----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Paul" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 9:57 PM Subject: RE: Bitter Fruit
>I am to young to recall the politics and events of that time. As you >paint it, a defacto state of war existed anyway, in which case it was >not really a pre-emptive strike. Troops were being moved into an agreed >de-militarized zone and shipping was threatened. If someone else is >making the troop movements and doing the sabre rattling, that is a very >different thing from you doing the troop movements and sabre rattling. >The former is a matter of national defence, the latter is an act of >aggression, which is what I am opposed to. By definition, what the Israelies did is a pre-emptive strike. >And, in the long run, was it the right thing to do anyway? As events >demonstrated, Israel had it all over the "bad guys" and it has had a >long flow on effect in terms of setting precedents. Witness the Yom >Kippur war in 1973. What would have happened if they had just sat and >waited? Would Egypt have attacked, and Jordan and Syria?Would the Middle >East be the place it is today? Would Arabs feel so happy with attacking >people at will if the supposed "moral" democracies had not done it >first? The Arabs did attack first: in 1948. Everyone assumed that the state of Israel would be a short lived failed experiment. The guess is that the Jews would have to be rescued from annialiation by Euorpe and the US, and would be easier to deal with once this gratitude balanced the feelings from the Holocaust. Second, referring to the 6-day and Yom Kipper wars, if Israel didn't have land into which it could have retreated with minimal risk to its people (Siniah and the Golan Heights), then it would have been in horrid shape. It is hard to mobilize reserves, if the enemy is amoung you. At the time, Mosha Dyan told Golda Myer "the third temple has fallen"...stating that he thought that Israel was about to lose. What saved Israel was a combination of two things: 1) A massive, unprecedent resupply by the US. A billion dollars worth of materials was sent in a few days. 2) The US warning the Soviet Union that they would not accept a matching resupply of the Egyptian and Syrian allies of the Soviet Union. They would stop these shipments if need be. Kissinger said, afterwards, that this was the closest the world had come to nuclear war. Indeed, there is an unmentioned third thing. Israel probably had disassembled nuclear weapons. It was thought, "the temple has fallen" indicated that things were desperate enough (Israel facing total annialistion) to ready the weapons as a last line of defense. One thing really worries me about your response. It seems that you believe that the Arab nations act very legalistically. That the Arab attack on Yom Kippur was not part of a long term wish of the Arabs to remove the Jews from Israel/Palestine and replace them with Arabs, but some sort of view that they were attacked first and had the right to annialate Israel because of that. I've seen this sort of reasoning from a number of Europeans. My view, from the history, was the only constraint on the Arabs was the view that their attacks might fail. When they thought they had a reasonable chance of success, they attacked. When they thought the attacks would result in losses for them, they withheld attack. Indeed, both the actions and rhetoric of the Arabs indicated that they were working towards restoring Israel as either an Arab state or parts of Arab states. There were regular calls for the elimination of the "illegal" Israel. There was no effort to integrate the Palestinians into the countries in which they took refuge. Rather, they were kept in long standing refugee camps. The only logical reason for doing this is to use them as a weapon (both diplomatically and via guerrilla attacks) against Israel. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
