Did the Egyptians actually
start the 1967 war, as Israel originally claimed?
"The former Commander of the
Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, regarded as a hawk, stated
that there was 'no threat of destruction' but that the attack on
Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that
Israel could 'exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she
now embodies.'...Menahem Begin had the following remarks to
make: 'In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army
concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser
was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves.
We decided to attack him.' "Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful
Triangle."
Was the 1967 war defenisve?
- continued
"I do not think Nasser wanted
war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been
sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew
it." Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Chief of Staff in 1967, in Le
Monde, 2/28/68
Moshe Dayan posthumously
speaks out on the Golan Heights
"Moshe Dayan, the celebrated
commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to
conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the
Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz
residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights
did so less for security than for the farmland...[Dayan stated]
'They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land...We
would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible
to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance
that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we
would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the
Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.
And then we would use artillery
and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The
Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to
us.'" The New York Times, May 11, 1997
The history of Israeli
expansionism
"The acceptance of partition
does not commit us to renounce Transjordan; one does not demand
from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in
the boundaries fixed today. But the boundaries of Zionist
aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external
factor will be able to limit them." David Ben-Gurion, in
1936, quoted in Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Expansionism - continued
"The main danger which Israel,
as a 'Jewish state', poses to its own people, to other Jews and
to its neighbors, is its ideologically motivated pursuit of
territorial expansion and the inevitable series of wars
resulting from this aim...No zionist politician has ever
repudiated Ben-Gurion's idea that Israeli policies must be based
(within the limits of practical considerations) on the
restoration of Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish
state." Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, "Jewish History,
Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years."
Expansionism - continued
In Israeli Prime Minister Moshe
Sharatt's personal diaries, there is an excerpt from May of 1955
in which he quotes Moshe Dayan as follows: "[Israel] must see
the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to
keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward
this end it may, no - it must - invent dangers, and to do this
it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge...And above
all - let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that
we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space."
Quoted in Livia Rokach, "Israel's Sacred Terrorism."
But wasn't the occupation of
Arab lands necessary to protect Israel's security?
"Senator [J.William Fulbright]
proposed in 1970 that America should guarantee Israel's security
in a formal treaty, protecting her with armed forces if
necessary. In return, Israel would retire to the borders of
1967. The UN Security Council would guarantee this arrangement,
and thereby bring the Soviet Union - then a supplier of arms and
political aid to the Arabs - into compliance. As Israeli troops
were withdrawn from the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank they would be replaced by a UN peacekeeping force.
Israel would agree to accept a certain number of Palestinians
and the rest would be settled in a Palestinian state outside
Israel.
"The plan drew favorable
editorial support in the United States. The proposal, however,
was flatly rejected by Israel. 'The whole affair disgusted
Fulbright,' writes [his biographer Randall] Woods. 'The Israelis
were not even willing to act in their own self-interest.'"
Allan Brownfield in "Issues of the American Council for
Judaism." Fall 1997.[Ed.-This was one of many such proposals]
What happened after the 1967
war ended?
"In violation of international
law, Israel has confiscated over 52 percent of the land in the
West Bank and 30 percent of the Gaza Strip for military use or
for settlement by Jewish civilians...From 1967 to 1982, Israel's
military government demolished 1,338 Palestinian homes on the
West Bank. Over this period, more than 300,000 Palestinians were
detained without trial for various periods by Israeli security
forces." Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli
Occupation," ed. Lockman and Beinin.
World opinion on the
legality of Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza.
"Under the UN Charter there can
lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state
acting in self-defense. The response of other states to Israel's
occupation shows a virtually unanimous opinion that even if
Israel's action was defensive, its retention of the West Bank
and Gaza Strip was not...The [UN] General Assembly characterized
Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a denial of
self determination and hence a 'serious and increasing threat to
international peace and security.' " John Quigley, "Palestine
and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Examples of the effects of
Israeli occupation
"A study of students at
Bethlehem University reported by the Coordinating Committee of
International NGOs in Jerusalem showed that many families
frequently go five days a week without running water...The study
goes further to report that, 'water quotas restrict usage by
Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, while Israeli
settlers have almost unlimited amounts.'
"A summer trip to a Jewish
settlement on the edge of the Judean desert less than five miles
from Bethlehem confirmed this water inequity for us. While
Bethlehemites were buying water from tank trucks at highly
inflated rates, the lawns were green in the settlement.
Sprinklers were going at mid day in the hot August sunshine.
Sounds of children swimming in the outdoor pool added to the
unreality." Betty Jane Bailey, in "The Link", December 1996.
Israeli occupation -
continued
"You have to remember that 90
percent of children two years old or more have experienced -
some many, many times - the [Israeli] army breaking into the
home, beating relatives, destroying things. Many were beaten
themselves, had bones broken, were shot, tear gassed, or had
these things happen to siblings and neighbors...The emotional
aspect of the child is affected by the [lack of] security. He
needs to feel safe. We see the consequences later if he does
not. In our research, we have found that children who are
exposed to trauma tend to be more extreme in their behaviors
and, later, in their political beliefs." Dr Samir Quota,
director of research for the Gaza Community Mental Health
Programme, quoted in "The Journal of Palestine Studies," Summer
1996, p.84
Israeli occupation -
continued
"There is nothing quite like
the misery one feels listening to a 35-year-old [Palestinian]
man who worked fifteen years as an illegal day laborer in Israel
in order to save up money to build a house for his family only
to be shocked one day upon returning from work to find that the
house and all that was in it had been flattened by an Israeli
bulldozer. When I asked why this was done - the land, after all,
was his - I was told that a paper given to him the next day by
an Israeli soldier stated that he had built the structure
without a license. Where else in the world are people required
to have a license (always denied them) to build on their own
property? Jews can build, but never Palestinians. This is
apartheid." Edward Said, in "The Nation", May 4, 1998.
All Jewish settlements in
territories occupied in the 1967 war are a direct violation of
the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed.
"The Geneva Convention requires
an occupying power to change the existing order as little as
possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is
that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there.
It may not bring its own people to populate the territory. This
prohibition is found in the convention's Article 49, which
states, 'The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts
of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.'"
John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Excerpts from the U.S. State
Department's reports during the Intifada
"Following are some excerpts
from the U.S. State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices from 1988 to 1991:
1988: 'Many avoidable deaths
and injuries' were caused because Israeli soldiers frequently
used gunfire in situations that did not present mortal danger to
troops...IDF troops used clubs to break limbs and beat
Palestinians who were not directly involved in disturbances or
resisting arrest..At least thirteen Palestinians have been
reported to have died from beatings...'
1989: Human rights groups
charged that the plainclothes security personnel acted as death
squads who killed Palestinian activists without warning, after
they had surrendered, or after they had been subdued...
1991: [The report] added that
the human rights groups had published 'detailed credible reports
of torture, abuse and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees in
prisons and detention centers." Former Congressman Paul
Findley, "Deliberate Deceptions."
Jerusalem - Eternal,
Indivisible Capital of Israel?
"Writing in The Jerusalem
Report (Feb. 28, 2000), Leslie Susser points out that the
current boundaries were drawn after the Six-Day War.
Responsibility for drawing those lines fell to Central Command
Chief Rehavan Ze'evi. The line he drew 'took in not only the
five square kilometers of Arab East Jerusalem - but also 65
square kilometers of surrounding open country and villages, most
of which never had any municipal link to Jerusalem. Overnight
they became part of Israel's eternal and indivisible capital.'"
Allan Brownfield in The Washington Report On Middle East
Affairs, May 2000.