Rabin was quoted in Le Monde, February 29, 1968, as saying, "I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai in May [1967] would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Is
Oh puhlease. Not that bogus out-of-context quote, favorite of anti-Semitic websites, where I daresay you found it.
Just to provide a little context for the historically impaired, whatever Nasser wanted at the beginning of May 1967 (historians agree that Syria and the USSR were the prime instigators of the war), by June 4th, 1967, Nasser had something like 800,000 men in the Sinai, way more than "two divisions" and plenty to do the job. In fact, according to Michael Oren's Six Days of War, Nasser had already ordered the attack for May 27th, but something the Soviet FM Alexei Kosygin told him caused him to call it off at the last minute.
According to Oren, by June 1, 1967, both the Arabs and Israelis seemed confident of victory, and diplomats for several countries noted that one side was clearly miscalculating.
Re: the Iran Iraq war, thank you for proving my point. Saddam never expressed any intention to wipe Iran off the map, which would have been absurd even for him. |
