Talk:Controversies relating to the Six-Day War
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Notes for editing
[edit]Here are the Notes bits from the article, if there are viewpoints here that are worth including, that can be done. E.g. the Jordanian aspect may be something worth considering.
Preemptive strike:
- "...Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egyptian planes as they stood on the airfields. These events triggered the so-called June war of 1967, but the pre-emptive action of Israel was not condemned by the S.C. – or indeed by the G.A. There appeared to be a general feeling, certainly shared by the Western states, that taken in the context this was a lawful use of anticipatory self-defence, and that for Israel to have waited any longer could well have been fatal to her survival." Antonio Cassese. The Current Legal Regulation of the Use of Force: Current Legal Regulation Vol10, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986, p. 443. ISBN 90-247-3247-6
- "War was inevitable under these conditions. Israel, seeing war as inevitable, decided on a pre-emptive strike, launching its attack on 5 June 1967." Goldstein 1992, p. 127.
- "In 1967 Israel was aware of an impending attack by Egypt, to be assisted by Jordan, Iraq and Syria, and won a brilliant and total victory in only six days (consequently the fighting is known as the 'Six-Day War'), largely because they launched a pre-emptive attack on the Arab air forces..." David Robertson. The Routledge Dictionary of Politics, Routledge, 2003, p. 22. ISBN 0-415-32377-0
- "On 30 May 1967 Jordan joined the Syrian-Egyptian military pact. Despite US attempts to mediate, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike just days later which destroyed the unprepared Egyptian air force..." Martin S. Alexander. Knowing Your Friends: Intelligence Inside Alliances and Coalitions from 1914 to the Cold War, Routledge, 1998, p. 246. ISBN 0-7146-4879-5
- "On 5 June 1967 Israel attacked Egyptian positions in a pre-emptive strike." Sören Zibrandt von Dosenrode-Lynge, Anders Stubkjær. The European Union and the Middle East, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002, p. 56. ISBN 0-8264-6088-7
- "In the end Israel launched a preemptive aerial attack, in which most of the Egyptian air force was destroyed on the ground within the first three hours of the war, and in six days the war was over." Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, Columbia University Press, 1999, p. 276. ISBN 0-231-10483-9
- "a massive pre-emptive strike on Egypt." "BBC on this day", BBC website. URL accessed May 14, 2006.
- "Israel launched a pre-emptive strike on June 5" "Mideast 101: The Six Day War", CNN website. URL accessed May 14, 2006.
- "Most historians now agree that although Israel struck first, this pre-emptive strike was defensive in nature." "The Mideast: A Century of Conflict Part 4: The 1967 Six Day War", NPR morning edition, October 3, 2002. URL accessed May 14, 2006.
- "a massive preemptive strike by Israel that crippled the Arabs’ air capacity." Six-Day War, Retrieved 17 July 2010; Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. © 2006 World Almanac Education Group via The History Channel website, 2006, URL accessed February 17, 2007.
- "In a pre-emptive strike, Israel smashed its enemies’ forces in just six days..." Country Briefings: Israel, The Economist website, July 28, 2005. URL accessed March 15, 2007.
- "Yet pre-emptive strikes can often be justified even if they don't meet the letter of the law. At the start of the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel, fearing that Egypt was aiming to destroy the Jewish state, devastated Egypt's air force before its pilots had scrambled their jets." "Strike First, Explain Yourself Later," Michael Elliott, Time, July 1, 2002. URL accessed March 15, 2007.
- "the situation was similar to the crisis that preceded the 1967 Six Day war, when Israel took preemptive military action." "Delay with Diplomacy", Marguerite Johnson, Time, May 18, 1981. URL accessed March 15, 2007.
- "Following the Israeli conventional pre-emptive operations in June 1967,..." Aronson, Shlomo. "Israel's Nuclear Programme, the Six Day War and Its Ramifications", in Karsh, Efraim. Israel: The First Hundred Years, Routledge, 1999, p. 83. ISBN 0-7146-4962-7
- "Israel, seeing war as inevitable, decided on a pre-emptive strike, launching its attack on 5 June 1967." Goldstein 1992, p. 127.
- "Thus provoked, the Israelis attacked preemptively and, in what came to be known as the Six-Day War, routed Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian troops..." Cohen, Warren I. The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations Volume IV, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 193. ISBN 0-521-48381-6
- "As Egypt, Syria and Jordan mobilized their forces in spring 1967 for an evident impending attack, Israel launched a preemptive strike." CNN In-Depth Specials: Mid-East, Land of Conflict, Six-Day War, CNN, Website. Accessed January 7, 2007.
- "Are there good examples of preemptive or preventive war – that is, ones that were proper to fight? Taking the most promising of the two categories – preemption – only one actual case seems clearly right: the Israeli attack on Egypt and Syria in June 1967." Betts, Richard K. "Striking First: A History of Thankfully Lost Opportunities", Ethics and International Affairs, Volume 17, No. 1 (Spring 2003).
- "While he and I agree that World War I and the Six Day War are preemptive, we code six cases differently." Reiter, Dan. "Exploding the Powder Keg Myth: Preemptive Wars Almost Never Happen", International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 5–34.
- "Ironically, when the timing, character and success of Israel's pre-emptive strike surprised the Soviets and obviated their planned intervention, it also put a damper on the festive occasion..." Ginor, Isabella. "The Cold War's Longest Cover-up: How and Why the USSR Instigated the 1967 War", Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal, Volume 7, No. 3 (September 2003).
- "It was also the primacy of Security interests over moral rectitude that prompted Israel, in the opening blow of the 1967 Six-Day War, to preemptively attack Egypt's warplanes on their bases." Brown, Seyom. International Relations in a Changing Global System, Westview Press, 1996, p. 138, footnote 6. ISBN 0-8133-2353-3
- "Israel attacked preemptively, destroying the Egyptian and Syrian air forces on the ground, and went to win a decisive victory in six days." Dershowitz, Alan M. Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. p. 81.
- "Israel staged a sudden preemptive air assault and destroyed Egypt’s air force on the ground" Encyclopaedia Britannica Six Day War, accessed 30 May 2010.
- “Cognizant since its inception of Egypt’s leading role in the Arab world, its growing military power and untiring defense of the Palestinian case in world forums, Israel launched a treacherous assault on June 5, 1967...” Egypt State Information Service.
- "The Israeli first strike is...a clear case of legitimate anticipation." Walzer, Michael. (2006 ). Just and unjust wars: a moral argument with historical illustrations. Basic Books. ISBN 0465037070.
- "The United States has often walked a fine line between preemption and prevention. In fact there have only been a handful of clear-cut cases of military preemption by any states in the last 200 years. (Israeli preemption in the Six Day War of 1967 is perhaps the most cited example)” U.S. National Security Strategy: a New Era U.S. Department of State (2002).
- The Six Day War is, "A classic example of preemptive war." Henry Shue, David Rodin Preemption: military action and moral justification
- "Classic examples of preemptive wars include the July Crisis of 1914 and the Six Day War of 1967 in which Israel preemptively attacked Egypt…" Mueller Karl P. (2007). Striking first: preemptive and preventive attack in U.S. national security. (PDF). Rand Corporation. ISBN 978-0-8330-3881-4.
- “The Six Day War between Israel and alliance of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq was an example of preemption.” And, “It exemplifies preemption.” Kegley, Charles W.; Raymond, Gregory A. (2009). The Global Future: A Brief Introduction to World Politics. Wadsworth Publishing. 3 edition. ISBN 0495569275.
- "Preemptive attack is morally justified when three conditions are fulfilled: The existence of an intention to injure, the undertaking of military preparations that increase the level of danger, and the need to act immediately because of a higher degree of risk. Since these conditions were met in Israel’s Six Day War, Israel’s preemptive attack on Egypt on June 5, 1967 was a legitimate act of self-defense.” Amstutz, Mark R. (2008). International ethics: concepts, theories, and cases in global politics. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 0742556042.
Sources supporting the view that the war on the Jordanian front was not initiated by Israel:
- "In May–June 1967 Eshkol's government did everything in its power to confine the confrontation to the Egyptian front. Eshkol and his colleagues took into account the possibility of some fighting on the Syrian front. But they wanted to avoid having a clash with Jordan and the inevitable complications of having to deal with the predominantly Palestinian population of the West Bank.
- "The fighting on the eastern front was initiated by Jordan, not by Israel. King Hussein got carried along by a powerful current of Arab nationalism. On 30 May he flew to Cairo and signed a defense pact with Nasser. On 5 June, Jordan started shelling the Israeli side in Jerusalem. This could have been interpreted either as a salvo to uphold Jordanian honor or as a declaration of war. Eshkol decided to give King Hussein the benefit of the doubt. Through General Odd Bull, the Norwegian commander of UNTSO, he sent the following message the morning of 5 June: 'We shall not initiate any action whatsoever against Jordan. However, should Jordan open hostilities, we shall react with all our might, and the king will have to bear the full responsibility of the consequences.' King Hussein told General Bull that it was too late; the die was cast." Shlaim, 2000, pp. 243–244.
The Arab view:
- “Cognizant since its inception of Egypt’s leading role in the Arab world, its growing military power and untiring defense of the Palestinian case in world forums, Israel launched a treacherous assault on June 5, 1967...” Egypt State Information Service.
- "Israel has committed a treacherous premeditated aggression against the United Arab Republic...While we in the United Arab Republic...have declared our intention not to initiate any offensive action and have fully co-operated in the attempts that were made to relieve the tension in the area", M. A. El Kony, Permanent Representative of the United Arab Republic (Egypt), UN Security Council meeting 1347 (5 June 1967)
Unjustified attack:
- “Various Israeli officials said later... that 'Israel had not in fact anticipated an imminent attack by Egypt when it struck June 5'”. The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective, p. 164; John B Quigley
- “... declassified documents from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, indicate that top officials in the Johnson administration – including Johnson's most pro-Israeli Cabinet members – did not believe war between Israel and its neighbors was necessary or inevitable, at least until the final hour. In these documents, Israel emerges as a vastly superior military power, its opponents far weaker than the menacing threat Israel portrayed, and war itself something that Nasser, for all his saber-rattling, tried to avoid until the moment his air force went up in smoke...” Tolan, Sandy. (5 June 2007). Rethinking Israel’s ‘David and Goliath’ Past, Salon.com.
- “... all US intelligence... had characterized Nasser's troops in the Sinai as "defensive in nature". (ibid)
- “(Nasser) seemed to think that he could 'ride out the storm' and that, ultimately, ‘discretion would prevail in Tel Aviv'. ("Nasser", Sir Anthony Nutting, Constable, London, 1972. p. 408)
- “President Johnson told Eban that even after instructing his ‘experts to assume all the facts that the Israelis had given them to be true’, it was still their ‘unanimous view that there is no Egyptian intention to make an imminent attack’ – a conclusion according to Eban, also reached by Israeli intelligence”. (“Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict”; Norman Finkelstein, p. 134)
- “Mossad chief Meir Amit (stated) ‘Egypt was not ready for a war’ and Nasser did not want a war’” (ibid p. 134)
- “The Israeli-compiled Middle East Record stated that ‘most observers agree’ that Nasser did not intend to launch an attack ‘and that his pledges to U Thant and to the Great Powers not to start shooting should, therefore, be accepted at their face value’.” (ibid p. 134)
- “... it is generally agreed [that] Nasser was sincere when he later said that he had no intention of launching an attack against Israel; on the contrary as he said in his 23 July speech, he believed that ‘any attack on Israel would expose us to great dangers.” (Cockburn and Cockburn, “Dangerous Liaison”, 1991, p. 137)
- “The claim that Israel was in danger of imminent destruction was propaganda aimed at the Israeli public no less than Israel’s Western sympathisers, part of what Seale has described as “one of the most extensive and remarkable exercises in psychological warfare ever attempted. Foreign intelligence agencies were in agreement that Israel would make short work of Arab armies...” ”June 5, 1967: A Retrospective View”; Centre of Policy “Analysis on Palestine; Jeremy Salt
- “Far from trying to avert conflict, the conclusion is inescapable that Israel’s military command did everything it could to bring it on.” (ibid.)
- “... all the evidence (is that) Israel was trying to bring the Arab states to war by May 1967... when Nasser closed the Strait of Tiran, the Israelis knew he had walked into their trap – had taken the bait – and could ‘barely restrain themselves’. They wanted to attack at once. Their concern was not to defuse the crisis but to destroy Arab military capacity and bring down Nasser before the moment passed.” (ibid.)
- U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban that the U.S. intelligence assessment was that "the Egyptian deployments were defensive in character and anticipatory of a possible Israeli attack". Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, May 26, 1967, 10:30 a.m.; The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael B. Oren has acknowledged that "By all reports Israel received from the Americans, and according to its own intelligence, Nasser had no interest in bloodshed..." Israel's assessment was that "Nasser would have to be deranged to take on an Israel backed by France and the U.S. Sixth Fleet. War, according to the Israelis, could only come about if Nasser felt he had complete military superiority over the IDF, if Israel were caught up in a domestic crisis, and, most crucially, was isolated internationally—a most unlikely confluence." Oren 2002, pp. 59–60).
- “The myth of Israel as victim is also reflected in the conventional wisdom about the 1967 war, which claims that Egypt and Syria are principally responsible for starting it... It is clear from the release of new documents about the war, however, that the Arabs did not intend to initiate a war against Israel in the late spring of 1967, much less try to destroy the Jewish state.” (John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt; The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Penguin Books, pp. 84–85).
- “Avi Shlaim, a distinguished Israeli ‘new historian’ writes, ‘There is general agreement among commentators that [Egyptian President] Nasser neither wanted nor planned to go to war with Israel’. (ibid p. 85)
- “Serious diplomatic efforts were also under way to solve the crisis peacefully. Yet Israel chose to attack anyway, because its leaders ultimately preferred war to a peaceful resolution of the crisis. In particular, Israel’s military commanders wanted to inflict significant military defeats on their two main adversaries – Egypt and Syria – in order to strengthen Israeli deterrence over the long term... In short, Israel was not preempting an impending attack when it struck the first blow on June 5, 1967. Instead, it was launching a preventive war – a war aimed at affecting the balance of power over time.” (ibid p. 85)
- Israel's former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, regarded as a hawk, stated that there was "no threat of destruction" but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could "exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies." Menachem Begin, the first Likud Prime Minister of Israel, also said: "In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him." Quoted in Chomsky, Noam (1999) The Fateful Triangle, South End Press, p. 100. ISBN 0896086011. Quote from Ha'aretz, March 29, 1972; for a more extensive quote, see Cooley, Green March, Black September, p. 162.
- "I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it." (Le general Rabin ne pense pas que Nasser voulait la guerre, Le Monde, February 29, 1968, quoting Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Chief of Staff in 1967. Quigley, John. The Oslo Accords: More Than Israel Deserves, American University International Law Review 12, no. 2 (1997): 285-298)
- "Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.'" The New York Times, May 11, 1997.
- Lenczowski 1990, p. 105-115, Citing Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life, and Nadav Safran, From War to War: The Arab-Israeli Confrontation, 1948-1967, p. 375
Israel clearly did not want the US government to know too much about its dispositions for attacking Syria, initially planned for June 8, but postponed for 24 hours. It should be pointed out that the attack on the Liberty occurred on June 8, whereas on June 9 at 3 AM, Syria announced its acceptance of the cease-fire. Despite this, at 7 AM, that is, four hours later, Israel’s minister of defense, Moshe Dayan, “gave the order to go into action against Syria.”
USS Liberty: LOLWUT?!
[edit]I have a slight problem with the text quoted:
however, some reject this conclusion saying the attack was to silence the ship's intelligence-gathering communications that may have warned Egypt indirectly.
Conspiracy nuts will be conspiracy nuts, but surely nobody is dumb enough to believe that the ship was sunk on purpose... In order to prevent warning the Egyptians about a war THAT HAD BEEN GOING ON FOR THREE DAYS?!
Is this just phrased clumsily here, or is it an accurate representation of the loopy conspiracy theories out there?
192.38.143.252 (talk) 16:48, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
- It’s about warning the Egyptians about the Israeli attack on the Golan Heights on 9 June (the following day). Follow the link to the main article USS Liberty incident. Edit this article if you don’t think it’s clear enough. DeCausa (talk) 19:38, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
Issue with the "Allegations of Egyptian atrocities against fellow Egyptians" Section
[edit]While reading this article I noted that the section on "Allegations of Egyptian atrocities against fellow Egyptians" is both small compared to the sections it is bracketed by, and comparatively poorly sourced and one sided. The section simply states that the Egyptians machine gunned their retreating soldiers and threw other survivors in prison camps so as that word of the catastrophic Egyptian defeat would not reach the population, and cites only one source for this, written in either 1967 or 1970 (the section's citations list both dates) by Winston Churchill's son and grandson. In comparison, the preceding section on whether the Israeli attack counts as a justified preemptive strike cites almost two dozen distinct sources and includes arguments both for and against this assertion, and the following section on Israeli war crimes is nearly twice as long, highlights claims for and against Israeli war crimes being conducted, and includes eyewitness accounts. This is a significant difference in quality and it casts doubt on the veracity of the claims made about Egyptian atrocities.
Therefore I suggest that it would be preferable to add additional citations to this section both in support and in opposition to the claims made by Churchill, or to remove the section altogether if no additional citations even mentioning the topic can be found.
Lazer Raptor (talk) 03:00, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
Censored Voices
[edit]Immediately after the 1967 war, Amos Oz and a few friends went around with a tape recorder interviewing returned soldiers about their experiences. Some of it was published as a book Siach Lochamim (The Seventh Day) but most of it was forbidden by the censors. This year a film "Censored Voices" was shown in Israel with the original recordings. An article about it is here but more is needed. The film itself is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlkEyA1pAx8 (copyright status unknown and also accuracy of subtitles unknown!). Quite a lot of the testimonies mention killing of unarmed Arabs, both in Sinai and the West Bank, and also the expulsion of Arabs from their villages. This should be mentioned somehow but work is needed. Zerotalk 03:56, 7 September 2020 (UTC) Another article about it is here. Zerotalk 05:44, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
First sentence
[edit]Why are the words "Six-Day War" in bold face in the opening sentence? They should not be. 109.144.208.240 (talk) 09:26, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
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