Right from 1948 when Israel as a nation was established, it has fought 4 major wars and numerous wars with its Arab neighbors. And it has always beaten them in most shameless manners. The Arabs not only lost, but they lost their face after every defeat. Many researches have been done: as how a small country having hundreds time less population that the combined might than its Arab neighbors has been able to defeat them. But no one has been able to pinpoint to anything.

In this article, I will analyze the non-military and cultural reasons as why Arabs lose wars. Before achieving anything, one needs to build a character first. This is lacking among Arabs.

Lets see how.

  1. Existential Threat: First, all the wars starting from 1948, when Israel was created, posed existential threat for Israel. But those wars never posed existential threat for the Arabs. This forced Israel to fight desperately in comparison to its Arab neighbors.
  2. Dishonest intention of Arab leaders: If any one digs deeper in to the military strategies of the Arabs, (s)he will find that Arabs never fought to win. Immediately after the Arab nations became independent, there was a competition among the Arab leaders to prove their leadership. For e.g. the “six day war” in 1967 was instigated by Egypt whose president Colonel Naseer had gained power by a military coup. He had to prove himself as a tough leader and he adopted a strong anti-Israel rhetoric. Looking at Naseer, the Syrian president was compelled to prove that he is a better leader than Naseer. Both attacked Israel. But since the attacks were not coordinated, Israel defeated both and captured their territories. Not only that, they bullied Jordan to fight Israel and all three were sounded defeated in just 6 days and lot of their area was captured by Israel. Israel tripled its area after the war and also captured Jerusalem.
  3. Lack of democracy or rampart dictatorship/corruption in Arab nations: All the arch enemies of Israel are military dictatorships. Since, they don’t have support from people and are extremely corrupt, they need Israel as an issue to divert attention of public so that their corruption scandals are hidden from public. The revolts against the dictatorship started in Syria in 2011. Using Israel card the ruling Assad family could remain in power(and in the mean time captured all businesses of the nation) without facing much opposition. The Israel card has kept them in power for more than 4-5 decades. Israel diverted the public attention from the corruption scandals of Assad family. And people realized the trick as late as 2010-11.
  4. The Arab rulers don’t trust their military officers: Israeli top military leadership gives autonomy to its low level officers to take decisions. This makes the Israeli military agile, and take quick decisions on field. But, this is not the case with Arab nations. Why? The leaders of Arab nations don’t give such autonomy as they themselves had grabbed power through military coups. They therefore remain in constant fear of being removed by military coup if their officers are given more autonomy.
  5. Corruption in military hardware procurement: If we look deeply in to wars, Israel purchases, builds military hardware that are actually needed in war. But most Arab nations purchase such military hardware which give them more profits i.e. where they can do more loot/corruption. A lot of research on making new military hardware happens in Israel. But none of such happens in Arab nations, their leaders always intend to purchase from foreign countries. The leaders will not get any commission/bribes if military hardware is produced at home.
  6. Fear among Arab leaders of losing the power: During 1973 Yom Kippur war, though Israel was beating Syrian forces black and blue, Syrian President Hafiz-al-Assad (father of the current one) kept his best soldiers deployed round his place instead of letting them fight the Israelis in the fear of being removed by the common public or military coup.
  7. Efficient Spy agency: Israel’s Mossad (the best spy agency in world) has played a very significant role in all wars though their role is not public. The Arab nations don’t maintain such efficient spy agencies as such agencies would know all the black secrets of the corrupt leaders. And leaders cannot trust people who know too much about them. This is however not the case with Israel.
  8. Lack of Planning/Alpha male mentality: As we can see, during all wars, Israeli military planning is very systematic. They keep a Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and so on. But the Arab military doesn’t have any planning. The reason is simple: The Arab military dictatorships don’t want intelligent officers to move up in ladder as they may pose a threat to themselves. Due to this Alpha male mentality, we saw high casualties among Arab armies in every war. In 1967 six day war, Egypt asked its soldiers to retreat, which meant the soldiers have to cross the desert. They did not provide water to soldiers, due to which hundreds died of thirst. But Israel had provided its own soldiers 1 liter water/hour due to which not even a single Israeli died due to thirst.
  9. Islam: Last but not the least, I consider Islam itself is most responsible for the defeat of Arab nations. Why? It is a fact that, Islam and democracy are incompatible. Since Islam is an inflexible religion, we see corrupt rulers use Islam religion as a weapon to keep people suppressed so that their grip on power remains and they keep looting the nation. But, Jews and Judaism are very flexible and compatible with democracy.

All the above reasons have so far ensured that Arab nations are kept in check.

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