Jewish History: 18 Key Battles (Part 3/3: Modern)

The Modern Era

The Israeli War of Independence (1947–1949 CE) – After 1,813 years in exile, the Jewish people would have to struggle to reconstitute a polity in its ancestral homeland. For 30 years (1917–1947) the British had controlled the territory, but on November 29, 1947 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Partition Plan (UN Resolution 181) that provided for discrete Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem to be internationalized. Palestinian Arab terrorists and rioters immediately initiated bloodshed and chaos, and violence soon escalated. As Britain prepared to evacuate the region, it implemented its self-interested pro-Arab policy, which included a weapons embargo against the Jewish forces, and relinquished strategic sites, military bases, and arms to the Arab forces. Disadvantaged from the outset against Palestinian Arab militias and irregulars from Arab states, the Jewish forces comprised three paramilitaries: the Haganah (~47,000 active and reserve members); the Irgun (5,000 members); and the Lehi (1,000 members). In the first phase of the war, the Jews were largely on the defensive, suffered heavy casualties, and were deprived passage along most major highways (vital supply lines), but by the spring of 1948 the Haganah had switched to offense and regained the initiative. When their overconfident leaders advised them to temporarily quit the battle zone until they could return triumphantly within a few weeks, panicky Arab residents fled areas reclaimed by the Jews, including Tiberias, Haifa, Tzfat, Beit She’an, and Jaffa. On the very eve of the British withdrawal, under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948; the next day, a coalition of armed forces from seven Arab states—Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen—invaded Israel and joined the Arab militias and irregulars in a concerted assault from all sides against the nascent Jewish state. The Arabs’ genocidal intent was overt and explicit: Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, boasted: “It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.” For the State of Israel and all its Jews, the war perforce would be existential.

Indeed, the war’s second phase began with the Jews facing a precarious and perilous predicament, despite the timely arrival of surplus warplanes and arms smuggled into Israel by North American Jewish and gentile aviators in a clandestine operation led by enterprising veteran Al Schwimmer. The fiercest fighting occurred in and around Jerusalem, whose Old City’s Jewish Quarter fell (May 28) to the Transjordanian Arabs (the Arab Legion, armed, trained, and commanded by British officers) and whose New City they besieged. The siege was relieved when the newly rebranded (effective May 31) Israel Defense Forces (IDF), unable to take the strategic hilltop fortress at Latrun in the Ayalon Valley, furtively forged an alternative access road/supply route—the makeshift bypass, little more than a rough dirt track, known as the “Burma Road” (completed June 14)—through the Judean Hills to the Holy City for their convoys to reach the Jewish front lines. The Jews reclaimed Lod (Lydda) and captured Ramla, and Nazareth with its predominantly Arab Christian population surrendered. Subsequent Israeli campaigns to retake the Negev and Galilee regions likewise succeeded. Against daunting odds, the fledgling State of Israel had retained its hard-won independence and defeated its attackers, but victory came at a high cost: 6,373 soldiers and civilians killed (almost 1% of the Jewish population of 650,000) and some 15,000 wounded. It would be Israel’s bloodiest war. By the war’s end, some 10,000–15,000 Palestinian Arabs had been killed and 700,000 had fled their localities (by 1949, about 300,000 of these resettled among the preexisting 400,000 Arab residents of the Judea and Samaria regions, which remained under Arab control), and the IDF’s manpower had swelled to more than 100,000 full-time uniformed fighters. De facto borders substituted for de jure ones. The war officially concluded on July 20, 1949 following a series of armistice agreements—not peace treaties—between Israel and Egypt (Feb. 24), Lebanon (March 23), Transjordan (April 3; Transjordan was soon renamed Jordan on June 2), and Syria (July 20), though not Iraq or Saudi Arabia (which do not share borders with Israel); the glaring absence of formal peace treaties augured ill for the future prospects of peace in the Near East. Essentially, all later Arab-Israeli wars would be additional rounds of the War of Independence.

Soldiers from the IDF’s Golani Brigade during “Operation Uvda” (1949). Wikimedia Commons.

The Six-Day War (1967 CE) – In 1964, Syria and Lebanon began diverting the Jordan River to deprive Israel of water. The Syrian Arabs were increasingly shelling Israeli border villages, as well as shooting at agricultural workers in the demilitarized zone and fishermen on Lake Kinneret. Likewise, Palestinian Arab terrorists ramped up their deadly attacks against Israeli civilians from staging grounds in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. In April 1967, the Israelis responded forcefully to these provocations and shot down six Syrian MiG-21 fighter jets. Soviet disinformation reports (May 13) claimed Israel was planning to attack Syria, which unnerved the Soviet Union’s Arab client-states. The undisputed leader of the Arab world since 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt and a bloviating warmonger, then surpassed his usual saber-rattling and brinkmanship when he expelled the United Nations Emergency Force peacekeepers (May 16–18), concentrated 100,000 troops in the Sinai Peninsula (May 20), imposed an illegal blockade on Israel by closing the Straits of Tiran (May 22), and signed a mutual defense pact with Jordan (May 30), which alliance Iraq soon joined (June 4). Thus four Arab states—Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq—amassed armed forces and were, for the second time, poised to destroy the State of Israel. The UN and the entire world did nothing as Israel was surrounded by 250,000 Arab warriors, 2,000 tanks, and 700 warplanes; the gentile nations were perfectly content to spectate as events unfolded, even though it appeared a second Holocaust was in the offing. The Arabs salivated at the prospect of Israel’s annihilation, issued blood-curdling threats, and proudly announced their imminent attack throughout their various media. “It’s time we stop deluding ourselves that someone will come to our aid,” said IDF chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin, who had already, quietly but efficiently, mobilized the Israel Defense Forces (May 20).

Only world Jewry rallied behind Israel; Israeli embassies and consulates were besieged by thousands of Jewish volunteers. But after two Egyptian reconnaissance flights over Dimona (May 17, 26), Israeli intelligence assessed that Egypt was preparing an impending aerial strike against its sensitive Negev Nuclear Research Center. War was certain. Facing another existential crisis, Israel decided to cross the nuclear threshold on the eve of war, as a last resort. The high stakes and intense pressure caused an exhausted Rabin to suffer a brief breakdown during which he was sedated and slept for 24 hours. Morale plummeted when Israeli premier and defense minister Levi Eshkol stammered through a national broadcast (May 28), but rose again when one-eyed war hero Moshe Dayan promptly replaced him as defense minister in a national unity government (June 1). Although isolated among the nations, Israel was determined to endure, and to that end its military leaders—who knew full well that the longer they waited the harder and costlier it would be to win—devised an ingenious war strategy.

Under its commander Mordekhai Hod, the intrepid Israeli Air Force (IAF) launched a massive preemptive airstrike (“Operation Focus”), comprising almost 200 combat aircraft, in several attack waves to devastate the Arab air forces and airfield runways, which caught the Arabs by surprise (June 5). Within three hours, 452 Arab warplanes were destroyed on the tarmac or in air combat, while Israel lost 19 aircraft, affording Israel aerial superiority for the war’s duration. In a multi-pronged armored assault, Israeli generals Israel Tal, Avraham Yoffe, and Ariel Sharon of the IDF’s Southern Command (under general Yeshayahu Gavish) confronted and overcame Egyptian forces in Sinai and the Gaza Strip and soon captured both. Egyptian radio broadcasted blatantly false reports of triumph to listeners across the Middle East. King Hussein of Jordan, duped by Egyptian fabrications and keen to be seen to honor his pact with Nasser, refused the option to sit out the war and instead Jordanian Arabs unleashed a heavy barrage against Israeli towns and villages, most brutally against Jerusalem, which suffered many casualties. Unlike in the War of Independence, the IDF this time was able to capture the strategic Latrun fortress, and the IDF’s Central Command under Israeli general Uzi Narkiss advanced to Jerusalem, where he was joined by Israeli paratroopers under Colonel Mordekhai Gur. Meanwhile, the IDF’s Northern Command under Israeli general David Elazar, with an armored brigade, smashed the Jordanian Arabs in northern Samaria around Jenin. Ramallah surrendered, Qalqilya and Jenin fell, and Jerusalem’s Old City—including Temple Mount, Jewry’s holiest site—was reclaimed by Gur’s paratroopers, who had penetrated through Lions’ Gate (June 7). Jericho, Bethlehem, and Hebron were soon in Israeli hands, and the core regions of Judea and Samaria—the heartland of the homeland—were liberated. In the Gulf of Eilat, the Israeli navy captured Sharm el-Sheikh and reopened the Straits of Tiran, thereby lifting the blockade against the port city of Eilat. Egyptian armored forces were demolished and trapped in Sinai. Thanks to the IAF, the Mitla Pass became an Egyptian military graveyard. The Israeli flag was hoisted over the Suez Canal as desperate Egyptian soldiers retreated in disarray.

On the northern frontier, after fierce fighting against heavily fortified and tactically advantageous Syrian Arab positions, the IDF reclaimed Caesarea Philippi (Paneas/Banias), captured Quneitra, put an end to Syrian shelling, and gained control of the main highway to Damascus. In less than a week, the IDF had liberated Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip, and had conquered the entire Sinai Peninsula. Most importantly, it had reunited Jerusalem. Jordan, Egypt, and lastly Syria accepted a ceasefire agreement. In total, Israel suffered 777 fatalities and 2,586 (per another tally, 4,517) wounded, with a handful of POWs (mostly downed pilots, all of whom were later exchanged in a prisoner swap); more than 18,000 Arabs were killed, and almost 6,000 more were POWs. UN observers were posted along the Suez Canal and upon the Golan Heights. Disgraced, Nasser resigned but returned to office after his countrymen evinced their support with massive street demonstrations. Yet again had the Arabs suffered a self-inflicted disaster born of fanatical hatred and intransigence. Israelis not only breathed a sigh of relief, but were euphoric. The State of Israel had stunned the world by achieving a decisive victory in record time, but hubris set in…and for Israelis the sequel to ecstasy would be agony.

IDF Paratroopers surround Chief Military Rabbi Shlomo Goren in Jerusalem (1967). Wikimedia Commons.

The Yom Kippur War (1973 CE) – Bitter about losing, and about being surprised, during the Six-Day War, the Arab states plotted their vengeance against the State of Israel. They were eager to regain territory and honor lost in that debacle. Israeli intelligence had detected (Sept. 1973) indisputable signs of imminent attack—Egypt and Syria had massed armies along the 1967 ceasefire lines—and, on the day before Rosh HaShanah (Sept. 25), King Hussein of Jordan secretly flew to Tel Aviv to warn Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir of an imminent Syrian attack. The warning was downplayed by self-deluded Mossad head Tzvi Zamir, but as a precaution Israel doubled its armored forces on the southern and northern fronts during the ten Days of Awe following Rosh HaShanah. Israel also had noted that Soviet advisors and their families were departing Egypt and Syria and had been warned by an Egyptian billionaire spying for the Mossad that war was forthcoming (Oct. 4). Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deputy chief of staff Israel Tal, appealed to his superior, IDF chief of staff David Elazar, to bolster Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and to summon reservists: “If I am wrong and you are right, we drafted them for nothing, inconvenienced them during the holidays, and wasted money. That would be a shame, but not too bad. On the other hand, if I am right and you are mistaken, we will face disaster.” At the last minute Elazar recommended the full and immediate mobilization of Israeli forces and a preemptive airstrike, but was overruled by Meir and only hours later was a partial mobilization approved. Although Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was determined to wage war, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had warned Meir not to strike first, and Meir—in a stunning feat of faulty and inverted reasoning—thought that by doing so Israel would incur the blame for initiating hostilities and alienate American President Richard Nixon, whose aid Israel would desperately need during the war. Israel’s military (and psychological) dependency upon America ruled out a preemptive strike—the very tactic that had saved the nation during the Six-Day War.

At 2pm on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Egypt and Syria (along with armed forces from Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and even North Korea) unleashed a precoordinated and simultaneous “surprise” attack against Israel in Sinai and in the Golan Heights (Oct. 6). In the first three days of war, with their up-to-date Soviet weaponry, the Arabs overran Israeli positions and inflicted heavy losses on the IDF. Egyptian forces in two hours overran the supposedly impenetrable Bar-Lev Line in Sinai and blockaded the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and Syrian forces overtook Mount Hermon and were advancing toward Lake Kinneret. But soon the IDF recovered and counterattacked (Oct. 8): Israeli generals Moshe Peled, Dan Laner, and Rafael Eitan (under Northern Command GOC Yitzhak Hofi) halted the Syrian Arabs in the north and repulsed them to the 1967 ceasefire lines (Oct. 10), then smashed the armored forces of Iraqi Arabs advancing in Syria (Oct. 12). By the end of the war’s first week, Syria’s air force and missile system were mostly destroyed.

To fully go on the offensive, however, the IDF required an adequate resupply of military equipment. Only after much deliberation—and following the Soviet Union’s massive air and sea lifts to resupply the armed forces of Egypt and Syria—did the United States decide to intervene on Israel’s behalf and begin a full-scale emergency airlift (“Operation Nickle Grass”) of matériel including warplanes, tanks, armored vehicles, helicopters, and munitions (Oct. 14). Thus replenished, despite Britain’s disgraceful arms embargo and the refusal of various U.S. allies to facilitate the arms shipments, Israel went on the offensive, retook its territorial losses, and even gained new ground against Egypt and Syria. Through its daring and initiative during history’s first naval missile battles, the Israeli Navy destroyed much of the Syrian and part of the Egyptian navies, thereby securing control of both the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.

On the southern front, Egypt’s 100,000 infantrymen had easily overwhelmed the 450 Israeli soldiers manning 16 border forts in Sinai along the Suez Canal, and Egyptian air defense (missile) systems and antiaircraft guns had inflicted heavy casualties on the Israeli Air Force (IAF). Israeli generals Avraham Adan, Ariel Sharon, and Avraham Mandler (under Southern Command GOC Shmuel Gonen) confronted and repelled the advancing Egyptian Arabs. After Mandler was killed in action (Oct. 13) and replaced by general Kalman Magen, and while the IAF achieved air superiority, IDF ground forces bridged then crossed the Suez Canal with three divisions (Oct. 19) and soon isolated, surrounded, and trapped in a tightening vise the Egyptian Third Army (comprising ~20,000 troops and 300 tanks), which faced certain annihilation. Predictably, when it became painfully clear that Israel was winning the war, urgent international calls to end the fighting were issued. On the same day Mount Hermon was reclaimed by Israel from Syria (Oct. 22), the UN Security Council passed a ceasefire proposal (Resolution 338) meant to rescue the Arabs from utter ruin; both sides violated it, but the Soviet Union’s threat to intervene on Egypt’s behalf and American pressure combined to halt Israel’s further progress, and a second ceasefire was imposed (Oct. 25). Thereafter Israel signed ceasefire agreements with Egypt then Syria. The 19-day war lasted more than three times as long as the Six-Day War, and cost Israel 2,691 soldiers with another 7,250 wounded, while the Arabs lost as many as 18,500 men. It transpired that the Syrian and Egyptian Arabs committed numerous barbaric atrocities against Israeli POWs (e.g., beatings, torture, dismemberment, summary execution, and reportedly in one instance even cannibalism). Israel’s Agranat Commission that subsequently investigated the war’s initial failures blamed Israeli intelligence—especially IDF military intelligence chief Eliyahu Zeira and his deputy Aryeh Shalev—for misconstruing the information it had received, and chief of staff Elazar resigned. Meir was forced to resign (April 1974), followed by her cabinet including Dayan, whose reputation lay in tatters. Israeli military confidence was severely shaken and would never again be the same…and the bitter lessons learned in the war’s aftermath would, half a century later, be completely forgotten.

Sharon, Dayan, and Bar-Lev during the Yom Kippur War (1973). Wikimedia Commons.

The Gaza Envelope (2023 CE) – Complacent Israeli intelligence agencies—deluded by their own ideological biases and in thrall to misconceptions devoid of common sense—had assessed that Hamas was content to govern the Gaza Strip and deterred from terrorism, despite having continually terrorized Israelis for the previous 36 years. Per some reports, Israel became aware of Hamas’ blueprint for a major attack—as early as one year in advance—at some unspecified date, but assessed that Hamas lacked the capability to implement its complex, aspirational plans. Three weeks prior to 10/7 (Black Sabbath), Military Intelligence Unit 8200 of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) compiled a report on Hamas’ training but senior commanders reportedly ignored it; this detailed document was followed by an urgent warning message internally emailed by an operator from Unit 8200, mere days before the brutal massacre, but again nothing was done by senior military officials. And according to Egyptian intelligence officials and U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), Israel was alerted three days in advance of an impending attack, which went unheeded due to institutional complacency and alternative security priorities in Judea & Samaria.

Thus it came to pass, just after the break of dawn on the holy Sabbath (Oct. 7) coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Shmini Atzeret (in Israel, Shmini Atzeret is celebrated together with the Simhat Torah holiday) characterized by unbridled joy, that the barbaric savages of Hamas, along with those of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as well as numerous unaffiliated Gazan “civilians”, diverged markedly from the working intelligence assessment when they invaded western Israel and committed the deadliest massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust and the bloodiest attack in the history of the State of Israel.

Some 6,000 Palestinian Arabs (including 3,800 of Hamas’ elite Nukhba terrorists) broke through the Israeli security barrier and almost 1,200 men, women, and children—including 46 Americans and foreign nationals of more than 30 countries—were slaughtered in the onslaught, with another 251 people (including 12 Americans) abducted as hostages into the Gaza Strip. The invasion was accompanied by a deadly barrage of 5,000 rockets (3,000 of them fired in the first four hours of the attack) launched by another 1,000 terrorists within the Gaza Strip, raising the total number of Gazan Arabs directly involved in the genocidal assault to 7,000. Detonating explosives and using bulldozers, the terrorists breached Israel’s supposedly impenetrable border fence in 119 places (why Israel’s high command believed a fortified fence would withstand a terrorist horde with up to 40,000 members remains unanswered). They also infiltrated via motorized paragliders and motorboats. The Nahal Oz military outpost was soon raided and overrun, with its soldiers gassed to death. Adjacent to the kibbutz Re’im, some 3,500 partygoers at the Nova music festival—whose organizers hosted the mass event not only on the eve of a Jewish holy day but in perilous proximity to a major terrorist enclave—mostly dispersed to their vehicles once the rocket barrage had begun, but were hunted and gunned down by terrorists in their automobiles and in nearby fields, orchards, bushes, and mobile bomb shelters. The wounded hid among the corpses of the murdered. Only an hour and a half after the attack began did the IDF issue a state of alert for war, and only after another half hour did they begin mobilizing reservists. IDF forces and the Shin Bet internal security service were caught—often literally—asleep at the switch.

While 364 Nova festival revelers were brutally massacred, terrorists infiltrated 21 Israeli communities including Kfar Aza, Be’eri, Nir Oz, Netiv HaAsarah, Holit, Ein HaShloshah, Sderot, Ofakim, Nirim, Kissufim, and Alumim; they penetrated as far as the Bedouin Arab city of Rahat in the Negev Desert, about 26 miles from the Gaza Strip. Israel’s security cabinet finally convened—seven and a half hours after the invasion began. Shortly thereafter IDF soldiers at last reached the site of the music festival massacre, and the fightback began. Yamam officers of the Israel Border Police rescued policemen holed up in a police station surrounded by terrorists. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) and Israeli Navy eliminated infiltrators by land and sea, and the IDF killed terrorists in several areas: Sderot; near Nirim; at Erez Crossing; and Nir Oz.

For Israelis, the Battle of the Gaza Envelope featured both gross incompetence and incredible heroism and self-sacrifice. Only three weeks later (Oct. 27) did the IDF launch its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. Simultaneously, Lebanese Arab terrorists of Hezbollah and Yemenite Arab terrorists of the Houthi (Ansar Allah) movement began attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas and PIJ. What ensued was the Israel-Iran War (imprecisely termed the Israel-Hamas War and insipidly labeled “Operation Swords of Iron” by the IDF) wherein the fanatical Iranian regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps twice launched massive aerial barrages against Israel (April 13-14, Oct. 1), which twice retaliated (April 19, Oct. 26), the second time with more force and impact. While Israel ultimately won the battle by eliminating and repelling the terrorists, and then achieved important gains in the full-scale war that followed, scores of hostages still languish in the Gaza Strip and many are believed to be deceased. Few of those among Israel’s defense establishment have accepted responsibility and resigned; most of the IDF and Shin Bet leaders on whose watch the unprecedented atrocities and failures of 10/7 occurred indefensibly remain in their positions to this day.

10/7 memorial for civilians slain at the Nova music festival site near Re’im. Wikimedia Commons.

In the ancient era, Jews (Israelites) waged war to conquer their Promised Land, and their success was ascribed to divine favor; later they succumbed in combat against regional adversaries more powerful, aggressive, and technologically advanced, who were deemed divine instruments of punishment. The Land of Israel was lost then regained, albeit under foreign occupation. In the classical era, Jews heroically restored their religious freedom and political independence, but this latter golden age proved ephemeral. Detrimental civil wars between rivals vying for power squandered Jewish sovereignty and liberty. Jewry, subjugated and oppressed, became restive and recalcitrant, courageously willing to defy, yet unable to permanently overthrow, their imperial-colonial overlords. In the medieval era, the Jewish people were without a state or a military of their own, and poorly organized for communal defense as diasporic minorities faced with frequent persecution. In the modern era, once more were sovereignty and independence recovered with the Jewish nation-state of Israel, the Third Commonwealth, but for Jews the difficult battles to reclaim and retain their ancestral homeland continue three-quarters of a century after they commenced.

The State of Israel has fought and won four existential wars since its establishment (1947–1949; 1967; 1973; 2023–2025). Throughout these conflicts, the Arab states or terrorist groups have been repeatedly saved only by the United Nations’ tendency to intervene whenever the Arabs are in danger. But in the last half century, severe military failures—entirely avoidable, as it transpired—have brought disaster to Israel and Israel to the brink of catastrophe. The Yom Kippur War and the Israel-Iran War evidence two fundamental lessons that Israel fails to learn at its great peril: just because you’re caught off guard doesn’t mean it was a surprise, and comforting delusions are the deadliest kind.

Regrettably, most Arab states and their inhabitants have never reconciled themselves to the historic repatriation of the Children of Israel to the Land of Israel or to the permanence of the State of Israel. They continue to believe they are just one war away from pushing the Jews into the sea, and direct their energies and resources toward that evil end. Since 1979, the (non-Arab) Islamic Republic of Iran has been at the forefront of pursuing this genocidal goal and has strategically developed regional proxies—comprising Arab terrorist groups Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the Houthis, plus militias in Syria and Iraq, in what has been termed the Iranian “ring of fire”—to carry out much of its dirty work, then to suffer the consequences thereof. The iniquitous and insidious Iranian regime is perfectly willing to fight Israel down to the last expendable Arab. Only lately has Israel begun to break the stranglehold with substantial force and resolve. In a region of the globe where strength is respected and weakness attacked, there is little alternative to a proactive and preemptive military approach, and history evidences that depending upon deterrence is no substitute for acting against implacable enemies with determination, decision, and finality.