re 1967: I split this 50/50:
"Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland...[Dayan stated] 'They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.'" The New York Times, May 11, 1997 cactus48.com
<Nasser had been planning to attack on May 27th, but something Kosygin told him spooked him and he called off the attack>
That's exactly what Bush's excuse is: "I was spooked about ghosts in the closet, monsters under the bed, and WMD in Iraq, so I had to go to war." Israel attacked first, not Egypt.
<The Syrians, egged on the Russians, had started the whole May 1967 crisis, and had troops massed as well.>
Is massing troops an act of war? Is angry rhetoric an act of war? The shooting with Syria started, when Israel did a Pearl Harbor to Syria, destroying their air force in a surprise attack.
<King Hussein ignored Levi Eshkol's private pleas to stay out of it, and (having not been informed by Nasser than the Egyptian Air Force was no more) invaded Israel several days into the war >
Jordan couldn't stay out of it, because Israel attacked Jordan's airfields on the first day of the war, before any Jordanian air/land forces had fired a shot:
June 5, 1967: Israel attacks Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi airfields destroying the combat effectiveness of the major Arab air forces. Simultaneously, Israeli armor attacks Egypt... members.fortunecity.com
<You'd really think that Israeli attempts to cause mass civilian casualties would be successful>
The ratio of Israeli vs. Palestinian deaths (the more reliable figure), has consistently been in Israel's "favor", by a ratio of 3:1. The ratio of casualties, is even more skewed. And that's just in Occupied Palestine; it doesn't include all the civilian killings in Lebanon during the years of Israeli aggression there:
Israeli casualties and injured (since 28.9.2000, to January 2004); followed by the comparative ratio with Russia, the European Union and the United States:
Israel Russia European Union United States
Murdered 904 26,216 68,704 50,262
Injured 6,063 175,827 460,788 337,103
Same ratios, same time period, for Palestinians:
Palestine Russia European Union United States
Murdered 2,783 112,093 293,761 214,909
Injured 48,000 1,933,333 5,066,666 3,706,666
indcatholicnews.com
I note, also, you didn't deny my statement that the 1956 war was a pure act of aggression by Israel (100% Israel's idea). This is as close as you can come, to admitting that Israel has not exactly been the victim, in all its many wars. Oh, and I didn't list the Lebanon war, which was just like 1956. Are you going to portray Israel as the victim of Lebanese aggression, or are you just going to let it drop? |
