 
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HoundOfHello       11/22/2006 12:55:51 PM
Wow. Haven't been to this board in a while.

"I like that... mind if I use it?"-Yimmy
---Sure, go ahead.

" To be honest the second was the most important. Says something about the world doesn't it? If the Arabs had won the world would have simply gone "tsk, tsk" over the "poor Jews" without helping a bit. And to be fair the world was stuffed with unfortunate people more then usual then, and few care about those they have no connection too. As the Jews won it was necessary to have some diplomatic influence with them. Some things never change. "- Jastayme
----Agreed.

Same to Herald. I think you got it perfectly.

"but people who were culturally and ethnically part of the Levant. "-GoG
----Disagree. I don't see how a Russian, German, French, or Polish Jew is culturally and ethnically part of the Levant. Their ancestors were, but the Jews who emigrated to Israel had been shaped by a millenia of European cultural influence not Levantine.

"There was also a large population already present in the area that felt they needed protection after WWII, lest they go the way of oppressed minorities in other countries. "- GoG
---How and when did the opression start though? AFAIK, Jews weren't bothered too often before the late 19th and early 20th century during the Arab nationalist movements. IMO, the Balfour declaration was the spark that really got the Arabs and Jews at each other's throats.

"
Has it?
Is there any other nation-state on Earth, which status and legitimacy are being as constantly dicussed and challenged as Israel?
Kiribati? nah!



Taiwan?"- Yellichink
---Not even close to the same degree that Israel has I think. PRC and Taiwan have been in a Cold War state since 1949. In that time Israel has had to fight 3 full scale wars against neighbors who have sought its destruction.
 


-HoH

 
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Godofgamblers       11/23/2006 7:03:55 PM
Hey HoH, how's it going, you may be right, but the key is that people PERCEIVED them to be Jewish. This is why they were discriminated against. The Russians and Poles and Germans et al did not take the view that they had become European, no matter how many years they were in Europe. As a result, they did have a need to take shelter in a homeland. If they had no Jewishness about them, as you seem to be saying, why would they go in fact to Israel? Why would they have heeded the call to go to the emerging state of Israel is they had been fully assimilated? Obviously, culturally and ethnically, they still felt themselves to be Jews.
 
You may be right that the Arabs were not immediately threatening them, but because of contemporary massacres and genocides, the position of minorities was more and more an issue. Hence the sense of urgency.
 
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Barca       11/27/2006 10:02:15 AM

Nobody else got any comments on how Israel came into being?
I will argue that the possibility of a state of Israel started because secular Jews in the 19th century bought land and encouraged other Jews to do so.  After the breakup of the Turkish 'Empire' and the desire of England and France to divest themselves, the UN was the vehicle for the victorious powers to create the treaties.
 

 
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HoundOfHello       11/28/2006 6:52:31 PM
"The Russians and Poles and Germans et al did not take the view that they had become European, no matter how many years they were in Europe. As a result, they did have a need to take shelter in a homeland. If they had no Jewishness about them, as you seem to be saying, why would they go in fact to Israel? Why would they have heeded the call to go to the emerging state of Israel is they had been fully assimilated? Obviously, culturally and ethnically, they still felt themselves to be Jews."-GoG

----You are right about the way they were treated in Europe (particularly Russia and Eastern Europe, but also in France and German) as outsiders, and felt that they needed their own homeland. Where I disagreed with you was here:

"However, the 'foreign nationals' in this case were not completely alien farmers, as in the case of white immigration to various African countries (Rhodesia, South Africa, etc) (2) but people who were culturally and ethnically part of the Levant."-GoG

----My point was that after a millenium of life in Europe, the Jews who moved to Palestine were NOT culturally and ethnically part of the Levant. Their ancestors were, but to the contemporary inhabitants of that region (Muslim Arabs), the Jews were indeed alien. Basically the Jews were Europeans who were moving back to the land of their ancestors. The Jews of 19th and 20th century Europe were no more Levantine than European Christians were.

The unfortunate position of the Jews was that they were caught between a rock and a hard place: not totally accepted where they lived, and not at all accepted where they sought to live. The Jews realized that without a fight, no one would recognize their right to exist. As jastayme pointed out, the world would have said ""tsk, tsk" over the "poor Jews"". And that was in public. In private, no one but the Jews would have cared about what happened to Israel, either through apathy or geography.

-HoH

 
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sentinel28a       11/29/2006 4:16:37 AM

Many, of the actual fighters among the Israelis, had excellent training in the Second World War. Whether as partisans, or volunteers, or former soldiers in Allied armies who emigrated to the British Mandate prior to 1947, that gave the Israelis a ready-made officer and NCO corps for their forces. You cannot overestimate how much that latent professionalism combined with their iron determination and desperation became a force multiplier.

Something else. People might consider this culturally chauvinistic, but European civilization  produces, or at least it produced then, organized efficient bureaucratic and corporate-minded organizational people who thought, acted, and worked as cohesive units.

Arab culture then, and I'm not sure it isn't true now, wasn't capable of that.

Israelis knew enough to pull basic equipment maintenance and drill themselves until their arms fell off..

That accounts for maybe half of why they were so effective.

The rest of it may have just been sheer grit.

Herald


I agree with Herald here.  The one Arab unit that consistently did well against the Israelis was the Arab Legion, which had benefitted from British training and had a solid NCO corps.  (It also was the foundation for the Jordanian armed forces, which also have a good NCO corps, which is one reason why they're helping to train the Iraqis.)  The Egyptians had some training from the British, but not much; the Syrians had little or no training, and what they had was from the Vichy French and/or the Third Reich; Iraq the same thing.
"Don't worry, Weaver...we sergeants will bring them through again."
                                                                  --Sgt. Miller, Force 10 From Navarone

 
 
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Shirrush    How did Israel secure its status as a nation state after WWII?   11/29/2006 1:20:00 PM
The IDF at its inception, in 1948-49, was a sorry mess composed of ragtag refugees from the concentration camps of Europe and from the miserable ghettos of the Arab countries, and took horrendous losses mostly due to its utter lack of basic soldiership. A few combattants had real experience from WWII, but the seasoned soldiers from the Soviet Army, the British forces, the Free French, the Yugoslav partisans, the Greek Andartes and so on, didn't get a chance to show much of their mettle.
The commanding jobs were then the exclusive reserve of the locally-bred, and politically approved, Kibbutz farmboys of the PalMa"Kh and the Haganah, and these were tough, fearless guerilla fighters, but they had few real military or leadership skills. These were acquired on the job, and the price in blood was steep.
A notable  exception, however, is the determinant role that the Anglo-Saxon Jewish airmen from South Africa and the US had in setting up our air force.
The Arab regular expeditionary forces were not very large, not more than a couple of brigades each, and only the Egyptians, who were mercilessly defeated in the South, and the Jordanian Arab Legion, which held its ground in the Judean heartland with the help of the Iraqi contingent, played a significant role in that fight.
The Syrians were repelled by a small company of Kibbutz girls with hairy legs and makeshift bazookas, and the Lebanese army's token force showed up for a couple of weeks in the North, but did not make much of an impression on the Galilean defenders.
Most of the fighting, on the Arab side, was therefore done by local village militias and Beduin gangs from all over the area, which had the same sort of motivation as today's "Janjaweed" in the Sudan. The olive growers-camel herder alliance was in effect, no match for determined Holocaust survivors with their back against the wall.

I don't think that what we call the Independance War meant much more than a bloody, unnecessary tragedy, except for the founding myths of our military ethos. Had the Arabs accepted the foundation of Israel at the end of the British mandate in the spring of 1948, we still would have managed to become a nation-state.
After all, we had been a nation for at least 3,000 years. In the Age of Nationalism, and after what we had just gone through in Europe, carving up a state for our few survivors -"She'erit HaPleyta, the escaping remnants"- was a natural step, and if there were pro and con arguments at the time, these were mostly restricted to the philosophical and the religious planes, and did not get to become a general debate.
 

 
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jastayme3       11/29/2006 10:39:45 PM

The IDF at its inception, in 1948-49, was a sorry mess composed of ragtag refugees from the concentration camps of Europe and from the miserable ghettos of the Arab countries, and took horrendous losses mostly due to its utter lack of basic soldiership. A few combattants had real experience from WWII, but the seasoned soldiers from the Soviet Army, the British forces, the Free French, the Yugoslav partisans, the Greek Andartes and so on, didn't get a chance to show much of their mettle.
The commanding jobs were then the exclusive reserve of the locally-bred, and politically approved, Kibbutz farmboys of the PalMa"Kh and the Haganah, and these were tough, fearless guerilla fighters, but they had few real military or leadership skills. These were acquired on the job, and the price in blood was steep.
A notable  exception, however, is the determinant role that the Anglo-Saxon Jewish airmen from South Africa and the US had in setting up our air force.
The Arab regular expeditionary forces were not very large, not more than a couple of brigades each, and only the Egyptians, who were mercilessly defeated in the South, and the Jordanian Arab Legion, which held its ground in the Judean heartland with the help of the Iraqi contingent, played a significant role in that fight.
The Syrians were repelled by a small company of Kibbutz girls with hairy legs and makeshift bazookas, and the Lebanese army's token force showed up for a couple of weeks in the North, but did not make much of an impression on the Galilean defenders.
Most of the fighting, on the Arab side, was therefore done by local village militias and Beduin gangs from all over the area, which had the same sort of motivation as today's "Janjaweed" in the Sudan. The olive growers-camel herder alliance was in effect, no match for determined Holocaust survivors with their back against the wall.

I don't think that what we call the Independance War meant much more than a bloody, unnecessary tragedy, except for the founding myths of our military ethos. Had the Arabs accepted the foundation of Israel at the end of the British mandate in the spring of 1948, we still would have managed to become a nation-state.
After all, we had been a nation for at least 3,000 years. In the Age of Nationalism, and after what we had just gone through in Europe, carving up a state for our few survivors -"She'erit HaPleyta, the escaping remnants"- was a natural step, and if there were pro and con arguments at the time, these were mostly restricted to the philosophical and the religious planes, and did not get to become a general debate.
 

All wars are unnecessary except for the uncomfortable fact that people are nasty. And all wars are bloody.
The forces the Yishuv had were not well trained by Great Power standards. But the Yishuv was a splendid organization for a partisan group. And street fighting is a great equalizer. Less well trained troops if they are reasonably stouthearted can hold built up areas well was proved in Stalingrad. And even the best Arabs weren't trained in urban war.
The only reason the Arabs did not have more regular troops available was that they underestimated the Jews and were afraid of their own people. It is a cop-out and I don't see why they should be allowed to get away with it in the history books. The fact that they weren't more Arab troops there was their own fault. One does not stop being outnumbered simply because the enemy is polite enough to serve their men up in dainty little bite size pieces.
Arab villiage militia could have been as good as Jewish villiage militia. The fact that they weren't also was their own fault.
The Jews won because they knew it was coming and had been preparing for years. The preparations were imperfect as might be expected of a pariochial vassal-state. But they were quite creditable given their situation. The Arabs had no preparation at all.
The Jews were as a side note very short of arms while the Arabs were not. Yishuv gunrunners and cottage armsmakers were much more efficient. Equally important while the Arabs squabbled the Jews were able to even the odds.
The basic reason the Jews won was that when independance came the Jews already were a nation-state and had been for years whereas the Arabs were a coalition of tribes. The factional differences within the Jewish ranks was as nothing compared to that among the Arabs(and yes I heard the two Jews and three points of view joke too). The Jews knew how to make a nation and they made one. The Arabs did not. That was the big intangible that made the difference, far bigger then the bean-counting.
Finnally I don't see the need for the sneer. It was a very creditable performance. Martial elegance of the Guderian sort is not the only way t
 
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jastayme3       3/9/2007 2:29:40 PM

 Also the Jewish tradition focuses loyalty on a large group rather then a local one. Becoming a nation-state wasn't as hard because it already was a nation and just needed a state. By contrast Arabs think about local tribes and by necessity lack cohesion. I have read stories of how when new shipments of arms arrived Arabs would fight over the shares whereas Jews would just plug them into the system and everyone would accept it.

 
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