Open Letter to General the Lord Guthrie
On 3 June 1972, Peled was even more explicit in an article forLe Monde. He wrote: “All those stories about the huge danger we were in facing because of our small territorial size, an argument expounded once the war was over, have never been considered in our calculations. While we proceeded towards the full mobilisation of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our ‘defence’ against the Eygptian threat. This force was to crush once and for all the Eygptians at the military level and their Soviet masters at the political level. To pretend that the Eygptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel’s existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army.”
The complete truth about the 1967 war includes the following facts:
Israel’s prime minister of the time, the much maligned Levi Eshkol, did not want to take his country to war. And nor did his chief of staff, Rabin. They wanted only very limited military action, an operation far, far short of war, to put pressure on the international community to cause Eygpt’s President Nasser to re-open the Straits of Tiran. (Which he was anxious to do provided he could be seen to be doing so under international pressure).
Israel went to war because its military and political hawks insisted that the Arabs were about to attack. They promoted this nonsense to undermine Eshkol by portraying him to the country as weak .The climax to the campaign to rubbish Eshkol, who was wise not weak, was a demand by the hawks that he surrender the defence portfolio and give it to Moshe Dayan, Zionism’s one-eyed warlord and master of deception. Four days after Dayan got the portfolio he wanted, and the hawks had secured the green light from the Johnson administration to smash Eygpt’s air and ground forces, Israel went to war.
What actually happened in Israel in the final countdown to that war was something very close to a military coup, executed quietly behind closed doors without a shot being fired. For Israel’s hawks the war of 1967 was the unfinished business of 1948/49 ? to create Greater Israel with all of Jerusalemits capital. In reality Israel’s hawks set a trap for Nasser and, for reasons of face, he was daft enough to walk into it.
There can be no denying that most Israelis didbelieve they faced the danger of annihilat
ion, but that was only because their leaders refused to tell them the truth ? that Israel was not in danger. While I was writing the truth about that war, I found myself saying aloud to my readers that there were moments, and this was one of them, when I wanted to “cry out” with the pain of knowing how much Israeli and almost all other Jews have been deceived by Israel’s leaders and Zionism’s spin doctors everywhere.
Zionism’s assertion that poor little Israel faced the danger of annihilation in 1967 was not only a monstrous propaganda lie, it became the cover which allowed Israel to get away where it matters most, North America and Western Europe, with presenting its aggressionas self-defence; and itself as the victimwhen, actually, it was and is the oppressor.
Can you now understand, Lord Guthrie, why I was astonished by what you said this morning?
The question arising is something like this. Did you say what you said out of ignorance of the facts and documented truth of history, or are you content to peddle a propaganda lie to serve powerful vested interests which prefer war to peace?
I describe the conflict in and over Palestine as the cancer at the heart of international affairs which will consume us all unless there is informed and honest debate about who must do what and why for justice and peace. The pre-requisite for informed and honest debate is an acknowledgement by all of the truth about what happened in the Middle East (and behind closed doors in the major capitals of the world and at UN headquarters)in 1967.
Sincerely,
Alan Hart
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The 1967 War:
July 31st, 2011 at 5:55 pm
[...] turn lead to land grabs. Which is what it's all about – "Greater Israel" and all that. Alan Hart, an English journalist with over 30 years experience reporting on the conflict, including exclusive [...]