Technorati Tag: Israel and Six Day War and Tom Segev.
"The biggest myth going is that somehow there was not a real and immediate Arab threat, that somehow Israel could have negotiated itself outside the crisis of 1967, and that it wasn't facing an existential threat, or facing any threat at all," said Oren, who is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at Jerusalem's Shalem Center and author of Six Days of War: June 1967. He noted that this was the premise of Tom Segev's book, 1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East. "What's remarkable is that all the people alleging this - not one of them is working from Arabic sources. It's quite extraordinary when you think about it. It's almost as if Israel were living in a universe by itself. It's a deeply solipsistic approach to Middle East history."You mean Israel is not living in a universe by itself?
UPDATE II: Mmmm, looks like the short answer is getting longer. Again, from Michael Oren; this time from The Jewish Press: Did Israel Seek War In 1967?Andrew White, London: Tom Segev's new book on the Six Day War received a gushing review in this week's Economist (26 May 2007). Is this the beginning of Six Day War revisionist history?
Michael Oren: Alas, it's not the beginning. Segev's primary thesis, namely, that the Six-Day War was the product of irrational Israeli fears and war-mongering, has been around for many years. It is implicit in Jimmy Carter's recent book, which describes Israel-quite wrongly-as having attacked Jordan and Syria pre-emptively in 1967. It is crucial to note, however, that neither Segev nor Carter employ even one Arabic source. In essence, the Arabs simply do not exist for them. The end result is not only an injustice to Israel but moreover gross discrimination toward the Arabs, who are treated as two-dimensional figures, incapable of independent decision-making and political dynamics.
Papers released by Britain’s Public Record Office and the United States National Archives, for example, provide fresh insights into the diplomacy of the 1940’s and 1950’s, particularly in relation to the Arab countries, whose archives remain closed indefinitely. But when it comes to Arab-Israeli history, no collection can rival the Israel State Archives, which in addition to the wealth of firsthand accounts it contains, is particularly liberal in its declassification policy.Read the whole thing.
These documents, tendentiously read and selectively cited, have been marshaled to substantiate the most radical of revisionist theories about the 1948 War of Independence and the 1956 Sinai Campaign. With the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War now upon us, the same methodology is again about to be applied to smashing the “myths” of 1967.
... Israeli “fear had no basis in reality,” Haaretz journalist Tom Segev writes in his newly translated book 1967. “There was indeed no justification for the panic that preceded the war, nor for the euphoria that took hold after it.”
But can these conclusions stand up to straightforward historical scrutiny? Can the assertion that Israel wanted the war, did little or nothing to avert it, or even instigated it, be substantiated by Israeli declassified documents from the period, the favored weapons of the new historians?
Files from the Israel State Archives reveal a great deal about Israeli policymaking and diplomacy of the time, and about what Israel’s leaders thought, feared and strove for during three weeks of intense diplomatic efforts leading up to June 5, 1967. Far from even hinting that Israel deliberately brought about the conflict, the record shows that Israel was desperate to avoid war and, up to the eve of battle, pursued every avenue in an effort to avert it – even at great strategic and economic cost to the nation.
Israeli diplomatic documents from the period leading up to June 5, 1967 offer overwhelming evidence against any suggestion that Israel sought war with the Arabs. Nor do the tens of thousands of declassified papers contain a single reference to any desire to divert public opinion from the economic situation, to overthrow Arab rulers, or to conquer and occupy the West Bank, the Sinai or the Golan Heights.
Nefesh B'Nefesh is initiating a simple project this week called "12 to 12". We are asking every Oleh to compose a list of 12 great things you appreciate and love about living in Israel and email your message to 12 (or more) friends abroad.Read Sabra's 12 reasons
Technorati Tag: Israel.
One of the biggest scams perpetrated on America, Israel and the West by Islam, right up there with that "Religion of Peace" business, is the idea that Muslims are so fanatically devoted that they aren't afraid to die. As proof of that they've thrown suicide bombers at us who will deliberately go out and kill themselves, just to take some of us with them.Read the whole thing.
Suicide attacks are not a new tactic. Muslims themselves have used variations of it for centuries going back to John Paul Jones' experience in the Russian fleet and encountered Turkish fireboats that tried to ram Russian ships while still manned by crews. But the Muslim suicide bomber itself is a sham.
Technorati Tag: Suicide Bombers and Kamikazes.
Sharansky views the Six Day War in terms of the beginning of the fall of the Soviet empire. In his view, the 1967 war brought with it the sobering realization for the Soviets that they would not dominate the Middle East, as well as the emboldening of Jewish national identity amongst Soviet Jews who would begin to agitate to leave the Soviet Union creating a movement that undermined the very notion of the idyllic worker’s paradise and caused the foundations of Soviet society to crumble.
Sharansky explained in passing, how the compulsion of Soviet Jews to excel in their professional lives was an expression of their identity in a society where nearly all of them were completely disconnected from knowing what it meant to be a Jew in any other way.
Today, more than one million Jews from Russian-speaking countries live in Israel. Their presence has changed the face of Israeli society in many spheres—they’re the brains behind our bio-tech and hi-tech industry; hospitals and clinics are full of Russian-speaking doctors and technicians; Israel would have few world class sports figures or sports trainers without the Russian speakers and our arts scene is filled with musicians, artists and actors trained in the academies of Moscow and St Petersburg.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Sharansky and Six Day War and Russian Jews.
Technorati Tag: Israel and IDF.
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Jack Kevorkian, the former pathologist once known as Doctor Death, says he will never again counsel a terminally ill person on how to die. But eight years behind bars and a strict list of promises to gain parole have done nothing to mellow the blunt, passionate, combative advocate for physician-assisted suicide.[Emphasis added]Charen notes that Kevorkian was less then discriminating when it came to helping people he did not know kill commit suicide:
He is a twisted man who presided over the deaths of at least 130 people, some of whom he had known only 24 hours before agreeing to help end their lives. One of his "patients" Rebecca Badger, who was 39, apparently told Dr. Death that she wished to die because she had multiple sclerosis (a non-fatal condition). But it gets worse. When the coroner performed an autopsy on her body he found no disease. "I can show you every slice from her brain and spinal cord," he told the Washington Post, "and she doesn't have a bit of MS. She looked robust, fairly healthy. Everything else is in order, except she's dead."This is the "the blunt, passionate, combative advocate for physician-assisted suicide"--which just goes to show you that when it comes to killing, terrorist attacks on civilian targets are not the only thing the media can spin.
Technorati Tag: Kevorkian and Dr. Death.
Against the backdrop of civil war, Abraham Lincoln stirred Americans by appealing to their "better angels." Now some of those angels appear in an unprecedented study about Muslims in the United States--and they may show us how to prevent civil war in Europe.Read the whole thing.
"Muslim Americans," released by the Pew Research Center, contains moments of bad news. For example, one in four respondents under the age of 30 accepts suicide bombing. As a reformed-minded Muslim, I say that honoring any religion of peace through violence is like preserving virginity through pre-marital sex. Think about it.
But the Pew report offers a lot more good news. Political Islam has not caught on in America as it has in Europe because most Muslims in the U.S. are--dare it be said--treated with dignity.
The vast majority of those surveyed like their communities and describe their lives as "pretty happy" or "very happy." Which means lobbyists do not speak for Muslim Americans when they cry that the U.S. hates Islam.
...Europe, take notes. America, take a break from self-flagellation. Reformist Muslims, take your cue. In the U.S., you have the possibility of a voice. Islam's better angels depend on it.
Technorati Tag: Moderate Muslims and Irshad Manji.
As part of Al Jazeera's 1967 anniversary coverage, Rob Winder visits the southern Israeli town of Sderot, where rocket attacks by Palestinian fighters from Gaza have brought the town close to collapse.Oh yeah, Israel fires rockets on civilians in Gaza all the time.
History does not mean a lot in the Israeli town of Sderot.
The 40th anniversary of the 1967 war means little to people who live in fear caused by a conflict very much alive and well.
Despite a relative lull in recent days, the town and its surrounding area continue to be hit by rockets fired by Palestinian fighters in Gaza, just three kilometres away.
Two people have been killed by the missiles in the past two weeks and up to half of Sderot's 24,000-strong population are believed to have fled.
The damage and deaths caused by the rockets compared to those carried out in Gaza by Israel are minimal, but the fear that grips the town is palpable.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Sderot and Al-Jazeera.
