No one lies as casually as Shimon Peres, not even Bill Clinton. "President Shimon Peres, in an interview with the newspaper Maariv, summed up the sense of wonder that has driven Israel’s belief in itself, describing the poor odds of the Zionist militia against the Arab world in 1948. “Israel, mathematically or tangibly, should not have been established,” he said. “Prior to the War of Independence, there was no chance. We were 650,000, they were 40 million. They had seven armies, we had barely 5,000 soldiers.” He added: “So tangibly we were on the brink of collapse, but we won anyway, thanks to hidden powers. Ever since, for all of my life, I have tried to understand those immeasurable powers.” Israel played the same shtick later in 1967 to the point that Lyndon Johnson had to ask his advisers (prior to the war) whether Israel is really in danger, and he was reassured that Israel could easily win against all Arab armies. In 1948, there was no miracle at all. Notice that the lie has to put the entire Arab population against the Israeli population as if the Arab population was under arms and as if Arab regimes allowed any serious help to the Palestinians. And look at the numbers cited. In fact, the Jews in Palestine were allowed by the British to form their own army in WWII, and the numbers at the height of confrontation were decisively in favor of Israel: some 60,000 Israelis against no more than a rag-tag army of 20,000 who were so disorganized that they were shooting at one another as they entered Palestine without an coordinated plan. Of course, the over-all commander of all Arab forces was a man on the payroll of Zionists: King `Abdullah of Jordan.