According to King Hussein, he not only could have stayed out if it, he would have if he had only been better informed. Israel may have attacked Jordan's airfields, but the 6,000 shells Jordan rained on Jerusalem on June 5th were not a love note either. King Hussein could have refrained from invading, and lived to regret doing so.
Is massing troops an act of war? Is angry rhetoric an act of war?
Massing hundreds of thousands of troops on the border and declaring your intentions to destroy the country on the other side are usually considered belligerent acts, at least on the planet I come from. If the Syrians didn't more aggressively attack on June 5th, it was due entirely to their own incompetence - they found they could not drive their tanks over the bridges on the Jordan, and their advance fell apaart. Nobody's attack on anybody was "Pearl Harbor" by June 5th, 1967. Troops had been massing for a month already. What a totally ludicrous idea.
The ratio of Israeli vs. Palestinian deaths (the more reliable figure), has consistently been in Israel's "favor", by a ratio of 3:1
When your weapon of choice is the suicide bomber and the boy shaheed, you will rack up a few casualties. Those who kill themselves are also counted as killed by Israelis.
I am waiting for the mass civilian casualties you promised me - you know, civilians, without guns, not aiming for martyrdom, not shooting at anybody. I mean, surely with F-16s, Israelis could do better? 40% of the Israeli dead are women; only 5% of the Palestinian dead. That's because the Israelis don't try to kill civilians minding their own business. Palestintians do. |
