Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty – The full story
In his conversations with Rami Tal which were not made public until after his death, Dayan was astonishingly honest. At the heart of the great myth about Israel’s actions on the Syrian front in 1967 is the claim – it remains an article of faith among Israelis and most Jews everywhere – that the IDF seized the Golan Heights to stop the fiendish Syrians shelling Israeli settlements down below. (As we have seen, it was Israeli provocations that provoked Syrian shooting in the countdown to the war). When Tal demonstrated his belief in this Israeli claim, Dayan cut him short and said the following:
“Look, it’s possible to talk in terms of ‘the Syrians are bastards, you have to get them and this is the right time,’ but that is no policy. You don’t strike every enemy because he is a bastard but because he threatens you. And the Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.”
Israel’s last land grab of the war did provoke the threat, a real and serious one, of Soviet military intervention. For some hours there was the prospect that gut-Zionism’s territorial ambitions and what Lilienthal rightly called “Israel’s unconscionable use of military force” would provoke a superpower confrontation and possibly World War III. But at the brink, catastrophe was averted by use of the White House-Kremlin hot line.
For Israel’s hawks and those in the Johnson administration with whom they conspired, there was one big disappointment. The humiliation the Israelis had heaped on Nasser did not bring about his downfall, but… There was a moment when it had seemed that he was finished.
On the evening of 9 June, live on television from his home and headquarters in Manshiet el-Bakri near Heliopolis on the road to the airport, Nasser resigned. He was looking drawn and haggard and appeared to be a broken man. The explanation he gave his people for the catastrophe Egypt had suffered was short and simple. He had listened, he said, to the warnings of President Johnson and the Soviet Union not to strike the first blow.
That said, Nasser announced he was resigning the presidency in favour of Vice-President Zacharia Mohieddin, (the man who, on Nasser’s instructions, and given the chance by the Israelis, would have made the necessary concessions in discussions with U.S. Vice-President Humphrey to avert war).
Nasser did actually resign but before the next day was out, in response to mass demonstrations in his favour, he was President again.
Israelis, leaders and ordinary folk, had their own explanation for this turnaround in Cairo. The whole thing had been stage-managed. Nasser was not serious when he resigned. He was playing a game. The popular demonstrations in his favour had not been spontaneous. His secret police had bullied and bribed Egyptians to take to the streets to demand that Nasser stayed in power. (Israel’s intelligence chiefs knew that the CIA’s plan for toppling Nasser included paying Egyptians to take to the streets to denounce him. They assumed that Nasser had done the same thing in reverse, so to speak).
My Israeli friends, and many others who said such things, were kidding themselves. It was what they wanted to believe. The truth about what happened in Cairo is this.
Nasser did not inform his chosen successor of his intention to resign and, consequently, he did not ask Mohieddin if he was prepared to take over. Mohieddin did not want to be President in any circumstances, but especially those now prevailing in Egypt and throughout the Arab world because of the scale and speed of Israel’s victory which, for the Arabs, was an even bigger humiliation than that of 1948. Like all Egyptians and other Arabs, Mohieddin did not know that Nasser was intending to resign until he said so live on TV and radio. As soon as the broadcast ended, Mohieddin drove at top speed to Nasser’s home – to refuse the succession for himself and to tell the resigned President that he could not abandon his post while remnants of his army were still trapped in Sinai.
An argument followed. Nasser insisted there was no going back on his decision. “You are now responsible”, he said to Mohieddin, “you cannot refuse.” Mohieddin gave as good as he got. He told Nasser that he had no right to choose his successor. Only the National Assembly could decide who would be President.
While the two men continued to argue, the cabinet was assembling in another room for a meeting Nasser had called to ratify his hand-over of power to the Vice-President. Meanwhile, in the streets outside, the people were having their say. Contrary to what Israelis believed at the time, it was an entirely spontaneous happening. The best summary description of it was in a report filed to Le Monde by the perceptive Eric Rouleau, one of the best French correspondents of his generation. He wrote:
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