The Czechs and the Jews of Israel Go Back a Long Way

The Czechs and the Jews go way back. A little history — or a lot — never hurts.

One of the main attractions for visitors to Prague is the ancient Jewish cemetery, that dates to the first half of the 15th century. It is one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in the world; its toppling tombstones evoke a vanished world. The oldest tombstone, the first of its 12,000, dates from 1439; the last grave was filled in 1787. The plots thickened; in some graves, there were as many as twelve bodies, piled on top of one another.

Prague is now the capital of the Czech Republic, as it was previously the capital of Czechoslovakia, before the split of that country into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in 1993.

Czechoslovakia was the only country in the world that provided weapons to the Jews fighting in the 1948 war. The rest of the world observed the UN’s embargo on arms to the Middle East — except the U.K., which continued to supply arms to the British-officered Arab Legion in Jordan, as well as arms to Egypt. Four of the Avia-199 planes — really, planes cobbled together from Messerschmitt parts by the Czechs, that were sold by Czechoslovakia to Israel, proved to be of vital help in the war. As 6,000 Egyptian troops made their way to a spot 17 miles from Tel Aviv, four pilots — American Lou Lenart (the only one of the four with experience as a pilot in wartime), two Israelis, Modi Alon and Ezer Weizmann, and South African Eddie Cohen, took to the air and strafed the Egyptian troops who were amazed that the Jews had airplanes, and decided, in their fright, that those four planes were only the tip of the iceberg, that the Israelis no doubt had hundreds more planes about to attack; the fearful Egyptians then abandoned their advance and retreated. Those four Czech planes, that stopped the Egyptians from taking Tel Aviv, may have made the difference between victory and defeat in the 1948 war.

But those rickety airplanes weren’t all the Czechs sold to the Israelis while the rest of the world enforced the embargo on weapons to Israel. The Czechs supplied other weapons that kept the Haganah going: 34,500 P-18 rifles; 5,515 MG 34 machine guns with 10,000 ammo belts; 10,000 vz.24 bayonets; 900 vz. 37 heavy machine guns; 500 vz. 27 pistols; 12 ZK 383 submachine guns; 10 ZK 420 semi-automatic rifles; 500 vz. 26 light machine guns.

It is worth noting that the most important Czech leaders in the 20th century have all been firm supporters of Israel and the Zionist movement. More on these Czech Zionists can be found here: “The Czech Republic and Israel: A Unique Friendship,” Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs:

Three of these supporters, in particular, are considered to be the most important for the positive development of relations with Israel and they deserve our attention. The first one is the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk; the second is his son Jan Masaryk; and last, but not least, is Václav Havel, the first democratic president after 1989. All of them were great personalities who played an immensely important role in Czech history, and they were all friends of the Jewish nation. Thanks to these three figures, the history of freedom and democracy in Czech lands is also a history of good relations with Jews and Israel.

In the first half of the 20^th century, the first Czechoslovak President Tomáš G. Masaryk was well known for his sympathy toward Zionism. Moreover, long before he became president, he had fought anti-Semitism in the Hilsner Affair in the early 1900s, when Leopold Hilsner, a Jewish vagrant, was falsely accused of murdering two young non-Jewish women for ritual purposes. He was also a staunch sympathizer of the Zionist movement and pleaded for the creation of a Jewish state. It is also worth mentioning that in 1927 he was one of the first state officials to visit the then-British mandate of Palestine. This event was undoubtedly a great moment for the Zionist cause, even though his visit was unofficial. Thus, the roots of Czech strong pro-Zionist, or pro-Israel, sentiment lie in the thoughts and policies of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who influenced the way of thinking of future generations of democratic politicians in the Czech Republic.

The commencement of very close relations between Czechoslovakia, or the Czech Republic, with Israel dates back to tumultuous times before the establishment of the Jewish state. Jan Masaryk, son of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, and then foreign minister, followed in his father’s footsteps. He was also an ardent supporter of the Zionist cause, and in 1947 Czechoslovakia was one of 33 countries to vote in favor of the UN partition resolution recommending the establishment of a Jewish state. Czechoslovak support for Israel continued even after the Communist putsch in February 1948.

Jan Masaryk, alas, was murdered by Soviet agents who pushed him out of a window, in what may be called the Second Defenestration of Prague, on March 10, 1948, a few weeks after that putsch. He did not live to see the declaration of the Jewish state’s existence on May 14.

On May 18, 1948, four days after Israel’s declaration of independence, Czechoslovakia was among the first countries to recognize the State of Israel. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were established on July 3, 1948.

The Czechs and the Jews of Israel go back a long way.