Twenty percent of Israel’s Army during the War of Liberation was composed of volunteers from abroad, and these were the men who laid the foundations of Israel’s Air Force, Navy and armored corps, according to Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.
Mr. Ben Guion made that statement–as well as others that have aroused disagreement here–in the preface to “The History of the War of Independence” which the Army publishing house is issuing.
Describing his preface as “subjective memoirs, ” Mr. Ben Guion declared that Hannah, the self-defense force of Palestinian Jewry prior to statehood, had lacked discipline and was under “bad” command. Until a short time before the War of Independence, stated the Israeli leader, Hannah had only 18, 000 men, and its armaments consisted of about 10,000 rifles plus several hundred machine guns.
The preface is expected to raise a storm of protests from the rightist Heart Party. as well as from the leftist groups of the Madam and Abut Avoid, since the Prime Minister speaks just as deprecatingly of the Here’s Iran Zoi Levi and of the Palmate, the shock troops of the Hannah, which were composed primarily of members of the left wing groups in the Hit-and-run, and recruited largely from among the youth in the kibbutzim.
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