The Path to Sovereignty
Setting a pattern for the events and diktats of August 2006, early in July 1948, the United Nations, prodded by the government of Ernest Bevin in Britain and by the United States State Department, declared that a ceasefire must be imposed on the fighting for Jewish independence. This demand increased as the likelihood of Jewish liberation of all of Jerusalem approached.
The Anglo-American plan, “strongly supported by the Vatican” which, as the self-defined “New Israel” could not abide the resurrection of the genuine and original nation, demanded the internationalization of all of Jerusalem, the port of Haifa, the cession of the entire Negev (as well as Judea and Samaria) to King Abdullah of Transjordan. Immigration would be at his consent and administered by the UN. Israel would scarcely exist and its dissolution into Britain’s long-cherished Arab Federation would be swift, the western section of its “Fertile Crescent” plan largely achieved.
The alliance of Anglo-American diplomats and their instruments had little to fear from the official Jewish leadership. David Ben Gurion had less than two weeks before ordered the assault on and sinking of the Altalena, a ship of urgently needed reinforcements and arms the Irgun had spent months assembling in Europe. BG’s picked commander at Jerusalem, David Shaltiel, continually postponed the final Jewish attack and ultimately, when he could no longer delay, told the Irgun troops that if they attacked on their own, “we [the Hagana] shall treat you as rebels. We shall attack you as we would the enemy. We shall cut you off from your supplies.” The Irgun (“National Military Organization” led by Menachem Begin and Shmuel Katz), which already had breached the old city was ordered to retreat and surrender to their fellow Jews to please the international masters. The sinking of the Altalena, including the relentless shooting of those who swam from the ship (which had already surrendered) gave weight to BG’s ultimatum. The Irgun, cherishing Jewish blood and fearing that civil war might sink independence, followed its usual practice and submitted to those who valued power above all else.
When Count Folke Bernadotte, fronting the great powers war against the Jews as Tony Blair does today for the Quartet, was assassinated, Ben Gurion used it as an excuse to blame, jail and break up those who spear headed Jewish independence and self-sacrifice, the Lehi (“Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”) and the Irgun (Etzel) [1] .
But as they do to this day, ceasefires (“hudnas”) brokered by the world community led by NATO and the EU then did not last. Jihadist violence, once incited is quenchless until smothered totally. In January fighting resumed and Israel began sweeping the British-armed Arab armies from the Negev, most of the Galilee and advanced into Lebanon. At this point, the British, not content with having armed and trained their Arab storm troops, on January 07, 1949 sent five of their own planes on a mission against Israel. The Israeli Air Force shot down all five planes. On January 10, the British government recognized the State of Israel [2].
That is the path to independence; as then, so now.
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As part of the Armistice agreement of 1949, Israel withdrew from the Litani River whose waters had been included in the original plans for the reconstitution and viability of the Jewish National Home. They also withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, Judea and Samaria. The Labor regime was true to its foreign masters, just as it had been in preventing the liberation of Jerusalem, in establishing a State with inadequate water sources and without the holiest sites of Judaism, its spiritual water.
There was no military reason for this failure, this “half-achieved victory and the consequent unachieved peace” [3]. In 1964, when David Ben Gurion defended his leadership by blaming the failure of his officers and men for not unifying the nation in 1948-9, three of his top Generals publicly rebutted him and exposed a bit of the game he played with the great powers in truncating Israel.
“Mr. Ben Gurion’s words do not accord with the facts,” wrote Brigadier General Yigal Alon who, in 1948 had requested permission to capture Gaza and been rebuffed. The comments of Ben Gurion, Alon and his colleagues, Generals Yigal Yadin and Ya’akov Drori, “are a slur on the fighters in the war of independence who longed to liberate the entire country and were not permitted to do so. When the then Prime Minister and Minister of Defense ordered a halt to our advance, we were at the height of our victories on all the decisive fronts, from the Litani River in the north to the heart of the Sinai desert. In a few days [more] fighting, we could have achieved the final destruction of the Arab invasion armies and the liberation of the entire country [west of the Jordan River.’ The Army cannot be blamed for misguided political decisions. The country has remained divided and the Old City of Jerusalem out of bounds not because of operations that failed but because of operations that were disallowed by the political leadership…because of political retreat in the crucial days…” [4].
Nothing has changed in Israel; the same cliques rule the State in subservience to foreign interests and the same problems remain only in magnified form as America and Russia have joined England in arming the Arab States and Iran with Germany and France supplying major technical assistance including in nuclear capabilities. All that nations remain gathered against Jerusalem, assisted by their in-house flunkies who today, as a century ago “denounce all manifestations of Jewish nationalism” and display “unrelenting hostility” to Jewish military vigor [5]. Together they have set up a dialectic conflict with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas that will require (as synthesis, as the scripted outcome) more “painful concessions” by Israel forcing it back to total dependency and immersion in a Mediterranean Union and, thus, the EU and NATO administering the Fertile Crescent.
The path to sovereignty remains what it was in January 1949; the motto is “don’t tread on me” the method is vigorous action to reconstitute “Palestine” as an intact Jewish National Home. The boundaries needn’t be invented much less negotiated: they are given clearly in Scriptures and were partly restored from 1967-78. The points to remember are “you shall not seal a covenant with them” and “they shall not dwell in your land…for it will be at trap to you” [6].
1. Shmuel Katz, Days of Fire (NY 1968), 252-82
2. ibid. 281-2
3. ibid. 260-80
4. ibid. 261-2
5. Shmuel Katz, Lone Wolf, a Biography of Zev Jabotinsky (NY 1996), 272, 302 passim regarding the “cultural Zionists,” “Assimilationists” and self-styled “practical Zionists” like Ben Gurion.
6. Exodus 23:31-3; Rambam Sefer HaMitzvoth I.187-89, “a mitzvah for all generations…”