----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Paul" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 6:57 PM Subject: RE: Arab-Israel 1948, 1967 & 1973 wars
>Fine, I wont quibble about definitions. Its actually interesting, that >some may call things like the war on Iraq, a "pre-emptive strike" when >in reality it is a war of aggression. It certainly isn't a typical war of agression. In many ways, it would be closer to say that a cease fire had been terminated. For example, British and American fighters controlled 2/3rds of the airspace in order to protect Shiite and Kurds from massive retaliation by Hussein. In particular, the Kurds were generally free from Hussein's rule, as a result of the air cover and their own military forces. >I think it is this new meaning I >am using, and objecting too, not the Israeli style one. The one where >you just invent a threat and attack it, rather than when you strike >against a real and very present threat. Even though no WMD has been found, and that can be said in hindsight, given what was known at the time; it is hard to claim that the threat was invented out of whole cloth. The disagreement that existed between analyists who had access to the general pre-1998 data, was that the difference was over the size and immediacy of the threat, not it's existance. Even the UN >> 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. > >That's a big leap. Who's idea was this actually, to send the Jews to >semi-extermination as a way to make them grateful for being saved? I didn't mean that. The idea of Zionism came from Jews after the Dryfus affair convinced many that they would never be accepted as full citizens in Europe. After WWII, many walked hundreds of miles and boarded crowded ships to get to Israel....in the hopes that they could make a home of their own there. The movement to Israel was (possibly with a rare exception that I don't know about) voluntary. I >seem to recall reading that the Israeli's invented terror bombing, attacking the >King David Hotel and blowing up the British but was all this part of some huge >allied anti-Zionist plot of which I was unaware? There was no Israel at that time, the British ruled Palestine at that time, but the bombers were Zionists. The King David hotel was the headquarters of the British Secretariate at the time. Warning of the attack was given, but whether it arrived in time to clear the hotel was/is in dispute. It is fairly well agreed that the warning was not passed on to the residents of the hotel....but there are differences in the accounts as to whether the warning was given with enough time. This group clearly didn't invent terror bombing, I know that some anarchists participated in this type of bombing years ago. > 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. > > > 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. > >No, I don't think that, there has been plenty of agro from both sides. >As I said, I am not a student of the arab-isreali wars and I don't hold >a strong position for one side or the other. The situation sucks, the >responses suck. My comments were in relation to the morality of starting >wars. Your thoughts on that are of interest. I see an asymmetry here that I guess you don't. For the first 25 or so years of Israel's existence, it was the stated goal of the Arab governments to wipe "the Zionist entity" off the face of the map. I don't think there is any evidence that Israel planned to eliminate the existence of Arab countries. I can go on with this, but it isn't your chosen topic of discussion....so I won't. I guess the point is that I don't know what Israel could have done or can now do to virtually guarantee that adoption of UN Resolution 242 would be implemented as a major step towards a permanent peace. If I were to magically run the PLO and have full authority over all the Palestinian movements; I could probably get that within 6 months. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
