Letters to the Editor
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Typo?
"The 'Exodus' history, in which Arabs are alternately pathetic or malicious, holds no room for a more layered narrative of the struggle between Arabs in Jews ..."
Shouldn't that be "Arabs and Jews"?
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Blood, oil, sweat, and toil
I don't think this is particularly surprising; Israel's always had a tech advantage relative to its Arab neighbors, and after 1967's victory, got to the front of the American foreign/military aid line, where it's comfortably been for a very long time (although it finally appears to be slightly displaced, it's still surely in the top five, maybe $3-4 billion a year?)
The timing of increased US interest in and support for Israel is interesting, paralleling our increased thirst for foreign oil -- and for controlling those oil resources.
I suppose having a client state like Israel in the region to draw fire for us keeps the region less unified and more favorable to our kind of support (in terms of Arab countries that recognize Israel's right to exist, versus ones who don't; ones that are Islamist and ones that are nationalist/fascist -- with American aid flowing to the ones who play ball, while us boycotting, embargoing, and/or invadings the ones who don't -- that seems natural on the face of it, but the ones playing ball are pursuing policies that create the fabled instability in the region, turning it into a powderkeg, and feed the Islamist movement, and make us "The Great Satan").
Israel's illegal, undeclared nukes and the double standard we have toward them in international law doesn't suit our national interest -- and, in truth, doesn't suit Israel's long-term interests, either; it makes them too dependent on our aid as we continue to stir the pot in the region; there's a price to be paid for being on our payroll.
Our whole Middle East policy is a disaster, and will likely remain in place until every drop of oil has been wrung from the region; then we'll move on, and leave Israel twisting in the wind.
I don't think our assorted aid to the region helps make it a more peaceful place; I think our aid makes it a more violent, dangerous place.
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Oh GoldenBoy, GoldenBoy, Where Art Thou GoldenBoy?
I figure it's only a matter of time before he shows up to start in on his Zionist, Islamophobe tirade...
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I'm not going to talk about Zionism
Or the Holocaust, or Jews, or anything like that. What we need to do is to be even-handed in that region. For far too many years, US foreign policy has allowed or encouraged Israel's preemptive wars, and see what happens? We do one for ourself. How has that Iraq business, our "three-week" war, played out, anyway? We have pushed other regimes around as if they were irrelevant, and laid our thumb on the scales over and over. See what it gets you? We've had the wonderful experience of Iran's blowback, and Afghanistan's, and Islamic revolts replacing the left nationalism of Nasser with al-Qaeda. The answer really isn't aggressive war, but neutral standards of human rights which we apply to all nations. The worst danger we have is turning into a decadent, belligerent empire. We're a republic.
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Slackie's Onalysis...
...is what I wish I had the insight to express. I had the same thoughts, but w'out the versedness to express them so eloquently.
The fact that Israel is the cause to champion for so many evangelicals, those that have our appointed "president"'s ear, scares me.
That which said evangelicals are less proud to announce, is that that they embrace the notion that those Israelis who don't embrace Christ, at the hour of their supposedly Revelations-foretold Biblical demise, will be cast into Hell. As a true Christian, that scares the f@*k outta me. I would hope it would, too, their Israeli "beneficiaries."
Thank you, Slackie.
Erik
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Smacks of revisionism
In both "The Russians Were Coming" google it, it's online, and "Foxbats Over Dimona" there's substantial evidence that the Soviet Union both pushed and armed Egypt with their latest weapons, and, prepared to invade Israel themselves up to and including a nuclear strike in order to remove the only vestige of American influence, however limited in the middle east. And limited, because the US was up to that point never a strong backer of Israel anyway.
But this is Salon and it's been at least two weeks for a Jewslaming Article from Joan and Gary.
Anyway, when Iran nukes Tel Aviv I'm sure I'll see a long column here about Zionist agression.
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This is of course will be June's all time high post count hatefest at Salon
Must be tough to find relevance in the dog days of summer.
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Not sure what the point of this article is
Really. What’s the point of this article? That the odds were not really stacked up against Israel during the 67 war and that the war was not of necessity? Hmm. So what?
Now onto the content of this article. But first, a sidetrack to high-school history.
When I was in highschool, I had a great history teacher – Mr. Vigilante. Mr. Vigilante didn’t want to go into the blow-by-blow military history of the civil war. He admitted he didn’t know the details of the battles and he was not a military historian. So he presented the war-history (not the political aspects mind you) this way. “At the beginning of the Civil War, the North had higher popularion. That’s +2. The South had a smaller population…+1, and better generals, +1. So 2 =2. Later in the war, the North got better generals…+1. Now the war became 3>2. The North won.”
Applying this style of military history analysis to the 1967 Six Day war… Egypt and the Arab countries had much greater population than Israel and larger armies…+2. They had twice as many tanks. +1. They surrounded Israel… + 1. On the other side of the equation, Israel had a smaller population…+1. They had a better air-force. +1. They had better generals and a better military culture +2. And they trained day and night for more than a year on tactics to destroy the Arab airforces and then use air-superiority to turn back the enemy. +4. So the equation goes 8>4. Israel won.
Who is David and who is Goliath? Does it matter? Israeli leaders did not know they were going to win. They perceived they were outnumbered and surrounded…and that perception was right.
Did Nasser want to start the war? Again, does it matter? It has been documented elsewhere that he was looking for dialogue with Israel. He tried to mobilize his population by promising to “push the Jews into the sea” (and that was a literal refrain which Arab radio stations continuously repeated before the war…which the Jews of Israel heard) The final line was crossed when Jordan put its military under Nasser’s command. Did Nasser want to start the war just then? Maybe not…maybe someone under his command was telling him that the war should wait until the army commanders were trained up on better tactics. Maybe the military build-up was just a negotiating ploy. The fact is, he could have publicly called for peaceful resolution, but instead he called for the destruction of Israel and he unified the Arab armies, apparently for that purpose.
Oh, and by the way…at that time, America had given Israel very little support. The planes, tanks, and guns mostly came from France. And Israeli had no plans to take over Sinai, East Jerusalem, or Gaza. Arab forces in Gaza and East Jerusalem started lobbing artillery shells into Jewish neighborhoods from Gaza and E. Jerusalem. The Israeli army particularly did not want Gaza, which was a big refugee slum (as it mostly is today).