I came across a most interesting article, from Mark Glenn's excellent website: "The Ugly Truth", at www.theuglytruth.wordpress.com, that was originally written by Ray McGovern, and is entitled: "Applying The 6 Day War To Iran". It covers an interesting and very false assertion recently by the Washington Post, that at this time, the state of Israel is in much the same "peril" as what it was like just before it attacked its neighbours in the so "pre-emptive war" called the "Six Day War" in June, 1967, and is looking at the same logic for launching a new "pre-emptive" war of aggression against Iran. I want to share this information with my own readers, so I have that entire article right here for everyone to see for themselves. I do have some of my own comments, as usual, to follow:
Applying the Six-Day War to Iran
With the 45th anniversary of the
Six-Day War of June 1967 coming early next month, pro-Israel pundits
like syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer are again promoting
Israel’s faux narrative on the reasons behind Israel’s decision to
attack its neighbors.
The Krauthammers of our
domesticated, corporate media seem bent on waging pre-emptive war
against an accurate historical rendering of the actual objectives behind
that Israeli offensive that overwhelmed Arab armies and seized large
swaths of Arab territory, land that hard-line Zionists refer to as
“Greater Israel,” i.e. rightly theirs.
With its surprise attacks on June
5, 1967, Israel rapidly defeated the armies of its Arab neighbors. It
gained control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the
West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from
Syria.
The Sinai was returned to Egypt
in 1979 as a result of the Camp David peace accord, a land-for-peace
swap that U.S. President Jimmy Carter demanded and that then-Israeli
Prime Minister Menachem Begin deeply resented.
Jewish settlement has proceeded
apace on other territories conquered in the Six-Day War, particularly in
the Palestinian West Bank, which Israel’s ruling Likud Party refers to
by its Biblical names Judea and Samaria.
Likud’s charter declares that
“the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization
of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the
unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. … The
Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will
prevent their uprooting.”
In other words, in the Six-Day
War, Israel seized land that hard-line Zionists consider to be part of
their ancestral legacy. The surprise attack in 1967 was the means to
that end. The Likud Party emerged several years later with the explicit
intent of consolidating that control through a settlement policy called
“changing the facts on the ground.”
Time to Worry
Yet, despite Israel’s continued
expansion into those Palestinian lands, pro-Israel pundits are in a
defensive mood these days, and with good reason. They see a particular
need this year to whitewash Israel’s surprise attack on its Arab
neighbors 45 years ago – not only because the anniversary is likely to
draw more than the usual attention – but also because Israel’s strategic
position has deteriorated markedly in the past year.
For instance, the 80 million-plus
Egyptians are no longer neutered by the joint Mubarak-Israel-U.S.
effort to repress them and co-opt them into passivity vis-à-vis the
Palestinians. Serious contenders in the upcoming Egyptian election have
said they would reconsider the Egypt-Israel Treaty of 1979.
Some leading Egyptian politicians
have added that they would fling wide open Egypt’s border with Gaza,
where about 1.5 million Palestinians live in what amounts to an open-air
prison. These Egyptians also are saying strongly sympathetic things
about the widespread suffering in Gaza and the West Bank.
Equally important, Egypt’s
present government has already nullified the sweetheart arrangement
under which Egypt was providing natural gas to Israel at bargain
basement prices. (That alone is a very big deal.)
And, in sad contrast to the
deafening silence of senior American officials regarding Israel’s
reckless killing of U.S. citizens, such as Rachel Corrie in 2003,
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to demand an
apology for Israel’s killing of Turkish citizens aboard the Mavi Marmara
on May 31, 2010.
The result of that dispute is a
sharp diminution in what used to be very close military ties between
Turkey and Israel — not to mention a lot of ill will, which can be very
corrosive over the longer run.
Misinformed Americans
Regarding the events of 1967,
America’s pro-Israel pundit class knows only too well that Egyptians,
Turks, Syrians, Jordanians and other audiences in the Middle East will
not buy Israel’s faux-history of the Six-Day War — many having been on
the receiving end of it.
Thus, it is abundantly clear that
the primary targets of the disinformation are Americans like those who
subscribe to the neoconservative Washington Post, whose editors
in recent decades have been careful to keep their readers malnourished
on the thin gruel of watered-down (or unreliable) facts about the Middle
East (think, Iraq’s WMDs).
So, it would be simply too much
to acknowledge, as former Israeli Prime Minister Begin did 30 years ago,
in an uncommon burst of hubris-tinged honesty, that Israel’s attack on
its neighbors in 1967 was in no way a defensive war — or even a
“pre-emptive” war (there being no really dangerous Egyptian or other
threat to pre-empt).
While Prime Minister in 1982,
Begin declared: “In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army
concentrations in the Sinai approaches (did) not prove that Nasser was
really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided
to attack him.”
Such real history would lift the
veil now shrouding Israel’s version that plays up the “threat” posed by
Egypt and disguises the grand enterprise to expand Israel’s borders and —
in double-contravention of international law — to colonize the occupied
territories.
To bolster Israel’s heroic
rendition of the Six-Day War – and to apply its supposed lessons to
Israel’s current plans to bomb Iran – Krauthammer reprised that triumphal version of Israel masterfully defending itself against imminent destruction by the Arabs.
“On June 5 (1967), Israel
launched a preemptive strike on the Egyptian air force, then proceeded
to lightning victories on three fronts,” Krauthammer wrote, cooing: “The
Six-Day War is legend.”
He then overlaid that gauzy
history onto today’s confrontation with Iran: “Israelis today face the
greatest threat to their existence — nuclear weapons in the hands of
apocalyptic mullahs publicly pledged to Israel’s annihilation — since
May ’67. The world is again telling Israelis to do nothing as it looks
for a way out. But if such a way is not found — as in ’67 — Israelis
know that they will once again have to defend themselves, by
themselves.”
Noting Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s recent coalition with the rival Kadima Party, Krauthammer
also mocked the importance of former Israeli intelligence chiefs
cautioning against a rush to war with Iran.
He wrote: “So much for the recent media hype about some great domestic resistance to Netanyahu’s hard line on Iran. Two notable retired intelligence figures were widely covered here
for coming out against him. Little noted was that one had been passed
over by Netanyahu to be the head of Mossad, while the other had been
fired by Netanyahu as Mossad chief (hence the job opening). …
“The [new] wall-to-wall coalition demonstrates Israel’s political readiness to attack, if necessary. (Its military readiness is
not in doubt.) Those counseling Israeli submission, resignation or just
endless patience can no longer dismiss Israel’s tough stance as the
work of irredeemable right-wingers.”
After reading this Krauthammer op-ed in the May 10 Washington Post, I
decided, against my better judgment, to invest a half-hour writing a
letter to the editor, trying to make it as factual as possible. Several
days after its submission, I have given up any meager hope I may have
harbored that the Post would actually print it.
Perhaps that half-hour investment will not have been a complete waste of time if I can share the result with you:
Letter to the Editor, Washington Post, May 13, 2012
In his May 10 op-ed column,
“Echoes of ’67: Israel unites,” Charles Krauthammer refers to May 1967
as “Israel’s most fearful, desperate month” and compares it to today,
claiming that Iran poses “the greatest threat” to Israel’s existence.
It ain’t necessarily so. In
August 1982, then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin admitted publicly: “In
June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the
Sinai approaches (did) not prove that Nasser was really about to attack
us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
Today’s “threat” from Iran is
equally ephemeral. Krauthammer, though, warns ominously about “nuclear
weapons in the hands of apocalyptic mullahs publicly pledged to Israel’s
annihilation.”
The allusion is to an illusion —
the alleged threat by Iranian President Ahmadinejad to “wipe Israel off
the map.” But he never said that, an inconvenient reality reluctantly acknowledged by
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor early last month. And in
January, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his Israeli counterpart both
publicly affirmed the unanimous assessment of U.S. intelligence that
Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon.
Who, then, is being apocalyptic? Krauthammer’s agenda is so transparent that a rigorous Fact Check should be de rigueur.
It must also be added that the 6 day war of June 1967 also saw the infamous attack by Israeli forces on their so called "friend" the United States, when they decided to bomb and torpedo the USS Liberty in international waters that resulted in the murder of some 34 innocent sailors, and wounding some 171 others. To this day, the American government still has never openly admitted that this was a deliberate attack by their most precious "ally" in the Middle East.
And we must also not forget that the so called "Six Day War" saw the Israelis massacring hundreds if not thousands of captured prisoners, in direct violation of the prisoners' rights according to the Geneva Conventions. That action was a war crime, and to this day, the culprits still have never been brought up on charges or brought to justice.
What we have here by the Washington Post is another excuse to try to convince the more skeptical American public that a new war of aggression is necessary, when there is absolutely no proof anywhere of any Iranian wrongdoings!
Our so called "recorded" history is a real laugher when it comes to the 1967 Six Day War of Israeli aggression against its neighbors, and it is truly time that people learned the real reasons for that war of conquest as Ray McGovern points out. This is essential now more than ever especially when it comes to these criminals wanting a new war against Iran.. For if we do not learn from history, we are definitely doomed to repeat it.
More to come
NTS
No comments:
Post a Comment