A second myth, fostered by official and semi-official accounts of the 1948 War, is that the Israeli victory was achieved in the face of insurmountable military odds. Israel is pictured in these accounts as a little Jewish David confronting a giant Arab Goliath. The war is portrayed as a desperate, costly and heroic struggle for survival with plucky little Israel fighting off marauding armies from seven Arab states. Israel's ultimate victory in this war is treated as nothing short of a miracle.
The heroism of the Jewish fighters is not in question. Nor is there any doubt about the heavy price that the Yishuv paid for its victory. Altogether there were 6,000 dead, 4,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilians, or about 1 per cent of the entire population. Nevertheless, the Yishuv was not as hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned as the official history would have us believe. It is true that the Yishuv numbered merely 650,000 souls, compared with 1.2 million Palestine Arabs and nearly 40 million Arabs in the surrounding states. It is true that the senior military advisers told the political leadership on 12 May 1948 that the Haganah had only a 'fifty-fifty' chance of withstanding the imminent Arab attack. It is true that the sense of weakness and vulnerability in the Jewish population was as acute as it was pervasive and that some segments of this population were gripped by a feeling of gloom and doom. And it is true that during three critical weeks, from the invasion of Palestine by the regular armies of the Arab states on 15 May until the start of the first truce on 11 June, this community had to struggle for its very survival.
But the Yishuv also enjoyed a number of advantages which are commonly downplayed by the old historians. The Yishuv was better prepared, better mobilized and better organized when the struggle for Palestine reached its crucial stage than its local opponents. The Haganah, which was renamed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on 31 May, could draw on a large reserve of Western-trained and home-grown officers with military experience. It had an effective centralized system of command and control. And, in contrast to the armies of the Arab states, especially those of Iraq and Egypt, it had short, internal lines of communication which enabled it to operate with greater speed and mobility.
During the unofficial phase of the war, from December 1947 until 14 May 1948, the Yishuv gradually gained the upper hand in the struggle against its Palestinian opponents. Its armed forces were larger, better trained, and more technologically advanced. Despite some initial setbacks, these advantages enabled it to win and win decisively the battle against the Palestine Arabs. Even when the Arab states committed their regular armies, marking the beginning of the official phase of the war, the Yishuv retained its numerical superiority. In mid-May the total number of Arab troops, both regular and irregular, operating in Palestine was between 20,000 and 25,000. IDF fielded 35,000 troops, not counting the second-line troops in the settlements. By mid-July IDF fully mobilized 65,000 men under arms,by September the number rose to 90,000 and by December it reached a peak of 96,441. The Arab states also reinforced their armies but they could not match this rate of increase. Thus, at each stage of the war, IDF significantly outnumbered all the Arab forces ranged against it and by the final stage of the war its superiority ratio was nearly two to one.[26]
IDF's gravest weakness during the first round of fighting in May-June was in firepower. The Arab armies were much better equipped, especially with heavy arms. But during the first truce,in violation of the UN arms embargo, Israel imported from all over Europe, and especially from Czechoslovakia, rifles, machine-guns, armoured cars, field guns, tanks, airplanes and all kinds of ammunition in large quantities. These illicit arms acquisitions enabled IDF to tip the scales decisively in its own favour. In the second round of fighting IDF moved on to the offensive and in the third round it picked off the Arab armies and defeated them one by one. The final outcome of the war was thus not a miracle but a faithful reflection of the underlying Arab-Israeli military balance. In this war, as in most wars, the stronger side ultimately prevailed.