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Book Review  by Ida Nasatir

This Army of Israel by Moshe Pearlman

July 7, 1950—Ida Nasatir book reviews—This Army of Israel  by Moshe Pearlman—Southwestern Jewish Press, page 7:  Israel's War of Independence will rank as one of the major events in Jewish history. Already it has assumed almost Biblical proportions.  It has transmitted an electric shock to the enemies of Israel; it has excited world Jewry as not other event in modern times and it has overworked the noun "miracle" and the adjective "miraculous" for more than two years.  In his book, The ARmy of Israel, Moshe Pearlman, the young Israel official who wrote it, discusses the rise of the army.  He talks of its growth. For instance, Haganah was the Yishuv's prompt answer to the aRab riots in 1920 and 1921. The volunteers of Israel in the recent war who joined the Army came from unexpected homes abroad, and for unexpected reasons—all of them driven by a call of destiny.  Today the Army of Israel is generally regarded as the strongest fighting force in the Middle East. Yet its beginnings were astonishingly small and modest. Even after an existence of 28 years it was essentially an underground militia lacking the experience and equipment of a regular army.  However, its growth after its transformation into the army of Israel shortly after the establishment of the State was meteoric.  Very properly the author opens his narrative with a dramatic account of a defense outpost (Negba)  in the Negev and concludes it with the sweeping victories in the Negev which brought the soldiers of Israel to the shores of the Red Sea, opened a window to India and the Far east, thus widening the prospects of the new nation.