“The failure of the Arab armies to win quietly in Palestine in the first phase of fighting in May and June destroyed any chance of Arab victory, if not permanently, at least for some years to cone,” Hanson W. Baldwin, military expert of the New York Times, declared today in an article analyzing the stalemate in the Palestine fighting.
The history of the fighting in Palestine, Baldwin says, clearly shows in retrospect “that the Arabs led from weakness and not from strength, that they sent a boy to do a man’s job and that stalemate and frustration are now, therefore, their resultant lot.” He expressed the opinion that the Arab war plan was “somewhat faulty and uncoordinated in concept and poorly executed.”
Declaring that the Arab leaders who had done so much to “whip up the wild mare of passion and prejudice” against the Jews have now become to some extent prisoners of their own people, the military analyst emphasizes that the Arab populations, stimulated by exaggerated accounts of the Palestine “victories,” wanted more “victories” and reseated the present truce.
“There is not much doubt, in retrospect, that the Zionists benefited most from the truce,” Baldwin says. “Over a good part of several continents their purchasing agents were busy and supplies started to flow toward Palestine at an accelerated rate. Zionist factories in Palestine had time to match supply to demand and to build up reserves. The Zionists have been manufacturing in Palestine “Piats,” a British-de-signed anti-tank weapon; Sten guns or sub-machine guns, mortars, and small arms ammunition, and the truce gave them an opportunity to intensify production of these weapons. More trucks were converted with armor plateinto improvised armored cars and the Zionists added at least two light tanks to their weapons.
“About the time the truce ended the world-wide purchasing system of the Zionists commenced to produce results; field artillery – one of the Haganah’s greatest needs – reached Palestine, as did Messerschmitt fighter aircraft, manufactured in Czechoslovakia, and other planes and equipment free elsewhere. The Tabs too, reinforced their troops and increased their supplies, but the Zionists outstripped then,” he concluded.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
