Grandma's army

Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel from February 1969 to June 1974:                                                                                                               “When in 1921 I came to Palestine – until the end of World War I a barren, sparsely inhabited Turkish province – we, the Jewish pioneers, were the avowed Palestinians. So we were named in the world. Arab nationalists, on the other hand, categorically rejected the name. Arab spokesmen continued to insist that the land we had cherished for centuries was, like Lebanon, merely a fragment of Syria. Until the 1960’s, attention was focused on the Arab refugees for whose plight the Arab...

  The “Israeli Defense Forces”   is the only army in the world to be named as such. Since its inception, it has never been Israel’s intention   to be the aggressor or to start a war.   Israel is not looking to enlarge its territory, to become an Empire, or to make converts.   There are 56 Islamic countries, 125 predominantly Christian countries - how dare the Jews claim the right to have a country of   their own, and such a big one! People are used to the Jews being helpless, homeless, and defenceless.   That has been our role in the world for the last 2,000 years. For days, the civilized world has been steeped in stories of the unbelievable barbarity perpetrated by Hamas in Israel. And yet, there is still an international political regime, including academia, that romanticises so-called Palestinians and now blame Israelis for being brutalised. How can one rationalise the murder of close to 1,400 individuals, including rape, decapitating babies...

  When the fourth Arab-Israeli war began on October 6, 1973, many of Israel’s soldiers were away from their posts, observing Yom Kippur   (Day of Atonement). The Arab armies were able to make impressive advances, with their up-to-date Soviet weaponry. Iraqi forces soon joined the war, and Syria received support from Jordan. After several days, Israel was fully mobilised, and the Israel Defense Forces began beating back the Arab gains - at a heavy cost to soldiers and equipment. The reluctance of the United States to help Israel changed when the Soviet Union   continued to supply weapons to Egypt and Syria. The U.S. President, Richard Nixon , countered by establishing an emergency supply line to Israel. As a result, the Arab countries imposed an oil embargo . European countries refused to allow American planes carrying weapons to Israel, to refuel. On October 25, an Egyptian-Israeli cease-fire was secured by the United Nations. Israel’s victory came at the cost of h...

Last week the subject was the Six Day war. A far different war was inflicted upon us six years later. The Yom Kippur war caught Israel completely by surprise since our enemies chose the most holy day in the Jewish calendar to attack us. The then Prime Minister, Golda Meir, visited the worn- out and filthy soldiers in the front line. One exhausted member of a tank crew asked Golda: “My father was killed in the 1948 war, and we won. Last week I lost my best friend and we’re now winning. But is all our sacrifice worthwhile, Golda? What’s the use of our military power if we can’t win the peace? After expressing her understanding of his question and her condolences,   Golda Meir added: In 1948, in this season of the year, I arrived in Moscow as Israel’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union. The State of Israel was brand new. Stalinism was at its height. Jews, as Jews, had no rights. They had been cut off from their fellow Jews for 30 years. Since the Communist revolu...