Quick🧵debunking the #Israeli myth of the 5 Arab armies' unprovoked aggression to annihilate Israel:
Arab regimes were forced in ONLY after Israel committed the Deir Yassin Massacre. The Arab armies goals were to stop the flood of refugees to their states, secure their borders..
2\ Jordan's king, who had the strongest of the 5 armies, met with Zionist leaders regularly & had promised to endorse Jewish statehood & partition
After Deir Yassin, he proposed a Jewish canton in an expanded Jordan. His troops refrained from attacking Israel's own territories👇
3\ Egypt's king went to war to prevent a flood of refugees; protect his borders; gain territory in South Palestine & prevent Jordan's king from claiming leadership of the Arabs.
His army were told they were "merely a punitive expedition against the Zionist gangs" NOT liberation
4\ Lebanon decided not to take part in the war last minute b/c Israel's PM Ben-Gurion had "arrived at an agreement with the Maronite religious leadership in Lebanon that cost a few thousand pounds & kept Lebanon's army out of the War of Independence". Their role was symbolic!
5\ Syria merely wanted to capture some parts of northern Palestine, while Iraq wanted to showcase Arab leadership.
Iraqi forces quickly became merely defensive & "stationary & their involvement in the war effectively ended" after capturing parts of the West Bank.
6\ #Israel had conducted 13 full-scale military operations inc. 8 outside of the area allotted to a Jewish state in the 44 days prior to May 14, 1948.
Commander Yigal Allon admitted that "If it wasn’t for the Arab invasion there would have been no stop to [Israel's] expansion."
7\ The French military attaché in Beirut revealed 3 days before May 14, 1948 that "Arab leaders were hesitant, seeking a way to delay an invasion of Palestine," & adds that "British agents" directly intervened to convince them to go to war...
Their war was nonetheless limited!
8\ The number of Arab soldiers sent to Palestine "evenly matched" Israel's army which soon grew to 90,000, the Arab army was only 68,000!
Israel received loads of weapons from Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, France...
It had the support of Stalin & the US, Arabs were alone!
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