Thread by @MouinRabbani

THREAD (Part II): With respect to the 1967 June War, it is certainly true that a majority of Israelis lived in genuine fear of annihilation in the period leading up to the war.

Coming a mere two decades after the Holocaust, their widespread terror was put to good use by the Israeli government and official propaganda.

What ordinary Israelis and those anticipating the imminent slaughter of Israel’s Jewish population did not know, and as was subsequently confirmed by multiple senior Israeli leaders, Israel had been planning a new war and preparing to launch one for an entire decade.

Among the Israeli leadership there was never really any doubt about the outcome. Nor was there any among Israel’s closest ally, the United States.

In the most notable example in this regard, US President Lyndon Johnson in late May 1967 tasked the CIA with conducting an assessment of a potential new Middle war.

The Agency swiftly concluded that Israel “could successfully defend against simultaneous Arab attacks on all fronts … or hold on any three fronts while mounting successfully a major offensive in the fourth.”

In a transparent attempt to solicit additional US arms deliveries, Israeli intelligence insisted that not only was Israel badly outgunned, but that the Soviet Union was keen to see Moscow’s Arab allies attack Israel in order to give Washington a geopolitical bloody nose.

This led the CIA to produce a second assessment in early June. On this occasion it correctly determined that the Soviet Union was neither agitating for war nor would intervene if Israel gained the upper hand; that it would be Israel that would attack first;

that it intended to do so “in the next few days”; and that if it was Israel that initiated the war - as it did – it would make short shrift of the Egyptian air force “in less than 24 hours” and “drive the Egyptians west of the Suez Canal in seven to nine days."

"Israel could contain any attacks by Syria or Jordan during this period.” As President Johnson would later recount what he told Abba Eban, “All of our intelligence people are unanimous that of the UAR [i.e. Egypt] attacks, you will whip the hell out of them”.

It was not only Israelis who anticipated the destruction of their young state. Palestinians and Arabs were as ecstatic about the prospects of an early end to the Zionist project as Israelis were fearful.

Their anticipation was stoked by the triumphalist propaganda of Arab governments, and Egypt in particular. Ahmad Sa’id of Cairo’s Voice of the Arabs, easily the region’s most recognizable voice, continually trumpeted the imminent demise of Israel and liberation of Palestine.

Ahmad Sa’id of Cairo’s Voice of the Arabs, easily the region’s most recognizable voice, continually trumpeted the imminent demise of Israel and liberation of Palestine.

Against this background, a key Israeli talking point developed around the claim that Egypt’s Abdel-Nasser was openly threatening to “throw the Jews into the sea” and annihilate Israel’s Jewish population.

Responding to such drivel, British MP Christopher Mayhew in 1973 offered GBP 5,000 to anyone who could produce evidence that Abdel-Nasser had indeed made such a threat, or that any Arab leader had made any statement that could be characterized as reflecting genocidal intent.

An avalanche of claimants bearing manufactured and distorted citations promptly presented themselves, but none emerged from the experience with an enhanced bank balance.

One claimant, a university student named Warren Bergson, in 1976 sued Mayhew to force him to pay up. Bergson not only failed to convince the judge,

but was required to apologize to Mayhew after Bergson’s lawyer admitted that the offending passage presented by Bergson in court had been taken out of context.

In point of fact, Mayhew had interviewed Abdel-Nasser on 2 June 1967, 72 hours before the war erupted, and asked him, “If Israel does not attack, will you leave them alone?” “Yes,” replied the Egyptian leader, “We will leave them alone. We have no intention of attacking Israel.”

That Egypt was neither prepared for war nor intent on one, and that its deployment in Sinai was essentially defensive in nature, has among others been confirmed by Israeli Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol; his defense minister Yitzhak Rabin and foreign minister Abba Eban;

his head of Mossad Meir Amit; the Commander of the UN peacekeeping force (UNEF) deployed between Egypt and Israel, General Jit Rikhye; US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara; and numerous others whose role was to formulate and implement policy as opposed to propaganda.

As recounted previously, Egypt’s best forces were at the time fighting in Yemen, not Sinai, in what Abdel-Nasser would characterize as “My Vietnam”. Among the most telling statements was one by Israeli General Mattiyahu Peled, made to the French newspaper Le Monde in 1972:

“The thesis according to which the danger of genocide hung over us in June 1967, and according to which Israel was fighting for her very physical survival, was nothing but a bluff which was born and bred after the war.”

A decade later Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin, seeking to justify Israel’s unprovoked 1982 invasion of Lebanon (more on this later) before Israel’s parliament, according to the New York Times of 12 August 1982 put it thus:

“In June, 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

As mentioned in the intro to Part I, the claim that an unlawful attack entitles those engaged in legitimate self-defense to respond as they please, unrestrained by either international law or the laws of war, is an entirely specious and indeed preposterous position.

What Israel flunkies don’t quite realize in this respect, given the copious amount of Zionist Kool-Aid they have guzzled with respect to Israel’s narrative about the 1967 June War,

is that in incessantly making this argument they are in fact providing justification for the 7 October 2023 Palestinian attacks within Israel, and much, much else.

What Israeli agitprop falsely claims about the 1967 June War would prove to be entirely correct about the 1973 October War.

On this occasion, Egypt and Syria initiated a combined,surprise attack that launched what has been arguably the most intense military confrontation of the entire Arab-Israel conflict.

Within months of the conclusion of the 1967 War that resulted in its utter defeat, the Egyptian military commenced with artillery shelling and other attacks on Israeli occupation forces deployed on the east bank of the Suez Canal.

Abdel-Nasser’s closest associate and Egypt’s senior military officer, Field Marshal Abdel-Hakim Amer, also the chief author of his country’s military debacles in 1956 and 1967, had in September 1967 been removed from the scene.

Officially reported as a suicide, there is compelling evidence he was killed to prevent an imminent coup attempt. With Amer finally gone, the Arabs would not again decisively lose a military confrontation with Israel.

The retraining and rebuilding of the Egyptian military after 1967, essentially from scratch, was a task no less daunting than the construction of the pyramids, and to the best of my knowledge has yet to be properly studied.

By mid-1970 Egypt was well on its way to developing a capable and professional army. It was escalating its air, artillery, and commando attacks on Israeli occupation forces in Sinai,

and deploying an anti-aircraft network that neutralized Israeli air supremacy over both banks of the Suez Canal and made it possible for Egyptian aircraft to strike throughout the Canal Zone and beyond.

Israel’s previous strategy, of raising the costs of continued warfare by launching raids deep into Egypt (including the outskirts of Cairo) became increasingly risky as Soviet forces took direct responsibility for defending the Egyptian hinterland.

In other words, continuing with such raids risked not only a direct Israeli-Soviet confrontation (there had apparently already been several such incidents), but by extension a superpower crisis as well.

Pulling back from the brink, Cairo and Tel Aviv in August 1970 accepted a three-month ceasefire agreement, which was renewed that November.

Analysts have speculated that Abdel-Nasser, who died on 28 September, may have been preparing to resume the war in full force after the first ceasefire expired. Be that as it may, Anwar Sadat, who succeeded him, elected to conserve Egyptian gains.

If Egypt’s objective was to liberate Sinai, the War of Attrition was an abject failure. It also precipitated Israel’s construction of the Bar-Lev Line, the purportedly impenetrable succession of fortresses on the Canal’s east bank.

But against Israel’s preservation of the status quo Cairo had successfully demonstrated that, Egypt’s devastating 1967 defeat notwithstanding, it would never accept occupation and was a serious military adversary.

In 1971 Egypt’s new president began making a series of peace overtures, offering to conclude what was essentially a separate Egyptian-Israeli peace in exchange for the restoration of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

Previously, Egypt along with the other Arab states had insisted they would accept only a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict that would include responding to the Question of Palestine.

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who (for once correctly) considered Sadat a “clown”, and was erroneously convinced the new Egyptian leader would soon be replaced, ignored him.

For its part Israel, at the time ruled by Joe Biden’s icon, Golda Meir, had absolutely no intention of relinquishing Sinai. Still seized by the collective hubris produced by 1967, Israel was confident the Arabs had no military option to recover their occupied territories,

and that Sadat’s peace overtures could along with others be safely dismissed. In 1969, for example, the Israeli government, apparently encouraged by Kissinger who was intent on undermining his bureaucratic rival,

rejected a peace initiative proposed by US Secretary of State William Rogers, denouncing it as “an attempt to appease [the Arabs] at the expense of Israel”.

No serious historian has ever put forward the claim that Israel initiated hostilities on 6 October 1973. In contrast to Germany on 1 September 1939 or Israel on 5 June 1967, Egypt and Syria in 1973 proudly took credit for their actions and responsibility for launching the war.

While doing so might seem ill-advised given the strict prohibition on wars of aggression (a serious crime under international law), it would be virtually impossible to charge Cairo or Damascus in this respect.

This is because they were not invading Israel within its internationally-recognized boundaries, but rather seeking to liberate occupied territory in a context where the international community recognizes their and not Israel’s sovereignty over these territories.

Although Egypt and Syria jointly planned and coordinated their offensive, and caught Israel thoroughly unprepared, they approached the war from fundamentally different perspectives. Syria believed it could liberate the Golan Heights by force of arms.

Egypt’s objective was more limited: to demonstrate Egyptian military power and Israeli vulnerability, resulting in a crisis significant enough to force subsequent diplomatic movement.

By successfully crossing the Suez Canal and demolishing the Bar-Lev line in matter of hours, Egypt succeeded in breaking the existing logjam.

On the strength of a massive US airlift (and one that would be exceeded only by the US arming of Israel’s current genocide), and a breakdown in Egyptian-Syrian coordination, Israel was eventually able to turn the tables on its adversaries and,

by the time the guns fell silent in late October, advance beyond the positions it held at the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, the Arab-Israeli equation was in 1973 thoroughly transformed.

Speaking to a group of Israeli military veterans in 1971 Moshe Dayan, Israel’s Defence Minister and hero of its 1967 victory, had triumphantly declared,

in reference to the famous resort at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula: “Better Sharm al-Shaikh without peace, than peace without Sharm al-Shaikh!”.

Sadat’s objectives were to shatter Israel’s conceit of military invincibility, and compel Kissinger to reconsider his dismissive response to Egyptian diplomacy.

The shock of the Egyptian-Syrian 1973 October surprise produced an Israeli realization that its military superiority was ultimately no match for Egypt’s determination to recover its occupied territories.

It understood that Cairo would eventually impose on Israel a cost greater than its military, economy, or society could bear.

Before the decade was out, a deflated Dayan was the architect of an agreement—the groundwork of which had been laid by a chastened Kissinger—that gave Israel peace with Egypt, but without Sharm al-Shaikh.

Yet, by concluding a separate peace that removed the most powerful Arab military from the conflict and gave Israel a free hand to wage war to its north, Sadat, Begin, and Carter had at Camp David also laid the groundwork for the inferno that would consume Lebanon in 1982.

END OF PART II (TO BE CONTINUED...)