Palestine and Zioinism The Whole Truth
As to the actual fighting in 1948 here is the key to complete understanding. Early on there was a month long truce. When the fighting resumed it was 20,000 Arab soldiers, poorly trained and equipped, lacking motivation and badly led, against 80,000 Israeli forces, well trained and equipped, highly motivated and well led. As David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister knew, there was always only going to be one winner on the battlefield.
When Israel closed the Palestine file with its victory in 1948 the Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as Zionism and all the major powers. It was that the Palestinians would accept their lot as the sacrificial victims on the altar of political expediency and that the Palestine file would remain closed for ever.
To give you a real indication of how little things have changed over the years I’ll tell you now about an amazing conversation I had some years ago with a major Saudi royal. In an hour long exchange of views I had with him alone in London I made what I thought he would regard as two very contentious points.
The first was this. “Nothing is going to change in the Arab world until your bloody regimes are more frightened of their own people than they are of Israel and America.”
He replied: “You’re right.”
My second point was this. “If tomorrow the Israelis exterminated the Palestinians, your bloody regimes would raise a glass of whisky behind closed doors and say ‘Thanks‘”
He replied: “You’re right.”
The essence of the truth about the Six Days War of June 1967 can be simply stated. For Israel’s leaders it was the unfinished business of 1948. They set a trap (fully explained in my book) for Egypt’s President Nasser. He was naive enough to walk right into it and give Israel’s leaders the pretext they wanted for war.
As it happened I was the first Western correspondent to the banks of the Suez Canal with the advancing Israelis. Just before I left Tel Aviv for the Sinai I had another amazing conversation, this one with then retired Major General Chaim Herzog, one of the founding fathers of Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence who went on to become Israel’s ambassador to the UN and eventually its president. During the course of this conversation on day one of the war Herzog said the following.
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If Nasser had not been stupid enough to give us a pretext for war we would have invented one in a year to 18 months.”
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In summary, what happened in June 1967 was a war of Israeli aggression, not as Zionism asserted a war of self-defence. Years later some Israeli leaders acknowledged this truth. In the first chapter of Volume Three of my book which is subtitled Conflict Without End?, I quote a number of them. Here are just four examples.
* In an interview published in Le Monde on 28 February 1968, Israeli Chief of Staff Rabin said this.
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I do not believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on 14 May would not have been enough to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.
UNQUOTE
* On 14 April 1971, a report in the Israeli newspaper Al-Hamishmar contained the following statement by Mordecai Bentov, a member of Israel’s wartime national government.
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The entire story of extermination was invented in every detail and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory,
UNQUOTE
* On 4 April 1972, General Ezer Weizman, Chief of Operations during the 1967 war, said the following in an article in Ma-ariv.
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There was never any danger of annihilation. This hypothesis has never been considered in any serious meeting.
UNQUOTE
* And in an unguarded public moment in 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin said this.
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In June 1967 we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.
UNQUOTE
In the light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, including the on-the-record statements of some of Israel’s own former leaders, it is truly astonishing that still today when they make reference to the 1967 war almost all Western politicians and mainstream media people continue to peddle the nonsense that Israel’s existence was in danger.
The short, true story of the 1973 war can be simply stated.
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