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WWIII is coming, 'I'm sure,' high-level Sharon aide says
ARIZONA DAILY STAR ^ | 27 April 2002 | Stephanie Innes

Posted on 05/02/2002 11:31:01 AM PDT by swarthyguy

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To: kcrack
However assume this: we are all going to die ... we want to live. Peace

Most human evolution occurs during war. It's ugly but true that modern humans are the end product of a million years of killing and rape. War is high speed evolution and is the only reason humans are the most genetically advanced animal to ever live.

The problem in the Middle East isn't war, but peace. The Israelis always pull their punches. If the 6 Day War had run its course, the losers wouldn't be alive today to cause trouble. I personally do not want peace. I want the terrorists, which are genetic flunkies, and their mothers to die off and not bother anyone anymore.

41 posted on 05/02/2002 1:32:53 PM PDT by Reeses
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To: Lazamataz
A nice start would be removing the call for the complete destruction of Israel from the Palestinian Liberation Organization charter, and the same series of clauses -- also calling for the complete destruction of Israel -- from the Fatah Constitution of the Palestinian Authority.

Those clauses became a dead letter years ago when the Oslo peace process began and the Palestinian National Authority came into existence. The onus is on Israel now to end its destructive occupation and finally let the Palestinians exercise self-determination.

42 posted on 05/02/2002 1:40:34 PM PDT by ThreeOfSeven
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To: Oschisms
Let me make sure we're on the same page:
The Napoleanic Wars were WWI.
The War to End All Wars is now WWII.
The War After the War to End All Wars is now WWIII.
The Cold War is now WWIV
Is that right?
43 posted on 05/02/2002 1:47:24 PM PDT by BJClinton
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To: ThreeOfSeven
finally let the Palestinians exercise self-determination.

They already tried that, the Arabs attacked Israel multiple times resulting in the so-called "occupation".
44 posted on 05/02/2002 1:50:44 PM PDT by BJClinton
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To: BJClinton
They already tried that, the Arabs attacked Israel multiple times resulting in the so-called "occupation".

Not so. Israel started the '67 war with a surprise attack, though you can quibble about earlier hostilities. The only Arab-Israeli war clearly initiated by Arab nations was the '73 war.

45 posted on 05/02/2002 2:21:45 PM PDT by ThreeOfSeven
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To: BJClinton
Ya know, it didn't seem so confusing when I made my first comment... :)
46 posted on 05/02/2002 3:10:30 PM PDT by Oschisms
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To: ThreeOfSeven
Israel started the war in 1967?

Syria had been barraging Israeli farms and villages from the Golan Heights for years before the Six Days War.

Not to mention all of the Arab rhetoric about exterminating Israel while massing forces on Israel's borders and kicking the UN out of the Sinai is a good indicator they're going to attack in earnest.

And I notice you seem to have forgotten the 1948 war. Or do you somehow think the Israeli's started that one?
47 posted on 05/02/2002 3:28:34 PM PDT by BJClinton
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To: ThreeOfSeven; BJClinton; lazamataz
Not so. Israel started the '67 war with a surprise attack, though you can quibble about earlier hostilities. The only Arab-Israeli war clearly initiated by Arab nations was the '73 war.

Unmitigated Barbara Streisand.

First, 3 of 7, you obviously missed the 1948 war, in which armies from 5 Arab nations attacked Israel the morning after it declared its independence. That is the clearest case of naked aggression that I can think of since World War II.

Second, the 1956 war occurred because Egypt blockaded the Strait of Tiran, thereby cutting off Israel's only southern port, Eilat. This was an act of war, to which any nation similarly situated would have responded (or tried to) as Israel did. Though Israel's armed forces struck first, the war started at the moment the Strait was blocked.

1967: Well, you really seem to have a problem with your neurons firing properly, don't you. This war was a defensive action by Israel, not an act of aggression. Why? First, the Strait of Tiran was, once again, blocked by Egypt - that alone was an act of war, once again justifying an Israeli action. Second, Nasser violated a treaty he had signed in 1957 and ordered the UN out of the Sinai Desert, where there was a nominal buffer force to prevent either side from starting a war. The UN was so dedicated to peace that it left faster than the French usually surrender to the Germans. Third, Nasser immediately moved hundreds of tanks and several divisions of troops into Sinai, and announced that he and the other Arabs were going to "push Israel into the sea." Fourth, Syria, which had used the Golan Heights for most of the prior 19 years to shell Israeli farmers and villages, began shelling again and reinforced its forces there. These 4 very good reasons, each of which was sufficient on its own to justify an Israeli response, combined to make this one of the most justified military strikes (by Israel) in history. By the way, in the middle of the war Jordan, which Israel had begged to stay out, began shelling Israeli positions in Jerusalem and other areas from what is now called the "West Bank" (it was simply called "Jordan" before the war). Israel responded to all of these aggressions by taking away from Egypt, Syria and Jordan the territory from which those nations' forces had committed aggression against Israel. Further, when Israel offered to return all of that territory in return for peace, it received the 3 Nos from the Arab League: No recognition of Israel, No negotiation with Israel and No peace with Israel. You know what really happened here? The Arabs decided to play a high-stakes game of poker, and lost. Instead of blaming the Israelis for winning that hand, Arafat & Co. should blame Egypt, Jordan and Syria for being stupid. They should demand a state from those countries!

1973 - at least you got your neurons firing correctly here and realized that the Arabs (Egypt & Syria) started this war.

Let's go on: How about Lebanon in 1982? You undoubtedly think that this was also a war that Israel started, so I'll fill you in on the facts: Yassir Arafat and his terrorists failed to overthrow Jordan's King Hussein in 1970. Hussein killed about 10,000 of Arafat's terrorists, and kicked Arafat out - and he ended up in Lebanon. By 1982 he and associated terror groups had set up a state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon, an armed camp the sole purpose of which was to harm Israel. Northern Israeli towns were routinely subjected to mortar and Katyusha rocket attack. At some point, Israel had had enough and decided to clean out southern Lebanon. This was no act of aggression, but one of defense on Israel's part.

Why don't you try to peddle your worthless wares elsewhere? No one with any knowledge or sense believes your garbage.

48 posted on 05/02/2002 3:31:07 PM PDT by Ancesthntr
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To: BJClinton
Damn, you beat me by 3 minutes!
49 posted on 05/02/2002 3:32:31 PM PDT by Ancesthntr
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To: Ancesthntr
Yup, but I wasn't nearly as thorough.
50 posted on 05/02/2002 3:34:24 PM PDT by BJClinton
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Comment #51 Removed by Moderator

To: swarthyguy
Mohyeddin Abdulaziz, 54, a Tucson resident and Palestinian who grew up near Ramallah, did not attend Gissin's talk.

Amazing journalistic technique! Well, duh, pretty much the entire population of the planet did not attend Gissin's talk. What's next, "Joe Dumbass did not attend school and he thinks that 2 plus 2 is..."?

52 posted on 05/02/2002 3:37:55 PM PDT by Revolting cat!
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To: Ancesthntr;BJClinton
The Electronic Intifada - Historical myths - The Arabs started all the wars: 1948
ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
Home/What's New? | Introduction to Media Coverage | Media Activism Advice
Action Items | Coverage Trends | Features | For Reference | Historical Myths
For Journalists & Editors | Protest Letter Archives | Bookstore | Al-Bassaleh
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HISTORICAL MYTHS
The Arabs started all the wars: 1948

Written by Arjan El Fassed. Edited by Laurie King-Irani.

Myth

Since the establishment of Israel there have been five major wars between Arabs and the Israelis. These wars occured in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. Israel claims that the Arabs started all the wars. Although there has been low-intensity conflict in the intervening years and major conflagrations during the "War of Attrition" in 1969-1970 and the 1978 invasion of Lebanon, massive civil disobedience during the Uprising of 1988, and in 2000-2001 during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, it is these five wars Israel refers to when it makes its claims, creating the impression that Israel has only acted "in self-defence".

The roots of the 1948 war go as far back as the first recognition on the part of the Palestinians that the Zionists wished to establish a Jewish state on their land. In late 1947 the United Nations proposed that Palestine be divided into a Palestinian Arab state and a Jewish state. The UN Partition Plan recommended that 55 percent of Palestine, and the most fertile region, be given to the Jewish settlers who compromised 30 percent of the population. The remaining 45 percent of Palestine was to comprise a home for the other 70 percent of the population who were Palestinians. The Palestinians rejected the plan because it was unfair.

Israel and its supporters claim that the Arabs first attacked in Janurary 1948 and then invaded Israel in May 1948.

Facts

The truth is that by May 1948 Zionist forces had already invaded and occupied large parts of the land which had been allocated to the Palestinians by the UN Partition Plan. In January 1948 Israel did not yet exist.

The evidence that Israel started the 1948 war comes from Zionist sources. The History of the Palmach which was released in portions in the 1950s (and in full in 1972) details the efforts made to attack the Palestinian Arabs and secure more territory than alloted to the Jewish state by the UN Partition Plan (Kibbutz Menchad Archive, Palmach Archive, Efal, Israel).

Already, Zionist forces were implementing their "Plan Dalet" to

"control the area given to us [the Zionists] by the U.N. in addition to areas occupied by Arabs which were outside these borders and the setting up of forces to counter the possible invasion of Arab armies after May 15" (Qurvot 1948, p. 16, which covers the operations of Haganah and Palmach, see also Ha Sepher Ha Palmach, The Book of Palmach).

  1. Operation Nachson, 1 April 1948
  2. Operation Harel, 15 April 1948
  3. Operation Misparayim, 21 April 1948
  4. Operation Chametz, 27 April 1948
  5. Operation Jevuss, 27 April 1948
  6. Operation Yiftach, 28 April 1948
  7. Operation Matateh, 3 May 1948
  8. Operation Maccabi, 7 May 1948

  9. Operation Gideon, 11 May 1948
  10. Operation Barak, 12 May 1948
  11. Operation Ben Ami, 14 May 1948
  12. Operation Pitchfork, 14 May 1948
  13. Operation Schfifon, 14 May 1948
The operations 1-8 indicate operations carried out before the entry of the Arab forces inside the areas allotted by the UN to the Arab state. It has to be noted that of thirteen specific full-scale operations under Plan Dalet eight were carried out outside the area "given" by the UN to the Zionists.

Following is a list drawn from the New York Times of the major military operations the Zionists mounted before the British evacuated Palestine and before the Arab forces entered Palestine:

  • Qazaza (21 Dec. 1947)
  • Sa'sa (16 Feb. 1948)
  • Haifa (21 Feb. 1948)
  • Salameh (1 March 1948)
  • Biyar Adas (6 March 1948)
  • Qana (13 March 1948)
  • Qastal (4 April 1948)
  • Deir Yassin (9 April 1948)
  • Lajjun (15 April 1948)
  • Saris (17 April 1948)
  • Tiberias (20 April 1948)
  • Haifa (22 April 1948)
  • Jerusalem (25 April 1948)
  • Jaffa (26 April 1948)
  • Acre (27 April 1948)
  • Jerusalem (1 May 1948)
  • Safad (7 May 1948)
  • Beisan (9 May 1948).

David Ben-Gurion confirms this in an address delivered to American Zionists in Jerusalem on 3 September 1950:

"Until the British left, no Jewish settlement, however remote, was entered or seized by the Arabs, while the Haganah, under severe and frequent attack, captured many Arab positions and liberated Tiberias and Haifa, Jaffa and Safad" (Ben-Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (N.Y.: Philosophical Library, 1954, p. 530).
Although late PM Ben-Gurion speaks of "liberating" Jaffa it was alloted to the Palestinians by the UN Partition Plan.

Late PM Menachem Begin adds:

"In the months preceding the Arab invasion, and while the five Arab states were conducting preparations, we continued to make sallies into Arab territory. The conquest of Jaffa stands out as an event of first-rate importance in the struggle for Hebrew independence early in May, on the eve [that is, before the alleged Arab invasion] of the invasion by the five Arab states" (Menachem Begin, The Revolt, Nash, 1972, p. 348)

On 12 December 1948 David Ben Gurion confirmed the fact that the Zionists started the war in 1948:

"As April began, our War of Independence swung decisively from defense to attack. Operation 'Nachson'...was launched with the capture of Arab Hulda near where we stand today and of Deir Muheisin and culminated in the storming of Qastel, the great hill fortress near Jerusalem" (Ben Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (N.Y.: Philosophical Library, 1954, p. 106).

Israeli historians have themselves refuted the claim that the Arabs started the 1948 war. Benny Morris uncovered a report from the Israeli Defense Force Intelligence Branch (30 June 1948) that shows a deliberate Israeli policy to attack the Arabs should they resist and expel the Palestinians (Benny Morris, "The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Branch Analysis of June 1948", Middle Eastern Studies, XXII, January 1986, pp. 5-19).

Conclusion

In sum, it is not true that the Arabs "invaded Israel" in 1948.

First, Israel did not exist at the time of the alleged invasion as an established state with recognised bounderies. When the Zionist leaders established Israel on 15 May 1948 they purposely declined to declare the bounderies of the new state in order to allow for future expansion.

Secondly, the only territory to which the new state of Israel had even a remote claim was that alloted to the Jewish state by the UN Partition Plan. But the Zionists had already attacked areas that were alloted to the Palestinian Arab state.

Thirdly, those areas which the Arab states purportedly "invaded" were, in fact, exclusively areas alloted to the Palestinian Arab state proposed by the UN Partition Plan. The so-called Arab invasion was a defensive attempt to hold on to the areas alloted by the Partition Plan for the Palestinian state.

Finally, the commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, was under orders not to enter the areas alloted to the Jewish state (Sir John Bagot Glubb, "The Battle for Jerusalem", Middle East International, May 1973).

[Historical Myths]


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53 posted on 05/02/2002 3:54:56 PM PDT by ThreeOfSeven
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To: codebreaker; RJayneJ
The reason that WW3 or WW4 isn't coming any time soon is because there is no credible armed force aligned against the U.S.

Forget the wild-eyed hype about China, it has only 18 servicable ICBM's and its main nuclear enemies are India and Taiwan. Forget Russia, as Putin has clearly sided with the U.S. against Islamic terrorists in Chechnya.

As it stands today, no enemy of America can seize and maintain space superiority, air superiority, or naval superiority. Only in the etheral world of computer wars and in the world of the grunt soldier can any coalition of forces credibly oppose the same U.S. forces, and without space, air, and sea superiority, they literally stand no chance against us.

These conditions aren't ripe for a new world war; they are ripe for complete disaster to befall on anyone who opposes the U.S. militarily.

Our economic, technological, and military superiority is more than a generation ahead of the closest potential combination of adversaries. Consider that China has still not managed to orbit its first man around the Earth, something that the U.S. did more than 40 years ago, for instance. In the Middle-East, such technological feats are even less plausible.


What the Islamic Revolution had going for it was unamity of opinion. That solid block of faithful believers made for powerful political statements and potent propaganda.

Their mistake, however, was in digressing from their strong suits above into our strong suits of economic, technological, and military warfare.

But the hilarious part is that they are too macho and too unclever to back down from their current path.

So the Middle-East wants war?!

So be it! Their masses of soldiers can witness firsthand the death and utter destruction that our lowly conventional military forces are capable of delivering at will from space, the air, the sea, and even on the ground.

And should we ever decide to escalate any particular conflict, our non-conventional forces pack a power that no other coalition of nations can hope to equal.

So are we headed straight for a new World War? Not a chance. There is simply no opposition capable of making a real fight of any conflict against us.

54 posted on 05/02/2002 3:55:38 PM PDT by Southack
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To: swarthyguy
"Either you are with us or you are against us".

That isn't what Bush said. Big difference between that and what Bush said.

55 posted on 05/02/2002 3:56:37 PM PDT by VRWC_minion
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To: Ancesthntr;BJClinton
The Electronic Intifada - Historical myths - The Arabs started all the wars: 1956
ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
Home/What's New? | Introduction to Media Coverage | Media Activism Advice
Action Items | Coverage Trends | Features | For Reference | Historical Myths
For Journalists & Editors | Protest Letter Archives | Bookstore | Al-Bassaleh
Search | Join the Mailing List | Related Websites | About Us | Contact Us

HISTORICAL MYTHS
The Arabs started all the wars: 1956

Written by Arjan El Fassed. Edited by Laurie King-Irani.

Myth

Since the establishment of Israel there have been five major wars between Arabs and the Israelis. These wars occured in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. Israel claims that the Arabs started all the wars. Although there has been low-intensity conflict in the intervening years and major conflagrations during the "War of Attrition" in 1969-1970 and the 1978 invasion of Lebanon, massive civil disobedience during the Uprising of 1988, and in 2000-2001 during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, it is these five wars Israel refers to when it makes its claims, creating the impression that Israel has only acted "in self-defence".

Israel blames the 1956 Sinai war on Egypt's aggressive behavior, including the closing of the Suez Canal.

Facts

The facts concerning the Sinai war come from Israeli sources. A decisive and authoritative contribution exploding the myth of Israel's accusations are the relevations from former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary (Moshe Sharett, Yoman Ishi, Ma'ariv, 1979, in Hebrew with portions trans. in Livia Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism: A Study Based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary and Other Documents, AAUG, 1980).

The main reason often given for the origin of the 1956 war was Egypt's closing of the Suez Canal. Moshe Sharett reveals that the Israeli leadership was planning the territorial conquest of the Sinai and Gaza as early as the fall of 1953. The Israeli attack on Gaza in February 1955 was undertaken as a conscious preliminary act of war. David Ben-Gurion became Prime Minister and Israel soon became very aggressive.

On 28 February 1955 Israeli troops invaded Gaza killing 37 Egyptians and wounding 31. The attack came out of the blue. Egyptian President Gamal Nasser said it "was revenge for nothing. Everything was quiet there" (Kennett Love, Suez: the Twice Fought War, McGraw-Hill, 1969, p. 83). The Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation, Swedish General Carl von Horn, confirmed Nasser's claim, asserting that there had been

"comparative tranquility along the armistice demarcation lines during the greater part of the period November 1954 to February 1955" (Report to the Security Council, UN Doc. S3373, 17 March 1955).

In the 1950s few people believed that Nasser had aggressive intentions towards Israel. Richard Grossman, a British Zionist, wrote in 1955 that:

"not only Egypt, but the whole Middle East must pray that Nasser survives the assassin's bullet. I am certain that he is a man who means what he says, and that so long as he is in power directing his middle-class revolution, Egypt will remain a factor for peace and social development" (Richard Grossman, New Statesman and Nation, 22 January 1955).

The Gaza raid changed everything. Arab public opinion was outraged and demanded action, as it was intended to. Nasser needed arms to equip his army which was hopelessly outgunned by Israel. Western Intelligence was convinced that Egypt had no intention of attacking Israel. The Americans rebuffed Nasser in any case and Egypt turned to the Russians who orchestrated the famous Czech arms deal which was used by Israel for feigned outrage. The Russians had also used the Czechs to supply arms to Israel in 1948.

Nasser did not realise that he was being set up for the Israeli invasion, although he did recognise that the situation was heating up. In October 1955, a year before the war, Israeli PM David Ben-Gurion ordered his Chief of Staff, General Moshe Dayan, to prepare invasion plans. Ben Gurion was determined, according to Dayan,

"not to miss any politically favorable opportunity to strike at Egypt" (Moshe Dayan, Diary of the Sinai Campaign, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966, p. 37).
Dayan expressed the hopes of the Israeli leadership when he said in December 1955:
"One of these days a situation will be created which makes military action possible" (Kennet Love, Suez: The Twice Fought War, McGraw-Hill, 1969, p. 106).

The opportunity to make war against Egypt came in July 1956 when Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, an act within the legal right of the Egyptian state. The Suez Canal was controlled by foreigners in 1956 and represented an important vestige of colonialism affronting the Arab people. Nasser's action was popular although, in hindsight, politically cataclysmic. France and Britain, in one of the last spasms of European colonialism, colluded in a secret alliance with Israel to invade the Sinai and destroy Nasser.

On 29 October 1956 Israel attacked Egypt and occupied the entire Sinai. French war equipment poured into Israel and French and British warships bombarded the Egyptian coast. French and British troops landed and helped the Israeli armed forces. Eisenhower, who had been in the dark about the invasion plans and the secret alliance, demanded that Israeli forces withdraw from Egyptian territory. Israel refused, leading Eisenhower to exclaim:

"Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of U.N. disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its own withdrawal? If we agree that armed attack can properly achieve the purpose of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order..." (Address to the nation, 20 February 1957).


[Historical Myths]


Home/What's New? | Introduction to Media Coverage | Media Activism Advice
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56 posted on 05/02/2002 3:58:10 PM PDT by ThreeOfSeven
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To: seamole
The First World War was the Napoleonic War

Cain and Abel = first world war.

57 posted on 05/02/2002 3:59:24 PM PDT by VRWC_minion
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To: Ancesthntr;BJClinton
The Electronic Intifada - Historical myths - The Arabs started all the wars: 1967
ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
Home/What's New? | Introduction to Media Coverage | Media Activism Advice
Action Items | Coverage Trends | Features | For Reference | Historical Myths
For Journalists & Editors | Protest Letter Archives | Bookstore | Al-Bassaleh
Search | Join the Mailing List | Related Websites | About Us | Contact Us

HISTORICAL MYTHS
The Arabs started all the wars: 1967

Written by Arjan El Fassed. Edited by Laurie King-Irani.

Myth

Since the establishment of Israel there have been five major wars between Arabs and the Israelis. These wars occured in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. Israel claims that the Arabs started all the wars. Although there has been low-intensity conflict in the intervening years and major conflagrations during the "War of Attrition" in 1969-1970 and the 1978 invasion of Lebanon, massive civil disobedience during the Uprising of 1988, and in 2000-2001 during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, it is these five wars Israel refers to when it makes its claims, creating the impression that Israel has only acted "in self-defence".

Israel claims that its attack against Egypt in June 1967 was a defensive measure to prevent Gamal Abdel Nasser from attacking.

Facts

Israel began planning the re-conquest of the Sinai soon after its forced withdrawal in 1956. In 1967, as in 1956, Israel waited for favorable circumstances to put its plan into action.

In 1967, however, Israel had a greater appreciation of the necessity and utility of a sophisticated publicity campaign, waged through the international media, to convince Western opinion that any Israeli military actions could only be construed as acts of self-defense. This publicity campaign was two-pronged: stressing that the Arabs attacked Israel and that Israel was in danger of annihilation. Both presuppositions were patently false.

In the early hours of 5 June 1967, Israel announced to a credulous Western world that the Egyptian Air Force had initiated hostile actions. In fact, it was the Israelis who had attacked the Egyptians and destroyed virtually the entire Egyptian Air Force while its fleet was still on the ground.

General Matityahu Peled, one of the architects of the Israeli conquest, committed what the Israeli public considered blasphemy when he admitted the true thinking of the Israeli leadership:

"The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war" (Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972).

Israeli Air Force General Ezer Weizmann declared bluntly that "there was never any danger of extermination" (Ma'ariv, 19 April 1972). Mordechai Bentov, a former Israeli cabinet minister, also dismissed the myth of Israel's imminent annihilation: "All this story about the danger of extermination has been a complete invention and has been blown up a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territories" (Al Hamishmar, 14 April 1972).

After the 1967 war Israel, claimed it invaded because of imminent Arab attack. It claimed that Nasser's closing of the Straits of Tiran constituted an act of war. It also cited Syrian shelling on the demilitarized zone of the Syrian-Israeli border. The claim that the Arabs were going to invade appears particularly ludicrous when one recalls that a third of Egypt's army was in Yemen and therefore quite unprepared to launch a war. On the Syrian front, Israel was engaging in threats and provocations that evidenced many similarities to its behavior in the lead up to the Gaza raid of 1955.

The demilitarized zone on the Syrian-Israeli border was established by agreement on 20 July 1949. Israeli provocations were incessant and enabled Israel to increase and extend its sovereignty by encroachment over the entire Arab area. According to one UN Chief of Staff, Arab villagers were evicted and their homes destroyed (E.L.M. Burns, Between Arab and Israeli, Ivan Obolensky, 1962, pp. 113-114). Another Chief of Staff described how the Israelis ploughed up Arab land and "advanced the 'frontier' to their own advantage" (Carl von Horn, Soldiering for Peace, Cassell, 1966, p. 79).

Israel attempted to evict the Arabs living on the Golan and annex the demilitarized zone. When the Syrians inevitably responded, Israel claimed that "peaceful" Israeli farmers were being shelled by the Syrians. Unmentioned was the fact that the "farmers" were armed and using tractors and farm equipment to encroach on the demilitarized zone (David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: the Roots of Violence in the Middle East, Faber and Faber, 1984, pp. 213-15). This was part of a "premeditated Israeli policy [..] to get all the Arabs out of the way by fair means or foul."

Shortly after the Syrian response on 7 April 1967, the Israeli Air Force attacked Syria, shooting down six planes, hitting thirty fortified positions and killing about 100 people (Hirst, op. cit., p. 214). It was unlikely that any Syrian guns would have been fired if not for Israel's provocation.

Israel's need for water also played a role in the 1967 attack. The invasion completed Israel's encirclement of the headwaters of the Upper Jordan River, its capture of the West Bank and the two aquifers arising there, which currently supply all the groundwater for northern and central Israel.

The Israelis followed-up their massive retaliation with stern warnings. On 11 May 1967, General Yitzhak Rabin said on Israeli radio: "The moment is coming when we will march on Damascus to overthrow the Syrian Government" (Godfrey Jansen, "New Light on the 1967 War", Daily Star, London, 15, 22, 26 November 1973). Syria sought Egypt's assistance under their Mutual Defense Pact of November 1966. Nasser could not afford to stand idly by. He ordered the removal of the small UN force stationed in Sinai and closed the Straits of Tiran. This action provided the casus belli that Israel soon invoked.

Nasser's move was a gesture of solidarity with Syria and no threat to Israel's economy or its security. The closure of the Straits did not force Israel into war. Claims of economic strangulation were absurd since only 5 percent of Israel's trade depended on free movement through the Straits of Tiran. No Israeli merchant vessel had passed through the Straits during the previous two years (Michael Howard and Robert Hunter, Israel and the Arab World: the Crisis of 1967, Adelphi Papers 41, Institute for Strategic Studies, 1967, p. 24).

In sum, the threat to Israel's survival in 1967 was non-existent. According to the British newspaper The Observer, Nasser's purpose was clearly "to deter Israel rather than provoke it to a fight" (The Observer, London, 4 June 1967). New York Times columnist James Reston reported that "Egypt does not war [...] certainly is not ready for war" (New York Times, 4 and 5 June 1967).

The Israelis themselves were perfectly aware of this, given their sophisticated military intelligence capabilities. Later, in the first few days of the war, they were so concerned that their plans for attacking Syria would be discovered that they deliberately attacked the USS Liberty, killing 33 American sailors, in an attempt to prevent it from monitoring war preparations.

A few months after the war, Yitzhak Rabin remarked: "I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai on 14 May would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it" (Le Monde, 29 February 1968).

Israeli General Peled was even more frank: "To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal [Israeli army]" (Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972).

Finally, in 1982, the Israelis admitted that they had started the war (although official Zionist propaganda in the United States still does not acknowledge this fact). Prime Minister Menachem Begin, in a speech delivered at the Israeli National Defense College, clearly stated that: "The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him" (Jerusalem Post, 20 August 1982).

[Historical Myths]


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58 posted on 05/02/2002 4:01:02 PM PDT by ThreeOfSeven
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To: Nathan _in_Arkansas
Thank you for your service to our country. I hope it's not WWIII. But maybe it is. The bad thing this time around is that 50% of America's Senate is ruled by people who want America (as we know it) destroyed. Don't wish for war until we can put in a few more pro-America people in there, ok?
59 posted on 05/02/2002 4:07:40 PM PDT by Freedom'sWorthIt
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To: varon
If we counted the crusades as WWI and WWII, then we are up to WWVI.
60 posted on 05/02/2002 4:11:56 PM PDT by CWRWinger
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