Q. Israeli belligerence in ’67 began over what? (A. Blockade)

by on January 17, 2009 13

A brilliant point at Tzipi Livni's press conference in DC yesterday. Sam Husseini, media director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, makes the point (at about 8:30 or so) that the government of Israel states that it started the Six-Day War in 1967 because of Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Iran [Tiran, sorry folks!] (at a time when Israel was getting nukes). Israel has of course been blockading Gaza for years.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Beyondoweiss, Gaza, Israel/Palestine, US Policy in the Middle East

{ 13 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Finkelstein fan says:
    January 17, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    There was no blockade you can read about it here or listen here.

  2. Eva Smagacz says:
    January 17, 2009 at 7:34 pm

    It's never a genocide until AFTER the genocide:





  3. kevin says:
    January 17, 2009 at 8:39 pm

    The worst part of the video of the press conference is the pathetic conduct of the National Press Club officer who tries to cut off the microphone when Sam Husseini is asking his question (he does the same with others as well)… truly craven conduct.

  4. samuel burke says:
    January 17, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    WHO REALLY STARTED THE 1967 ARAB-ISRAELI WAR?

    PARIS – One of the primary causes of the epochal 1967 Arab-Israeli War has been largely forgotten or ignored.

    In the months before the June, 1967 conflict, Israel and Syria fought increasingly violent clashes along their border as Israeli paramilitary settlers pushed into the demilitarized zone separating the two states.

    Hawkish Israeli generals, led by Moshe Dayan, sought to provoke a limited war with Syria in hopes of grabbing water resources around Lake Tiberias. Palestinian `fedayeen’ were staging raids across Israel’s borders.

    As tensions surged, the Soviet Union, then Egypt’s close ally, urgently warned Cairo and Damascus that its spy satellites were detecting Israeli armored formations massing to attack Syria. The Arabs had no independent means of verifying Moscow’s warnings, but could not ignore them.

    Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, believed an Israeli invasion of his close ally Syria was imminent and came under intense pressure from Damascus and his own generals to counter Israel’s threat. Egypt’s rivals in the Arab World heaped scorn on Nasser for timidity, demanding Cairo take action to defend Syria.

    So Nasser ordered four Egyptian divisions into Sinai. They were deployed in defensive formations in the middle of the peninsula, well away from Israel’s border.

    In reality, Israel was not massing troops to attack Syria. Moscow’s warnings to Cairo and Damascus of an impending Israeli attack were false. In late 1990, the US used similarly doctored satellite photos to fool the Saudis into believing Iraq had massed troops on its border and was about to invade.

    Moscow’s disinformation lit the fuse that ignited the second major Arab-Israeli war. Syria, knowing its military forces were useless, was gripped by panic and pleaded with Nasser to deter the imagined Israeli attack by making some powerful demonstration.

    Israelis were gripped by panic, believing deployment of Egyptian divisions into Sinai heralded a war that would destroy their young state.

    Israel’s hawkish military establishment seized upon popular panic to pressure the government of Golda Meir to activate a long-planned campaign to seize the West Bank and Golan Heights.

    Meanwhile, Palestinian spokesman Ahmad Shukairy and other windbags thundered, `we will drive the Jews into the sea.’ Such empty threats won worldwide sympathy for Israel and provided it with a perfect pretext to launch what it called a `self-defensive war of survival.’

    As pressure on Nasser intensified, he made a fateful error. Nasser had no intention of going to war. But he desperately sought to dissuade Israel from the attack Moscow warned was coming. Nasser ordered UN troops in Sinai to withdraw, and closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Withdrawing UN troops was mistakenly seen by the outside world as the beginning of an Egyptian offensive into Israel. So did closing Israel’s access to the Red Sea.

    Israel’s hawks finally convinced PM Golda Meir a major Arab offensive was imminent. She authorized surprise attacks on the Arab states. Nasser had fallen right into a trap. But who had set it?

  5. AM says:
    January 17, 2009 at 9:55 pm

    I thought the purpose of Israels 1967 war was to seize territories. They may have been waiting for just the right time or opportunities for "justification" to do so, and the Arabs unwittingly helped them on that.

  6. Richard Witty says:
    January 17, 2009 at 10:54 pm

    The purpose of the 67 war was to defend.

    Gaza Palestine is not a state recognized by international institutions. In 67, Israel was.

    Gaza Palestine is in active or deferred war with ALL of its neighbors, Israel, Egypt, and Fatah Palestine.

    It needn't be. It was a choice, that it could choose differently.

    "Everyone else is corrupt".

  7. Rowan Berkeley says:
    January 17, 2009 at 11:59 pm

    Look at this cow spouting Derrida in the grauniad. These pseudo intellectuals are no better than nazi whores.

  8. Jim Haygood says:
    January 18, 2009 at 12:02 am

    Looks like Eva's been looking through her grandma's photos again . . .
    But seriously, she really likes calling Jews "nazis," and engaging in photo-contrast. But I wonder if her theory here hasn't backfired. By killing around 1,000 Palestinians, Israel has killed less than .02% of Gaza's population. Nazis, in turn, killed about 85% of Poland's Jews (with the help of Eva's ancestors, of course, but most of them were too cowardly to do the killing themselves).
    By her own logic, Israel still has 99% of its killing to do–another million Gaza civilians at least.
    Given the ease with which these accusations are made, one wonders if Israelis might not just conclude that a real genocide might solve their problems. What's stopping them, after all? Eva calling them nazis? Too late for that . . .

  9. chimpsky says:
    January 18, 2009 at 12:03 am

    Avnery's reflections on June 67 war
    1967: A personal testimony
    URI AVNERY
    Gush Shalom, June 2007

    "…Chief of the Northern Command, General David ("Dado") Elazar… had confided in the same few trusted members: "Every night, before going to sleep, I pray that Nasser concentrates his troops in the Sinai desert. There we shall annihilate them."

  10. BLG says:
    January 18, 2009 at 4:11 am

    January 09, 2009 at 04:18 PM

    1967 war

    * Israel withdrawing water from the Jordan River.
    * Arabs Build dam that would divert water. 1965.
    * Israelis bomb dam.
    * Israeli boat hits mine. 1966.
    * Syrians and Israelis fire at each other. Both sides claim it was in response.
    * Israelis invade West Bank. Battle ensues.
    * President Lyndon B. Johnson says he thinks the invasion was disproportionate and bad for U.S.
    * Jordan under pressure militarizes.
    * Egypt and Syria sign defense pact.
    * Aerial battle over Syria Golan Heights.
    * Israelis start farming land in disputed demilitarized zone
    * Syria shells tractors
    * Israel brings armored tractors and Air force and army.
    * Soviet Union fed false information to Syria that Israel was to invade Syria. Syria tells Egypt. Egypt closes straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.
    * Israel uses closure as a reason to launch Pre Emptive strike on surrounding arab forces.

    2008-09 Gaza War.
    * Blockade
    * Blockade not lifted
    * Israel strikes tunnels on November 4.
    * Hamas launches rocket
    * Israeli Airstrikes
    * More rockets.
    * More cross exchange.
    * Israel launches strike.

    One closure of a strait equals justification of a pre emption. Continuing blockade of a people is worse than that.
    Two standards.

  11. Arie Brand says:
    January 18, 2009 at 5:50 am

    Samuel Burke wrote:
    "Israel’s hawks finally convinced PM Golda Meir a major Arab offensive was imminent. She authorized surprise attacks on the Arab states."

    The Israeli PM at the time of the Six Day War was Levi Eshkol. Golda Meir was PM during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

  12. Eva Smagacz says:
    January 18, 2009 at 6:49 am

    This is exactly the point I am making:

    There is NOTHING to stop Israel committing genocide. The emotional breaks are off, the moral compass is corrupted, the enemy has been relegated the position of subhuman, the sense of invincibility and righteousness has infected the general population.

    The consensual state of national mind is edging closer to the point where it will stop being if , whether and become WHEN and HOW.

    When the deed will be done, it will be too late to do anything. Call it the principle of pre-emptive defense of the slaughtered.

  13. LanceThruster says:
    January 19, 2009 at 7:39 pm

    The purpose of the 67 war was to defend.

    —–

    In an interview that created a stir in Israel after its belated publication, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan declared:

    I know how at least 80 percent of all of the incidents there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's speak about 80 percent. It would go like this: we would send a tractor to plow in the demilitarized area, and we would know ahead of time that the Syrians would start shooting. If they did not start shooting, we would inform the tractor to progress farther, until the Syrians, in the end, would get nervous and would shoot. And then we would use guns, and later, even the air force, and that is how it went. We thought that we could change the lines of the cease-fire accords by military actions that were less than a war. That is, to seize some territory and hold it until the enemy despairs and gives it to us.

    It was just such a staged provocation – an Israeli tractor plowing through a disputed field despite Syrian pleas for compromise – that sparked the April 1967 aerial battle.

    Michael Oren's Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
    Reviewed by Norman Finkelstein

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