Israel has been in a continuous war since its independence in 1948, and has yet to gain decisive victory over the Arabs, former Israeli soldier and journalist Yehuda Yev said yesterday.
"We are still fighting a war that began at four-o'clock in the afternoon on the 14th of May, 1948, in a converted Museum in Tel Aviv," Yev said in a speech in the Roth Center for Jewish Life. "We never won the war. We won battles."
Yev suggested that a total victory -- such as that of the Allies over Germany in World War II -- is the only way to fully end the war, though this is unlikely given Israel's democratic nature.
He also said that Israel could have been destroyed in 1948 if Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey had coordinated their attacks. In addition to having numerical superiority, "they were in the hills" and had a tactical advantage, Yev said.
A number of factors contributed to Israel's victory against the Arabs in the various wars since 1948, including better military training and greater determination, Yev said.
"There was a trained cadre of soldiers and officers to defend their country" with experience in World War II, Yev said.
Zionists had also created a strong economy, a transitional government and a military by the time independence was declared, Yev said, while the Palestinians "were basically an armed rabble."
The Zionists also made a number of concessions, and even "accepted the Jewish state without Jerusalem," Yev said, in order to appease Catholic nations worried about Jewish control of holy sites.
"What saved us in the end," Yev said with a note of sarcasm, "was one of the great Zionist leaders of our time -- Josef Stalin -- to enter the war on the side of the Zionists."
Stalin, attempting to create unrest for the West, sought to ferment an extended battle in the Middle East by shipping captured Nazi German arms -- some still with the swastika on them -- to help the Israelis.
Yev pointed out that Stalin was not committed to the Israeli cause, and later supplied arms to Egypt's war against Israel for similar reasons.
Many of the problems Israel has always faced are rooted in history, Yev said.
For example, "there was already in Palestine a native population that was not Jewish" that outnumbered the Jews by a margin of 1.2 million to 600,000 in 1947.
This led to "a very serious clash of very different cultures," Yev explained, and tensions grew as Israelis applied Western-style property rights to communal land.
Given these difficulties, Yev said it was surprising the movement went as far as it did. With the death of Zionism advocate Theodore Herzel in 1904, the movement was "picked up by others and continued by them," he said.
Ultimately, what allowed Zionism to become a viable movement was that although "it was clothed in idealism," Yev said, "basically it was pragmatic."
