(This article is the continuation of the article found at this link).
ורדפו מכם חמשה מאה ומאה מכם רבבה ירדפו ונפלו אויביכם לפניכם לחרב
THE WORST FOUR WEEKS IN THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL
Israel’s War of Independence was the most critical battle for the survival of the Jewish State. It began on the evening of May 15th, 1948, when the British army withdrew from their region. Throughout the first few weeks of the war, the United Arab armies were defeating the newborn State of Israel, despite a heroic resistance. But Israel was not able to stop the advance of five strong armies with planes, ammunition, and counting with the implicit support of the rest of the world. Before beginning their attack, the Arabs, confident in their impending victory had said that “what Hitler did was nothing compared to what they would do with the Jews living in Israel.” It was a horrible dejavu of the Shoa, to see that the world remained silent. But HaShem was with us. And the unimaginable occurred. Israel not only survived the invasion of five Arab armies but against all odds, won the war in a way no one could have anticipated.
THE MIRACULOUS CEASE-FIRE
According to Dr. Hagai Ben Artzi- professor of history at Bar Ilan University (and brother-in-law of former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu) the greatest miracle of this war was that the Arab armies accepted a ceasefire. The proposal came from the Swedish Folke Bernadotte, who had been designated as a mediator between the Arabs and Israelis by the United Nations. The ceasefire proposed to stop all military activity for four weeks and stated that the armies would remain in control of the positions they had conquered. Israel, which conquered nothing and was cornered everywhere, immediately accepted the proposal. The unexplainable, however, is that the Arab armies also accepted the proposal. I quote Ben Artzi from his (Hebrew) book- Megillat Hatequma VeHaAtzmaut: “…but why did the Arabs accept the ceasefire …? …they had almost reached all of their military objectives: Jerusalem was surrounded and besieged; Tel Aviv, a very short distance [from falling]; southern Israel [the Negeb] disconnected from the rest of the country, and the Galil, the North, was already conquered. A little more effort on the part of the Arabs and they were already in the heart of Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Petah Tikva, Netania, Hadera, and Afula. … ” Ben Artzi does not hide his conviction that this ceasefire was indeed a miracle of Biblical proportions. The enemies of Israel retreated as if possessed by an imaginary panic.
A BIBLICAL FEAR
Among other examples of this sort of Providential intervention, Ben Artzi mentions what happened on May 30th, 1948. Israel went to war without a single military plane. While the Arabs had over 75 active warplanes. The only country which dared to break the embargo and sold weapons to Israel was Czechoslovakia. By the end of May, four unarmed German “Messerschmidt” military planes arrived in Israel inside a transport plane. The planes were quickly assembled and on May 30th, and without even a test run, were sent on their first operation: trying to stop the Egyptian forces that were only 30 Kilometers away from Tel Aviv. These new Israeli planes took the Egyptians by surprise but did not cause severe damage, because the weapons did not function very well. Nevertheless, the Egyptian commander sent an urgent message to his headquarters saying that they could go no further because they were heavily bombarded “by a force far superior to them”. This “military assessment” was based more on imagination than reality. Ben Artzi also cites the reports of an Egyptian officer who fought in that battle and was taken prisoner by the Israelis in the 1956 war. When asked why the Egyptians did not continue their advancement towards Tel Aviv in ’48, when they had the whole area open to them, he said, “In the two Israeli attacks … we saw something that shook us: even after being hit by direct fire and suffering large losses, the Israeli soldiers continued to advance as if they were “crazy” (mej’nunin). And we said to ourselves: it is impossible to defeat these madmen. Better [accept the ceasefire and] settle for what we have conquered. ”
ALL ROADS LEAD TO JERUSALEM
Another providential event that occurred was that a young soldier, Moshe Eshed, discovered, “by coincidence” an alternative path to Jerusalem through the mountains, which was named “Derekh Burma.” Through this path, the Israeli fighters were able to send food, medicine, weapons, and reinforcements to the city. There were about 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem at the time, especially concentrated in the Western area, the “Jewish Jerusalem.” They were completely isolated and trapped by the Jordanians, who had blocked all entrances to Jerusalem to avoid any supplies sent in. If this mysterious path- which shockingly neither the Arabs nor the United Nations discovered for six months- had not been found, Jerusalem would’ve collapsed and the war would have had a very different ending.
WHEN WHAT DOES NOT HAPPEN IS A GOOD THING
Despite all efforts, the Old City of Jerusalem (where the Kotel and the Temple mountain are) could not be conquered. By the end of the 1948 war, the Old City still remained in the power of the Jordanians. Until the Six Days War in 1967. Even in this failure, we can see the Divine Hand because if Israel had conquered Jerusalem in 1948, the United Nations would have demanded the internationalization of Jerusalem, a holy city “for the three Biblical religions”. International pressure would have been unsustainable and Israel, which was not strong at that time, would have surely relented. Jerusalem, with international status, would have been impossible to recover. And the long-term consequences for Israel would have been terrible. In the end, the Old City was not conquered by the Jews in 1948 and came under Jordan’s sovereignty. And as expected, no one imposed an “International status” on the city, and there were no complaints to the Jordanians for not allowing the Jews to visit the Western Wall.
Therefore, when in 1967 Israel conquered the Old City, the U.N. could no longer demand from Israel what they did not demand from Jordan for 19 years…
