THE PLOT

The United States became the first country to officially recognize Israel, but wouldn’t support it militarily against the Arabs. Still, lots of ex-US servicemen and women covertly helped the Jewish State, such as training pilots, smuggling surplus aircraft to Israel, and crewing ships.  Israel mostly obtained weapons from Czechoslovakia and France, including a crucial delivery of four Avia S-199 planes to launch the nascent Israeli Air Force (IAF).

The air force was crucial against Egypt, which posed the most significant threat to Israel from the Gaza Strip. In its first mission on May 29, 1948, four IAF pilots stopped the Egyptian advance barely 20 miles from Tel Aviv, at a place called Ad Halom (“up to here”). At a cost of one pilot, it was the furthest Egypt advanced during the war.

Up in the north the Israelis had managed to not only hold most of their lines but consolidated their territory as well, pushing the Lebanese forces north and grabbing a chunk of territory between the Sea of Galilee and Haifa on the coast, as well as repelling the Syrian onslaught. In the Negev, the Israelis were starting to push the Egyptians back. By the summer of 1948, the Arabs had grabbed chunks of land that were supposed to belong to Israel under the partition plan, but Israel had also grabbed land that had been earmarked for the Arabs. Most of the major cities of Palestine were in Israeli hands. 

THE PEOPLE

Eddie Cohen: South African Israeli Air Force pilot killed in the first mission against the Egyptians, May 29, 1948.

Zohara Levyatov: 20 year-old Haganah medic sent to California to train as a pilot. One of the few women pilots in the Israeli Air Force, Zohara was killed when her plane crashed in Jerusalem’s Sacher Park.

Eleanor Rudnick: Jewish-American woman who operated a flight school in Bakersfield, California, that was used as a front for the Haganah. She was indicted and fined for violating the U.S. ban on assisting Israel.  

Vidal Sassoon: famous hair stylist and fashion icon who joined the Haganah in early 1948 and fought on the Egyptian front during the war.

Ezer Weizmann: nephew of Chaim Weizmann and combat pilot for the British during World War Two. Part of the first Air Force mission against the Egyptians, he later had a long military and government career, including serving as President of Israel. 

THE BIG IDEAS

Israeli-Egyptian fighting during 1948 explains why the Gaza Strip looks the way it does today. Its boundaries roughly mark the area where the Israeli army managed to surround and then confine the Egyptians, after pushing them back from the road to Tel Aviv. And the reason why Gaza didn’t end up becoming a part of an independent Palestinian state is because the Egyptians held on to the territory.

In all, around 5,000 foreign volunteers had come to fight for Israel. More than 150 of them were killed in action. As intense as the fighting was, for many of those volunteers it was also an exhilarating experience. They felt like they were fighting for something substantive, vital, and profound, especially after the tragedy of the Holocaust, when many of them had felt helpless. The contributions of these volunteers was never minimized by Israel and its leaders then and even now have continued to acknowledge their efforts. While many of them returned home, many also stayed

FUN FACTS

The Haganah ran a secret air force base in Bakersfield, California, during the 1940s.

The CIA predicted that Israel would last no longer than 2 years under Arab attack.

Iran was the second country to officially recognize Israel. And in 1979 the first to retract that recognition.

When the Israeli Air Force was short of bombs, they dropped empty plastic soda bottles, which made a terrifying high-pitched whistle that sounded like incoming artillery.

© Jason Harris 2020