On ANZAC day, remember Deir Yassin

I am afraid, oh my heart,
to grow up in this exile;
and my homeland may not recognize me.
Take me, take me —
take me back home.
– Nassam Alayna el‑Hawa

Sometimes the truth, or its approximation, comes from unexpected quarters. The following are excerpts from “Handbook of the Arab-Israeli crisis. Volume II, political and military perceptions of the struggle over Palestine“ by Lewis B. Ware, Maxwell Airforce Base, Alabama, 1978.

In the lead up to Anzac Day Australian should remember that they were part of an occupation of Palestine not once but on two occasions. We remember also al Nakba that is coming up on 15 May and those that fought in Palestine during the second world war before the terror gangs, Haganah and the Zionist Irgun, marched through Palestine and declared the State of Israel supported by the United Nations. – Ian Curr, Editor, 24 April 2026.

Al Nakba

“The Irgun [under Israel’s future Prime Minister] Menachem Begin, acting without collaboration of the Haganah of Ben-Gurion [Israel’s first Prime Minister], massacred the entire village of Deir Yassin, which lies astride the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road in the name of strategic necessity.

Ben-Gurion disavowed responsibility for this slaughter and pursued, with determined vigor, a policy of integration of all Jewish armed forces into one military structure. Once again, Begin refused to join the Haganah.

The Haganah held Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and Haifa and those parts of the Galilee and the coast that would have been allotted to a Jewish state by the Peel Commission. The day the last British soldier embarked in the harbor of Haifa for home, Ben-Gurion [unilaterally] declared the new Jewish state [Israel].

The Arab armies suffered from a shortage of ammunitions and supplies brought about by a UN and, in particular, a British embargo in 1948. Moreover, the Arabs entered Palestine with long lines of communications and no central military command and coordination structure.

The Israelis, on the other hand, if they were not better armed, were better organized. The Haganah had ordered a mobilization in
November of 1947 and mustered sixty to eighty thousand men and women for service. The Israelis clearly benefited from their experience as the “shadow” government of Palestine during the mandate and were able to maintain civil and military order during the emergency. Initially on the defensive until arms arrived from Czechoslovakia, the Israelis held on tenaciously to the urban areaswhere most Jews lived but as the army became flooded with new immigrants and volunteers who brought important skills to the fighting force the war, conducted on short interior lines, was soon carried to the enemy.

While the UN mediator, Count Folk Bemadotte, attempted to establish the rules for arbitration, the Israelis took advantage of the first cease-fire to regroup and resupply. By July Israeli forces clearly outnumbered the invading Arab armies (sic). When the truce ended the Israeli won the central Palestinian towns of Ramlah and Lydda where they took possession of a valuable airport.

They then turned their attention to the Galilee and took Nazareth and 750 square miles of territory in the north in excess of what was allotted to them under the provisions of the UN Partition Plan. Now faced with success, Israeli attitudes towards UN stiffened and both sides fell back on their preconceived compromising positions.

The Israelis refused to allow Arab [Palestinian] refugees to return to their homes and the Arabs continued to hold out for a unified Palestine. Count Bernadotte, who had repeatedly taken the Arab side in negotiations, was assassinated by the Stern gang on 17 September 1948.

Ralph Buncte was appointed by the UN to take his place and a second truce was initiated in that month. In September the Israelis were at the point of mounting a major offensive against the Egyptian army in the Negev. Under provisions of the second cease-fire they had been permitted to pass through Egyptian lines to resupply their surrounded southern settlements. When the Egyptians finally balked at this the Israelis took the opportunity to break the truce and open hostilities once again.

It was now obvious that the Israelis enjoyed the advantages of arms, an air force, a clear plan of operations, daring leader ship, and coordinated command. Against them the Egyptians were dug in along a static line of defense and suffered from the fatigue of an indefinite truce.

The Israelis, using mobile small unit tactics and avoiding any frontal attacks or large concentrations of forces, gained substantially east of Gaza and south of Jerusalem. By October 1948 the Israelis had succeeded in surrounding a force of three thousand Egyptians near the town of Faluja. When ordered to withdraw by Ralph Bunche, the Israelis refused to comply thereby laying claim to the whole of the Negev desert.

Diversionary assaults in the Galilee and Jerusalem by the Syrians and the Jordanians did not appreciably help the Egyptian situation. By this time the Israeli army could shift troops to the north where the Arabs were soon pushed out of the entire Galilee and Lebanon was effectively eliminated as a belligerent. In this operation the Israelis pushed some ten kilometers across the international frontier into Lebanon but, fearful of enraging France whose relations with Lebanon were still strong, withdrew once the Lebanese no longer proved a threat. In December the Israelis embarked on a second invasion of the Negev which took them across the frontier into the Sinai.

Here Israeli planes shot down five British aircraft which had come to the aid of the Egyptian forces. Once again fearful of Great Power pressure the Israelis withdrew but without alleviating pressure on the surrounded Egyptians in Faluja. The Egyptians were the first to demand an armistice from the Israelis in January 1949. Caught in a precarious position, the best the Egyptians could hope for was the stabilization of their positions in Gaza along a narrow strip of land that extended north towards Tel Aviv.

The Lebanese followed suit in March. Jordanians signed an armistice not long after but not before the Israelis had managed to secure a foothold on the Gulf of Aqaba where the port of Eilat would later be erected. In April the Syrians agreed to a final cease-fire which stabilized (sic) to frontlines facing the Golan Heights. Since Saudi Arabia and Iraqi held no front individually their troops were simply withdrawn without any written agreement with Israel (sic).

The effects of this war were felt long after it ended. With in several months revolution broke out in Syria and threatened to spread to the rest of the Arab world.”

Lewis B. Ware
Maxwell Airforce Base
Alabama 1978

These events led to the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organisation under the keadership of Yasser Arafat [Havakat al-Tahrir al-Falasteen (Movement for the Liberation of Palestine) spelled in reverse = Fatah]

Lewis B. Ware was professor of Middle East studies and chief of the Political-Military Affairs Division at AUCADRE. Before entering service with the Air Force, he taught at New York University, Boston State College, and Northeastern University. He has published numerous articles on a wide range of subjects in such journals as the Middle East Journal, Military Review, and the Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Doctor Ware has also produced a series of monographs on the Middle East for the Air University Press.