> From: Dan Minette > From: "Andrew Paul" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >I am to young to recall the politics and events of that time. As you > >paint it, a defacto state of war existed anyway, in which case it was > >not really a pre-emptive strike. Troops were being moved > into an agreed > >de-militarized zone and shipping was threatened. If someone else is > >making the troop movements and doing the sabre rattling, > that is a very > >different thing from you doing the troop movements and sabre > rattling. > >The former is a matter of national defence, the latter is an act of > >aggression, which is what I am opposed to. > > By definition, what the Israelies did is a pre-emptive strike. >
Fine, I wont quibble about definitions. Its actually interesting, that some may call things like the war on Iraq, a "pre-emptive strike" when in reality it is a war of aggression. I think it is this new meaning I am using, and objecting too, not the Israeli style one. The one where you just invent a threat and attack it, rather than when you strike against a real and very present threat. > >And, in the long run, was it the right thing to do anyway? As events > >demonstrated, Israel had it all over the "bad guys" and it has had a > >long flow on effect in terms of setting precedents. Witness the Yom > >Kippur war in 1973. What would have happened if they had just sat and > >waited? Would Egypt have attacked, and Jordan and > Syria?Would the Middle > >East be the place it is today? Would Arabs feel so happy > with attacking > >people at will if the supposed "moral" democracies had not done it > >first? > > The Arabs did attack first: in 1948. Everyone assumed that > the state of > Israel would be a short lived failed experiment. The guess > is that the > Jews would have to be rescued from annialiation by Euorpe and > the US, and > would be easier to deal with once this gratitude balanced the > feelings from > the Holocaust. > That's a big leap. Who's idea was this actually, to send the Jews to semi-extermination as a way to make them grateful for being saved? I seem to recall reading that the Israeli's invented terror bombing, attacking the King David Hotel and blowing up the British but was all this part of some huge allied anti-Zionist plot of which I was unaware? > Second, referring to the 6-day and Yom Kipper wars, if Israel > didn't have > land into which it could have retreated with minimal risk to > its people > (Siniah and the Golan Heights), then it would have been in > horrid shape. > It is hard to mobilize reserves, if the enemy is amoung you. > > At the time, Mosha Dyan told Golda Myer "the third temple has > fallen"...stating that he thought that Israel was about to > lose. What saved > Israel was a combination of two things: > > 1) A massive, unprecedent resupply by the US. A billion > dollars worth of > materials was sent in a few days. > > 2) The US warning the Soviet Union that they would not accept > a matching > resupply of the Egyptian and Syrian allies of the Soviet > Union. They would > stop these shipments if need be. > > Kissinger said, afterwards, that this was the closest the > world had come to > nuclear war. > > Indeed, there is an unmentioned third thing. Israel probably had > disassembled nuclear weapons. It was thought, "the temple has fallen" > indicated that things were desperate enough (Israel facing total > annialistion) to ready the weapons as a last line of defense. > > One thing really worries me about your response. It seems > that you believe > that the Arab nations act very legalistically. That the Arab > attack on Yom > Kippur was not part of a long term wish of the Arabs to > remove the Jews > from Israel/Palestine and replace them with Arabs, but some > sort of view > that they were attacked first and had the right to annialate > Israel because > of that. > > I've seen this sort of reasoning from a number of Europeans. > My view, from > the history, was the only constraint on the Arabs was the > view that their > attacks might fail. When they thought they had a reasonable chance of > success, they attacked. When they thought the attacks would result in > losses for them, they withheld attack. > No, I don't think that, there has been plenty of agro from both sides. As I said, I am not a student of the arab-isreali wars and I don't hold a strong position for one side or the other. The situation sucks, the responses suck. My comments were in relation to the morality of starting wars. Your thoughts on that are of interest. Andrew _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
