The Jewish-Arab Civil War of 1947-48
what did happen on the ground?
What do you think? Does it make sense? Are you sure it isn’t the inner asshole?
Seeing so much rage farming propaganda from Arab nationalists, left-wing progressive anti-semitics + Islamist radicals has caused me to revisit the I.F. Stone book and detail the civil war battles described therein.
A few things become clear from the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict—
Religious extremists dominated Arab leadership—they hated Jews + loved Nazism with a fierce lust.
Arab leadership refused to entertain the notion of Jewish presence in the Levant.
Arab leadership refused to negotiate or make any concessions, from the beginning they adopted the strategy of: a.) disrupt communication; b.) attack border settlements; c.) gain Jerusalem.
This battle has always only been about keeping Jews out of the Levant, this battle has always been about hatred toward Jews - the goal of Arab nationalists + pan-Islamists is Judenfrei aka ZionistFree.
The British were like tits on a bull to the Jews, useless as fcuk—also, they were duplicitous and self interested anti-semitic assholes in this particular situation.
The notion that the British expelled anyone for the Zionist cause is false. The notion that the Zionists LARPed their Nazi nemesis against the Arabs is absolute horsesh1t. It’s interesting how the muppets love to call Jews Nazis, like they single them out and call them Nazis. Canada has a history with the indigenous people, no one is calling us Nazis. America and Britain have slavery. No one is calling them Nazis. We choose to call Israel all manner of offensive names and hold the country to some whack standard we hold no other to, weird huh? Like, the Sauds killed a Saudi dissident who was an American resident—they killed him brutally on Turkish soil and the Sauds are the world leaders in capital punishment and they fund extremism and terrorism globally and everyone thinks that’s ok. Oh they have money and oil I guess that gives them an asshole pass.
Sure, the Nazis/wehrmacht were on the ground in the Mandatory Palestine EY — fighting against the Jews with the Arab Liberation Army, a fighting force of volunteer militia comprised of German Nazis, Polish reactionaries, Yugoslav Chetniks, and Bosnian Muslims—all lead by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, a close advisor to the Grand Mufti during the coup in Iraq and throughout the stay in Berlin when collaborating with and hosted by Nazi Germany. The Germans made al-Qawuqjii a colonel in the wehrmacht, in fact.
So the Arabs recruited Nazis to help prevent the Jewish state from becoming a reality.
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Because it’s sometimes difficult to image history the way it felt on the ground, let’s establish some context first so we can understand what happened. Sitting there in your 2023 life, please do remember these people had no smartphones, Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, or GPS at their fingertips. Europe and Japan lay in ruins from the devastation of a lengthy military conflict that drew the world’s powers into conflict. We had a massive displaced persons crisis, with an exodus of Holocaust survivors escaping to America + Palestine EY, as well as the war criminals who tried to kills these survivors, making their escaping under the noses of Allied Powers, to South America and Egypt. The same people who watched the Germans genocide Jews to the point of decimating the European Jewish population also looked away when the many of genocidal maniacs who created that mass industrial extermination system made their escape.
:: I assure you that Zionists were absolutely NOT the Nazis nor were they the racists ::
The situation in Palestine was ominous. The Jews made up hardly more that one-third of its population. Of some 650,000 Jews in Palestine, 100,000 were in Jerusalem, cut off by Arab territory from the coastal plain where most of the Jews dwelt … The distribution of the Jewish population was so uneven as to endanger Israel’s hold on the outlying sections of its own territory … 1,500 Jews lived amid a shifting population of 20,000 to 30,000 Bedouins.
—I.F. Stone. This is Israel, 1949, p.19
The year was 1947-1948, early post WW2, in desert-like + infrastructure-challenged geography. War attacks aim to assault infrastructure switch a view to endangering petrol and water supplies—troops and fighting forces face a multiple of offences. Settlements outside of cities lacked access to information media such as papers or even radio. They had no Whatsapp! Fighting forces lacked formal training1, had inexperienced leadership, and lacked a cohesive strategy of attack formation. Okay, so just keep in your soft 2023 minds that this was 1947, post WW2, in the Levant, where the upper and middle class had fled, where Jewish settlements existed remotely, and where the fanatically-dominated Arab leadership committed to terror and war at all cost, no end in sight, no negotiating. And some of the militias lacked training and coordination—so many tragedies that happened occurred as a result of clumsy fighting and not intentional systemic ethnic cleansing social media muppets suggest.
Context and intention assigned to players matters. Put bluntly— to try to compare this battle of the Jews against the Arabs as similar to say, the ethnic cleansing slaughter of Armenians by the Ottomans— constitutes a lie. The words we use matter—they convey intentionality. It’s become increasing common in the baizhu/woke culture to insinuate terms such as ethnic cleansing when describing the behaviour Israel toward Palestinians, that simply denies so much historical context and it promotes hatred of Jewish people. So, please make an effort to learn about the history and put things in context. And please do recognise the role Islamist extremist played in the disruptive politics and the way the British indulged them as much as possible, to no end.
The borders of the Jewish state were drawn as if to make certain that it would be indefensible … The Jews were besieged by hostile Arab armies on every side but the Mediterranean. There they … faced the British navy blockade, and this was reinforced by the American arms embargo.
—I.F. Stone. This is Israel, 1948, p.20
On November 29, 1947 UN Resolution 181 established the conditions for the partitioning of Mandatory Palestine. You can view the map of the original partition [here]. The Announcement of the partition sparked a civil war, triggering an Arab uprising and the Jewish/Zionist response to Arab uprising.
“The Arabs have taken the final solution to the Jewish problem,” read the Arab Higher Committee leaflet.
Arab leaders promised, from the very beginning of the partition process, to make the partition line one of blood and fire, in the words of Jamal al-Husseini. Abdul Rahman Azzam Pascha, Secretary of the Arab League promised the Egyptian press a war of extermination and momentous massacre.
December 3rd - fighting broke out on the border between Arab Jaffa and Jewish Tel Aviv. The British officered + armed + funded Arab League of Transjordan announced it was reinforcing Jaffa … The League … began at once to engage in attacks on Jews.
December 15 - travel became impossible without convoys of armed guards; Arab Legion troops attacked a convoy of supply trucks headed to the Children’s Village of Ben Shemen in Arab territory, killing 14 Jews and murdering two more in Haifa.
Death toll after first week - 66 | Death toll after first month - 489
January 2 - British permit Arabs to take control of Old City in Jerusalem, encouraging Arabs to take control where they could and at the same time telling Jews to evacuate.
From the first, the British seemed to hope that the Jews could be frightened into relinquishing the colonies established in the Negev and giving up Jerusalem to the Arabs. Arab leadership shrewdly understood what was expected of them, everywhere in those first few weeks Jewish life and property were in danger.
—Stone, p. 23
January 6 - Haganah bombed the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem because it was a headquarter for Arab gangs, this is the only time the British denounced violence. British admit or almost admire the fact that, for Arabs, the killing of Jews now transcends all other considerations.
January 9 - Arab Legion attacked Dan and Kfar Szold and met Jewish resistance
January 15 - Hajj Amin’s al-Husayni’s forces launch the first of a series of attacks on a remote settlements in the Judean mountain country south of Jerusalem. In four month, the Arabs ambushed two supply columns, and sustained heavy losses against the Haganah when drawn into an ambush. Few of the 200 Arabs escaped in the melee, they ended up shooting at each other. The Arabs ambushed + massacred 35 Haganah men passing through the mountains one night.
January 25 - 200 Arabs attack a Haganah road patrol near Jerusalem, British troops arrive and begin shooting at both sides, killing 10 Haganah men.
Ill-armed, outnumbered, however desperate their circumstances, the Jews stood fast. The Arabs very early began to run away. First the wealthiest families went; it was estimated that 20,000 of them left the country in the first two months of internal hostilities. By the end of January the exodus was so alarming that the Palestine Arab Higher Committee in alarm asked neighbouring Arab countries to refuse visas to these refugees and to seal the borders against them. —I.F. Stone, p. 27
February 1 - a group of British fascist terrorists bombed the Palestine Post building in Jerusalem. Fawzi al-Kutub, an SS trained explosives expert, aka The Engineer, build the bomb for the British Fascists.2
February 12 - British military patrol arrested Haganah members, disarmed them, and set them loose to an Arab mob who stripped and murdered them.
February 22 - British fascists again were responsible for the Ben Yehuda Street bombing,3 killing 54. The Haganah testified that the trucks filled with explosives gain entrance because they had British escorts.
March - Jewish Agency Headquarters and the head offices in Haifa of labour co-operative Solel Boneh were bombed. In the north 2000 Arabs attacked a convoy taking supplies to a colony near the Lebanese border and wiped it out. British troops on the scene did nothing.
March 19 - The fighting concerned the Americans, causing Warren Austin to back out of the deal at the last minute —by March 19, 1948 America reversed its position on the partitioning of Mandatory Palestine.
He asked The Security Council to instruct the Palestine Commission to ‘suspend its efforts to implement the proposed partition plan’. This was to reward rather than punish Arab aggression … The effect was to invite the Arabs to destroy the new Jewish state before it could come into being.
— Stone, p. 21
March 31 - The systematic Arab blockading of Jewish supply convoys between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem had cut off all supplies and necessitated bread rationing in Jewish Jerusalem.
April 1 - America calls a special UN session to reconsider the vote for the partition of Mandatory Palestine on the grounds that it could not be enforced.
April 3 - Haganah capture the sniper citadel that was the Arab mountaintop village of Kastel, then 2 days later blew up the building housing the commander of Hassan Bey Salemeh, the Arab forces in that area which had been menacing Jewish roads. Abdul Kadr al-Husayni, Hajj Amin’s cousin and then his commander for Jerusalem, was killed in this battle.
April 4 - Fawzi al-Qawuqji lead 1500 Syrian + Iraqi troops Mishmar Ha-Emek, which lies in the Vale of Jezreel 15 miles south of Haifa and one of the largest colonies in the country with a population of 500. For 4 days the Arabs battered the colony with mortars and 25-pound cannons. During a truce the women and children were evacuated and the British arrived, trying to strong arming the Haganah into a extending the truce.
April 9 - al-Qawuqi launched a new attack with reinforcements and the Haganah also had reinforcements, overwhelming the Arabs, who asked the British for a truce from the Haganah, the British officer was rebuffed by the Haganah.
April 9 - after changing hands a few times, Kastel remained with the Jewish, and supplies could finally get through to Jerusalem on April 13.
April 11 - Qawuqi launched a fresh attack, dividing Jewish forces and commando attacks neutralize his forces. Heavy fighting continues for nearly a week. End result—Arab villages in the area overrun and population in flight.
Mishmar was only one indication that the Palestinian problem was not to be solved by progrom. On the Syrian frontier even artillery manned by veterans of the Reichswehr was not enough to enable 1200 Syrian volunteers to take the border colony of Lehavoth Habashan when outflanked by a hastily improvised detachment of Jewish calvary.
—I.F. Stone, p. 26
April 1 to May 15 - As the Arab guerrillas moved in the Arab civilian population moved out. The entire Arab population of Tiberias (6,000), Haifa (65,000), Safad (47,000), Jaffa + Jerusalem fled the country.
April 21-22 - Haifa—two dozen Haganah men take on hundreds of Arabs - explosives, grenades, mortar attacks all involved. After a violent + bloody struggle the Arabs fled and the Arab resistance collapsed.
April 25 - 2,000 Irgun fighters with armoured cars and mortars captured the Manshieh district and then took British air and artillery fire on April 28 to prevent them from taking the Jaffa harbour. By April 29, Haganah had subordinated Irgun and Jaffa was encircled and the city residents fled. As April ended the Haganah began to advance on Jerusalem, evoking the eire of the British who threatened RAF strikes.
The Arab League had besieged 1500 Jews in the Sheikh Jarrah quarter of Jerusalem, blockading all approaches to the Hadassah hospital. The Arabs had assaulted convoys for weeks on these roads. A seven hour battle killed 34 Jewish docs, nurses, patients, and Haganah guards on April 13. The Haganah drove the Arabs out of the quarter and then the British showed up and fired the Haganah out.
In Safad, 7,000 Jews lived surrounded by 47,000 Arabs, scattered amongst 29 farming settlements. When the British prepared to leave, they tried to scare the Jews into evacuating, saying the Arabs would instigate progroms against them—the Jews refused. The attacks against the Jews in east Galilee were frequent and daily and unrelenting.
May 2 - Haganah forces drove out hostile Arabs from between Lakes Tiberias and Hula. The Arab population left, save for one village of anti-Husseini Arabs who struck a deal with the Jews and put a detachment of its sons in the Haganah as a token of good faith.
May 10 - the Haganah went to break the ring around the Safad Jews. Overnight the Haganah penetrated the Arab held roads and made a surprise attack on a citadel. The Arabs fled through a southern corridor which the Haganah had left open.
May 14 - in a final push the Haganah moved into Western Galilee, bringing supples to the Jewish settlement of Nahariya for the first time in 6 months. In a retaliatory act, the Haganah took the Arab village of Kabiri, where 6 weeks before a convoy of 47 including a Haganah battlefield commander were ambushed and killed.
The Jews had done the job for themselves. May 15, 1948 the British Mandate of Palestine ended and the State of Israel declared its independence.
The exceptions to this include the Haganah + the Transjordan army + the British troops
According to historian Uri Milstein
we have tracked down details about British personnel involved and also that Nazi SS trained Fawzi al-Kutub developed the explosives—coming soon in a future post.