Haganah had thousands of civilian volunteers armed with little more then a sidearm or a pitchfork.
8O Let's see a pic of them holding those pitch-forks. lol
BS, the majority of these people fled the territory under direction of Arab states.
They offerred them a santuary from the Israeli night squads (why would a Nation even admit to having a squad that is trained for night terror missions on women and kids) The SNS may have been disbanded by the Brits but the Jews kept them in business under a new name and a new agenda, target Arab civilians inn the dead of night.
(in part)
Special Night Squads (SNS)
A joint British-Jewish unit set up by the British Captain Ord Wingate in 1936 to defended the Iraqi Petroleum Line against Arab guerillas. They were manned by the best of the Settlement Police, but otherwise received little practical British support However, Wingate did gain Haganah support andhence sometimes reinforced his patrols with POSH fighters. The British disbanded the SNS in 1938.
POSH
Full name Plugot SadeH ("Field Companies") and usually abbreviated to POSH. A elite mobile strike force of the Haganah created in 1937. Although primarily a commando style unit they also included topographical, educational, and intelligence (Arab speaking) units. By March 1938 Fosh had 1,500 trained fighters in 13 regional groups. They openly faced Arabs mobs and initiated raids on Arab villages. Disbanded in 1939 when the Hish were formed.
(Now days POSH includes all the fighters in the IDF.)
HISH
Full name Heyl SadeH ("Field Force") but usually abbreviated to HISH. Formed in 1939 from the POSH.
Israeli Order of Battle | Arab-Israel Wars | Military History | Balagan | Steven Thomas
Still waiting to see some proof of you claim that members here are guilty of supporting war crimes.
Making people refugees is a war-crime, refusing them the right to return is also a war-crime. The question can be answered on that point alone, the rest of the issue(s), like can they even be accused of that crime and have the courts decide rather than it be trial in the court of public opinion. Coming in the dark of night to do it is just an added act of terror to an already terrifying experience for the ones without side-arms or pitch-forks. (it is one thing to ply for sympathy and quite another to appear to be out of touch with the reality of the situation back then (and today). When was the last time you checked your 'facts'?
No one legitimately armed Israel. Israel smuggled arms from Czechoslovakia. There was a western arms embargo imposed on the region. Much to England's dismay, since they had and were prepared to arm the Arab states. In fact, Trans Jordan's Arab legion was lead by a British Officer, RAF planes flew with Egyptian squadrons.
When Britain ditched they left their weapons to the Jews. I could post an article that shows some British military man inciting the Arabs to violent demonstration in Jerusalem about that time. That is setting them up, that was not 'helping them'.
Also see below for their 'military statues, they were already quite profecient at night raids on villages. As soon as the paper was signed in Nov47 it was a land rush like the old west in the US. Grab as much land as you can, using terror and death as your methods, and suddenly 'stop, throw your hands up and declare yourself ' a Nation' that includes all the land that the Native inhabitants were just chased from ot just killed, often just as an example to the few survivors. Like in the few examples below. Arab Nations weren't involved prior to the declaration of independance with confiscated (stolen at gunpoint) Arab land.
[SIZE=+1]NASER AL-DIN MASSACRE:[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+0] 13-14 April 1948(Palestine) : a contingent of Lehi and Irgon entered this village (near Tiberias) entered the village on the night of 13 April dressed as Arab fighters. Upon their entrance to the village the people went out to greet them, the terrorists met them with fire, killing every single one of them. Only 40 people survived. All the houses of the village were raised to the ground.[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1]Back to top[/SIZE] [SIZE=+0]Abu Shusha Massacre[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1](coming soon)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]THE TANTURA MASSACRE:[/SIZE] May 15, 1948 (Palestine): "From testimonies and information I got from Jewish and Arab witnesses and from soldiers who were there, at least 200 people from the village of Tantura were killed by Israeli troops...
"From the numbers, this is definitely one of the biggest massacres," Teddy Katz an Israeli historian said Tantura, near Haifa in northern Palestine, had 1,500 residents at the time. It was later demolished to make way for a parking lot for a nearby beach and the Nahsholim kibbutz, or cooperative farm.
Fawzi Tanji, now 73 and a refugee at a camp in the West Bank, is from Tantura he said:
I was 21 years old then.They took a group of 10 men,lined them up against the cemetery wall and killed them.Then they brought another group, killed them, threw away the bodies and so on, Tanji said. I was waiting for my turn to die in cold blood as I saw the men drop in front of me.
Katz said other Palestinians were killed inside their homes and in other parts of the village. At one point, he said, soldiers shot at anything that moved.
[SIZE=-1]Back to top[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]BEIT DARAS MASSACRE:[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+0] 21 May 1948(Palestine): after a number of failed attempts to occupy this village, the Zionists mobilized a large contingent and surrounded the village. The people of Beit Daras decided that women and children should leave. As women and children left the village they were met by the Zionist army who massacred them despite the fact that they could see they were women and children fleeing the fighting.[/SIZE]
What Israel faced the Arabs with in the first war, was terrifyingly limited, compared to what her enemies held. Israel had no tanks, no cannons, a few armoured vehicles and jeeps, to mobilize.
What is your source for that, I think you are intentionally fudging the books since this is on page one of almost any search engine.
1948 Arab–Israeli War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Initial line-up of forces
[edit] Military assessments
Benny Morris has argued that although, by the end of 1947, the Palestinians "had a healthy and demoralising respect for the Yishuv's military power", they believed in decades or centuries "that the Jews, like the
medieval crusader kingdoms, would ultimately be overcome by the Arab world".
[60]
On the eve of the war the number of Arab troops likely to be committed to the war was about 23,000 (10,000 Egyptians, 4,500 Jordanians, 3,000 Iraqis, 3,000 Syrians, 2,000 ALA volunteers, 1,000 Lebanese and some Saudi Arabians), in addition to the irregular Palestinians already present. The Yishuv had 35,000 troops of the Haganah, 3,000 of Stern and Irgun and a few thousand armed settlers.
[61]
On 12 May David Ben-Gurion was told by his chief military advisers, "who over-estimated the size of the Arab armies and the numbers and efficiency of the troops who would be committed", that Israel's chances of winning a war against the Arab states were only about even.
[62]
[edit] Yishuv forces
In November 1947, the Haganah was an underground paramilitary force that had existed as a highly organized, national force since the riots of 1920–21, and throughout the
riots of 1929, and Great Uprising of 1936–39
[63] It had a mobile force, the
HISH, which had 2,000 full time fighters (men and women) and 10,000 reservists (all aged between 18 and 25) and an elite unit, the
Palmach composed of 2,100 fighters and 1,000 reservists. The reservists trained 3–4 days a month and went back to civilian life the rest of the time. These mobile forces could rely on a garrison force, the HIM (
Heil Mishmar, lit. Guard Corps), composed of people aged over 25. The Yishuv's total strength was around 35,000 with 15,000 to 18,000 fighters and a garrison force of roughly 20,000.
[64] The two clandestine groups
Irgun and
Lehi had 2,000–4,000 and 500–800 members, respectively. There were also several thousand men and women who had served in the British Army in World War II who did not serve in any of the underground militias but would provide valuable military experience during the war.
[65] Walid Khalidi says the Yishuv had the additional forces of the Jewish Settlement Police, numbering some 12,000, the Gadna Youth Battalions, and the armed settlers.
[66] Few of the units had been trained by December 1947.
[67]
In 1946 Ben-Gurion decided that the Yishuv would probably have to defend itself against both the Palestinian Arabs and neighbouring Arab states and accordingly began a "massive, covert arms acquisition campaign in the West". By September 1947 the Haganah had "10,489 rifles, 702 light machine-guns, 2,666 submachine guns, 186 medium machine-guns, 672 two-inch mortars and 92 three-inch (76 mm) mortars" and acquired many more during the first few months of hostilities. The Yishuv also had "a relatively advanced arms producing capacity", that between October 1947 and July 1948 "produced 3 million 9 mm bullets, 150,000
Mills grenades, 16,000 submachine guns (
Sten Guns) and 210 three-inch (76 mm) mortars",
[68] along with a few "
Davidka" homemade mortars that were highly inaccurate but had a spectacularly loud explosion that demoralized the enemy. Initially, the Haganah had no heavy machine guns, artillery, armored vehicles, anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons,
[69] nor military aircraft or tanks.
[70]
Sources disagree about the amount of arms at the Yishuv's disposal at the end of the Mandate. According to Karsh before the arrival of arms shipments from
Czechoslovakia as part of
Operation Balak, there was roughly one weapon for every three fighters, and even the Palmach armed only two out of every three of its active members.
[71] According to Collins and LaPierre, by April 1948 the Haganah had managed to accumulate only about 20,000 rifles and Sten guns for the 35,000 soldiers who existed on paper.
[72] According to Walid Khalidi "the arms at the disposal of these forces were plentiful".
[66]
[edit] Arab forces
There was no national military organisation in the Arab Palestinian community. There were two paramilitary youth organizations, the pro-
Husayni Futuwa and the anti-Husayni
Najjada ("auxiliary corps"). According to Karsh, these groups had 11,000–12,000 members,
[73] but according to Morris, the Najjada, which was based in Jaffa and had 2,000–3,000 members, was destroyed in the run-up to the 1948 war, during Husayni's attempt to seize control of it, and the Futuwa never numbered more than a few hundred.
[74] At the outbreak of the war, new local militia groups, the National Guard, mushroomed in towns and cities. Each was answerable to its local Arab National Committee.
[75]
In December, Abd al-Qadir Husseini arrived in Jerusalem with one hundred combatants who had trained in Syria and that would form the cadre of the Holy War Army. His forces were joined by a few hundred young villagers and veterans of the British army.
[76]
The equipment of the Palestinian forces was very poor. The British confiscated most of their arsenal during the 1936–39 rebellion and World War II
[77] A report of 1942 by the Haganah intelligence service assessed the number of firearms at the disposal of the Palestinian at 50,000 [but] this was probably an overestimate
[78] or even "highly exaggerated".
[79]
The
Arab Liberation Army (
Jaysh al-Inqadh al-Arabi) had been set up by the Arab League. It was an army of around 6,000 volunteers, largely from Arab countries, and was led by
Fawzi al-Qawuqji. Its officially allotted area was northern Palestine, including
Samaria.
Jordan's
Arab Legion was considered the most effective Arab force. Armed, trained and commanded by British officers, this 8,000–12,000 strong force was organised in four infantry/mechanised regiments supported by some 40 artillery pieces and 75 armoured cars. Until January 1948, it was reinforced by the 3,000-strong
Jordan Frontier Force.
[78]
As many as 48
British officers served in the Jordanian
Arab Legion;
[80] probably the Jordanian forces were the best trained of all combatants. Other combatant forces lacked the ability to make strategic decisions and tactical maneuvers,
[81] as evidenced by positioning the forth regiment at
Latrun, which was abandoned by other combatants before the arrival of the Jordanian forces. In the later stages of the war, Latrun proved to be of extreme importance, and a decisive factor for Jerusalem's fate.
Glubb Pasha, the commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, organized his forces into four brigades as follows:
(chart won't appear properly)
