June 5, 2017
theintercept.com

A 50-Year Occupation:
Israel's Six-Day War Started With a Lie

by Mehdi Hasan

Fifty years ago, between June 5 and June 10, 1967, Israel invaded and occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. The Six-Day War, as it would later be dubbed, saw the Jewish David inflict a humiliating defeat on the Arab Goliath, personified perhaps by Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt.

"The existence of the Israeli state hung by a thread," the country's prime minister, Levi Eshkol, claimed two days after the war was over, "but the hopes of the Arab leaders to annihilate Israel were dashed." Genocide, went the argument, had been prevented; another Holocaust of the Jews averted.

There is, however, a problem with this argument: It is complete fiction, a self-serving fantasy constructed after the event to justify a war of aggression and conquest. Don't take my word for it: "The thesis according to which the danger of genocide hung over us in June 1967, and according to which Israel was fighting for her very physical survival, was nothing but a bluff which was born and bred after the war," declared Gen. Matituahu Peled, chief of logistical command during the war and one of 12 members of Israel's General Staff, in March 1972.

A year earlier, Mordechai Bentov, a member of the wartime government and one of 37 people to sign Israel's Declaration of Independence, had made a similar admission. "This whole story about the threat of extermination was totally contrived, and then elaborated upon, a posteriori, to justify the annexation of new Arab territories," he said in April 1971.

Even Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, former terrorist and darling of the Israeli far right, conceded in a speech in August 1982 that "in June 1967 we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him." . . .

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Nuremberg Trial Proceedings: "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

"June 8, 1967: The Day Israel Attacked the USS Liberty," The Wisdom Fund, June 8, 2013

[For Americans, the myth that the occupation is unsustainable is a crucial element in maintaining and excusing the United States' financial and diplomatic abetting of it.--Nathan Thrall, "The Past 50 Years of Israeli Occupation, And the Next," nytimes.com, June 2, 2017]

Melvin Goodman, "The Six Day War and Israeli Lies: What I Saw at the CIA," counterpunch.org, June 5, 2017

[However, on 5 June, the day war started, Arab forces were static. It was Israel that opened the war with a stealth air attack that caught Arab air forces unawares. Israel used the element of surprise to bomb Arab aircraft while they were on the ground. This was the key to its resounding victory.--Guy Laron, "Was Israel Under Existential Threat in June 1967?," counterpunch.org, June 6, 2017]

Sharon Abraham-Weiss, "50 years of occupation - 50 years without borders," June 8, 2017

[After fifty years of violence, oppression and war both peoples deserve a better future. Admitting the reality of Apartheid is the first step in that direction.--Neve Gordon and Mark Levine, "After 50 years, Time for a Paradigm Shift," counterpunch.org, June 8, 2017]

John Pilger, "Why Palestine is Still the Issue," counterpunch.org, July 11, 2017