The Jewish Story: Decisions

decision says paul tillich is a risk rooted in the courage of being free now I'm feeling pretty free right now and I've got the courage to take some risks because I've made a decision this is the last episode of season 2 I'm Rob McClure and this is the Jewish story episode 40 the decisions that curve the state and seal shaping today now it seems to me that history offers decisive moments and with all due respect to the Titanic social economic political and spiritual forces that have carried our story up to now and make up the world in which we live there's a particular give aura exerted by individuals who find themselves in a moment of decision and by guevara I don't just mean it's literal translation of mic'd I mean the traditional understanding of the power to draw lines and decisions by definition always lie in the hands of an individual somebody has to pull the trigger and that's what we have ahead of us here in the last episode of season 2 we've got a few decisions to make and something to look at in the context within which they're embedded and I have to admit I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the task of trying to finish two years of a project so we'll just do the best we can by looking at the three months that come in the wake of the Declaration of Independence May June and July of 1948 we're going to see like I said the decisions that still shape the state today we're going to meet the characters who guide it in its process of formation and maybe just maybe we'll get some insight under how we arrive to where we are now but before we talk about the present let's think about the past it's important remember that there's a very big difference between the declaration of a state and its birth I mean all the first one really requires is an announcement and therefore it can be done in an instant no matter what comes afterwards you pop up you declare your state and then come what may the birth however is a product of powerful decisions and decisive actions over time and like other births it can be a difficult process painful bloody and prolonged now the official declaration of the State of Israel took place on May 14th 1948 at 4:00 p.m. air of Shabbat in the Tel Aviv Museum and despite the historic nature of the moment it was actually a very low-key event the provisional government was a little bit concerned that the British might try to throw one last spoke in the wheel before they left or maybe that the Arab armies who are already sharpening their knives would decide to invade her a day early just to spoil the party so they suppressed any publicity of the event invitations were sent out by messenger to a few hundred people but the event was broadcast live as the first transmission of the cold isa al radio station still broadcasting today the crowd responded to ben-gurion opening gavel with a spontaneous round of Hatikvah of leros and then when the quiet came ben-gurion announced I shall now read you the scroll of the establishment of the state which has passed its first reading by the National Council he took him all of 16 minutes for such a historic event and then he called on rabbi Yehuda laid my man head of Mizrahi party to recite this Jeffie on new blessing that blessing where we give thanks that God has given us the strength and allowed us to be at the moment where we find ourselves it's something that has to be heard in order to be appreciated but once Moshe Sharett the last of the signatories had done his job the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra struck up another round of Hatikvah after which Ben green again arose and declared the State of Israel is established this meeting is adjourned he took less than an hour suckle altogether I mean after all they had a war to go fight not to mention Shabbat but the birth process is opposed to that declaration is to some degree still on-going and we could stretch it as far back in the Jewish story as we really want certainly to the three Roman Jewish wars where we saw the last vestiges of an independent Commonwealth here in the Land of Israel and if we wanted to get existential we could probably go back to the six days of creation but for the purpose of our story now and for understanding the state as it is today I just want to reel back the process of birth to a meeting of the people's administration on May 12 two days before the Declaration of Independence now the administration was a proto cabinet that had established along with the People's Council or the National Council as I called it before it set itself a proto Parliament by order of the Zionist executive a month earlier on April 12 1948 and the decisions that were made by these 10 Jews in this meeting and the lead-up to ben-gurion declaration really still shape our state today now I can imagine when I think about it it was a pretty tense group that gathered that Wednesday they felt the full weight of history they felt the full pressure of international diplomacy and they knew that death was in the room after all the war of the Rhodes was already boiling over into regional conflict to their members couldn't even attend because they were trapped in deceives to Jerusalem but before they could make any decisions or really even have a discussion first had to come the reports Moshe Sharett soon to be foreign minister and already de facto playing that role had just come back from meetings in Washington and he stepped forward to give his full account of the international diplomatic situation his responsibility was to assess whether the world would recognize their state upon declaration much less whether anyone would assist in its birth and central to what he had to say were the words of the American Secretary of State George Marshall given just a few days earlier they weren't just words they were a warning he said there was no warrant to expect help from the United States which had warned them of the grave risk which they were running at this point in the lead-up to the Declaration America had backed down from the idea of partition that it had helped make happen and they were now pushing for an immediate ceasefire brokered by the United Nations and an extension of what they were calling a UN trusteeship meaning the continuation of the mandate nevertheless chari described George Marshalls sign as a yellow light not red I mean after all it was a warning not a command next up was Golda marason better known as Golda Meir who spoke about how she'd been smuggled into a man dressed as an Arab peasant woman just a few days earlier the purpose was secret meeting with King Abdullah of Transjordan whom she hoped to convince to stay out of the coming war but her words were not positive she called him as saying I'm very sorry I deplore the coming bloodshed and destruction apparently not bad enough to stay out of it though now this was bad news but unquestionably the most disturbing report was that from the military chief Yagami Dean Dean was head of operations with a Ghana that's why I'm searching for his name and he would soon be the IDF's first chief of staff from now he's just the military chief right his assessment of the situation on the ground was downright grim bottom line was he gave the forces marshaled under the Jews a 50/50 chance against the invasion that they all knew would be triggered the moment they declared independence and when ben-gurion asked who was then advisable to accept the ceasefire that the Americans were trying to broker Hadean said yes but only if they used it to prepare for the next round because hidden in his eyes the future held only war this wasn't the only war that was causing concern in the room because the fear of a civil war between Jews also clouded the atmosphere less than a week before their meeting Menachem Begin head of the Irgun had published a warning to the people's administration quote the Hebrew government will be established there is no maybe it will rise if the official leadership establishes a government we will back it but if the government gives in to the threats or forces and the majority of the lands youth will back the free government that will grow from the underground now these might sound like a lot of bluster and maybe empty words from an underground leader but the hora Shalom she treat who was the representative of thus far deem the Middle Eastern Jews in the room and in fact the only native-born Jew there knew exactly what was going on and he put it like this we are alert to the street and we know the mood there and if we now seem to go soft and retreat from what the street hopes from us will unleash war in the street so there were clearly some decisions to be made but I want to make something clear not over declaring independence there was no doubt in the room on that score the force of events had already overtaken them later in his memoirs Moshe Sharett would describe the feeling he had in these moments as though he were standing on a high cliff with a gale blowing up all around him and nothing to hold on to except his determination not to be blown over into the raging sea below the future founder of the Bank of Israel David Horowitz would write the following there was no other real alternative course it seemed that the narrow path on which we trod hadn't been chosen by us of our own free will but was imposed upon us by hidden forces over which we had no influence so like I said there was no choice being made about independence but the birth process was not nearly as clear because the minutes of that meeting testify to the power depth and importance of the decisions which the people whose administration did make on that day because their question they were facing wasn't whether to declare a state but what sort of state to declare this is the meaning by the way where Israel received its final name the competitors were numerous seonu Huda even sabar thank God that didn't went out but someone suggested Israel a quick vote was held seven to three and I know somebody out there asked me civically about the story I can't go into it now but send me an email and I'll shoot you the link that's Ralf Mike Feuer at gmail there's another very important decision that was made here this is where the Declaration of Independence began to reach its final form now the declaration is a text which deserves proper study as a text that being one of my passions in life especially as in the absence of a constitution you should know that the declaration serves as the standard of measure for Israeli jurisprudence but a true analysis would distract us from our story right now I do have a thought about giving it a proper treatment at some point maybe in an interlude send me your opinions if you have them but the one word that we have to mention before we get to the really important decision about to be made is democracy which of course is not in the Israeli Declaration of Independence an early draft of the document did propose declaring the state of democracy and there are several commitments to a Liberal Democratic character which remain even now but the word democratic was deliberately removed from the Declaration now soon to be justice minister Pincus Rosen was the one who oversaw the legal framework of the Declaration and soon-to-be foreign minister Moshe charade wrote the final draft so without unraveling the entire story we can say with confidence but between the two of them they felt that the word wasn't so central and that's why when ben-gurion stood up on May 14th in the Tel Aviv Museum and declared we are here assembled and hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel to be known as the State of Israel he sent a Jewish state and not a Jewish and democratic one now this is a hot topic and the one that we're gonna return to quite a bit in the coming season trust me because I know better than most that the tension between the vision of Israel as an ethnic nation-state and the vision of a civil nation-state is a primary strain on our social fabric more so every day but it's still not the decision I want to talk about because in terms of the birth process of the state and the decisions that we're taking which still define it in our day there was a choice made on May 12 1948 which was even more influential than removing the word Democratic from some document no matter how influential now when you look at the Declaration of Independence it's clear that the Jewish people could never craft such a text which didn't address history and the declaration does not disappoint on that score it mentions Israel as the birthplace of Omni sir of the Jewish people it speaks of our long exile and the faith which we kept with the dream of our home it names Herzl it gives a shout-out to the Balfour Declaration of course gives a place to the massacre of millions in Europe it even includes the United Nations quote on the 29th November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel this recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their state is irrevocable this right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate like all other nations in their own sovereign state and it was again the jurist Pincus Rosen ever a legal mind who insisted that the state be declared within the framework of the UN Partition Plan and he further insisted that its borders be defined accordingly it was a matter of law he argued it's impossible not to treat borders he found assistance from the horse Shalom she treat who already mentioned who was himself a lawyer and judge and soon-to-be Minister of police who declared that it's not credible to declare an authority without defining its scope this can draw us into complications what the state publishes is the law in the territory of the state when a state arises it declares the limits of its borders it sounds like a solid argument but David ben-gurion was having nothing of it he pointed to the US Declaration of Independence as his greatest piece of evidence which of course doesn't say anything about borders and told them quote if we decide not to save borders then we won't say it there is no need and no such law as that I too learned from law books that ass estate is made up of territory and population every state has borders but we're talking about a declaration of independence and whether borders must or mustn't be mentioned I say there's no such law as that but Ben Gurion didn't stop there he went on to point out that the UN by doing nothing to implement the partition plan and the arrows by declaring war on Israel had essentially torn up the map of resolution 181 in his eyes there was no reason whatsoever to limit the boundaries of the future state under the current circumstances quote we don't know what will happen if the UN stands its ground we won't fight the UN but if the UN doesn't act in the Arabs wage war against us and we thwart them and we then take the Western Galilee and both sides of the corridor to Jerusalem all this will become part of the state if we have sufficient force why commit ourselves and then he did something he hadn't done during the entire session he called for a vote who favors including the issue of the borders in the declaration for raised their hands and who is opposed five in the minutes there Reed resolved not to include the issue of the borders in the Declaration and the borders had been an unresolved issue ever since you know there's a widely accepted legend of an initial vote that took place right at the beginning of this meeting a vote on independence for or against all of the ingredients biographers claimed he turned tide in favor of the state and thus saved our future but interestingly when Grant himself never claimed any such responsibility and in fact modern historical research has cast a lot of doubt that such a vote ever actually occurred anyway as I pointed out to you the context dictates that that decision had already been made but the decision not to define the borders of the state he's a well documented reality one in which Ben Gurion took eternal pride in fact when telling the story and he told it often he was always careful to man that though his own law studies had been cut short by World War one he had prevailed over the jurist Rosen and the judge she treat it was almost as if he wanted to show that it was the power of his clarity of decision which had saved Israel from being forever trapped in a partition map by its very own lawyers in that decision and in carrying the vote to make it happen then Greene set the new state on a path to establishing its borders through the fortunes of war and not necessary through treaty and one wonders how he would feel to know that seventy years later that pattern still holds largely true well there's no way we can but I suspect at the time Ben green would have agreed wholeheartedly with what his arch rival Menachem Bagan had to say when he gave his own independent speech on Mo's a Shabbat the night of May 15th the rule of oppression in our country has been defeated uprooted it is crumbled and been scattered the State of Israel has arisen in bloody battle the foundation has been laid but only the foundation for true independence it is difficult to set up a state it is even more difficult to keep it alive scores of generations and millions of wanders from one land of Massacre to another were needed it seems there had to be exile it seems burnings at the stake and torture and dungeon we needed the sweat and toil of generations of pioneers and builders we had to have an uprising to crush the enemy we had to face the gallows the banishment across the seas the prisons and the cages in the deserts all this evidently was necessary so that we might reach the present stage were 600,000 Jews now dwell in our homeland where the rule of oppression has been driven out and Jewish independence declared in part of our country the whole of which is ours now I'm many things but a military historian is not one of them so if you are looking for the detailed description of the war of 1948 you'll have to look elsewhere but if we're going to understand the decisions that shape the state and we're going to set the groundwork to watch it unfold in season three then there are certain elements of what happened in 48 that you simply have to know because the Israel born out of the War of Independence will be the one that unfolds as a state in the coming phase of the Jewish story first of all simple obvious and tragic in human terms the War of Independence was Israel's most devastating war six thousand three hundred and seventy-three men and women were killed in action before the final ceasefire on July 28 1949 and more than 1500 wounded that's almost 1% of the population of the shoe that died and don't forget were only three years after the end of the show ah the end of World War two in which one-third of the Jewish people as a whole world over were murdered there were many survivors among the dead on the battlefields of 48 in these two losses coming one on the heels of the other will have a deep impact on the phase of a story which lies ahead of us in this episode and we'll leave an indelible mark on Israeli and frankly Jewish consciousness for generations to come and this isn't the time for a national psychoanalysis but it is important to remember that there is a relationship between the two the shadow of the Holocaust made the Jews of the issue take the threat of annihilation that were part of the war of independence very seriously so when you add that shadow to the actual sacrifices made on the battlefield you'll see that for Israelis and Jews all over the world the birth of the State of Israel was both a scarring event and an incredible moment of clarity there was a clarity around questions of life and death that dwarfed all other moral problems that could be posed by the nature of such a birth and more that's one piece and we're gonna see it both in this episode and in the coming but a larger piece that needs to be known is that the War of Independence created the Israel Defense Forces the IDF and the IDF is not just an army it's not just the People's Army which functions through Universal conscription it is the greatest tool of social construction that Israel knows even today it has an educational arm as an arm for history it sees itself as not just a servant of the society but as its shaper and its formation was far from a simple process a may 26 1948 less than two weeks after independence was declared the provisional government issued Israel Defense Army ordinance number four it's a simple document straightforward eight clauses but it deserves a bit of attention the first Clause is very simple number one there is hereby established a defense army of Israel consisting of land forces a navy and an Air Force simple but note the name defense army of Israel it speaks volumes about two essential elements of our story at this point first of all is the fact that the Hagana which of course is the word for defense in Hebrew is the underground army loyal to ben-gurion and the labor zionist leadership and it becomes the core of Safa hagen a lessor L the Israel Defense Forces you know you may be familiar with the phrase I am the state attributed to louis xiv son king of france well ben-gurion had no such personal pretensions but he was absolutely committed to the rule of the state and his party within it so placing the Hagana at the core of the most powerful institution in this new state was his way of saying we are the state they are the lesson we can learn from the name of the IDF is how the Zionists conceived their struggle this is a defensive war and if the Arabs would just leave us alone we wouldn't fight them now we have discussed many times the doctrine of purity of arms that's been at the center of the internal Zionist debate since the Arab revolt of the 30s you can go back to last episode and revisit this story of the 35 martyrs if you want a refresher but this is deeper than purity of arms in battle this is about purity of national purpose it tells a story of returning home after a long and brutal exile only to find the door barred by violent squatters so of course we're only looking to defend ourselves and will speak much more in season 3 about the psychological need of Israeli society to believe that our posture is purely defensive and we'll ask the question about whether it's actually serving anyone us or the Arabs but for now just note the significance of a name Clause 2 of the ordinance says in a state of emergency every person serving in the defense army of Israel shall take an oath of allegiance to the State of Israel its constitution and it's competent authorities well 70 years later there's still no Constitution but by demanding loyalty to the provisional government ben-gurion laid a cornerstone of democratic society for which I for one am grateful today military power must be subordinate the political authority and that leads us on to our last point here from ordinance for most of the rest is purely bureaucratic but Clause 4 deserves one more comment it is forbidden to establish or maintain any armed force outside of the defense army of Israel now that may seem stunningly obvious but if you've been following the Jewish story for any length of time at this point then you know that there are at least three underground armies operating within the territory of the new state and that's just the Jews Max Weber foundational thinker of sociology define the state as the only human organization which lays claim to the monopoly on legitimate use of physical force and he goes on to add that that monopoly is limited to a certain geographical area and in fact that this limitation to a particular era is one of the things that defines a state in other words what he means is that if anyone else claims to be a legitimate force within your boundaries you are not a state my friend that deserves some reflection and we already seen in our story that Bank rain was not so interested in tying himself down to boundaries at this point in Independence but trust me when I tell you he was totally committed to having a monopoly on the use of physical force and so establishing a unified army IDF necessitated eliminating the underground forces one way or another this was no simple process just picture it you can't lump together Red Army veterans ghetto fighters terrorists and guerrillas and think that they'll simply gel into an army or a state a lot of the story of season 3 is going to be following the seam lines within both those institutions but for now just know that the let he more or less went quietly into the night dissolving itself with the creation of the state and allowing its members to join the idea on an individual basis we'll see more of them at the beginning of season 3 when we pick up in 1949 they don't totally go away and we'll tell the story of how Menachem bagans your goon made its way into the IDF at the end of this episode but in order to set the stage for the next decision being made I want to say one word about the Palmach now nominally the Palmach was the striking arm of the Hagana and therefore should have been smoothly incorporated into the IDF by ordinance 4 along with the rest but in reality the Palmach was its own elite army dominated by the mahkum the United Workers Party that had broken away from ben-gurion SMAP I party in 1944 in politics the mahom remained been grins staunch coalition allies on the left for decades to come but he was not about to leave them with their own private army ego alone commanding officer of the Pama along with five of its brigade commanders were all mop amnok and they saw themselves as the military and ideological elite of the new society this is where if you're familiar with present-day Israeli society you get this assumption of the secular left is Ashkenazi elite that leads the political and military echelon it starts here and that's why ben-gurion was willing to go all the way in his fight to integrate the Palmach into his authority and in fact in the end he had to use his doomsday weapon ben-gurion threatened to quit as Prime Minister in the middle of the War of Independence if they didn't remove the generals that he didn't want from the headquarters of the IDF it's called the generals role by the way if you want the details you can send me an email but for now just take this that the Palma represents on one hand a left-wing almost internationalist ideology although there are some serious territorial maximalist there right and on the other hand it represents a real challenge to ben-gurion unified Authority and for the immediate story the shakeout in military leadership that happened when ben-gurion broke their back is gonna contribute heavily to the confusion that lies in the story ahead so here we have just a few elements that will help us first of all the scarring sacrifice of 1% of the population in the shadow of the Holocaust and the real belief that annihilation was possible combined with the birth of the Israel Defense Forces the IDF most powerful institution to this day within Israel not just in service of the state but in shaping it and the last element created by the War of Independence that we need to know in order to understand the coming decision is of course the Palestinian refugee issue which seems to weigh more on the Jewish story every single day in order to understand the birth of the refugee issue we actually have to understand the outline of the war Israel declared independence on May 14th at midnight of the 15th the British Mandate officially ended and several hours later the combined armies of Egypt Syria Jordan and Iraq invaded the newborn Jewish state now we know actually before this there was the Battle of the Rhodes which had been won decisively by the Jews but at this point they faced the Arab states this was the war in which eagle alone had given ben-gurion fifty-fifty odds not a victory of survival and the question that we need to touch before we go on is was that an honest assessment where the Jews David or Goliath in 1948 now certainly the classic version of 48 is the Jews were definitely David outgun out hang out planed we held out against the combined might of four of Arab armies with a slingshot two bottle rockets and some chewing gum today it's actually fashionable amongst the revisionist historians to paint Israel as Goliath better armed better organized unified and highly motivated by having our backs against the wall now I'm not gonna throw my hat in on either side of the argument but I will note that the need by the Jews to see ourselves as weak and the Arabs as strong and of the Arabs to feel the opposite is part of the psychological struggle that goes on in our state even today and we'll pursue that in season three especially the question when exactly Israel became Goliath in the public imagination but for now it's beyond question whatever the military line up actually was that the Jews believed they faced overwhelming odds and that defeat meant certain death after all only a month before the partition vote the Secretary General of the Arab League Azam Pasha had declared this will be a war of extermination and a momentous Massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades apparently he felt that it would be bad for him to add like the Holocaust but trust me when I tell you that in 1948 every Jew in the room heard him say it and they had no reason to doubt his words at this point so the war unfolded like that battle of the Rhodes the invasion but in the end the newborn state and it's freshly formed army managed to hold off the Arab armies the Syrians were stopped at cubed Suganya in the north the Egyptians at Yad Mordecai in the south and the Jordanians managed to take the old city of Jerusalem but they were stopped at the border of the new only two weeks after the opening of the hostilities and United Nations managed to broker a truce and it came into effect on June 11th and no one thought that this was peace it was a truce designed to last for 28 days it was breathing room which included an arms embargo and prevented people from making any gains but of course neither side cooperated it was only an opportunity to position himself for the next round of battle and it was during this first truce that the cabinet of the now provisional government met to hold its first forthright discussion on the refugees that had already been uprooted by the war and here we come to the second mighty decision that shapes the State of Israel even today the question at hand was whether the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had fled their homes should be barred from return now we spoke last episode if you recall about how the initial victories of the Arab forces in the battle for the Rhodes did not prevent the economic and political elite of Arab society from fleeing the war much as they had done during the revolt in the 30s they were the ones with the economic resources to assume that they could go away and come back and this is really the origin of that rumor unsubstantiated that the Arab armies broadcasts a message of get out of the way so he can push the Jews into the sea and you'll come back when we're done but we did speak about how indeed they fled perhaps as many as a hundred thousand and how they're leaving laid the groundwork through a social breakdown for a much larger Exodus and that first wave only grew as the underground pre-state armies moved on to the offensive in the weeks leading up to the declaration of independence as the fighting swept through the north the Arabs would spot two very and the Galil all followed their leaders into exile heading north and east and the lebanon syria Transjordan where many of their descendants remain today a particularly dramatic flight and well documented took place when the yer goon conquered the city of Jaffa almost its entire population took flight now all but the most vehement revisionists say that there was no clear government policy of expulsion during the Battle of the roads or the first phase of the War of Independence but all but most Pollyanna historians recognize that the Jews were far from being sorry to see their enemy flee and that was the tone when the cabinet met on June 16th to finally discuss the refugees and it boiled down to a fierce debate between ben-gurion Mapai and his far left ally mahom now a central tenant of them a pom party platform was the possibility and necessity even of arab-jewish cooperation and coexistence in the Jewish state they had many times publicly and strongly opposed expulsion and in this meeting they supported the return of the Arab refugees at the war's end and this wasn't just politics as we pointed out many of the major generals even after ben-gurion had broke the back of the palma were Muhammad Hakeem they were commanding in the field ben-gurion opposed the ideology and idealism of the map hum with his classic pragmatism now the partition plan had left nearly 400,000 Arabs amongst five hundred and forty thousand Jews and after six months a brutal civil war and the subsequent invasion by the Arab states in his eyes the only real question at hand was the viability of the state that they had declared and were still in the process of birthing survival dwarfed all other of moral questions and as for his general opinions he'd answered that many times take for example this quote from a letter to his son in 1937 we never wanted to dispossessed the Arabs but since England is giving part of the country promised us for an Arab state it is only fair that the Arabs in our state be transferred to the Arab area and if he wanted to look around for a legal precedent in the world it certainly wasn't lacking in the argument ben-gurion cited the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and large parts of Eastern Europe which was ongoing even as they argued already at the end of 1944 Churchill had announced the Allies intend to carry out what became the largest forest population transfer in human history his plan was quote that expulsion of the Germans for expulsion is a method which so far as we have been able to see will be the most satisfactory and lasting and then over the next five years between twelve and fourteen million people the overwhelming majority of whom were women children and elderly were driven out of their homes or forcibly prevented from returning conservative estimates suggest that some five hundred thousand people died in the process this is actually why a clause outlawing forced and systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a group was deleted from the UN's 1948 Genocide Convention at the insistence of the u.s. delegate he pointed out that it quote might be interpreted as embracing forced transfers of minority groups such as have already been carried out by members of the United Nations so this is not a simple moral equation because with all the scars Europe is stable today but no matter how you feel about that ben-gurion combination of hard pragmatism moral clarity and rhetoric carried the day it was decided in the meaning to bar the return of the Palestinian Arabs at least for the duration of the hostilities now that clause was added in order to placate them a pom it's very clear from the notes of the meeting that it was just a formality because the Hagana had presented an estimate that three hundred and ninety thousand Arabs had already fled the country by June and that it lacked only a political decision to complete the process the first truce that had held off the Arab armies and the Jewish armies ended on July 8th now the war had been won on the battles of the road and the invasion forces halted now was time for the freshly equipped and reorganize IDF to go on the offensive and when they looked around the IDF general staff saw the first priority on their map we're leaving the pressure on Jerusalem and that meant they had to secure the whole length of the Tel Aviv Jerusalem highway prime minister and acting Defense Minister David ben-gurion agreed and a closer look at the map showed that this meant that the two Arab towns of litter and Ramallah must be taken and in fact it had been true for months that when ben-gurion the IDF brass looked at the maps they saw these two towns which lay to the south and east of Tel Aviv as a thorn in the side of their entire new state and they weren't just cutting off the Jerusalem Road they were threatening Tel Aviv itself the towns had a combined population of between 50 and 70 thousand which at this stage included some 15,000 refugees who had fled the conquest of Jaffa and since they were allotted by the partition plan to the Arab state in garrisoned with trans Jordanian Arab Legion units supported by local militia they were deeply hostile to Jewish rule not just in their town but frankly anywhere and so a decision was made to launch operation Danny on the night of July 9th as part of a larger effort to free the city of Jerusalem from the siege but our focus is on the fact that from the first shot is clear from the documentation that the attack was designed to induce civilian panic and flight as a means of achieving the military goals the ground battle opened to the north of the town while the same time the IDF began to drop bombs on both Lita and Ramallah operation Danny headquarters radioed the IDF general staff that there was quote a general and considerable civilian flight from Ramallah there is great value in continuing the bombing inform us of possibilities of aerial bombardment of Ramallah now later that afternoon the radio the youth talk brigade headquarters which was the brigade actually in the field flight from the town of Ramallah of women the old and children is to be facilitated the male's of military age are to be detained just how many civilians had fled Rama and little before the capture is unclear but we do know the exes gained serious momentum during the night of July 11th when the Arab Legion company defending Rama finally retreated and by the morning of July 12 both towns were in the hand of IDF the victims of a formal surrender or so the soldiers thought because Ramallah was indeed subdued but that morning around 11:30 two Arab Legion armored cars entered the center of Leda and renewed fighting erupted the IDF managed to push the enemy out after sustaining a couple of dead and many wounded but noise that battle sparked a wave of sniping by armed townspeople in Lydda against the Israeli troops apparently at least some of the inhabitants believe that this was the beginning of an Arab Legion counter-attack and they were eager to help drive the Jews out I have to picture it three to four hundred Israeli troops in a town dispersed in semi isolated pockets surrounded by tens of thousands of hostile people some of whom are armed suddenly vulnerable and very angry they thought the town had surrendered the commander immediately ordered suppression of the sniping with utmost severity they were told to shoot quote at any clear target or according to some versions anyone seen on the streets well you could imagine in the midst of battle with the type of pressures that were already brought to bear what followed afterwards two hours later there were nearly 250 dead and the trickle fleeing the town began to grow into a stream as the soldiers encouraged inhabitants to flee toward the Jordanian lines for their own safety July 12 David ben-gurion was actually at operation dany headquarters together with the IDF operations had generally Galia Dean and much of the senior staff including once again the commander of operation Danny you got alone Palmach Nick and his fellow Palmas Nick and deputy Yitzhak Rabin now according to the best account of that meeting someone proposed expelling the inhabitants of the two towns but then Goran said nothing and therefore no decision was taken and then ben-gurion alone and Rubin left the room alone finally asked Ben Gurion flat out what shall we do with the Arabs and then gray made a dismissive energetic gesture with his hand and said garish oh thumb expelled them it was a decision which as we saw had already been made in the cabinet meeting almost a month before but it just been waiting for the right military moment to put it into effect and so at 1:30 in the afternoon on July 12th before the shooting had even completely died down operation dany headquarters issued the following order to the youth brigade in the field 1 the inhabitants of Lida must be expelled quickly without attention to age they should be directed towards baton Ambala Yitzhak brigade headquarters must determine the method and inform dany headquarters and the 8th brigade headquarters to implement immediately within a 72 hour period the inhabitants of the two towns had undergone the shock of battle unexpected conquest by the Jews abandonment by the Arab Legion and in litter what amounted to a large-scale massacre they needed little encouragement to leave in fact many of the notables of Lida actually approached the IDF offers and asked for permission to leave along with a guarantee of safe passage and the officers agreed adding that they themselves would make an announcement saying everyone is leaving the town today now whether that's an order or an invitation I leave up to you schmuck Goodman of kibbutz Nam former commander of the Palmach Arab platoon was the one who conducted this negotiation and he described the scene as follow the little townspeople dreaded their fate now meaning after this Agreement signs of satisfaction and concealed joy appeared on the notable spaces not one of them protested about this Goodman then told the leaders where to muster and he announced that the thousands of detainees would be released and free to leave the town with the rest of the inhabitants according to him everyone was over only a few months after dear Eocene and considering the brutality of the war they certainly expected the worst we are going into exile they said but we are grateful to you he recalled one of them saying so the bulk of the axis from Rama and Lord leader known as Lud now took place on July 13th most of the troops involved knew that the operation was an expulsion rather than a voluntary Exodus operation Danny headquarters informed the general staff around new on the 13th quote little police force has been captured the troops are busy scheme begin oh Sh hot oven busy expelling the inhabitants now a report written by Yigal Allon soon after the end of the operation laid out the strategic advantages of the Exile of Lydda and Rama's inhabitants beside the long term benefit of freeing tel Aviv from the threat of a neighboring hostile population his military thinking was simple the IDF had just captured its two main initial objectives Lidda and Ramla but the third Brigade which was the one in the field was stretched incredibly thin and had run out of steam in fact the records show that after the horrors of what happened here they actually were taken out of the field for a day of - of what's called hashable nefesh of self-assessment but for now the great fear was that the Arab Legion was expected to account attack from the east at any moment and alone knew that filling the main axis of possible approach with refugees was the best way to frustrate such a counter-attack he also knew that the major new wave of refugees would SAP the Jordanian resources during the crucial days and weeks of war that lay ahead so such was the impression from the heights of command and we know what it looked like from the heights of politics because as I said ben-gurion had already taken a decision which in his eyes was vital to victory in war and to the viability of the state that would be born out of it such was the second decision but what did it look like this expulsion from Ramallah and Lud which really lays it the heart of the 700,000 Palestinians who left the land at that point what did it look like to the soldiers on the ground in to the Arabs who afterwards solve this as a defining moment of their naka of their national catastrophe well five months after operation Danny shmaaya Goodman wrote the following women walked burden with packages and sacks on their heads mothers dragged children after them the faces of the walkers did not express hatred or sympathy we tried to make things as easy as possible for them occasionally you encountered a piercing look from one of the youngsters walking in the stream of the column and that look said we have not yet surrendered we shall return to fight you he went on to say that as an archaeologist the scene conjured up the memory of the Exile of Israel although the Arabs were not in Chains we're not uprooted by force were not led to concentration camps although they went this time of their own free will toward their fellow Arabs out of fear of staying at the front but their fate was the fate of Exile so there's one more decision that lies ahead of us before we can bring 1948 and season 2 to a close and it too involves blood and tears in the late afternoon of Sunday June 20th the alte Lena armed ship reached far Vidkun on the coast between Haifa and Tel Aviv don't miss the sequence by the way we started in May with the decision not to declare the borders we jumped to July with the decision to actually put into effect the vision of expulsion and now we're back in June in the middle so on June 20th the alte Lena armed ship reached the coast between Haifa and Tel Aviv loaded down with over 900 men five thousand rifles 250 machine guns five million bullets 50 bazookas and 10 armored cars it was a ship with the potential to turn the tide in favor of the Jews at least in terms of arms and if you're paying attention you'll notice that June 20th is at the heart of that first ceasefire which came after the initial natan one which expressly forbid the importation of arms but the alternate Lena had followed a very winding path to reach the coast that day it was initially purchased by the ear goon by Menachem bagans underground army and intended to reach Israel on May 15th in time for the opening of the war but it had been delayed time and time again and by the time the alte Lena armed ship arrived not only was that ceasefire in place there had been an agreement signed about absorbing their goon into the IDF it would no longer be its own army and one of the clauses of that agreement stated that the air good must cease all independent arms acquisition activities Bagan Menachem vagin had actually signed that agreement with a fountain pen owned by Zev Jabotinsky he later said that he was deeply moved to have lived to see the fulfillment of what had always been his mentor's dream the birth of a hebrew army and when he informed ben-gurion about the alte Lena after all the delays in the complications the prime minister agreed to bagans initial request that 20% of the weapons be sent to the organs Jerusalem battalion who were still fighting on as an independent army as was true of all the underground armies in Jerusalem at that point but Bacon's second request was rejected out of hand he wanted the remainder of the arms to be transferred to the newly incorporated Earvin battalions of the IDF so that they could join the army with honor remember there's a lot of bad blood here but then Gurion interpreted that request as a demand to reinforce an army within an army and therefore he saw it as a threat to his hegemony over both army and state and what follows is a tragedy as they all talena reached the shore the government convened in Tel Aviv for its weekly meeting ben-gurion reported on the situation and repeated his demand that bagans surrender and hand over all of the weapons quote we must decide whether to hand over power to bagan or to order him to cease his separate activities if he does not do so we will open fire otherwise we must decide to disperse our own army now clearly the government wasn't giving up at this point and so they resolved to empower the IDF to use force to overcome the Irgun and confiscate the ship and its cargo the next morning as your good men were busy unloading the ship's precious cargo the Alexandria Brigade surrounded far Vidkun and Commander Donovan issued the following ultimatum by special order from the chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces I'm empowered to confiscate the weapons and military materials which have arrived on the Israeli coast hand over the weapons to me for safekeeping if you do not agree to carry out this order I shall use all the means at my disposal in order to implement the order and to requisition the weapons which have reached shore and transfer them from private possession into the possession of the Israeli government I wish to inform you that the entire area is surrounded by fully armed military units and armored cars and all roads are blocked I hold you fully responsible for any consequences in the event of your refusal to carry out this order you have ten minutes to give me or apply now beggin was never one to back down and he refused to respond to that type of ultimatum and unfortunately fighting ensued there were even a number of deaths and in order to prevent further bloodshed the people of Parvat can manage to negotiate a ceasefire between bagans lieutenant and the army which involved the transfer of the weapons already on shore to a local IDF commander Bagan however jumped aboard the Alta Lena and they sailed down to Tel Aviv he claims that he hoped to get a more fair hearing at the center of the country where as rumors began to swirl that what was intended was a push a military takeover of the newborn government David ben-gurion ordered the army to concentrate large forces on the Tel Aviv beach and to take the ship with any means necessary general eagle alone and his assistant Itzhak Rabine were in command remember that when you listen to the section we just talked about Ramla and lord so at 4:00 in the afternoon on June 21st your gunman concentrated on the beach to receive their leader and the Alta Lena while the IDF formed an armed parameter and the shelling of the alternator began within minutes one of the shells actually hit the ship and it began to burn fearing that the fire would spread to the holds filled with explosives the captain ordered all aboard to abandon ship before he scuttled her people gantu jump into the water nevertheless the firing from the shore continued and the ear goon comrades on shore set out to meet them in rafts Moroccan Bagan stayed on deck agreeing to leave only when the last of the wounded had been evacuated sixteen ear goon fighters were killed in the confrontation with the army six-bar Vidkun and ten on the Tel Aviv Beach three IDF soldiers died in that battle as well in the following weeks in an article in the newspaper Haaretz general Yigal Allon described the artillery fire as an unavoidable measure quote yellow tulane affair was a rebellion against the agreed on institutions of the sovereign state in its earliest days and a very grave junction in the War of Independence in every departure from national discipline lie the seeds of the calamity of schism fraternal discord and a grave threat to the very essence of democracy he continued had this phenomenon of self exclusion not been restrained the entire struggle of the issue could have ended very badly this is the kind of thing that an individual a nation and a leadership do with a heavy heart but a clean conscience what he's saying is the decision made by his political superiors which he carried out was not a cause for regret now Holocaust survivor Shmuel Feldman was on board the airplane of that day and when he read Alone's article and Haaretz he wrote the following furious response my personal conclusions from the alte Lena tragedy were that the problem was the planning of a rebellion by the air goon but rather the desire to destroy a political body that was a rival of the leadership Feldman claimed that their goal was to quote label their goon as rebels against the State of Israel which had just been established and in that way eliminated politically it should be noted that this stratagem was partly successful Feldman then mourn the death of his comrades at least one of whom had survived Auschwitz only to die at the hands of Jews on the shores of Tel Aviv and the newspaper returned his letter with no explanation now the IDF and prime minister van Goren were victorious that day the Ergun was broken as an independent institution and in the weeks after the confrontation enlisted whole cloth into the IDF as individuals and its political arm were successfully labeled as dangerous extremists Menachem Begin will wander in the political wilderness almost for the next twenty years by and large the reading public believed Eagle Alone's assertion then Greene's decision had saved the democracy Ben gray himself later said that the gunner who fired on the alte Lena should be blessed and that the cannon should be positioned next to the holy temple but the decision to fire is not the one in this story which in my eyes still defines our state or at least it's not the one that has to because whether Bacon's intent had been insurrection or not in the wake of the killings off the coast of Tel Aviv there is a real danger of civil war just picture the streets of Tel Aviv gun battles are going on there's a dark plume of smoke rising from the coast as an arms ship burns and as such a thing had occurred if a real Civil War had broken out in the midst of the first ceasefire just imagine how the war would have opened again on July 9th not with you got alone in its rocker beam commandingly attack on Ramallah and Lud you know decades after the events by the time he was already Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave an interview in which he admitted that his orders had not been just a fire on the ship but to kill menachem billion if the opportunity arose and in my eyes it's fortunate for the State of Israel and the Jewish people that he failed because in the chaos of the burning ship Bagan managed to escape and reach the your goons secret transmitter somewhere in Tel Aviv and there he broadcast his story of what had happened aboard the alte Lena which he called a crime and act of folly and sheer blindness and then he wept and pleaded with his supporters not to raise their hands in vengeance just as he had pleaded with them during the hunting season when the Hagana had handed over his men to the British not to fight back less than a year later speaking to a crowd and a theater into Varia he described the situation like this to this day there are enemies who mock me because of the tears I shed in public that night in my radio address let them cheer I feel no shame there are tears of which no man need be ashamed on the contrary there are tears of which a man can be proud tears did not come only from the eyes sometimes they well up like blood from the heart whoever has followed my story knows that fate has not pampered me from my earliest youth I have known hunger and have been acquainted with sorrow death to has often brooded over me but for such things I never wept I did weep that night however for the alte Lena why I wept because there are fateful times when a choice has to be made between blood and tears during our revolt against the British blood had to take the place of Tears but at the time of the alte Lena Jew against Jew tears had to take the place of blood far better for one Jew to shed tears from his heart than to cause many Jews to weep over graves so what's the moral of the story here are three decisions that shape the birth of Israel and still shape our society today and trust me when I tell you that season 3 in many ways will be an unraveling of the events that we've spoken about now the first was actually the most straightforward ben-gurion choice to allow Israel borders to be defined by war and not by declaration and it's important to remember that the dream of a wholeness to the Land of Israel is powerful seductive and ever-present it's one part biblical one part the rectitude of history one part psychology and one part real politic and we'll follow the consequences of ben-gurion decision through the Wars of 56 and 67 until he drops off the world stage and we'll see their echoes in the treaties and Wars of more recent decades but for now I'm holding the question of whether everyone in our world today isn't simply posturing for the final round of 48 in order to set the borders that we can all live with so the second decision was the decision not to allow the refugees of 48 to return to the Jewish state as exemplified by the expulsion from Ramallah and Lida now whoever you see as responsible for the exodus of nearly 700,000 Arabs from a newborn state at war we have to recall that it was the creation of this refugee population and their maintenance by the Arab world in a state of expected return as opposed to their rehabilitation that created a Palestinian national identity which was deep and broad enough to finally penetrate past the surface labor layer of politicians and intellectuals in other words the expulsion and the Arab response created the biggest problem we face today a group of people who have a competing national narrative over our land and who believe that they were born out of our greatest victory but before you or I or anyone sits in strategic or even moral judgment on the decisions that were made in 48 I want to make two more comments one is something about the pragmatic reality you know I've been relying a lot on the research of Professor Benny Morris for last few episodes some of you were pleased some of you not so much as the founder of what's called the new historians in Israel and one of the first to delve into the military and political archives of 48 Morris is often reviled by the right as a burster of national bubbles if not a downright hater of Israel but I'm gonna tell you nothing could be further from the truth anyway now the Mallette hates him too because in 2004 in the wake of the horrors of the Second Intifada or the AHS little war as it's also known more skeeve an interview to Haaretz correspondent ari shoved eat if you want the whole interview send me an email send you a link but for now in it he summed up his position on Ramallah Lida and all the refugees of 48 and I'll give it to you in his quote there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide the annihilation of your people I prefer ethnic cleansing you don't have to agree but it needs to be considered the other piece I'd throw into the pot is that there's something down right biblical in this whole series of events after all if you open up the 6th chapter of Deuteronomy of devar iam you'll see that it says there that God will give us a great and flourishing cities you did not build houses full of all good things you did not fill hewn cisterns you did not hew vineyards and all grows you did not plant now what to do with that I'm not sure but I would give a fervent prayer that the line which follows it we should merit to see some point in our day take heed that you do not forget the Lord so we have the borders or lack thereof and we have the refugees and then there is the alt Polina now there are actually two decisions that are as we said one to pull the trigger and one to hold fire in its to know that the element of incitement in our politics between left and right didn't come into being with the Oslo process as some like to say it goes right back the underground struggles and you know this if you've been with me for the last few months and you know that there are people today on the right who claim that the assassin's bullet that killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was an echo of the battle for the alte Lena they call it historic justice now the question I have for those people is are you following bagans lead or ben-gurion because remember it's far easier to declare a state than birthday but the decisions needed to declare and even the decisions needed to keep it born are far more difficult than those needed to raise it into maturity and so here at the end of more than two years of work and I feel like I should say a key on a key amount of yuki-onna las monjas II thank you God who's given me the strength and sustained me and allowed me to see this day here at the end of this phase of the story I want to just give you a few more words from Menachem bacon about the alte Lena which will carry us forward into season 3 I say to you tonight god forbid that a decision of a democratically elected government of israel should ever be defied by force whatever our differences however strongly held our our differing convictions however raucous the debate these shall be expressed only through the legal avenues of legitimate dissent as befits our parliamentary democracy it is thanks to this democracy set in a sea of despotism that we shall weather every storm overcome every hurdle and withstand every test as we shall with God's help go from strength to strength mikail Ohio I want to invite you to help me go from the strength to strength here at the end of season 2 moving toward season 3 you got to check out the new website Jewish story that Co you got to find Jewish story podcast on Facebook like follow and share I want to invite you if you go to the website their Jewish story dot Co that up in the upper right-hand corner there's a button it says be a patron you can click on through to give a little per podcast support season three needs your help because I got a lot of research to do as many hours on the line and I want to thank a few people here at the end as well I want to thank the amazing people who are patrons right now who give their hard-earned money help make this show possible help keep it free and widely available please think about joining them I want to thank the Land of Israel Network you've been there for me from the beginning and I want to bless them that's the land of Israel come on a blessing it should be successful in growing and spreading that amazing platform I want to thank our days of institute PA RDS org al for building an educational and stupid as me to teach so many wonderful Jews and I want to thank you for listening and I want to thank God for making happen one