-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 14, 2007 9:41:40 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Did Israel's Acquisition of Nuclear Weapons Lead to the
1967 War?
Did Israel's Acquisition of Nuclear Weapons Lead to 1967 War?
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/neocons/index.html
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2006/12/
did_israels_acq.html#more
In Tuesday's New York Sun, editor Seth Lipsky refers to the Six-Day
war of 1967 in typical fashion, saying that Ariel Sharon "saved the
Jewish state" by enveloping the Egyptians in the Sinai. Lipsky's
view of the war is unreconstructed chauvinism; it shows no
familiarity with Israel's new historians, who have described the
'67 war as a terrible accident brought on by saber-rattling
militarists on both sides. Neither side really wanted war. The
Israelis were more powerful than the Arab forces, and though Israel
justly feared for its existence in the face of Arab rhetoric,
Israel over-reacted to threats out of a "psychosis of
annihilation," writes former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami.
"Yitzhak Rabin intentionally led Israel into a war with Syria...
Egypt was definitely not ready for war and Nasser did not want a
war... In Israel the road to war was paved by a genuine existential
fear --a legacy of the Ben-Gurion years-- which always led to
perceiving crises in apocalyptic terms and reacting only according
to worst-case scenarios." (From Ben-Ami's book, Scars of War,
Wounds of Peace.)
The result of this war was a disaster: the Occupied Territories,
which have destroyed Israel's idealism.
That brings me to the bomb. If you read the history of this
disastrous war, a natural question is whether Nasser massed his
forces on the Sinai border, thereby provoking the Israelis, because
he feared Israel's nuclear ambitions. Why, just three years before,
Nasser had told the U.S. that Israel's developing the bomb "would
be a cause for war, no matter how suicidal."
It is generally thought that Israel got the technology from the
French, in the late 50s, early 1960s. The countries shared an
interest. The French were still trying to hold on to Algeria, and
wanted to deflate the pan-Arab nationalism that was transforming
the region, and that flowed from Nasser.
The Israelis were also fearful of Nasser. Israeli leaders likened
him to Hitler.
What did the U.S. do? We were against Israel getting the bomb. John
Kennedy was angered by reports of what was happening at Dimona, the
plant in the Negev where the nukes were being prepared, and
insisted on inspections. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion lied to
Kennedy about Israel's intentions to evade the inspections. After
Levi Eshkol succeeded Ben-Gurion in 1963, and LBJ succeeded JFK,
Johnson hosted Eshkol at the White House —the first Israeli PM to
come there— specifically because Eshkol had departed from Ben-
Gurion's "hyperactive nuclear policy in favour of a more
conventional emphasis" (Ben-Ami says). Because of this calculated
shift, Johnson committed the U.S. to Israel's territorial integrity
and gave it more arms.
The shift was rhetorical only. Israel went ahead with its nuclear
plans, out of existential fears. What is the evidence that these
plans prompted the '67 war?
1. Three weeks before the war, on May 17, 1967, Egyptian MiGs
overflew the nuclear reactor in Dimona.
"The incident touched on one of Israel's darkest concerns, that its
pursuit of nuclear power would impel Egypt to launch a conventional
attack while it still had the chance," American/Israeli thinktanker
Michael Oren writes in his voluminous/numbing history of the war
Six Days of War. "Back in 1964, Nasser had warned the Americans
that Israel's development of nuclear capabilities 'would be a cause
for war, no matter how suicidal.' The U.S. assured Nasser that
Israel was not developing strategic weapons, and he never renewed
his threat, but the memory of it stuck with the Israelis. They
never forgot the reactor's proximity to the border, its
vulnerability to aerial bombardment. Thus, though Nasser never once
cited Dimona as a motive for his decisions in May, Israeli
commanders assumed it was and concluded that they had to strike
first. Israel's fear for the reactor—rather than Egypt's of it—was
the greater catalyst for war."
2. Israeli historian Benny Morris makes similar statements in his
book, Righteous Victims:
"Throughout the [May] crisis Israeli decision-makers were worried
by the possibility of an attack on the Dimona plant. In 1965
Nasser's confidant, the journalist Muhammad Hassnin Heikal, had
written that Arab experts believed Israel would go nuclear in three
years time and that the Arab world would have to take preemptive
action. In 1966 Nasser himself had declared that if Israel
developed an atomic bomb, Egypt's response would be a 'preemptive
war,' directed in the first instance against the nuclear production
facilities. On May 21, Eshkol had told the cabinet Defense
Committees that Egypt wanted... 'to bomb the reactor in Dimona.'
Morris says that just before the '67 war, Israel had perfected a
nuclear device. Following the Egyptian flyover on May 17, "the
Egyptian command... briefly considered and planned a preemptive air
offensive against Israeli targets—including the Dimona nuclear plant."
A couple of comments:
One good thing to come out of Iran's nuclear jousting is the
removal of the hypocrisy surrounding Israel's nuke capabilities.
Israel has never acknowledged that it has the bomb, but in slips of
the tongue during the Iran debate, a few officials have said as
much. Israel's nukes ought to be part of this discussion.
Iran's nuclear ambitions represent a true global crisis. But the
rhetoric and threats surrounding Iran's plans recapitulate those of
the '60s case, and suggest that the answer is not militarism, but
disarmament.
Seeing the effect that nukes had on Egypt in the mid-60s is a good
reminder that all people fear nuclear devices, not just Israelis.
Indeed, notwithstanding Iran's president's hateful rhetoric, the
nuclear jousting should be considered not purely in ethnic and
religious terms (neocons) but through the lens of realists: one
regional superpower (Iran) versus another (Israel), duking it out
for supremacy in the region
The false promise that Ben-Gurion made to the U.S. in the 60s was
that Israel would "not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to
the Middle East."
Indeed, Israel armed itself with nukes in part because of [false
claims] that the Egyptians were doing so.
The U.S. failed to turn down the temperature in the region then.
Maybe now's our chance.
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www.ctrl.org
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