by Stephen Lendman
This June will mark an anniversary that will live in infamy for the people
affected by the event it commemorates following a far greater one 19 years
earlier on May 14, 1948.
On June 5, 1967, Israel launched its so-called "Six-Day (preemptive) War"
against three of its neighboring Arab states - Egypt, Jordan and Syria -
claiming it was in self-defense to avoid annihilation Israeli leaders later
admitted was spurious and false cover for a large-scale long-planned,
calculated war of aggression it believed it could easily win and did.
The New York Times quoted Prime Minister Menachem Begin's (1977 - 83)
August, 1982 speech saying: "In June, 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian
Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that (President
Gamal Abdel) Nasser (1956 - 70) was really about to attack us. We must be
honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."
Two time Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1974 - 77 and 1992 - 95) told French
newspaper Le Monde in February, 1968:
"I do not believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into
Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offense against
Israel. He knew it and we knew it."
General Mordechai Hod, Commander of the Israeli Air Force during the Six-Day
War said in 1978: "Sixteen years of planning had gone into those initial
eighty minutes. We lived with the plan, we slept on the plan, we ate the
plan. Constantly we perfected it."
General Haim Barlev, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief told Ma'ariv in
April, 1972: "We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day
war, and we had never thought of such a possibility."
Other Israeli leaders and generals voiced the same sentiment that in June,
1967 Israel was under no threat, yet preemptively undertook a war of
aggression falsely telling the world it had no other choice. It had a clear
one.
It could have chosen peace, but didn't and never did earlier or since to the
present because discretionary aggressive wars of choice serve Israeli
interests as they do its US imperial partner. . . .
FULL TEXT
Gideon Levy, "Israel Does Not Want
Peace," Haaretz, April 9, 2007
[The declaration by Theodor Meron, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's legal
adviser at the time and today one of the world's leading international
jurists, is a serious blow to Israel's persistent argument that the
settlements do not violate international law, particularly as Israel
prepares to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the war in June
1967.--Donald Macintyre, "Secret
memo shows Israel knew Six Day War was illegal,"
Independent, May 26, 2007]
Alvaro de Soto, "Confidential: End of Mission
Report," UN, May 2007
["The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO's [Palestine Liberation
Organisation] standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing
rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans.--Mark Tran, "Documents
claim Israel aided Entebbe hijack," Guardian Unlimited, June 1, 2007]
[A state based on religion rather than the will of all of its inhabitants
was at the end of the 19th century not only a medieval notion but also a
very eccentric idea, one Herzl concocted in the rarified environment of
cafes where ideas were produced with scant regard for reality. . . . In the
end, all that was to unite Israel was a military ethic premised on a hatred
of those "others" around them - and it was to become a warrior-state, a
virtual Sparta dominated by its army.--Gabriel Kolko, "Israel:
Mythologizing a 20th Century Accident," antiwar.com, June 2, 2007]
Isabel Kershner, "Anniversary
of 1967 War Shows Lasting Divisions," New York Times, June 6, 2007
Uri Avnery, "1967
- A Personal Testimony," gush-shalom.org, June 7, 2007
[Le Monde Diplomatique . . . recalled vividly - and shamefully - how the
world's newspapers covered the story of Egypt's "aggression" against Israel.
In reality . . . it was Israel which attacked Egypt after Nasser closed the
straits of Tiran and ordered UN troops out of Sinai and Gaza following his
vituperative threats to destroy Israel. "The Egyptians attack Israel,"
France-Soir told its readers on 5 June 1967, a whopper so big that it later
amended its headline to "It's Middle East War!".
Quite so. Next day, the socialist Le Populaire headlined its story "Attacked
on all sides, Israel resists victoriously".--Robert Fisk, "It was
Israel which attacked Egypt after Nasser closed the straits of
Tiran," Independent, June 9, 2007]
Note: Rabbi Arthur Waskow, an historian, and one of the founders and 15-year
Resident Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, challenges Robert
Fisk's assertion. He writes: "So it was not an 'attack' on Israel to
close the Tiran Straits, a crucial supply corridor for a legitimate state?
That was not a violation of international law? If the Soviet Union had
blockaded the Gulf Of Mexico so that New Orleans could not ship or receive
goods, that would not have been an 'attack' on the United States?"
[The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure
has "pummelled into submission" the UN's role as an impartial Middle East
negotiator in a damning confidential report. . . . Mr de Soto condemns
Israel for setting unachievable preconditions for talks and the Palestinians
for their violence.--Rory McCarthy and Ian Williams, "Secret
UN report condemns US for Middle East failures: Envoy's damning verdict
revealed as violence takes Gaza closer to civil war," Guardian, June 13, 2007]
Ian Black, "UN
envoy: anti-Hamas rhetoric undermines democracy," Guardian Unlimited,
June 13, 2007
Allister Sparks, "Israel's
hopes of a two-state solution is a fantasy," Pretoria News, June 13, 2007
[The one-state solution for Palestine-Israel is "gaining ground," a senior
UN diplomat has admitted in a leaked confidential report. Recently retired
UN special envoy Alvaro de Soto wrote "that the combination of institutional
decline and Israeli settlement expansion is creating a growing conviction
among Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, as well as some Jews on the far left
in Israel that the two State solutiuon's best days are behind it."--Ali
Abunimah, "One-state
solution "gaining ground" UN envoy admits," electronicintifada.net,
June 13, 2007]
Donald Macintyre, "A
triumph for Hamas... but a tragedy for the Palestinians? A war in Gaza
threatening to redraw the map of the Middle East," Independent,
June 15, 2007
Ilan Pappe, "The Israeli Recipe
For 2008: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank ,"
indypendent.org, June 23, 2007
[During the British mandate (1920-1948), Zionist leaders concluded
Palestinians, who owned 90 percent of the land (with 5.8 percent owned by
Jews), would have to be forcibly expelled to make a Jewish state possible.
Pappe quotes David Ben-Gurion, IsraelŐs first prime minister, addressing the
Jewish Agency Executive in June 1938, as saying, "I am for compulsory
transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it."--Arnaud De Borchgrave, "Israel's Embarrassing
History," UPI, August 6, 2007]