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Shield of David: An Account of Israel's Defence Forces

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There are many books about Israel, and even more than that, on the Israeli army. In case you wonder why you need to fish out a book from 1970, well, it's because this book is one of a kind. I think Yigal Allon is not a very famous chrecter in the outside world, not as Moshe Dayan or David Ben Gurion. But if he doesn't it is not because he didn't do anything important, but because his natural modesty covered on his great actions.
He was a briliant strategist, and yet a peace-lover who talked with the Arabs, understood them that was the first to offer a peace-plan with the Palestinians, back in 1968.

Yigal Allon was jewish, and was borned is Palestine. He witnessed the creation and development of the Jewish defence, andwhen his time arrived, he took a part in it. He was a member of the respond forces that attacked the Arab bases in respons to their attacks on Jewish settlements. He was the commander of the Palmah, the Hagana's elite unit. In the1948 war he commanded "Yiphtah" operation at the Galilee, and when he was turned to the commander of the southern front, his strategy and briliant tactics had beaten the strong Egyptian army. In 1967 he was offered to be the minister of defence, but refused, and yet was a part of the security counsol and an advisor to the prime minister in security and defence manners.

He wrote many other books, but the most important, in my opinion, is his first, "A curtain of Sand" from 1948 (Written during and after the war, was upgraded after the 1967 war.) where Allon is analysing Israel's strategist situation and actually designing its army.

So, as you can see, by buying this book you don't buy "Another book about the Israeli Army" you buy a book written by a man who was one of the main creators of it, and that just because of his foreseeing the future and the needs of the state of Israel, the Israeli army is as it is today.

This is a fascinating and well written book, with plenty of photographs. The author, the famous Israeli general Yigal Allon, is clearly an expert on the topic.

It is well known that for many centuries, the Jews did not fight at all as a people. This book describes the creation of the first military formation in modern Jewish history, and traces it through the six-day war of 1967.

Allon's narrative begins over 100 years ago. While modern Zionists did create a chain of villages in the Levant prior to 1900, the first use of Jewish arms sprang from the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, in the Ukraine. After that, Jews in a small nearby town called Gomel acquired weapons and prepared for an attack. Later that year, when they were indeed attacked, they fought back, first against the hooligans and later against the Czar's troops who intervened to protect the thugs. The fighting lasted three days. The next year, some of the Jews who had fought at Gomel moved to the Levant.

In 1907, the Gomel group founded Bar Giora and chose Israel Shochat as their leader. Bar Giora was a secret defense organization, but in 1909, it was reorganized to form an open self-defence force, Hashomer (The Watchman). By 1914, Hashomer was a military force with a duty to preserve the Levantine Jewish population (which by then was over 80,000 people). It even considered conquering Jerusalem.

By the winter of 1917, the Jewish population was indeed reduced, but 56,000 Jews remained and they formed the nucleus of what was to become the state of Israel a little more than thirty years later.

There are detailed discussions of Jewish defence against Arab pogroms in the 1920s and 1930s. Hashomer was replaced by the Haganah. We learn about the British White Paper of 1939 and the fight against it, including some the boats used to try to break the British blockade of the Levant. There is a discussion of Jewish plans to defend the Levant from a possible Nazi invasion, and of a number of Levantine Jews who carried out operations in Europe during World War Two (most of whom simply died). And there is a long section on the post-World War Two struggle against the British.

There is an excellent history of the War of Independence. The book concludes with forty pages on the history of Israel's military from the beginning of 1949 through the end of the six-day war.

I recommend this superbly written book.