I think this anecdote contains a hint of why Israel has been doing well militarily:
In the late 60’s part of my job was to train foreign nationals on US weapons and fighter/bomber aircraft.
We hosted several nationals, including Israelis, and several nearby Arab countries.
The Israelis would show up for training having already read the appropriate manuals and other pertinent information, and hit the ground asking questions that were demonstrative of their knowledge base…and they very seriously wanted to gain mastery of the weapons and materials.
The other nationals came with no previous interest and motivation, and most gave the impression of just going through the motions.
Besides the matter of survival, I think that the military structures of the different countries were the most important factors in the approach to the training presented. The Israelis were expected to perform well, and use their initiative; this didn’t seem to be true for the other nationalities.
I suspect that all of the students were equally intelligent, but the way the intelligence was applied was striking.
Who in general would be rationally willing to take a chance to lose a war, and why?
BTW, NB “never again” may have been written by some pre-WW2 Jewish writers, but these days it is basically mostly known as a terrorist slogan, so I would really, really hope it isn’t the “slogan of modern Israel” as suggested by gnoitall.
A joke back in the day was that Arab veterans called their war wounds “hemorrhoids”.
Israelis faced an existential crisis that their Arab neighbors didn’t, and pre-independence Palestinian leadership had been aligned with Nazis. “Drive the Jews into the sea!” seems to qualify as declaring genocide the goal. As is said, the prospect of being hanged in the morning does wonders for focusing one’s attention.
“Never again” is the motto of the Jewish Defense League, a right-wing terrorist group operating in the United States and elsewhere since the 1960s. You may have heard them mentioned on the news at some point.
The fear is not in losing a war - lots of nations and people have lost wars and still survived as a people and a culture.
The fear is extinction.
Something like 1/3 of Jews were slaughtered between the 1930’s and 1945. The were the focus of an attempt not to conquer them but to utterly destroy them.
So for many Jews these wars were not seen as battles to be lost or won but a truly existential threat, a real threat of genocide and elimination, of being hunted down to the last man, woman, and child and destroyed completely.
It makes them a bit… well, paranoid. Except not paranoid because there really are people in the world out to eliminate them.
Not everybody slammed into war were trained, I know a now adult friend who was the 14 year old son of a pair of American archeologists who was handed a kit and shoved into the fighting line. As a Golani, he has some pretty nasty nightmares occasionally. That was also why his parents left the field and stayed strictly with stateside teaching and lectures …
Since you’re Israeli, you’re more likely to know: How was the Israeli air force used to help with ground operations after the strategic bombing of enemy airfields, early warning stations and command centers?
How were Israeli forces able to prevail so much over numerically superior forces? Did a lot of it involve disrupting the resupply of enemy units?
Yup, 14 years old and their dig was being over run. They handed him a gun and ammo. Hell, if my parents and friends were in danger of being killed out of hand, I wouldn’t wait to be handed anything. But perhaps that is just me. One of his favorite pix is of he and a bunch of his fellow Golani very obviously fresh out of combat and very happy to be alive.
I’ve never heard of the JDL (though the name of one of their founders, Meir Kahane, rings a bell), and I’ve certainly never heard “never again” described as a terrorist motto. I’ve only ever heard it used in reference to the Holocaust (it’s even writ large on a memorial wall at Dachau). It seems to have been adopted over the years by a number of groups, but I suspect most people associate with the Holocaust.
Wait, which war are we talking about? If it was 1947-1949, I guess it could have been possible that a militia could have pressed him into service as an irregular. Not Golani, of course - even before Israel was founded, they were part of HISH (the Field Corps), and only took in people over 18.
After the War of Independence, the IDF was exclusively a regular, trained military force. They evacuate and protect friendly civilians, not put them in the line of fire - what your friend is describing isn’t an amusing anecdote, it’s a war crime. Plus, of course, they wouldn’t be that stupid. For shock infantry like Golani, a scared, untrained teenager with a gun would at least be as dangerous to them as he would be to the enemy. I certainly wouldn’t want him at my back.
So yeah, bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit, and *offensive *bullshit, too. Do you really think that the IDF would be so unprofessional to do what you’re accusing it of doing?
As far as I can tell, Kahane appropriated an extant anti-genocide slogan the way the Nazis appropriated the iconic swastika. It’s a good sign that his group is fading from memory, though.
To my knowledge, Israel does not have an official motto.
I don’t know a great deal about either of those wars. Was it really win or die? Were the Arabs going to kill every Israeli soldier they captured? “Win or die” sounds like the Warsaw ghetto uprising in WWII where unless the Jews somehow fought their way out they were headed to an extermination camp.
Are you guys are talking about the natural fear of being captured that any combat soldier feels because he can never know if a victorious guard might get a little sloppy and “accidentally” kill him—so if you want to live, you better just win the damn war—it’s the only way to be sure?
From what I understand it definitely was a case of “win or have your nation destroyed”, and without a doubt there would be lots of bloodshed if the Arabs had essentially won the war but the Israelis refused to surrender. Maybe people are using the term “die” to mean the state of Israel being killed rather than a person?
Or is the “win or die” thing actually literal—is it commonly thought that Arab forces would have performed mass executions of unarmed Israeli prisoners (and civilians) had they won? Because if that’s the case then I’ve missed a big, important part of Mideast history.
If we look at the situation in Syria and what went on there with civilians, it’s not beyond the pale for Israeli soldiers and civilians to have feared they would have a high likelihood of dying in case of defeat. The Israelis back then couldn’t have known about the Syrian civil war of the 2010s but they might have sensed that something like that could happen. It’s possible victorious Arab armies wouldn’t have turned victory into a giant pogrom but I wouldn’t be sure betting money either way and the Israelis weren’t up for betting their lives on the mercy of Arab militaries.
The Israeli air force could never afford to specialize too much in terms of air power - the same fighter jets and the same pilots were expected to do just about everything (which is why Israel never used bombers or designated ground attack planes). That means first, intercept airborne threats; then achieve air superiority and destroy enemy air defenses; then take out strategic targets; then attack enemy ground forces. All they needed to do was land, change their payload, and take off for their new mission.
One advantage the IAF had was very fast turnover times. At the height of combat in 1967 and 1973, Israeli pilots were averaging 7 sorties per day. Of course, it helps when your air bases are that close to the front.
Just good old-fashioned maneuver warfare. Attack the enemy where he’s weak, avoid him where he’s strong, outflank, surprise, exploit and most importantly, always take the initiative. Attacking lines of communications is effective, yes, but it’s even more effective to come at an enemy from multiple directions until he routs.
It wasn’t equipment- in general, there was rough parity between the Israelis and Arabs. It was really cultural differences made manifest in poor training, poor officer selection and development, and poor motivation.
A lot is cultural. The Israelis had the advantage of the Western military and cultural legacy; for all intents and purposes, the IDF was and is a Western military, with much the same traditions, viewpoints, and attitudes as say… the militaries of the UK, US, Germany or France.
The Arab nations didn’t really draw from that legacy. Much of their military was heavily influenced by their culture- social class distinctions, concepts of avoiding humiliation, harsh treatment of enlisted men, lack of leadership development or an NCO corps, etc… that the Western militaries don’t have.
When it came to fighting, the Israelis had officers and NCOs that were flexible, took initiative, and could actually lead their troops and act independently within the framework of their orders. By contrast, the Arab troops were controlled from the top down, were not flexible, and did not take initiative. This leads to quick defeat when facing mobile and reasonably well-armed opponents who have these traits. It’s why the Arabs lost in 1967, 1973, 1991 and 2003.
Here’s some articles on it:
If Egypt lost the war, Egypt would continue to exist. If Israel lost the war, Israel would not continue to exist. Whether or not the Arabs would try to implement a second Holocaust is almost beside the point.