Saturday, June 02, 2007

A PREVIEW ON HOW THE MEDIA WILL COVER SIX DAY WAR: Martin Peretz of The New Republic gives a sample of how The New York Times remembers The Six Day War:
When you don't know history or forget it you confabulate the past. Sometimes in grand dimensions. And sometimes in smaller ones. But even small distortions tell big lies. And that's what, I regret to say, is what The New York Times has done... again.

On May 28, the Times published an obit for Indar Jit Rikhye, a former general in the Indian Army and a decorated officer in the British military during World War II, who died at 86 a week earlier in Charlottesville, Virginia. The real reason for the paper's substantial necrologue for Rikhye was that he had been for more than a decade a commander of U.N. peacekeeping forces on four continents. That's why I recognized his name. He was on the spot when the United Nations Emergency Forces (UNEF), which had been placed in the Sinai as a buffer between Israel and Egypt as part of the settlement of the 1956 Suez crisis, withdrew from the area on demand from Gamal Abdel Nasser who was mobilizing for war and desperately wanted UNEF out of his way. Alas, for Nasser and the whole portentous Nasserist ideology, the war turned out to be the Six Day War.

Here's is how the Times' obituarist, Warren Hoge, describes the situation: "(Rikhye) oversaw the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force in Gaza and the Sinai in June 1967, when it found itself in the path of the advancing Israel Defense Forces and had all its vehicles wrecked, its communications knocked out and three of its soldiers killed."
Everyone in the media is going to try to find a new angle on The Six Day War.
Expect more of the same.

UPDATE:

Powerline provides The New York Times correction, which came 4 days later:
An obituary on Monday about Indar Jit Rikhye, an Indian general who was a top adviser to United Nations peacekeepers, referred incompletely to the circumstances of the withdrawal overseen by General Rikhye of the United Nations Emergency Force in Gaza and the Sinai in June 1967. While he and some peacekeepers were caught in the path of Israeli forces, the Israelis were not responsible for their expulsion. Egypt had expelled the peacekeepers from Sinai and Gaza in mid-May, which Israel viewed as part of an Egyptian plan for war. General Rikhye — who was trying to appeal that expulsion — and some men remained. When Israel pre-emptively attacked Egypt in early June, starting the Six-Day War, the remaining peacekeepers were in their path. [emphasis added]
The New York Times: All The News That's Fit To Print (more or less).

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well said! U Thant "explained" in his autobiography that when he agreed to carry out Nasser's directive to withdraw the UNEF, Egyptian troops had already overrun the UN Posts, so the UN troops were looking at the backs of the Egyptians advancing towards Israel rather than performing as a buffer force between the two countries!

On May 17 1967: "Now they have moved forces in front of the UN Emergency Force on the Israel-UAR border and all but ordered it to withdraw." - Memorandum From the President's Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson

All this material is in the public domain - why has the NYT not seen it?

Terry
Coordinator of www.sixdaywar.co.uk