Israel initiated the conflict, with its attack on Egypt. Further, Israel provoked the military buildup, by clearing out Arabs from Syrian territory. And, we haven't even discussed the U.S.S. Liberty, the American ship that Israel destroyed to hide their schemes.
electronicintifada.net
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). |
