The Six Day War has endured for 50 years
Tony Gosling
tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Sat Jun 3 02:18:55 BST 2017
The Six Day War has endured for 50 years
This conflict has caused untold misery for those living its consequences.
Tony Walker - Show comments
A week today the world will note the 50th
anniversary of the start of the most enduring
conflict of the modern era, and one which has
caused untold misery for those living with the consequences.
On June 5, 1967, Israel launched a pre-emptive
strike against surrounding Arab states in
retaliation for an Egyptian blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-six-day-war-has-endured-for-50-years-20170526-gwe1o3.html
In a matter of hours, Israel had destroyed 90 per
cent of Egypt's Soviet-supplied air force, and
over succeeding days, in what became known as the
Six Day War, it seized the Sinai Desert and Gaza
Strip from the Egyptians, Jerusalem and the West
Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria.
Overnight, the Jewish state trebled the size of territory under its control.
Moshe Dayan, Israeli Minister of Defence during the Six Day War
By any standards this was an extraordinary
military achievement, but the question a half
century later is whether Israel, as an occupier
of several million Palestinians, has been cursed by that success.
Might it not have been desirable for the
country's leaders to declare victory and pull
back to defensible boundaries, and thus avoid the
opprobrium that inevitably accompanies occupation?
I can tell you, having observed it in various
parts of the Middle East over many years, that
occupation is as corrosive for the occupiers as it is for the occupied.
Anticipating criticism in the letters pages,
let's assert that Israel was a victim of
aggression by the Arabs led by Egypt's Gamal
Abdel Nasser, that it had every right to defend
itself to the best of its ability and, in the
process, make use of territory gained in the
conflict to negotiate a just peace.
What a smashing victory in 1967 did not entitle
Israel to was to be a permanent occupier of
territory and its people and settlers of land
seized in war in defiance of international law.
Much will be published in the next several days
hailing a stunning victory, but significantly
less attention will be paid to voices in Israel
who have sought to question that triumphalist perspective.
We should heed these voices since they represent,
in many cases, fine Jewish traditions of moral
courage and intellectual curiosity.
The distinguished Israeli writer, Amos Oz, had
this to say in the aftermath of the 1967 war: "We
are condemned now to rule people who do not want
to be ruled by us. I have fears about the kind of
seeds we will sow in the near future in the
hearts of the occupied. Even more, I have fears
about the seeds that will be planted in the hearts of the occupiers."
Some might describe Oz as a prophet without honour in his own country.
Or Benny Morris, the historian, quoted in The
Guardian who said of the great paradox of the Six Day War victory:
"On the one hand, it contributed to peace because
it was so decisive that it persuaded the Arab
regimes that Israel couldn't be beaten militarily
On the other hand, it gave rise in Israel to a
messianic right-wing expansionism and ideology
that had not really existed before 1967."
Or Tom Segev, author of the definitive work on
the 1967 war, 1967: Israel, the War and Year that
Transformed the Middle East, who observed in 2007 on the 40th anniversary:
"Forty years of oppression and Palestinian
terrorism, both extremely cruel, have undermined
Israel's Jewish and democratic foundations."
It is interesting to compare Australia's cautious
responses to Israel's 1967 war victory with
alignments of today in which conservative
politicians fall over themselves to identify with
Israeli right-wing nationalists wedded to settlements on Palestinian land.
The recent visit to Australia by Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a case in point.
Hardly a word was heard from government ministers
about Israel's continued settlement expansion.
This brings us to the arrival in the White House
of a man who has described peace between Israel
and the Palestinians as the "ultimate deal".
On his visit to the Middle East this month,
including time in Saudi Arabia, in Israel and in
the occupied Palestinian territories Donald Trump
evinced what seemed like a naive faith in his
ability to bring about a resolution of arguably
the world's most vexed conflict.
But if there is reason for the slightest optimism
it may well lie in Trump's unpredictability, and
one other important ingredient best summed up by
the Arab saying: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Thus, Israel and the Sunni Arab world led these
days by Saudi Arabia in lieu of an impoverished
Egypt might find common ground in their fear
and loathing of the Islamic Republic of Iran
whose shadow is lengthening across the entire Middle East.
Trump left the region without making any concrete
suggestions about a way forward, and may well
prove to be a false god, but at least in his
public statements he did no harm. Fifty years
after the Six Day War remade the contours of the
Middle East, Israelis and Palestinians deserve a fresh start.
Tony Walker is the co-author of Arafat: The
Biography and a former Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times.
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So much emphasis is placed on select Jewish participation in Bormann
companies that when Adolf Eichmann was seized and taken to Tel Aviv
to stand trial, it produced a shock wave in the Jewish and German
communities of Buenos Aires. Jewish leaders informed the Israeli
authorities in no uncertain terms that this must never happen again
because a repetition would permanently rupture relations with the
Germans of Latin America, as well as with the Bormann organization,
and cut off the flow of Jewish money to Israel. It never happened
again, and the pursuit of Bormann quieted down at the request of
these Jewish leaders. He is residing in an Argentinian safe haven,
protected by the most efficient German infrastructure in history as
well as by all those whose prosperity depends on his well-being.
<http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fspitfirelist.com%2Fbooks%2Fmartin-bormann-nazi-in-exile%2F&h=eAQErj17O>http://spitfirelist.com/books/martin-bormann-nazi-in-exile/
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