During Israel’s Dire Need: Arming Israel in 1948

In 1948, hours after Israel declared independence, the neighboring states of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq declared war on the nascent Jewish state. Israeli fighters desperately needed arms with which to resist the onslaught, but the world was silent. The United States and the United Nations imposed blanket bans on selling any weapons or military-grade equipment to Israel.

Golda Meir described the trepidation inside Israel after declaring independence on May 14, 1948:

“The Arabs had an absolute superiority of manpower and arms and had been given considerable help by the British in various ways, both direct and indirect. And what did we have?  Not much of anything - and even that is an exaggeration.  A few thousand rifles, a few hundred machine guns, an assortment of other firearms, but on 14 May 1948 not a single cannon or tank, though we had all of nine planes (never mind that only one had two engines!)  …There were about 45,000 men, women and teenagers in the Haganah (the forerunner of the Israeli Defense Force), a few thousand members of the two dissident underground organizations and a few hundred recent arrivals who had been given some training - with wooden rifles and dummy bullets - in the DP camps of Germany and the detention camps of Cyprus….”  (Quoted from My Life by Gold Meir.  Futura Publications Ltd., 1975.)

In the face of Israel’s dire need for arms, most of the world turned its back. Although the United States voted in favor of the creation of Israel in November 1947, it immediately announced an arms embargo on the new state. This reflected deep divisions in the US government, with officials in the State Department remaining implacably opposed to warmer US-Israel relations. The United States’ arms embargo was later augmented by an even more draconian arms embargo by the United Nations Security Council.

In his diary, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, recorded the crippling blow these embargos dealt to the country: “The state of Israel was not established as a consequence of the UN resolution.  Neither America nor any other country saw the resolution through, nor did they stop the Arab countries from declaring total war on us in violation of UN resolutions.  America did not raise a finger to save us, and moreover imposed an arms embargo, and had we been destroyed they would not have resurrected us.”

David ben Gurion reading the Declaration of Independence

As Israel battled its enemies, supporters of the Jewish state scoured the world in search of weapons to purchase to ensure Israel’s survival.  Many came from Czechoslovakia. These negotiations were conducted in the shadows; the names of many of those who purchased weapons for Israel are lost to history.

Here are a few who battled the odds, scouring Europe in the aftermath of the Holocaust to find nations and individuals who would help Jews.

Rabbi Victor Vorhand

Rabbi Zev Tzvi (Victor) Vorhand “knew how to get along with everyone,” explained his son, Rabbi Moshe Vorhand, in a recent Aish.com interview.  Rabbi Zev Tzvi Vorhand served as Chief Rabbi of Prague from 1945 to 1949 and was a general “fixer,” helping Jewish refugees travel to the Land of Israel and arranging arms sales.

No stranger to activism, when World War II broke out Rabbi Vorhand was still a student, living in Slovakia. He tried to charter a steamer boat to take Jews from Europe to Palestine. Though his scheme tragically failed, he obtained a blessing from Rabbi Aharon Rokeach, a prominent pre-war Jewish sage, who told him in Yiddish: Di bist a baa’al chein. Di vest nosei chein zein. Lech v’hoshata.  (“You are someone who possesses charisma. You will find favor with others.  Go and be successful.”)  In Israel’s hour of need in 1947, this blessing came true.

“He was good with everyone…he got along with every faction” Rabbi Moshe Vorhand recalls. “He sent illegal ships to Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel). He got Jewish survivors documents to Israel, Canada, Israel.  He was very well liked and had a certain chein (charm).”  Rabbi Zev Tzvi Vorhand’s close friendship with Jan Masaryk, Czechoslovakia’s Foreign Minister, helped him persuade Czechoslovakia to sell arms to Israel.  Soon, Czechoslovakia became the primary conduit to send arms to the new Jewish state.

Israel’s “Team of the Highest Caliber”

Israel sent emissaries to scour Europe for help.  “One thing is certain: we had a team of the highest caliber handling our affairs in Czechoslovakia,” Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres later recalled in his memoires.

Ehud Avriel

Israel’s team was led by Ehud Avriel, a Viennese Jew who helped his fellow Jews escape before the Holocaust to the Land of Israel.  After Israel declared independence, Avriel traveled to Prague to serve as Ambassador. Shimon Peres, who would later go on to serve as Israel’s Prime Minister, noted that “Avriel was endowed with a brilliant mind, a creative imagination, great personal charm and urbane manners. He was appointed Ambassador to Prague at the age of 32, and won many Czechs to our cause - including communists. Avriel operated in Prague as though he were in Tel Aviv. All doors seemed to open before him. He issued documents, signed them, and handled himself with Daring and aplomb.”  (Quoted in Battling for Peace by Shimon Pered.  Orion: 1995.)

It’s difficult to know the monetary value of arms that Israel purchased from Czechoslovakia in 1947 and 1948; estimates range from $15 million to six times that (quoted in Peres 1995).

David Ben Gurion later declared, “Czechoslovak arms saved the State of Israel, really and absolutely. Without these weapons, we wouldn’t have survived.”

Struggle Against Imperialism

Israeli historian Dr. Uri Bialer has documented the secret arms trade in Israel’s first crucial years and believes that ideology, not only money or personal connections, motivated some European sellers.

Yugoslavia secretly shipped arms to Israel. “This situation was the result of the special relationship which the Yugoslavs had developed in the course of the Second World War and thereafter with representatives” of the nascent Jewish country. “After the war, it seems to have been buttressed by ideological perceptions. As one of the Mossad emissaries in the Balkans phrased it: ‘The Yugoslavs saw in the (Mossad) and embodiment of the struggle against imperialism….moreover, as former partisans, they felt an emotional affinity for the small nation struggling against an enemy that vastly outnumbered and overpowered it.’”  (Quoted in Between East and West: Israel’s Foreign Policy Orientation 1948-1956 by Uri Bialer.  Cambridge University Press: 1990.)

Al Schwimmer, American Hero Averting a “Second Holocaust”

Al Schwimmer was born in New York in 1917 to Jewish immigrant parents. After serving in the US Air Force in World War II, he led a group of former American servicemen in fighting in Israel’s War of Independence. These experienced pilots wanted to use their flying skills to build up Israel’s air force, but found the new Jewish state had nearly no aircraft.

Al Schwimmer in 1955

Schwimmer set up two different companies in the US to purchase and refurbish old airplanes, including many World War crafts. He recruited other Jew’s who’d served in the US Air Force to help repair them and restore them to fighting condition, then flew them from Florida to Czechoslovakia, where his airplanes were loaded with weapons, and from there flew to Israel.

The FBI grew suspicious of Schwimmer. It was illegal for American citizens to send military equipment to Israel. Schwimmer evaded arrest in the US several times, then was finally charged in 1950 with violating the U.S. Neutrality Act. He was convicted by a court in Los Angeles but avoided prison time. (He was pardoned in 2001 by President Bill Clinton.) After his conviction, Schwimmer left the US and moved to Israel. He founded Israel Aerospace Industries, now valued at over $15 billion, and established the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Israel Institute of Technology.

Later in his life, Schwimmer explained what led him and his friends to send military equipment to Israel.  “A few years after the end of the Second World War, we thought that the 600,000 Jews who lived in Israel were going to die and it would be a second Holocaust.  We could not allow it.”

Wining and Dining a Polish Count

Yet more arms were procured in Poland, thanks to an Israeli spy named Yehud Arazi. In 1947, Arazi gained global fame as the captain of the ship Exodus, which staged a hunger strike to force the British to allow it to leave Europe. Afterwards, Arazi searched Europe, befriending people in places high and low who were willing to sell him boats, ships, and armament.

Yehud Arazi

One of his greatest sources was a grand Polish count, Stefan Czernitsky. Shimon Peres recalled that Count Czernitsky “supplied us with arms for a 10 per cent commission. Stefan was the brother of the Polish commander whose forces were swept aside by the Nazi blitzkrieg in 1939. From that day on, Stefan always wore a black tie as a sign of mourning” (Peres: 1995). In his memoirs, Shimon Peres describes Count Czernitsky being incredibly close with Arazi and admiring the Israeli's derring-do.

Count Czernitsky lived in a lavish chateau outside Paris which was first built for Napoleon. He hosted lavish dinner parties and cultivated a wide circle of friends, including businessmen and military officials who were willing to help Israel.  For a time, the count was one of Israel’s principal sources of connections in Europe.

A major challenge was not buying the arms, but reconditioning it so it could be useful. In one cable, Arazi told his handlers back in Israel that he was able to “‘supply any British ammunition needed” and that “there is more 75-mm, 6-Pounder and 20-mm shells on sale, than money can buy.”  He also “found half tracks, armored cars…Spitfire aircraft…you name it.”  Azari’s task - and that of his fellow Israeli operatives - was finding engineers who could restore this materiel to working order, then obtain export licenses and transportation to Israel.  All these were gargantuan tasks.  (Quoted in The Origin of the Arab-Israeli Arms Race by Amitzur Ilan.  Palgrave Macmillan: 1996.)

Elusive Peace

Israel’s War of Independence ended with a ceasefire in 1949.  Though the United Nations in 1947 had voted to create two states - one Jewish and one Arab - by the end of the war, Jordan and Egypt had seized all of the territory that had been designated as an Arab state.  (Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt took Gaza; no Arab nation or organization so much as suggested that they establish an independent country, as the UN had mandated.)

In Israel, the war came at a terrible cost. Golda Meir, who later went on to serve as Israel’s Prime Minister, recalled how unequipped the Jewish state was in its early years.  The “only option available to us, if we didn’t want to be pushed into the sea, was to win the war.  So we won it.  But it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t quick and it wasn’t cheap. From the day that the UN resolution to partition Palestine was passed (29 November 1947) until the day that the forest armistice agreement was signed by Israel and Egypt (24 February 1949), 6,000 young Israelis were killed, one per cent of our entire population, and although we couldn’t have known it then, we haven’t even bought peace with all those lives” (Meir: 1975).

As more and more Eastern European countries fell under the sway of the Soviet Union, Israel’s supply of arms from Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia dried up. Today, 99% of Israel’s military imports come from the United States and Germany (quoted in The Economist September 7-13, 2024).

In Israel’s hour of need in 1948, a few brave individuals risked arrest to help the Jewish homeland.  Without their actions, Israel would not have survived.

Those who advocate for boycotts against the Jewish state today are threatening to return us to the dire years when Israel’s very survival was in doubt.