Poor blameless Israel and the 1967 War
I posted this in another thread because the issue is not really the 1948 conflict and resolution that established Israel's borders but rather the 1967 war that established the "occupied territories" and the building of settlements. I'll post it again because it just goes to show how one-sided this dispute so often is because, essentially - it is politically incorrect to critisize the policies of Israel.
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I think some questions need to be asked . The official version accepted by much of the West and Israel itself is that Israel was provoked and was acting only in self defense. The official version makes great effort to portray little David Israel vs. big Goliath Arabs. To challenge this is to lay one open to charges of anti-semitism.
Was Israel itself in any sort of threat? Why don't you listen to Israeli officials themselves at the time?
First Question– How did Israel justify its attack?
Israeli UN envoy Abba Eban initially claimed to the United Nations Security Council that Egyptian troops had attacked first and that Israel's air strikes were retaliatory. Less than one month later, however, Israel admitted that it had launched the first strike. It asserted that it had faced an impending attack by Egypt, evidenced by Egypt's bellicose rhetoric, removal of UN peacekeeping troops from the Sinai Peninsula, closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and concentration of troops along Israel's borders The Soviet Union then introduced a resolution to the UN Security Council naming Israel the aggressor in the war. This resolution was blocked by the US and Great Britain. Thereafter, the UN failed to rule definitively on the legality of Israel's actions, although it called for Israel's withdrawal from territories it seized.
Second Question: Is Israel's version of the facts universally accepted, even among Israeli’s?
Israel's claim of an impending Egyptian attack has been widely accepted in the West (note – no one is willing to go against it for fear of political fallout). The Israeli public had also been led to believe that it faced a threat of imminent attack, and perhaps even annihilation . (déjà vous – shades of Iraq here?)
However, the veracity of Israel's claim is increasingly questioned. A number of senior Israeli military and political figures have subsequently admitted that Israel was not faced with a genuine threat of attack, and instead, deliberately chose war.
Yitzhak Rabin (the Israeli army chief of staff during the war), later stated "I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it."
Menachem Begin: In the New York Times, August 21st, 1982, he stated "In June l967, we had a choice. 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."
General Yeshayahu Gavish: "The concept that out-teched Egypt would attack Israel's over 230,000 troops with a pathetic 80,000 is nonsense. Egypt was a nation with over 110 million people, and they only had 80,000 on the border. One would have to be rather silly to think that this was all they could muster”
Gen. Matityahu Peled (a reserve general in the 1967 war, who achieved major military success) was so frustrated with Israel's rush to war that he ended up as an activist for peace. In an interview with Haaretz on March 19th, 1972, he stated "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" and "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." In addition, a June 1972 article in Le Monde that cites Peled says "All those stories about the huge danger we were facing because of our small territorial size, an argument expounded once the war was over, had never been considered our calculations prior to the unleashing of hostilities. While we proceeded towards the full mobilization of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our defence against the Egyptian threat. To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel's existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analyzing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army."
Gen Haim Bar-Lev (another famous general of the 6 day war and previous wars, Deputy Chief of Staff in 1967 and Chief of Staff from 1968 to 1972 and a Knesset member) stated in April 1972 that "We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the Six Day War and we had never thought of such a possibility."
Gen. Ezer Weizman (an air force general during the Six Day War, Chief of Operations of the General Staff, and later Deputy Chief of Staff) was a major proponent of the attack, yet in his book he writes that he told the prime minister, "If you give the order [to launch an attack], Jewish history will mark you as a great leader. If you don't, it will never forgive you."). He is well known for his quote that "There never was danger of extermination. The Jews of the Diaspora would like, for reasons of their own, to see us as heroes, our backs to the wall."
Third Question: What were Israel’s true objectives?
One objective may have been territorial expansion. Some Israeli politicians and military leaders, such as former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Minister of Defence Moshe Dayan lamented the failure to seize East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1948 war. Before the war, Jordan's King Hussain told the American ambassador: "They want the West Bank. They've been waiting for a chance to get it, and they're going to take advantage of us and they're going to attack." More statements from prominent Israeli figures confirm this policy of pre-emptive annexation through self-defense.
Mordechai Bentov (member of multiple Knessets and author of "The Bi-National Solution for the Land of Israel") voted against the attack. On April 14, 1971, he stated "The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail, and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory." – my goodness - Israel *did* claim new territory, and then promptly began settling it.
Gen. Matityahu Peled: According to Peled, more than half of the Golan Heights clashes were "a result of our security policy of maximum settlement in the demilitarized area.".
Another possibility might have been that Israeli politicians were genuinely fearful of
Jamal Abdul Nasser, the charismatic leader of Arab nationalism. They may have seen the war as an opportunity to embarrass him and destroy the movement he embodied.
Israeli leaders may also have seen military confrontation with the Arab states as inevitable, and chose to engage in battle at a time and under terms of their choosing. Menachem Begin, for example, characterised Israel's war aim as to "take the initiative and attack the enemy, drive him back, and thus assure the security of Israel and the future of the nation."
What ever the reasons it is not as clear or simple or innocent as has been popularly portrayed and the tale of a "poor, little, threatened Israel" is a myth.
