Talk:Six-Day War/Archive 4

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Regarding bias

"The aftermath of the war is also of religious significance. Under Jordanian rule, Jews and many Christians[136] were forbidden from entering the Old City of Jerusalem, which included the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. Jewish sites were not maintained, and their cemeteries had been desecrated. After the annexation to Israel, each religious group was granted administration over their holy sites. Despite the Temple Mount's importance in Jewish tradition, the al-Aqsa Mosque is under sole administration of a Muslim Waqf, and Jews are barred from conducting services there.[137]"

Overall, I found the article to be not overly slanted toward Israel, but this paragraph seemed to overstate the religious importance of these places for Jews ("Judaism's holiest site", "importance in Jewish tradition" ") while not once mentioning Islamic tradition or the importance of the Temple Mount for them. I think a more balanced article would include a statement of that nature, and possibly a mention of the Western Wall incident. Untwirl (talk) 04:56, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Suez Crisis

The article implies that Egypt violated international law or the applicable treaties without mentioning their repeated requests for adjudication and requests that Israel stop acting as a belligerent and readopt the terms of the 1949 armistice agreement.

Israel had not been complying with the terms of the applicable UN resolutions or the 1949 Armistice agreements before the Suez Crisis or the 1967 war. It had stopped participating in the Mixed Armistice Commission meetings in 1951, and had been carrying out belligerent acts inside Egypt. When Israeli military intelligence agents were captured, Israel issued public denials of any wrongdoing. On the basis of those allegations, Egypt had requested a world court opinion on the legality of its refusal to permit Israeli shipping to pass through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba. The covert operations were subsequently confirmed during the Lavon Affair. The doctrine of servitude that developed in the colonial era depends on friendly relations. In practice, it has never been extended to belligerent parties. For example Great Britain violated the neutrality and militarized the Suez Canal zone during both world wars. The Panama Canal treaty adopts the terms of passage from the Treaty of Constantinople by reference. Nonetheless, the U.S. had closed the Panama Canal to belligerents during World War II, and went so far as impounding an Italian cruise ship and placing the crew in an internment camp. harlan (talk) 18:18, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

If anything was violated, it was the resolution to place the United Nations Emergency Force in 1957. Everybody knew that the 1949 Armistice agreements were dead long before 1967. So why is it relevant? -- Nudve (talk) 18:43, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The article has to present Egyptian and Israeli points of view, it does not have to adjudicate them. Egypt did complain about Israeli espionage and it did request a world court opinion according to several published accounts. harlan (talk) 20:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

No, actually, the article has to present what reliable sources say on the matter, not your personal views. You've been told before that your sources have to refer to the Six-Day War to be relevant, you can't invent your own timeline of what you consider to be relevant events. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Jayjg, alleged violations of the terms of the 1949 armistice agreements were part Egypt's justification for closing the canal and the straits prior to both the Suez crisis, and the 1967 war. The article already has a section on the Suez Crisis, because Israel invaded Egypt, not because I invented some timeline. I suspect that you would like it even less if I followed the ones provided in the UN yearbooks.

In this instance I cited material regarding the UN peace efforts from 'The Elusive Peace in the Middle East', Malcolm H. Kerr, SUNY Press, 1975, ISBN 0873953053, page 97. They were not my personal views. It seems that he also happened to believe that if peacekeepers could be placed on both sides of the borders they would be better able to prevent incidents, as well as wars. See page 92 of his book. I presume he qualifies as a reliable source. He was the president of the American University in Beirut, and had studied there and at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins - where he earned his PhD. He had also served as the chair of the Political Science Department at UCLA. His biography is available online here http://www.mesa.arizona.edu/excellence/kerrbio.htm harlan (talk) 05:43, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If Egypt cited the 1949 armistice agreements as its reason, then this is relevant, but not stories about the Lavon affair and the 1951 Mixed Armistice Commission meetings. Malcolm H. Kerr's views may be correct, but are speculative. According to Michael Oren (I believe in the English edition it should be around pages 69-70), Ralph Bunche denied that a request for replacement in Gaza or Sharm a-Sheikh was made, and that for U Thant, any request for a change in UNEF's deployment was tantamount to a demand for its complete removal. -- Nudve (talk) 06:11, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I mentioned the fact that Israel stopped attending the Mixed Armistice meetings in 1951. They didn't participate after the Suez Crisis either. Both Egypt and the UN mentioned the need for compliance in that area during the security council hearings. In the absence of an armistice or a peace treaty, the question before the Security Council boiled-down to a dispute over Egypt's right to secure the canal and their territory. I didn't include any "stories" about the Lavon Affair. I mentioned that an Israeli Committee tasked with investigating it had found that in 1954 cables had been sent to Israeli military intelligence teams operating in Egypt requesting that they report on the possibility of operations in the canal zone. Egypt had captured the teams and turned their trials into a public spectacle. harlan (talk) 14:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The article is about the Six-Day War, not a reprise of every twist and turn of Arab-Israeli politics from 1949 onwards. The Suez Crisis is quite relevant, because that's what led to the UNEF being in the Sinai, and also has implications regarding the closing of the Straits of Tiran. The rest is just POV-bloat. Jayjg ^(talk) 18:05, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The intro starts with UNEF, while the UN Yearbook, Dr Anthony's International History of the Twentieth Century (page 409), and Tom Segev's "1967" start with the downing of the Syrian MIGs, i.e. Eshkol's Aide-de-Camp, General Yisrael Lior, wrote that "From my point of view, the Six Day War had begun. see 1967, page 212.

I see. The downing of the MIGs was in 1967, though, not 1956. I'm not sure what you are suggesting for the article. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:20, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

On 30 May 1967, Prime Minister Eshkol promised President Johnson that he would wait two weeks to see if negotiations could resolve the crisis with Egypt. That was after the Egyptian troop build-up. see For the President's Eyes Only, Christopher Andrew, HarperCollins, 1996, ISBN 0060921781, page 333. The article should supply some information on the reasons the General Staff ordered the pre-emptive strike after those assurances were given, since afterward none of them attributed their motivation to concern over the Egyptian troop build-up. According several published reports, after the overflight of Dimona, they were worried about their hands being tied by a world ultimatum. One of those reports contains extensive quotes on the subject from Rabin, and et. al.. It also mentions that in the year and a half prior to the Six-Day War, Mossad Chief General Meir Amit promoted the establishment of a direct, secret channel with Egypt that had started in an effort to release the imprisoned Israeli spies, but that Amit was pushing to turn it into a regular channel for diplomacy between the two states. see Crossing the Threshold: The Untold Nuclear Dimension of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and Its Contemporary Lessons, by Avner Cohen harlan (talk) 18:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

O.K. What about the costs to the Israeli economy on maintaining all the reserves on alert? Israel has a fairly small standing army. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:20, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Lead image

I added a new section about the paratrooper photo in the infobox in order to satisfy WP:NFCC, specifically point 8 which states that non-free images can only be used when they are essential to the reader's understanding. In fact, it had been already been nominated for deletion once on those grounds. Since that time, no additional commentary on the photo has ever been added to this article. I think my addition should satisfy our policy. However, User:Jheald makes the point on my talk page that it's customary for non-free media to be used right at the point in the text where it's mentioned, and he's correct -- that's where it should be. So the question becomes, what can we put in the infobox (if anything) to replace it? howcheng {chat} 19:40, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

What if we put this in an endnote in the caption? -- Nudve (talk) 19:57, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Canadian Monkey (talk) 00:16, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. I figured that since the article already has a few very long footnotes, there's no need for a more compliacted endnote. -- Nudve (talk) 07:27, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Casualty totals

The Israeli casualties don't add up. Under "Preliminary air attack" it says 26 of theirs were downed, but the itemisation totals 27; and under "Casualties", it says 800 soldiers were killed, with the itemisation totalling 1,029. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mathemancer (talk • contribs) 03:24, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I was just about to make a comment on that. The line currently reads "The following casualties are as confirmed by Israel: 800 Israeli soldiers were killed, 338 on the Egyptian front, 550 on the Jordanian front, and 141 on the Syrian front;" which simply is an illogical statement. Does anyone know the actual amount killed? 98.230.33.45 (talk) 13:43, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

"Defensible borders"

This article states that the concept of "defensible borders" was not mentioned or known in 1967, without any further explanation. This suggests (to me) that the goal of "having defensible borders" was later used by Israel as justification for the 1967 war, is this true? At any rate, this quote in the article needs to be explained to uninformed readers like me, because it looks like one half of the story to me.

(Yes,I am that badly informed.)

Also, it seems to me that the section "Egypt and Jordan" should be clarified, in particular the text "At the end of May". Was this before or after the Soviets told Nasser not to start a war on May 27? Moreover, the section on Egypt and Jordan does not mention at all that the Soviets 'cancelled' the war (please excuse my frivolous wording), and instead only talks about increasing war preparations and the (implied or stated) increasing threat to Israel. Given the later text, this appears to be rather misleading, in that it suggests that Israel had to do something.--KarlFrei (talk) 14:59, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Pre-Emptive Strike

The sources cited to support the idea that Israel engaged in a pre-emptive strike are dubious. The likes of "The Economist", CNN, are not the proper sources to cite because they do not specialize in the analysis of history. A draft resolution which would "vigorously condemn Israel's aggression"[1] was rejected by 57 votes against to 36 in favor with 23 abstentions. Considering that a large part of the world in 1967 condemned Israel for committing aggression, the "pre-emptive" position in no way represents a consensus; Nierva (talk) 20:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Not only are they reliable sources, but they also reflect the modern consensus of opinion on the subject. The proposal by the U.S.S.R. you refer to was rejected. And Egypt didn't "request" that the U.N. force leave, it ordered them out. Please don't remove properly sourced information again, thanks. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The BBC is not an outlet that engages in the scholarly analysis of history but is merely a news outlet that reports current events. "The Economist" does not analyze history but only promotes a particular set of foreign and economic policies. None of these sources are reliable for the subject at hand. The resolution you refer to, despite being rejected, still had substantial support. The results contradict the misleading suggestion in this article that Israel engaged in a pre-emptive attack is supported by a consensus.

Concerning the presence of the United Nations Emergency Force, it was terminated by a decision of the Government of the UAR. The UNEF had entered Egyptian territory with the consent of the UAR Government and in fact could remain there only as long as that consent continued.

Your indiscriminate deletion of sourced material is provocative and at the least shows an absence of good faith.

Nierva (talk) 02:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

My "indiscriminate deletion of sourced material"? It was you who deleted seven reliable sources, in some bizarre attempt to suppress the majority view on this. I've restored them, of course, and added six more sources. I'll quote from one of them:

"...Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egyptian planes as they stood on the airfields. These events triggered the so-called June war of 1967, but the pre-emptive action of Israel was not condemned by the S.C. - or indeed by the G.A. There appeared to be a general feeling, certainly shared by the Western states, that taken in the context this was a lawful use of anticipatory self-defence, and that for Israel to have waited any longer could well have been fatal to her survival." Antonio Cassese. The Current Legal Regulation of the Use of Force: Current Legal Regulation Vol10, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986, p. 443. ISBN 9024732476

This is the view of international law on the matter by Antonio Cassese, the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal For the Former Yugoslavia. You, by contrast, have provided this as a source [2], a Table of Contents, and this: [3] a speech by Egypt's ambassador to the U.N. And this from someone who is claiming that the BBC and The Economist are not reliable sources. If you imagine that The Economist "does not analyze history but only promotes a particular set of foreign and economic policies", what on earth do you imagine the Egyptian ambassador to the U.N. does? Please review WP:V and WP:NPOV, and do not remove the reliable sources again, nor insert the unreliable ones. Thank you. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Even if one discounts CNN, The Economist, and the BBC (and no reasonable person will discount those three as reliable sources), the fact that the 6 Day War began with a preemptive strike is sourced to no less than 19 other sources, many of which satisfy Nierva's criteria of being "scholarly." For good measure, I'm about to add one more. --GHcool (talk) 03:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

There’s no doubt that the term “pre-emptive” is precise, appropriate and well sourced. -- Olve Utne (talk) 14:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

No one has disputed the reliability of the BBC and CNN. What is in dispute is the competence of these popular media organs in the analysis of history and international law. You will not find a citation of CNN in the work of a scholar in order to prove his argument that Israel launched a "pre-emptive" strike. These organs do not specialize in the analysis of history but merely report on current events in a manner that is often biased. While it's reasonable to cite these sources on current events, it is fallacious to consult them on matters of history.

Nor is anyone actually disputing belief that Israel engaged in a pre-emptive strike. This article makes a misleading attempt to show that this opinion represents a consensus when I have demonstrated the contrary. That there were 36 votes cast in the United Nations General Assembly condemning Israel for having committed aggression means that this viewpoint has to be considered. Whereas I am trying to show the perspective from the other side, many of you stubbornly insist that only one biased view has to be entertained.

A demonstration of an oppposing point of view is found in the work of the international jurist Henry Cattan who wrote:

...After the discovery of the true facts about Israel's aggression, Israel invoked two arguments to justify its launching the war. Its first argument was that it acted by way of a preventative strike which, in its view, is equivalent to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Such argument has no basis in fact or in law. In fact, Israel, as we have seen, created the crisis and attacked its neighbors. In law, the Charter recognizes the right of self-defence against an armed attack, but not a pre-emptive strike in advance of any attack. None of the Arab States had attacked or threatened to attack Israel and as D.P. O'Connell observes, the invasion of a neibhoring country's territory is not an exercise of the right of self-defence.

Nierva (talk) 20:50, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Aside from the fact that Cattan must have a very selective reading of history (Egypt didn't threaten Israel? Really?) I think criticism and condemnation of Israel's actions have been fairly covered in the article. We can never know what Egypt, Syria, etc., would have done if Israel had not attacked first. But the term "pre-emptive" must by necessity deal with the motivation of the attack, and you don't seem to be disputing this. --Leifern (talk) 20:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

That is your opinion. There are other opinions that conflict with that view and they should be fairly represented. Nierva (talk) 21:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

But it is you who are deleting information, not me. I have not tried to omit objections of any kind to Israel's actions. Besides, it is not a matter of opinion whether Nasser threatened Israel. Here's one well-documented quote from the article itself: 'President Nasser, who had called King Hussein an "imperialist lackey" just days earlier, declared: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."' You are also mixing up your arguments. In the introductory paragraph, the attack is merely characterized as pre-emptive and does not state whether it was "legal" or not. --Leifern (talk) 00:56, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Other observations found in the work of the United States scholar John Quigley:

"Even if Israel had expected Egypt to attack, it is not clear a preemptive strike is lawful. The UN Charter, Article 51, characterizes armed force as defensive only if it is used in response to an "armed attack." Most states consider this language to mean that a preemptive strike is unlawful. India, for one, asserted in General Assembly discussion of the June 1967 hostilities that preemptive self-defense is not permitted under international law. Most authorities agree with that view, though some say force may be used in anticipation of an attack that has not yet occurred but is reasonably expected to occur imminently Israel did not face such a situation.

Nierva (talk) 21:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Nierva commits the red herring fallacy with his/her argument above. Preemptive strikes are a complex issue in terms of legality, and perhaps an argument could be made that Israel's preemptive attack was illegal. I am not educated well enough in international law to know whether Israel's attack of Egypt was legal or not, but my guess is that it was legal since Egypt violated international law by closing the Straits of Tiran, and which any nation would interpret as a casus belli. The point is that Israel attacked preemptively regardless of whether or not it was legal to, and describing the attack as something other than a preemptive one is uncalled for. --GHcool (talk) 22:29, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Not that we should determine matters of international law here, but there is no question that a naval blockade is an act of war.--Leifern (talk) 00:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The arguments raised here have not sought to dispute historical facts. Rather, they have sought to dispute the suggestion that an overwhelming consensus of scholars believe that Israel launched a pre-emptive invasion when that is clearly not the case as has been thoroughly demonstrated above. In the historiography present in many predominantly Muslim countries the view that Israel engaged in aggression is unequivocal. At best, there is a divide between those that view Israel's attack as illegal aggression and those that saw it as a pre-emptive attack.Nierva (talk) 21:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

No, actually, there is a strong consensus that it was a pre-emptive attack, despite the protestations of opinion pieces by Galal Nassar in Al-Ahram Weekly. Your argument assumes that the phrase "pre-emptive attack" is completely incompatible with "illegal aggression". In fact, "pre-emptive attack" is a military strategy, "illegal aggression" is a political (and sometimes legal) opinion. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:49, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, that is exactly right. Hi again Jay, and thanks for the kind words. When one is speaking about legality, "pre-emptive" is inconsistently used with two opposite meanings. (More popularly and more recently in my OR opinion.) "preemptive" (legal) is opposed to "preventative" (illegal) , while international law literature often opposes "anticipatory self-defense" (legal) to "preemptive" (illegal). Cf the relevant pages here and their talk pages - there's a paper cited there with a helpful footnote on this point. Reading legal or older articles can be very confusing until you understand this point, and of course people aren't always talking about legality. So using the word doesn't say anything really about legality, which should be debated elsewhere. Perhaps we should be clearer that we're using it as Jayjg explains.John Z (talk) 06:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Source material clearly substantiates the postulate that Israel engauged in a first strike provoked by Egyptian actions. Source: Levi Eshkol's June 4th '67 correspondence with president Johnson[4] Other Referances - Memoirs from: Avihu Bindun, Dassault Super Mystère pilot and first strike leader, 1967 U.S. Secretary of state Dean Rusk, Avey Fienberg to President Johnson at a New York Reception 24 hours before war, Memoir of Primminister Yitzhak Rabin, Journal entry by Moshe Dayan, many others.

--A. Renner (talk) 03:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Casualties

There seems to be a serious mistake in the casualties section. The Revision as of 17:32, 22 December 2008, put the casualties as:

Egypt- 11,500 killed and 20,000 wounded, Jordan- 700 killed and 2,500 wounded, Syria- 2,500 killed and 5,000 wounded, Iraq- 10 killed and 30 wounded

Total number- 21,000 killed, 45,000 wounded, 6,000 prisoners, over 400 aircraft destroyed
(estimates)

The current revision only includes the total number. I don't understand how the total number adds up since Egypt, Syria and Jordan add up to 14,500 killed, 27,500 wounded.

Also, Mohamed Abdel-Ghani El Gammasy, Egyptian Chief of Operations during the 1973 war who also served with the Egyptian army at General Headquarters in 1967 puts the number of Egyptian losses to be around 10,000 dead, wounded and missing in action in his book The October War, 1973, and mentions that Egypt lost around 85% of its airforce and 4% of its pilots, so it is unlikely that 100 Egyptian pilots were killed. He constitutes a reliable source. Sherif9282 (talk) 15:40, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

According to Colonel Mustapha a former syrian intelligence officer in his book " secrets of the fall of the Golan" described the syrian casualities as only hundreds using this figure to claim that the Syrian army did not fight and was ordered by the Baath party leaders to withdraw unconditionally.Colonel Mustapha accuses Hafez al-assad of selling the Golan heights to the Israelis and in return he secured ruling Syria for 30 years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.101.128.110 (talk) 21:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Gulf of Aqaba as an act War

Concerning the closing of the Gulf of Aqaba by the UAR as an act of war, the viewpoint of the UAR has to be considered[5]

The Gulf of Aqaba, the representative of the United Arab Republic stated, had always been a national inland waterway subject to Arab sovereignty. Since the Gulf's only three legitimate littoral States - Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Republic - were all in a state of war with Israel, their right to bar enemy vessels was recognized under international law. The claim that Israel had a port on the Gulf had no validity, as Israel had illegally occupied several miles of coastline on the Gulf, including Om Rashrash, in violation of Security Council resolutions of 1948 and the Egyptian-Israel General Armistice Agreement. The Armistice Agreements did not vitiate his Government's rights to impose restrictions on navigation in the Strait; nor had the 1956 aggression changed the legal status of the Gulf of Aqaba or the United Arab Republic's rights over its territorial waters.

It was further pointed out that the claim that the blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba itself constituted an act of war and justified the Israel aggression as an act of self-defence provided no excuse for the massive assault. The Strait of Tiran had never been opened to Israel until the aggression of 1956. No vital interests had suffered; not an Israel ship had passed through the Strait in the last two and a half years. The action of Israel was not legitimate self-defence within the meaning of Article 51 of the Charter because no armed attack on its territory had in fact occurred. On 5 June 1967, the United Arab Republic had not yet even completed its defensive precautions in Sinai, and a similar condition had prevailed in Syria and Jordan.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.102.210.105 (talk • contribs) 03:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

The Big Lie

A term coined by Lindon Johnson, this is well know tactic used in some parts of the world where it is important to "Move the street" into reacting (or being manipulated) in a way state propagandists would like.
This concept of "The Big Lie" is something that has had a great influence on the aftermath of this war and indeed subsequent relations with the West.
Before I put down my comments, I would be very interested to know what others thought of this section and it's inclusion as a topic in the main article.
--A. Renner (talk) 04:05, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

What does this have to do with the topic of this article? Jayjg ^(talk) 04:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

It was a tern used by Lyndon Johnson immediately after the sensation of hostilities to describe how all of the belligerent nations (exception Israel) broadcast within their countries that the United States and England were to blame for the loss of this war.
The claim was made the war was lost due to the use of direct combat by the two superpowers to include the use of aircraft carriers, modern weaponry etc.
This is generally seen in the west as a means of "saving face" and preserving honor where it is better to lie than to admit something that could be shameful or even threaten the stability of a regime.

The "Big Lie" has gone on to be used extensively in east west relations to deflect shortcomings of Governments in favor of blaming a "whipping boy" government that can be demonized and used as a convenient excuse for that government's failures. A recent example was when the United States was blamed for the increase in the price of bread by Egypt and other poor middle eastern countries. This was despite the U.S.'s donation of over 27 metric tons of wheat to Egypt alone in 2007.

What it has to do with this article is it is a large factor in how the east sees the west and the tactics used by the eastern powers.

I understand that the topic itself is highly subject to political and other perspectives. Never the less, it is a well recognized tactic in international relations.

--A. Renner (talk) 04:36, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I'm not understanding what you are saying. What specifically would you like to add to the article, and what are your sources for it? Jayjg ^(talk) 04:39, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

This was an integral part of the six day war because it was used as something of a bargaining chip with third world nations in the body of the United Nations to gain advantages during the Cease fire and subsequent armistice... to say nothing for the survival of Nassar's government after what he called "the biggest mistake of my life". What would be added to the article or the references I'm not too sure of, I haven't given it that much thought but it needs to be added some place because of it's importance in negotiations.That is why I asked for the comments of others before whiting something substantive (with references) that could be put into the article.
--A. Renner (talk) 04:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

What specific "big lie" was used in negotiations, and what reliable sources discuss this? Jayjg ^(talk) 05:01, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Renner, please review WP:V; you can't just put your own beliefs in front of a citation, you have to provide sources that actually support your claims. Jayjg ^(talk) 06:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Jayjg. Also, lets' try to reach consensus instead of edit-warring. -- Nudve (talk) 06:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, you can give me an warning if you like, but that won't change the fact that this did in fact happen.

Johnson coined the phrase.... not me. and I did give you an authoritative reference for that... I can't help it if it's struck almost as fast as I put it in... Ince again the referance came from the Johnson Presedential library, I included the title and text... now it's gone and I'd track it down again if I had the interest.... but I no longer do.

However, as I read the posting rules, this is the place for DISCUSSION like this and an authoritative reference is not required.

Once again I was posting in an attempt to get input from others, not voicing personal belief's, and I object to the inference. If you have some bias that prevents you from accepting what has been established for over forty years and is even referenced in the main article by the then president Hussein.... I can't help it. Strike my comments if you like... this isn't worth the bother.--A. Renner (talk) 06:33, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Rewriting the lede

The first couple of paragraphs of the previous version of the lede focused on the various names of the war and gave a complete list of the participants, followed by some legalistic stuff to try to establish that the Arab side was at fault. Not that I am disputing any of that, but it isn't the right format for a history article. I rewrote the lede so that the major results of the war are in the first paragraph, the second paragraph is a brief chronology of what led to the war and what happened during the war. The names of the war and the minor participants are now in the third graph. Kauffner (talk) 14:41, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Articles should begin with a name and a definition. I don't see a problem with putting the results in the last paragraph. The lead had lots of citations, some of them essential, and many the result of consensus. It may be possible to reword some of it to make it seem less "legalistic", but we should reach consensus first. -- Nudve (talk) 16:35, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

So you've declared an edit war now? This is your solution? In any case, the lede should summarize what happened during the war rather than focusing on blaming one side or the other. The footnote should be the source of the information in the text. The lede shouldn't really have footnotes at all, although as a practical matter I'm sure someone will delete it if i don't give my source. Megafootnotes with lists of quotes from favorite authors? Whose idea of good style is this? Kauffner (talk) 17:36, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

You are the one who started the edit war by reverting, and you have reverted two more times since. The "megafootnote" is indeed cumbersome, but people kept questioning the "preemptive strike" part. As I said, articles should begin with a name (or names, if there are several) and a definition. See, for example, Vietnam War. Please return the last agreed upon version until a new consensus is reached. -- Nudve (talk) 17:53, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I've restored cited fact to the lede. Please stop removing it in favor of your own original research. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:29, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

"Disputed", Israel's refusal to host UNEF

It is a fact that UNEF was tasked, in part, with supervising the withdrawal of Israeli, British, and French forces that had invaded Egyptian territory. The General Assembly plan called for UNEF to deploy on both sides of the armistice line, but Israel refused to allow UNEF to deploy on their side. The Secretary General offered to redeploy UNEF to Israel's side of the border ten years later, after Israel's ambassador objected to the withdrawal of the force from Egyptian territory.

Some of the editors object to adding that information to the introduction without a full explanation as to why Nasser asked UNEF to go home after 10 years, or why Israel refused to host UNEF. So, the current introduction to the article expresses a commonly-held POV that the withdrawal of UNEF and/or the deployment of Egyptian forces to positions in their own territory somehow threatened Israel and triggered a crisis that served as a casus belli.

That particular theory has been publicly discredited by many observers, including Yitzhak Rabin, who served as the Chief of the General Staff for Israel during the war. In an interview published in Le Monde, on February 28 1968, he explained:

"I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it." cited in One Land, Two Peoples, by Deborah J. Gerner, Page 112

The same page explains that (a) President Johnson told Abba Eban that the CIA, the National Security Council, and the State Department had each investigated and concluded that no Egyptian attack was imminent; and (b)that Menachem Begin admitted "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."

Wikiquotes carries a variation of the Rabin quote under 'Sourced'. The only minor difference being 'We did not...' vs. 'I do not'...and etc. and a verbatim copy of the Begin quote under 'Sourced', Begin Speech at National Defense College, The New York Times, August 11, 1982, p. A6

The Terrorist Conjunction: The United States, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and Al-Qā'ida, By Alfred G. Gerteiny, and Jean Ziegler, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, ISBN 0275996433, page 142, quotes General Matityahu Peled: "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war. ... ...To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal (Israeli military), from Ha’aretz, March 19, 1972.

The Making of Resolution 242, by Sydney Dawson Bailey, page 21-22, says: "Thant (UN Secretary General U Thant) raised with Gideon Raphael the possibility of deploying UNEF on the Israeli side of the armistice demarcation line, but this was rejected by Israel as 'entirely unacceptable".... The author observes that alone wouldn't have opened the Suez Canal or Straits of Tiran, but explains: ..."it would have interposed a symbolic barrier to Egyptian military threats from Sinai"... and that ..."Thant believed that if only Israel had decided otherwise, 'the course of history would have been different.'"

An unclassified report to the Security Council from the Secretary General of the United Nations, S/7906, 26 May 1967, explained:

6. It may be relevant to note here that UNEF functioned exclusively on the United Arab Republic side of the Line in a zone from which the armed forces of the United Arab Republic had voluntarily stayed away for over ten years. It was this arrangement which allowed UNEF to function as a buffer and as a restraint on infiltration. When this arrangement lapsed United Arab Republic troops moved up to the Line as they had every right to do.

7. If UNEF had been deployed on both sides of the Line as originally envisaged in pursuance of the General Assembly resolution, its buffer function would not necessarily have ended. However, its presence on the Israel side of the Line has never been permitted. The fact that UNEF was not stationed on the Israel side of the Line was a recognition of the unquestioned sovereign right of Israel to withhold its consent for the stationing of the Force. The acquiescence in the request of the United Arab Republic for the withdrawal of the Force after ten and a half years on United Arab Republic soil was likewise a recognition of the sovereign authority of the United Arab Republic. In no official document relating to UNEF has there been any suggestion of a limitation of this sovereign authority'.... ...'President Nasser and Foreign Minister Riad assured me that the United Arab Republic would not initiate offensive action against Israel. Their general aim, as stated to me, was for a return to the conditions prevailing prior to 1956 and to full observance by both parties of the provisions of the General Armistice Agreement between Egypt and Israel.'

These are significant facts and viewpoints that have been published in reliable sources. harlan (talk) 10:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Regarding your points:

1) You have not given any credible explanation as to why "Nasser asked UNEF to go home after 10 years" - in reality, Nasser unilaterally pushing UNEF out on short notice.

2) By the time war broke out the Egyptians had 7 divisions, not 2, massed on the border, and the revisionist political view that Nasser was merely posturing, along with cherry-picked out-of-context quotes from Israeli leaders, can certainly be discussed in the article, but the overwhelming view at the time, and since, was that Nasser's re-militarization of the Sinai, massing troops, concluding pacts with Jordan and Syria, etc., combined with his belligerent rhetoric indicating Israel's imminent destruction, indicated a credible threat to Israel. The CIA's and NSA's assessments have been discussed elsewhere on this page, please review those discussions.

3) Wikiquotes is the weakest English language Wiki we have; please don't bother referring to it again.

4) Your inclusion did not, for example, give Israel's reasons for not wanting UNEF troops on its own territories; the article does give the detail.

5) The detail in general, including the revisionist apologia for Nasser's actions, can certainly go in the body of the article, but it has no place in the lede, which is a summary of uncontested facts. Jayjg ^(talk) 18:13, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

In no particular order:

Nasser couldn't 'unilaterally' decide to force UNEF out of the region. He needed Israel to serve as a willing partner in the accomplishment of that task. The introduction fails to make any mention of the Israeli decisions in the matter. In other words, the introduction isn't a summary of uncontested facts. You appear to be working quite assiduously to prevent the mere mention in the lead that Israel might have shunned its responsibility under the original General Assembly plan to host half of the UNEF forces on their side of the armistice line, and of their subsequent refusal to permit any portion of the force to redeploy there. After discovering those details a reasonable reader might agree with U Thant that if Israel had only decided otherwise, the course of history would have been different.

Israel asserted its 'sovereign right' as the justification for its original decision not to host peacekeepers from any country. That objection was raised before UNEF forces (as such) from any friendly or 'unfriendly nations' ever arrived. It is self-serving to suggest that Israel had to attack because the UNEF was withdrawn, or that Israel suddenly had concerns about the composition of the peacekeeping force that had been employed on the Egyptian side all along. Israeli intransigence helped create those supposedly dire circumstances.

U Thant's unclassified report supplies a credible explanation of Nasser's request for UNEF's withdrawal, the desire to return to the status quo ante with both sides observing the terms of the armistice. Egypt had already hosted a force of unwelcome foreigners, on a 'temporary mission', for ten and a half years after it had been invaded. Israel, given the same choice, had refused to tolerate those same peacekeepers for so much as one minute. If you want to start a wild goose chase for a more 'credible explanation' than that, the burden of conducting it is yours.

The 'Diplomacy and intelligence assessments section' of the article already reports (with admirable NPOV equivocation) that Nasser may have wanted a negotiated settlement: "U Thant, visited Cairo for mediation and recommended moratorium in the Straits of Tiran and a renewed diplomatic effort to solve the crisis. Egypt agreed and Israel rejected these proposals. Nasser's concessions do not necessarily suggest that he was making a concerted effort to avoid war." and: "The U.S. also tried to mediate and Nasser agreed to send his vice-president to Washington to explore a diplomatic settlement. The meeting did not happen because Israel launched its offensive."

I supplied more than one reliable published source for each of the quotations in order to dispell any misgivings about the use Wikiquotes. You are free to supply some cherry-picked quotations of your own regarding the importance these same men attached to the Egyptian troop build-up, or the withdrawal of UNEF.

U Thant's report and President Johnson's assessment of the situation can hardly be labeled 'revisionist'. They were submitted on the same day - just prior to the war. The article states that Abba Eban felt the Israeli government assessment delivered during his visit to Washington was 'An act of momentous irresponsibility... eccentric... ...lacked wisdom, veracity and tactical understanding. Nothing was right about it.' Characterizing Menachem Began, and General Peled as historical revisionists doesn't really change the fact that both men were talking about all of the Egyptian forces you have mentioned, and that neither seriously believed that Nasser was going to launch an offensive against Israel. Your claim that the overwhelming view at the time, and since, was that Nasser's re-militarization posed a grave threat amounts to the use of weasel words or concensus in an apparent attempt to forestall the inclusion of a substantial and well published point of view. In light of the fact that the statements I quoted were made by the leaders themselves, including: U Thant, Nasser, Johnson, Rabin, Begin, Peled, et al the possibility exists that the overwhelming majority of us were misled or kept in the dark. harlan (talk) 02:42, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Nasser not being able to unilaterally force the U.N. "out of the region", that's nonsense, of course. Using the weasel term "the region", you attempt to draw Israel into the issue. However, the fact remains, the UNEF had been in the demilitarized zone, manning its posts, until the Egyptian army swept in and occupied them, so they certainly were forced to withdraw from posts they were manning. Also nonsense is the claim "that Israel had to attack because the UNEF was withdrawn, or that Israel suddenly had concerns about the composition of the peacekeeping force that had been employed on the Egyptian side all along." No-one is claiming that except, perhaps, you. Israel attacked because Nasser had closed the Straits of Tiran, filled the airwaves with belligerent rhetoric stating he was going to destroy Israel, and massed 7 divisions comprising almost 100,000 troops and 1000 tanks on the border. Regarding Johnson's view, again, please review previous discussions on the page; just because the CIA didn't think an attack was imminent, it doesn't mean that an attack wasn't imminent. The CIA and NSA have gotten things wrong before, and they hardly had the same amount at stake as Israel if they got it wrong. And finally, Israeli officials have said all sorts of things, some of which were meant to serve internal political interests, and some of which have been taken out of context. They have been used to create a revisionist view of the war which was not held by at the time, nor is it commonly held today, except among the revisionist "Israel is the root of all evil in the Middle East" crowd. Their view should and does get an airing, but the conspiracy theories don't belong in the lead alongside actual facts. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:42, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Despite all of those equivocations, the quotes are genuine and belong in any NPOV article about the war. The fact that the General Assembly plan called for UNEF to be deployed on both sides of the border makes it regional deployment and the details of Israeli refusal to cooperate with the plan belong in the article for the same reason. harlan (talk) 04:10, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

If you want to talk about exactly how the G.A. plan was originally implemented 10 years before the Six-Day War, the place for that is in an article on the plan, or perhaps in Suez Crisis#Introduction of UN peacekeepers. As for the quotes may be genuine, but they're primary sources being used to advance an . If you want to build a case that Egypt had no intention of attacking, then please find some reliable historians who hold this POV/make this argument, and include that POV/argument in the body of the text, where it belongs. Jayjg ^(talk) 18:17, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The Secretary General's conclusions about the consequences of the failure to implement the original General Assembly UNEF deployment plan are contained in his own words in a report submitted to the Security Counsel just days before the war. He brought the issue up because it was still relevant. The Israeli and Egyptian sovereign right of consent was not dispositive. The Security Council is authorized under Chapter VII of the Charter to enforce peace when faced with threats or breaches of peace or with acts of aggression. They could have authorized the use of force to impose a deployment of UN forces on both sides of the armistice line, so it wasn't a 10 year old issue at all.

In the field of international law, articles such as United Nations Peacekeeping and Host State Consent and The Withdrawal of UNEF And a New Notion of Consent recognize the fact that UNEF could not legally stay and operate once Egypt's consent was withdrawn. They suggest that "consent" and the Good Faith Accords of 1956 between Egypt and the United Nations should have been ignored and a new definition of consent be developed in the future. That rationale applies with equal force to the Israeli right of consent. The Six Day War article contains many footnotes to editorials, books, magazines, and online resources like the Jewish Virtual Library Fact sheet #52 which make similar suggestions or claim that agreements to consult the General Assembly prior to any withdrawal may have been violated. The Secretary General's report addresses all of those issues.

As a result, clarifications seem to be in order for the "Withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force" section of the article. UNEF operated under a Chapter VI mandate. In describing the principles of the UNEF Model, Frederick H. Fleitz explained that the most important principle was obtaining consent, and that Israel had refused to permit UNEF troops on its territory or behind its armistice lines. After Egypt voiced concerns over consent, UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld had agreed it was an absolute condition (under Chapter VI), and entered into several bilateral agreements which were endorsed by the General Assembly November 7, 1956 (The Good Faith Accord of 1956). Under the terms of those agreements, UNEF could not stay or operate in Egypt if Egypt's consent was withdrawn; Acceptance of UNEF would not submit Egypt to any external control or infringe on its sovereignty; and UNEF was to be a temporary operation. see Principles of UNEF Model, Consent, page 39

The UN did not carry out those principles. For example, Dr. Anthony Best explains that when Nasser sent troops into the Sinai on 14 May, he asked for a partial withdrawal of UNEF forces. The UN did nothing, and responded by insisting he choose between no withdrawal or complete withdrawal. see International History of the Twentieth Century, page 409. Fleitz explains that unlike Hammarskjöld, U Thant did not think consent was absolutely necessary. He points out that despite Cairo's request for complete withdrawal on 16 May 1967, Thant resisted withdrawing UNEF even after Egyptian forces had overrun their positions. see Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s, page 41

The quotations for the Israeli politicians and generals were all taken from published secondary sources. The authors of those works include visiting scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, senior lecturers on history at major universities, a UN Special Rapporteur, and a university Middle Eastern Affairs department head. The responsible Israeli leaders and generals were stating their own conclusions after the fact, so no one is drawing inferences, or employing some sort of synthesis in violation of a Wikipedia guideline to substitute their own opinions.

The thesis that the Egyptian deployment in the Sinai threatened Israel's survival has been a dead duck for a long time. In 1972, Time magazine reported that former chief of staff of the armed forces, Haim Bar-Lev (a deputy chief during the war) had stated: "the entrance of the Egyptians into Sinai was not a casus belli." In the same article General Peled, the chief of logistics for the Army during the war, claimed the survival argument was "a bluff which was born and developed only after the war... ..."When we spoke of the war in the General Staff, we talked of the political ramifications if we didn't go to war —what would happen to Israel in the next 25 years. Never of survival today." see: Was the War Necessary? harlan (talk) 18:33, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how your points in any way even respond to mine, much less contradict them. Whether or not Egypt really meant its threats to destroy Israel, or whether or not Israeli leaders really believed them, is a point for discussion in the article. By the way, in 1973 Israel thought its Bar Lev line was impregnable; within 6 hours of attacking Egypt had 5 divisions and 400 tanks through the line, with almost no losses. So much for military assurances. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:54, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

You keep restoring an argumentative intro which claims that UNEF was expelled. The facts are that Nasser only requested a partial withdrawal of UNEF, and that the UN Secretary General gave him the choice of either no withdrawal, or a complete withdrawal. In any event, UNEF was still in-country on their main operating bases when the war started. They were planning on a phased redeployment with an estimated completion date of 30 June 1967. William Dutch noted that in 1967 the IDF drove through the remnants of UNEF at the start of the third Israeli-Arab war (see The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping, page 17). The UN Yearbook also notes that the UNEF commander had reported a strafing incident on 5 June 1967 in which Israeli aircraft killed three Indian soldiers and wounded several others. Those peacekeepers weren't 'expelled', they were either overrun or mistakenly attacked by the IDF. harlan (talk) 01:50, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you keep inserting the whitewashed intro that Nasser "requested" the UNEF withdraw, when in reality he demanded they withdraw, and militarily re-occupied their posts, so that when they showed up to man them, the found Egyptian troops had taken charge. As the U.N. itself reports, while U Thant was attempting to negotiate with the Egyptians, "the Egyptian Foreign Minister in Cairo summoned representatives of nations with troops in UNEF to inform them that UNEF had terminated its tasks in Egypt and the Gaza Strip and must depart forthwith... The same day, 18 May, Egyptian soldiers prevented UNEF troops from entering their posts." Also, note these sources in the article:

• "In 1967, Egypt ordered the UN troops out and blocked Israeli shipping routes - adding to already high levels of tension between Israel and its neighbours." Israel and the Palestinians in depth, 1967: Six Day War, BBC website. URL accessed May 14, 2006.
• "Buoyed by the almost universal Arab acclaim he received for his actions, Nasser expelled the UNEF forces and announced the closing of the Straits of Tiran" Robert Owen Freedman. World Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Pergamon Press, 1979, p. 79.
• "The Israeli attack ended a nerve-wracking three weeks of waiting... begun when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled the United Nations peacekeepers from the Gaza Strip and the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, blockaded the nearby Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships, and deployed his massive army along the Israeli border." Dan Perry, Alfred Ironside. Israel and the Quest for Permanence, McFarland, 1999, p. 18.
• "Soon after Nasser expelled UN forces from the Sinai, Secretary of State Dean Rusk directed State Department officials in Washington, New York, and Moscow to urge the Soviets to restrain their Arab friends." Nigel John Ashton. Cold War in the Middle East: Regional Conflict and the Superpowers 1967-73, Routledge, 2007, p. 18.
• "Nasser... closed the Gulf of Aqaba to shipping, cutting off Israel from its primary oil supplies. He told U.N. peacekeepers in the Sinai Peninsula to leave. He then sent scores of tanks and hundreds of troops into the Sinai closer to Israel. The Arab world was delirious with support," The Mideast: A Century of Conflict Part 4: The 1967 Six Day War, NPR morning edition, October 3, 2002. URL accessed May 14, 2006.
• "...a Middle East crisis erupted on May 16, 1967, when Nasser expelled the UN troops that had policed the Sinai since the end of the Suez-Sinai War in 1957." Peter L. Hahn. Crisis and Crossfire: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945, Potomac Books, 2005 , p.50.
• "In May, 1967 President Nasser expelled UNEF from Egypt and set in train the events that precipitated Israel's blitzkrieg invasion and conquest of the Sinai." J. L. Granatstein. Canadian Foreign Policy: Historical Readings, Copp Clark Pitman, 1986, p. 236.

Please stop changing wording to suit your views, rather than what reliable sources say. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:27, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I've done nothing to prevent you or anyone else from including material you consider relevant. I do happen to consider the fact that the IDF drove through the remnants of the UNEF force at the start of the war quite relevant. I've been trying to add material, not delete it. You on the other hand have taken on the role of a self-appointed gatekeeper bent on deleting kilobytes of very well sourced material, while accusing everyone (but yourself) of perpetrating 'a whitewash'.

As for changing the wording. I did change the word "expelled" to "requested withdrawal". According to U Thant's official report and the other letter cited in the article, those were the actual words used by the Egyptian government. You initially asked me to supply material on Nasser's motive, and then deleted it when I complied with your request. Nasser wanted the withdrawal of UNEF, a return to the conditions prevailing prior to 1956, and full observance by both parties of the provisions of the General Armistice Agreement of 1949 between Egypt and Israel. That was all contained in U Thant's report which I cited. It was also contained in the reliable sources like Frederick H. Fleitz who explained the legal situation and the stages in the negotiations. In any event many of the 3,378 military personnel assigned to UNEF were unable to leave on short notice and were still in Egypt when the war actually started. The complete withdrawal wasn't scheduled for completion until 30 June 1967. Most readers would understand "expelled" to mean the UNEF were no longer present.

There had been no peace treaty after 1949 war or the Suez Crisis. It was not an irrelevant fact under international law that Israel had stopped observing the terms of the armistice agreements, or that it had been conducting covert military operations targeting the canal zone, while issuing public denials. You also took it upon yourself to delete the quoted post-war threat assessments of Rabin, Begin, Bar-Lev, and Peled in what appears to be an act of outright censorship. I believe it is time to tag this article as POV. harlan (talk) 04:05, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Here from Wikipedia:Third opinion. seems that there are multiple reliable sources stating that Nasser "expelled" or "order out" the UN troops, so per, WP:V, that is the term that should be used in the article. NoCal100 (talk) 05:05, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect, the term "ordered out" has never been used, as yet, in the article. In any event, the dispute here is over the massive deletion of well-sourced verifiable material on numerous occasions. harlan (talk) 06:29, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

This appears to be a fourth opinion by this point, but I agree as well. Very strong and reliable sourcing has been presented supporting that Nasser did in fact expel the peacekeepers. The sources presented to refute this are largely primary and therefore not nearly so reliable, and I also don't think they're unambiguous enough to fit our normal requirements for the use of primary sources. I therefore see no problem with the lead section stating that there was an expulsion, as that position appears to be well supported. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Begging your pardon, but the original dispute was, and still is, over a series of arbitrary deletions of material from scholarly WP:V secondary sources, i.e. The Making of Resolution 242, by Sydney Dawson Bailey; International History of the Twentieth Century, by Anthony Best; Peacekeeping Fiascoes, by Frederick H. Fleitz; The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping, By William Durch; and etc. The UN Yearbook is a reference work published by the United Nations Information Service. Those secondary sources also happen to be supported by the primary source document - U Thant's report. Picking a WP:V source while excluding all others in order to craft a "master narrative" is a violation of the more fundamental WP:NPOV policy. harlan (talk) 16:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Section Break This Dispute is over Censorship

After a lengthy discussion here, I added these well-sourced quotations from WP:V secondary sources only to have them deleted:

After the war Yitzhak Rabin, who had served as the Chief of the General Staff for Israel during the war stated: "I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it." Menachem Begin stated that "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." [61] both men quoted in One Land, Two Peoples: The Conflict Over Palestine, By Deborah J. Gerner PhD, Westview Press, 1994, ISBN 0813321808, Page 112

Former Chief of Staff of the armed forces, Haim Bar-Lev (a deputy chief during the war) had stated: "the entrance of the Egyptians into Sinai was not a casus belli." Major General Mattityahu Peled, the Chief of Logistics for the Armed Forces during the war, claimed the survival argument was "a bluff which was born and developed only after the war... ..."When we spoke of the war in the General Staff, we talked of the political ramifications if we didn't go to war —what would happen to Israel in the next 25 years. Never of survival today." [62] both men were quoted in "Was the War Necessary?", Time Magazine. Peled also stated that "To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal (Israeli military)[63] quoted from 'The Terrorist Conjunction: The United States, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, by Alfred G. Gerteiny, and Jean Ziegler, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, ISBN 0275996433, page 142 harlan (talk) 15:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If Harlan were really interested in neutrality, rather than just finding secondary sources that included the specific quotes you were so keen on inserting into the article, you would instead have actually reproduced the thrust of the arguments the sources were using. Deborah J. Gerner, for example, suggests that it is unlikely that Nasser was actually going to attack Israel. However, she also points out that Nasser was engaged in brinkmanship in an "attempt to improve its standing in the Arab world and to humiliate Israel by forcing it to accept what it said it would not accept—the renewed closure of the Strait of Tiran". Someone interested in NPOV would have edited to include that view. By the way, Alfred G. Gerteiny reproduces a WP:FRINGE theory that "the Zionist lobby" and Israel are responsible for just about all Arab terrorism, among other things; certainly a view that's widely held among a certain segment of the world's population, but not nearly as widely held among respected historians of the topic. Jayjg ^(talk) 18:09, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks to me as if Harlan has excellent material that belongs in the article. As it currently reads, it is absurdly POV, giving the impression that it was Egypt's belligerence that caused the war, which I'm fairly certain is outrageously ridiculous. Dayan and Ben-Gurion were itching for this war and committed constant provocations. Nasser was no more than foolishly provocative in return. PR^talk 19:05, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I've tried to include quotations from very well known news accounts which first appeared in Ha'aretz, Time Magazine, and Le Monde. Employing ad hominem fallacies in an attempt to discredit me, Gerteiny, Wikiquote, and etc. which merely cite those interviews is illogical. I'm taking a break, but will return to this matter in a few weeks. harlan (talk) 22:50, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

As explained above, harlan, de-contextualized post-facto quotes intended to prove a specific, conspiratorial view of Israel in general, and the Six-Day War in particular, are not in line with WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:FRINGE. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:07, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

No, you didn't explain above. The text in the lead comes from the summary contained in the 1967 UN Yearbook. The crisis which led to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War is generally considered to have started on 7 April 1967, when the Israeli aircraft shot down six Syrian planes. A sampling of authors who agree with Tom Segev and General Israel Lior on that point are: Six Day War, By A. J. Barker, Published by Ballantine Books, 1974, ISBN 0345240669, page 10; Key to the Sinai: The Battles for Abu Ageila in the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli Wars, By George Walter Gawrych, Published by U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1990, page 74; and The History of the Middle East Wars, By J. N. Westwood, Published by Hamlyn, 1984, ISBN 0600347613, page 82.

Time/CNN pubished an article titled "Was the War Necessary?" which contained many of the quotes. I don't believe the remarks of the Israeli leaders are being taken out of context, and you certainly haven't offered a shred of evidence that they were. In fact, in the case of Begin and Gen. Peled, there isn't the slightest possibility that their remarks are being misconstrued in the way that you suggest. Please drop the bogus attempts at wikilawyering, there is no original research involved in quoting published material or balancing you POV with material from decision makers themselves.harlan (talk) 04:21, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Quotes without context are meaningless at best. I pointed out (above) that the context, even from the sources you provided, wasn't what you presented it as. Save the contextless quotes for wikiquote, and use this article for the analysis of reliable secondary sources. Jayjg ^(talk) 04:26, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Rabin, the IDF Chief of Staff, and Bar Lev, the IDF Deputy Chief of Staff, both went out of their way in the respective Le Monde and CNN/Time interviews to explain that the Egyptian troop build-up in the Sinai was NOT a casus belli. The CNN/Time article is available online in English. It obviously constitutes an analysis from a reliable secondary source.

The only thing you pointed out above were some "political" considerations:

"Deborah J. Gerner, for example, suggests that it is unlikely that Nasser was actually going to attack Israel. However, she also points out that Nasser was engaged in brinkmanship in an "attempt to improve its standing in the Arab world and to humiliate Israel"

The quote from General Peled clarifies that issue: "When we spoke of the war in the General Staff, we talked of the political ramifications if we didn't go to war —what would happen to Israel in the next 25 years. Never of survival today." In a 30 March 1968 Ma’ariv interview Moshe Dayan explained: "What do you mean, unavoidable? It was, of course, possible to avoid the war if the Straits had stayed closed to Israeli shipping." You won't even let me quote the published views of the principals themselves, so it begs the question to suggest that I should also include the views of the late professor Gerner.

These quotes have gotten a great deal of notoriety. They were made by the responsible Israeli decision makers themselves, and they were published (over and over again) in well-known WP:RS newspapers, magazines, and books. Wikipedia policy requires that all significant views that have been published by reliable sources be represented. "This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles, and of all article editors." harlan (talk) 09:49, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Instead of using primary sources for original research, please find reliable - and ideally reasonably neutral - secondary sources that discuss these quotes and their meaning. We need the views of respected historians of Israeli military history, not contextless quotes from principals. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Syrian section removed from lede

I've removed this recent insertion from the lede:

In January of 1967 Syria informed the UN Security Council that Israel was expanding its illegal occupation of the Demilitarized Zone by liquidating what remained of the rights of Arab cultivators. After a military build-up on both sides of the Armistice Demarcation Line, Israel charged that Syria had initiated a major clash, and that Israeli aircraft eventually had silenced Syrian gun positions and shot down six Syrian planes, including one near Damascus.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=wDhYMiAnidAC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=&source=bl&ots=A_3Jwq74fe&sig=ZEdVCQxJKGjeXs6izlN4649r_c4&hl=en&ei=mKeVSdGkI4Oftwfwuby5Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result 1967, By Tom Segev, Jessica Cohen, Published by Macmillan, 2007, ISBN 0805070575, page 210-212]</ref><ref>[http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/361eea1cc08301c485256cf600606959/17bdf357679b218f85256c41006ad66d!OpenDocument YEARBOOK OF THE UNITED NATIONS 1967]</ref>

As is quite obvious, the wording favors the Syrian POV on this (e.g. Syria "informs" rather than "claims" or even "states"), and states obvious POV as fact (e.g. "expanding its illegal occupation") - seriously violations of WP:NPOV. If one reads the actual comparable section in the Wikipedia article, the presentation is far more neutral and nuanced. Another problem with the material is that it violates WP:LEDE on two counts: first, as noted, it doesn't summarize what is in the article, but rather presents a whole new POV take on it. Second, there is no reason to believe or think that these specific incidents are so crucial for the war that they belong in the lede. Harlan, can you justify these policy violations? Jayjg ^(talk) 03:35, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

The wording of any Syrian report to the Security Council expresses the Syrian government's POV, just as the Israeli report that Syria had "initiated a major clash" expressed the Israeli government's POV. There is no Wikipedia policy that requires editors to water-down or neutralize the reports or official statements issued by the parties, themselves, about the nature of the dispute or conflict. The text attributes the views to the state of Syria.

The relevant extracts from the Yearbook of the United Nations for 1967:

In letters of 10 and 13 January 1967, Syria informed the Council that the grave deterioration along the demarcation lines was the result of the dual Israel aim to increase tension so as to justify subsequent large-scale aggression against Syria and to expand its illegal occupation of the Demilitarized Zone by liquidating what remained of the rights of Arab cultivators. Regarding charges made in Israel's letters of 8, 9 and 11 January, Syria stated that in every instance where there was a Syrian firing, it was in return of provocative Israel fire directed against peaceful Arab farmers or Syrian posts.

Here is the summary of the Israeli report:

Israel charged that by firing on 7 April at Israel tractors cultivating in the Demilitarized Zone, Syria had initiated a major clash, involving use of machine-guns, mortars, artillery, tanks and planes and had then violated cease-fire arrangements of United Nations Military Observers. Israel aircraft eventually had silenced Syrian gun positions and shot down Syrian planes.

In his account author Tom Segev says two tractors entered a certain lot "according to plan". He mentions that General Lior felt the war started with the downing of the Syrian planes on April 7th, 1967.

The article already mentions the 1974, interview given by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to journalist Rami Tal where Dayan rather adamantly dismissed concerns about Syrian aggression and insisted that IDF commanders had made a game out of escalating tensions along the Syrian front. Under those circumstances, I don't think it is a violation of Wikipedia policy to quote the reports Syria supplied to the UN in the lead.

Avi Shlaim said that Israel's strategy of escalation on the Syrian front was probably the single most important factor in dragging the Middle East to war in June of 1967. Most military historians agree with the assessment of General Lior that the crisis which led up to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War started on 7 April 1967 when the Israeli aircraft shot down the six Syrian planes. see for example: Six Day War, By A. J. Barker, Published by Ballantine Books, 1974, ISBN 0345240669, page 10; Key to the Sinai: The Battles for Abu Ageila in the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli Wars, By George Walter Gawrych, Published by U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1990, page 74; The History of the Middle East Wars, By J. N. Westwood, Published by Hamlyn, 1984, ISBN 0600347613, page 82, and Dr Anthony's International History of the Twentieth Century (page 409).

Moshe Dayan's complete quote mentioned several IDF Chiefs of Staff including Chaim Laskov, Zvi Tsur, Yitzhak Rabin, and David Elazar:

Never mind that. After all, I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace 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 farther, 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. I did that, and Laskov and Chara did that, and Yitzhak did that, but it seemed to me that the person who most enjoyed these games was Dado." see The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, By Avi Shlaim, Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, ISBN 0393321126, pages 235-236

harlan (talk) 07:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Jayjg. This is already discussed at the appropriate section, "Israel and Syria, where it belongs. No need to repeat it in a biased manner and with undue weight in the lead. -- Nudve (talk) 12:11, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

You and Jayjg should get together and publish your own book. In the meantime, a significant number of Israeli historians, Israeli generals, and Israeli politicians holding a very different view of the situation have been quoted in numerous published accounts which say the crisis began on 7 April 1967, and that the Egyptian troop buildup in the Sinai was not a casus belli. The present lead places undue weight on a non-issue while ignoring the casus belli that was cited by the Syrian government. I agree with what Kauffner stated above. The lead makes it appear that the Arabs started the war. harlan (talk) 15:18, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

If it makes it appear that way it's because, duh, they did. NoCal100 (talk) 05:24, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

NoCal100, a few days before the war, Menachem Begin was appointed to the "National Unity" cabinet as a minister without portfolio. He was speaking from firsthand knowledge when he said "We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him [Nasser]." No amount of dissimulation or legal theorizing over the casus belli in the lead will change that fact.

The heated discussions in "the Pit" that led to the decision to go to war revolved around the loss of IDF prestige, the government's apparent lack of confidence in the capability of the IDF, or the loss of IDF credibility as a deterrent force if nothing was done about Nasser.

Several of the participants published accounts which explained that Israel started the war because further delays might hamper the execution of the IDF's first strike battle plan. During the debate in the Pit, Generals Sharon and Peled had infuriated Prime Minister Eshkol by suggesting the government was weakening the military day-by-day because of its foot-dragging. Peled said

"We have heard something regarding Tiran, which lost its significance long ago. It was not important to start with and is even less important now. The entry of an Egyptian force into Sinai was nothing new for the IDF, having been anticipated and planned for in various exercises and war games. The only surprise was Nasser's audacity, since it was well known that his army was not ready for war." see ISRAEL'S DECISION TO GO TO WAR, JUNE 2, 1967, by Col. Ami Gluska

The "retaliatory" attacks on Sammu and the Syrians combined with Israeli troop build-up led to the war in exactly the same manner as the Egyptian escalation. Moshe Dayan revealed that several of the IDF Chiefs of Staff had been carrying out operations in the demilitarized zone in an effort to increase tension and wear down the Syrians. Rabin's autobiography states that "In fact, it was a clash in which our planes downed six Syrian aircraft in April 1967 that sparked the process that climaxed in the Six Day War." He goes on to explain that the process was a good thing because it resulted in the strengthening of the Israeli military. That process involved a propaganda campaign that provoked the Egyptian response and included the call up of 70,000 additional Israeli reservists. Rabin relates that Ben Gurion didn't think that Nasser wanted a war, and upbraided him over the reserve call-up. Ben Gurion said it was a grave mistake and predicted that it would lead the country to war.

Ralph Bunche and U Thant both commented on the rumors and leaks by various Israeli officials that appeared in both the local Israeli press and the international wire services. The reports claimed that an attack on Syria was either imminent or unavoidable. Even the US State Department took Israel to task over the effects of their threatening statements, so Nasser wasn't acting solely on the basis of fabricated Russian reports as the lead suggests. harlan (talk) 02:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

when you blockade another nation's waterways, you have committed an act of war. Who fires the first bullet after that is not relevant. NoCal100 (talk) 02:35, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe you are trying to resuscitate the discarded legal concept of unilaterally declared "just wars". Don't forget Israel's "security mishap". Egypt still had several crews of Israeli saboteurs in custody from the Lavon Affair who had been given bombs and orders to relay information about targets in the canal zone. Israel hadn't acknowledged any responsibility. The rules of "Innocent passage" don't permit that sort of behavior. Nasser said he only wanted Israel to agree to abide by the terms of the 1949 armistice agreement. He agreed to UN mediation too. In similar situations the US blockaded Cuba, and Israel has blockaded the Gaza Strip while simultaneously claiming it only wants a cease fire. harlan (talk) 03:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm just stating the obvious - that when you blockade another nation's waterways, you have started a war. Who fires the first bullet after that is not relevant. NoCal100 (talk) 05:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The lede should summarize what led to the war, what happen during the war, and what its impact was. It's not the place for legal argumentation regarding which side was at fault. Apart from the lede-worthiness issue, the idea of causus belli, where certain acts can be treated as a national insults and therefore valid reasons to go to war, is 19th century international law. In modern law, you take such grievances to the UN and to the World Court and so forth. Kauffner (talk) 05:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Clashes half a year before the war are not significant to require and entire paragraph in the lede. All sources refer to the closing of the straits of Tiran and re-militarization of the Sinai as the real brinksmanship that led to the war, not the Syrian incidents from months earlier. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The clash wasn't half a year before the war. All the sources that I've mentioned, including Rabin himself, mention the 7 April 1967 incident (which you deleted) started the process that led to war. Your personal point of view is irrelevant. Once again, Avi Shlaim said that Israel's strategy of escalation on the Syrian front was probably the single most important factor in dragging the Middle East to war in June of 1967. The inclusion of that major published viewpoint is non-negotiable at this point, since the UN Yearbook, Defense Minister Dayan, Tom Segev, Rabin, and Shlaim all single out the Israeli military clashes in the Syrian DMZ as the precursor to the war.

The lead doesn't say brinksmanship led to the war, does it? During the debate where the decision was made to go to war, Gen Peled and the rest of the General Staff didn't think the Sinai buildup or the closure of the Straits were an immediate security threat:

"We have heard something regarding Tiran, which lost its significance long ago. It was not important to start with and is even less important now. The entry of an Egyptian force into Sinai was nothing new for the IDF, having been anticipated and planned for in various exercises and war games. The only surprise was Nasser's audacity, since it was well known that his army was not ready for war."

See ISRAEL'S DECISION TO GO TO WAR, JUNE 2, 1967, by Col. Ami Gluskaharlan (talk) 23:32, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

You keep adding material discussing events in January 1967. That's 1/2 year before the war. The article you linked to describes it as "the crisis and war in May-June 1967". The one-sided, WP:UNDUE material you keep inserting violates WP:LEDE. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:58, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The actual Wikipedia policy states that "Neutrality requires that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each." You are violating policy by deleting very well known (practically notorious) published material in order to present ONLY one POV.

A large number of prominent sources, including many historians, the Syrian government, and Moshe Dayan (the fourth IDF Chief of Staff and Defense Minister in 1967) say that the IDF had been deliberately planning and carrying-out military operations inside the DMZ in order to provoke the Syrians. General Lior, the aide-de-camp to Prime Minister Eshkol (mentioned in Segev's 1967), General Rabin, the IDF Chief of Staff in 1967, and many others like George W. Gawrych, Historian on the Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, agree that the crisis that led to the war began on 7 April 1967 with the downing of the Syrian planes. Which authority (other than yourself) are you citing when you delete that section?

• The Iron Wall, By Avi Shlaim page 235 Discusses the Novenber 1966 IDF raid on Samu and says "In early 1967 they resumed cultivation of land in the DMZ in a manner calculated to provoke clashes with the Syrians." He mentions the April 7th air battle as a "major landmark in the spiral of violence" and goes on to say: "Israel's strategy of escalation on the Syrian front was probably the single most important factor in dragging the Middle East to war in June of 1967."

• The Rabin Memoirs, By Yitzhak Rabin page 64 says: "In fact, it was a clash in which our planes downed six Syrian aircraft in April 1967 that sparked the process that climaxed in the Six Day War."

As for the proof that threats made by Israeli officials contributed to the Egyptian mobilization:

• "Ralph Bunche", authored by UN Secretariat colleague Brian Urquhart, page 401 mentions the unfounded Russian warning to Nasser on 13 May. He also notes that the previous day UPI had reported that Rabin had threatened to occupy Damascus. He says these were the immediate reasons why Egypt mobilized on May 14th.

• Avi Shlaim's "Iron Wall" pages 236-237 also mentions Rabin's 12 May threat to occupy Damascus, and says Rabin was reprimanded by the Prime Minister at the next cabinet meeting. Shlaim also mentions the threatening statement made by Eshkol about "teaching Syria a sharper lesson than that of April 7".

• The article I linked to at the Jewish Virtual Library is titled "Closing the Gulf of Aqaba". It contains Nasser's own statement to the Egyptian military on the subject. He specifically cited the Israeli threats: "On May 12 a very impertinent statement was made. Anyone reading this statement must believe that these people are so boastful and deceitful that one simply cannot remain silent. The statement said that the Israeli commanders have announced they would carry out military operations against Syria in order to occupy Damascus and overthrow the Syrian Government. On the same day, Israeli Premier Eshkol made a strongly threatening statement against Syria. At the same time, the commentaries said that Israel believed Egypt could not make a move because it was bogged down in Yemen." and again: "Why is it that no one spoke about peace, the United Nations and security when on May 12 the Israel Premier and the Israeli commanders made their statements that they would occupy Damascus, overthrow the Syrian region, strike vigorously at Syria and occupy a part of Syrian territory?"

None of that is original research. Since it involves the statements of the principals, themselves, it is ridiculous for you to claim it is WP:UNDUE to include it. harlan (talk) 07:38, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Direct quotes of principals is original research. Quote consensus views of reliable historians in the lede. And stop insering stuff from a half-year before the war started. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:12, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Michael Oren's "The Six Day War"

page 135 of A Never-ending Conflict By Mordechai Bar-On, part of Michael Oren's article "The Six Day War" is cited repeatedly in this article, and in the lead.

Oren traces "The Path to War" from November 1966 (starting on page 134) and on page 135 mentions the armed clashes along the Israeli-Syrian border, the fact that the Israeli forces gained dominance over the (so-called) demilitarized zones, and the large November 1966 IDF attack on the West Bank village of Samu. He claims that Nasser began looking for a means of ridding himself of UNEF after King Husseien criticized him for failing to defend the West Bank, while hiding behind the skirts of UNEF. You can't rely on a source that confirms an eight-month long path to war, while at the same time deleting the entire section that describes the Syrian and Israeli government complaints about the border clashes, and IDF activities in the demilitarized zone. harlan (talk) 21:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure you can trace it back to the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, the 1917 Balfour declaration, and earlier. The article lede, however, should deal with proximate causes and events, not events that happened half a year before the war. Every time you insert material into the lede from January 1967 it will come right back out again. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

In that case the POV tag should never have been removed. The lead makes it sound like Israel only went to war with Egypt, when in fact the record shows they had been conducting a series of military operations against Syria and Jordan for months. If closing the Straits qualifies as a causus belli, then sending a few thousand IDF troops to destroy the village of Samu certainly should qualify.

In "Arab Politics, Palestinian Nationalism and the Six Day War", Moshe Shemesh explains that Jordan's military and civilian estimates reached the unequivocal conclusion that Israel's main design was conquest of the West Bank, and that Israel was striving to drag all of the Arab countries into a general war. He says that after the Samu raid these apprehensions became the deciding factor in Jordan's decision to participate in the war. King Hussein was convinced Israel would try to occupy the West Bank whether Jordan went to war, or not.

I am not tracing back to events that happened a half a year before the war, or misrepresenting my sources by including the April 7 air battle in the lead. A historian that is cited in your version of the lead, Michael Oren, traces back eight months to the raid on Samu and the Israeli-Syrian border clashes, and claims they led the Middle East to war. He is certainly not alone in that opinion. You brought up the issue of UNEF in the lead, and Oren says Jordan's criticism over the Egyptian response to the Samu raid was Nasser's motive for getting rid of UNEF.

Once again: "Neutral point of view is a fundamental Wikimedia principle and a cornerstone of Wikipedia. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles, and of all article editors.". There is guidance from ArbCom that removal of statements that are pertinent, sourced reliably, and written in a neutral style constitutes disruption.1. I've used the talk page and have supplied a multitude of WP:RS sources.

Here is another. Ambassador Richard Bordeaux Parker gathered representatives from the Israeli, Arab, Russian, and U.S. military, government, and academe to examine the steps that led to the war. He and L. Carl Brown co-wrote the introduction of the retrospective, "The Six-day War, which provides "a summary of events leading up to the June 1967 war". They list the Samu raid, the 7 April air battle over Damascus, the 13 May Russian warning, and the reports the same day of General Rabin's threat to occupy Damascus. The authors say that it is generally agreed that the Samu raid is the beginning of the escalation in tensions that led to the war. harlan (talk) 09:30, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

See, here's where we run into difficulties; you claim that in fact the record shows they had been conducting a series of military operations against Syria and Jordan for months - but, of course, there were a series of incidents for literally years between Israel and various Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian forces, or their proxies. Fedayeen incursions, shellings, land-mines, etc., and Israeli responses. Not just Israel "conducting a series of military operations". You consistently want to show one narrative, that of unprovoked Israeli military aggression for the purposes of territorial gain. However, that one-sided narrative is not in accord with the facts, nor with WP:NPOV, nor with the generally accepted historical view. As for the claim that that it is generally agreed that the Samu raid is the beginning of the escalation in tensions that led to the war, "generally agreed" by whom? Please name the people who "generally agree" on this. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:50, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Jayjg, I've put the POV tag back in place, and added this article to the list over at WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration. WP:NPOV policy does not require a sympathetic view of the Israeli raid on Samu, a good faith attempt to justify it to your satisfaction, or for other editors to downplay the universal condemnation that it provoked in the international community.

I believe that I already pointed out that you are misusing your own source in the lead. Micheal Oren wrote another article that makes it perfectly clear that he "generally agrees" the raid on Samu led to the war:

Nasser quickly seized on this pretext. He sent 100 thousand troops into Sinai, 500 aircraft, a thousand battle tanks. He evicted UN forces and closed off shipping to Israel’s Southern port of Eilat. From that point on, it was only a matter of time and circumstance before the Israeli government decided to react to this threat and to strike preemptively. Thus began what became the Six Day War. All this happened because of Israel’s raid on the village of al-Samu’a. Now one can learn from the recently declassified documents that the raid on al-Samu’a should never have occurred; in fact, it could have been easily prevented. To understand this, one needs to rewind to 11 November 1966." see The Revelations of 1967, New Research on the Six Day War and Its Lessons for the Contemporary Middle East, page 3 of 14

This thread started when you decided to "generate some drama" by making public proclamations of misbehavior and policy violations, while deleting well-sourced material from the UN Office of Public Information and saying that events from six months before the war are irrelevant. You are clearly the one who is POV pushing and making tendentious edits in this case. harlan (talk) 11:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

harlan, I haven't claimed that policy "require[s] a sympathetic view of the Israeli raid on Samu," so I'm not sure why you bring it up. As for "generally agrees", Michael Oren "generally agreeing" with a specific view doesn't mean that "it is generally agreed" that the raid was the cause of the war. As for Oren, he states, in the quote you bring, that "Nasser quickly seized on this pretext" - did you also put that position into the lede? If you're faithfully reproducing Oren, you would have to. And finally, regarding your last paragraph, Comment on content, not on the contributor. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Nasser had already launched the build-up in the Sinai on 14 May, before Fawzi ever made his trip to Syria. see NASSER AND HIS ENEMIES: FOREIGN POLICY DECISION MAKING IN EGYPT ON THE EVE OF THE SIX DAY WAR He mentioned the threats against Syria that had been made by Israeli leaders. He couldn't have ruled out the possibility of an attack on Syria on the basis of Fawzi's report in any event. General Odd Bull wrote that the UN had estimated Israel could mobilize 300000 men, ten per cent of its population, in as little as 48 hours. see War and Peace in the Middle East: The Experiences and Views of a U.N. Observer, by Odd Bull, Published by Leo Cooper, 1976, ISBN 0850522269, page 104. harlan (talk) 04:16, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I see. Thank you for sharing your interpretation of the historical events, as well as Odd Bull's estimates regarding Israel's mobilization capabilities. Now, what do respected historians of the era have to say about the causes of the war? If you were relying on Oren, did you also include his statements that Nasser was looking for a pretext to get rid of UNEF? Jayjg ^(talk) 04:23, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

No original research was required. The Laura James article on Egyptian decision making discusses Fawzi's trip to Syria. She says Nasser had already ordered the letter regarding UNEF to be written on the 14th of May.

Ambassador Richard Bordeaux Parker served in the infantry during WWII. He taught at the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins University, and Lawrence University. The Council on Foreign Relations sponsored and published his work. He mentions that during General Fawzi's visit, General Odd Bull had informed the Syrian delegate to the ISMAC that there was no sign of an Israel troop buildup, but that they didn't really need one in order to attack.. See the Chronology entry for 15 May 1967. On the same day, General Rabin let the Arab governments know through the UN that the Israeli forces in the Negev had been reinforced with an additional armored brigade. The next day, Israel began to rapidly mobilize its forces. see Israel and the American National Interest, By Cheryl A. Rubenberg, University of Illinois Press, 1989, ISBN 0252060741, page 107. Dr. Rubenburg quotes Menachem Begin about the cause of the war. He was actually in the room when the decision was made. harlan (talk) 12:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Article is pretty much incomprehensible

This article is about 3 times longer than it needs to be. I doubt any casual visitor would even bother reading the whole thing. Nobody who hasn't neurotically studied the conflict will understand most of it.

It is also poorly structured, punctuated by unnecessary quotes that belong in a novel, not an encyclopedia.

It is also a complete mystery to the reader the exact reasons for the Arab and Israeli attacks. The article wastes so much space discrediting various rationales for the war that it does not assign any real motives for the Israeli attack. 69.133.126.117 (talk) 02:37, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The Israeli cabinet decided to go to war on May 23, immediately upon learning Nasser would close the Straits of Tiran. The military problem was that while Nasser could gradually ratchet up the pressure, Israel could stay mobilized for only a short time. So Israel needed the crisis to be resolved quickly. Nasser presumably understood this, so why did he put Israel in this position? His Soviet sponsors and others were on his back to go war as soon as was practical. He would tell then that while he was eager to lead the charge, 1) there had to be a united Arab front against Israel, and 2) the United Nations and UNEF had to get out of the way. For a long time, both these things probably seemed like pie in the sky. But suddenly in May 1967 they were both reality and Nasser was out of excuses. Kauffner (talk) 04:31, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

You have a good point. Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to shrink the article (nor do I feel that I am qualified). I'll tag it, though... --Sci-Fi Dude (talk) 17:03, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Soviet Claims

The intro to the article reads:

Egypt's president Nasser expelled the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) from the Sinai Peninsula in May 1967.[7] Nasser knew that the Soviet claims were false, but used them as a pretext to evict the peacekeeping force that had been stationed there since 1957, following a British-French-Israeli invasion which was launched during the Suez Crisis.[8]

I can't find anywhere what "Soviet claims" are being referred to here - I imagine that more explanation has been lost in an edit somewhere. Anyone know enough to explain, or change the existing text to not refer to it? 82.163.43.10 (talk) 10:57, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It refers to Soviet intelligence report given by Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny to Egyptian Vice President Anwar Sadat, that claimed falsely that Israeli troops were massing along the Syrian border. It is mentioned in "Israel and Syria" paragraph in the article.Igorb2008 (talk) 21:32, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't that info be moved up then so the sentence actually makes sense?radek (talk) 05:33, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Also, the RS is divided on what Nasser believed, which is fundamentally unknowable. The report represented a Soviet demand that Egypt take action against Israel. To focus on whether or not Nasser believed that Israel was actually massing troops is to miss the point. Kauffner (talk) 00:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

casualty figures don't add up

"The following casualties are as confirmed by Israel: 800 Israeli soldiers were killed, 338 on the Egyptian front, 550 on the Jordanian front, and 141 on the Syrian front;"

1. This passage is not attributed to any source.

2. 338 + 550 + 141 = 1029, not 800; why the discrepancy?

Winterbadger (talk) 14:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem may be indicated by the fact that there are no inline citations for those figures. Someone needs to find some accurate ones... I Found some figures here: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign+Relations/Israels+Foreign+Relations+since+1947/1947-1974/THE+SIX-DAY+WAR+-+INTRODUCTION.htm.

I quote: "Israel's casualties amounted to 759 dead and about 3,000 wounded. Arab casualties came to about 15,000."

--Sci-Fi Dude (talk) 22:09, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Sharm El-Sheik

"and the Israeli light boat crews that captured the abandoned Sharm el-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula on June 7."

The link is to an article about the town. However, it seems that the text I quoted is referring to a ship. Can anyone clarify?

--Sci-Fi Dude (talk) 22:31, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Seems to me to be referring to the town. After all, it is on the southern tip of the peninsula. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 05:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --Sci-Fi Dude (talk) 16:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of Quotes

The editors that claim the quotes of Israeli leaders are being taken "out of context" should supply a citation that contains the so-called proper "context" for these same remarks, or else refrain from deleting pertinent well-sourced material. harlan (talk) 03:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"well sourced material?--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 03:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The 30 March 1968 edition of Ma’ariv is cited and verifiable. Many Israeli newspapers are available through IDC Publishers, for example copies from: http://www.idcpublishers.com/pdf/241_titlelist.pdf are available via ILL. If you Google the quote it appears to have been cited in: "The Other Israel", By Arie Bober, Published by Anchor Books, 1972, ISBN 0385014678 as well. harlan (talk) 04:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Since you want it in you have to provide the context. Otherwise the citation makes no sense and it is not clear what it adds. Is there any editor who claims to have seen this interview or read about in another source?Mashkin (talk) 04:37, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Yes, very well Harlan, but it doesn't sound like you've seen the articles that allegedly supports the text in the article. So we don't know the context and we don't have a source? What's the issue here exactly? How is this sentence still in the article? --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 04:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I was telling you where you could obtain a copy to verify the citation, or read it for yourself online. I already have. Bober had no afiliation with Ma'ariv, but since he cited the interview and provides the quote, in English, I will mention that as well. The book was originally published by Doubleday, but Moshe Machover has placed it online here: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/toi/chap1-04.html

The quote makes perfect sense. The Defense Minister, Dayan, said that the war had been avoidable even if the Straits of Tiran had stayed closed to Israeli shipping. That is hardly earthshaking news. How much context would you like? On the eve of the decision to go to war, the IDF Chief of Logistics said Tiran wasn't important to begin with, and that it had lost any significance long ago. The port couldn't even handle ocean going vessels until after 1956, and only five Israeli vessels had passed through during the subsequent ten years. see NASSER AND HIS ENEMIES: FOREIGN POLICY DECISION MAKING IN EGYPT ON THE EVE OF THE SIX DAY WAR, footnote 97 and Benny Morris Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956, page 337. According to the UNEF Commander, General Rikhye, the claim that Egypt was committing an act of aggression was a questionable charge, since the last Israeli vessel had passed through nearly two years earlier. He was in charge of monitoring the situation and he claimed that the Egyptians had only searched two ships before relaxing the implementation of their blockade. see The Sinai Blunder, By Indar Jit Rikhye, page 78. harlan (talk) 08:29, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

What do reliable sources have to say about that quote? Jayjg ^(talk) 02:29, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The editors at two professional publishing businesses, Ma’ariv and Doubleday, printed the quote. It is third party verifiable using an ordinary Google search, and it speaks for itself. I'm restoring it along with the other well-known quotes from Israeli leaders that were deleted without any explanation. harlan (talk) 18:01, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The point is that the quotes are not given in context, not the fact that they uttered the sequence of words (which is the case regarding the 1976 "interview" with Dayan). Mashkin (talk) 06:34, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia NPOV policy is to let published sources speak for themselves, and all of these have citations to verifiable published sources. So, the point is that YOU need to supply some published evidence that proves, or at least indicates, that these well-known quotes were taken out of context in the first place. harlan (talk) 15:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

lets start with the Dayan interview. He was not in a position of power when the incidents occurred and was a member of the oppisition (in fact he spent much of the time in Vietnam as a reporter). Hence he does not have particular expertise on the subject. also the suppsoed interview took place in 1976but was published only many years after he died. I have never seen the claim that the is a recording of these conversations. Also it contains claims that are pretty clearly wrong (e.g. that the Hula valley villagers wanted the land on the Golan for themselves, that it why they pushed for the war - there was no attempt by them after the war to get the land). Mashkin (talk) 15:16, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Mashkin, Wikipedia isn't interested in your personal critique of the Ma'ariv interview. Your objections look like a lot of WP:OR inferences and conjecture to me. The published quote speaks for itself, and its so well-known that its notorious. If you want to debunk it, you'll need to go head-to-head in the article using a reliable published source.

There were certainly lots of incidents in the DMZs while Dayan was serving as the IDF Chief of Staff. He is quoted saying that he provoked most of those. He also said that the other IDF Chiefs had done the same. He knew those men personally, and had access to IDF situation briefings and their old operational reports while he was the Defense Minister. Somebody in Israel obvious wanted to settle on the Golan. harlan (talk) 15:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Harlan, the quotes come from relaible sources and should be allowed to speak for themselves. If maskhin and brewcrewer know of sources that contradict these quotes then they should add them. Where Dayan was at the exact moment this was going on is irrelevant, he knew how the IDF operated and said that many of the other commanders engaged in the same tactics he did. This is a reliable quote from a reliable source and another reason has to be given why it shouldn't be included other than certian editors don't like it. annoynmous 05:43, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Miraculous Events?

Reading the article, I see no information on the many miraculous events that were supposed to have happened in protection of the Israeli forces. Is it just that there isn't enough documentation out there, or that no one has thought of it?

--Sci-Fi Dude (talk) 17:24, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Can you be a bit more specific? --OuroborosCobra (talk) 21:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

There are multiple documentations of supposed "miraculous events" that protected and/or saved Israeli soldiers - especially in the invasion and ensuing attempts to hold the old city.

I don't have the time right now to research them (I'm on a deadline to get a report done for school) but I was putting the idea out there in hopes that someone else could work on it.

--Sci-Fi Dude (talk) 22:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you should wait until you have enough time to come up with specific incidents before you bring up how the supernatural possibly aided a natio state fight some other nation states. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.203.43.13 (talk) 03:57, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

An unlikely event

Is there anybody watching this page? One interesting piece of observation here: Ahron Bregman in his book Israel's Wars, 1947-93 (ISBN 9780415214681), points out that Israel didn't expect a war to break out:

'The view in Israel in the first half of 1967 was that Egypt was unlikely to embark on a full-scale war. This opinion rested upon a fact that as long as Egypt's elite forces, eight brigades in all, were still involved in the civil war in Yemen, he would not dare to attack Israel.' --Sceptic Ashdod (talk) 15:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

It was the Soviets who engineered the war. In mid-May, they told Nasser that Israel was massing forces to attack Syria. Even if he didn't believe it, he had at least to pretend that he did. The UN agreed to withdraw its forces from Sinai much more easily than anyone expected. Suddenly, Nasser no longer had any of the excuses that he had using earlier to delay. Kauffner (talk) 15:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

This is true... but shouldn't undermine the fact that it was conscious decision by Nasser. On May 13, Soviets informed Egyptian official that '‘Ten Israeli brigades had been concentrated on the Syrian border’ ready to strike at Syria'. What did Nasser do? He ordered the dispatch of two divisions across the Suez Canal and into the Sinai, with the aim of distracting Israel from what seemed to be, according to the Soviet report, an imminent strike at Syria. In addition, Nasser sent his Chief of Staff Mohammed Fawzi to Damascus, entrusting him to confirm the Soviet information about the apparent Israeli mobilization. In Syria, Chief of Staff Fawzi went with Syrian General Anwar Al-Kadi to inspect the border, but found nothing unusual, aerial maps indicated no unusual movement of Israeli troops too. So what did Nasser do then? Nasser did not call his divisions back from the Sinai – in fact he went so far as to reinforce them by dispatching more troops to the desert. Furthermore, on 16 May he instructed UN troops, which since the 1956 war had been deployed on the Egyptian side of the border (Israel would not allow them to deploy on her side of the border) and in Gaza and Sharm el-Sheike, to leave their posts. Finally, on 23 May, Egypt’s president took yet another step, by ordering the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. In the full knowledge that the Israelis were likely to react violently, Nasser declared the Straits closed to Israeli shipping. That he did so with open eyes we know from Anwar Sadat, who later testified how Nasser had said to his colleagues, whom he had brought together to decide on the closure of the Straits: ‘Now, with the concentration of our force in Sinai the chances of war are fifty–fifty but if we close the Straits, war will be 100 per cent certain’. --Sceptic Ashdod (talk) 19:49, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Flag of Syria is incorrect

The flag of Syria in this article has 2 stars, but from 1963-1971 Syria's flag had 3 stars. Could somebody please fix it? I've seen it fixed before but then for some strange reason it keeps getting reverted to 2 stars....72.27.89.161 (talk) 22:09, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

• Good call - I've changed the flags in the infobox, but I couldn't use the same type of formatting as is used for the other countries, because Template:Country_data_Syria does not provide for the alternative 3 stars flag, and that template can only be edited by administrators. If an administrator could fix that it would be convenient...Rayizmi (talk) 15:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Problematic text that violates Wikipedia principles

"The Arab states disputed Israel's right of passage through the Straits, noting they had not signed the Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone specifically because of article 16(4) which provided Israel with that right.[72] However, it has long been a part of state practice and customary international law that ships of all states have a right of innocent passage through territorial seas.[73][74] That Egypt had consistently granted passage as a matter of state practice until then suggests that its opinio juris in that regard was consistent with practice.[75] Furthermore, when Egypt occupied the Saudi islands of Sanafir and Tiran in 1950, it provided assurances to the US that the military occupation would not be used to prevent free passage, and that Egypt recognizes that such free passage is "in conformity with the international practice and the recognized principles of international law.".[76] In 1949 the International Court of Justice held in the Corfu Channel Case (United Kingdom v. Albania) that where a strait was overlapped by a territorial sea foreign ships, including warships, had unsuspendable right of innocent passage through such straits used for international navigation between parts of the high seas, but express provision for innocent passage through straits within the territorial sea of a foreign state was not codified until the 1958 Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone.[73][74][77]"
 ---  Starting with the "However" in the second sentence, this paragraph has the form of an argument in the voice of the article against the position of the Arab states. This is unacceptable. Such an argument (no matter how well based) must be presented in the voice of an authority or concerned party that made that argument. Zero^talk 11:21, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, this section is a mess, and a worse one than the last time I looked at it. The section could use some depth charges and torpedos. I don't think that people should try editing it until they realize that the Strait of Tiran issue is an extremely MEGO murky one, finely balanced between the two sides, ideal for international lawyers' cocktail party chats, where the issue of who was "right" under 1956 or 1967 international law is nearly imponderable. I started writing a separate article on these Arab Israeli maritime legal issues a few years ago but never finished it. John Z (talk) 08:04, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I've made a partial band-aid of an edit which destroys the notable bias present by introducing less blame-tossing terms. No "however"s, or anything of the like. It now appears as a note, a recommendation for one to consider when studying the topic. It's a tough alteration because, while many of the points do underline the geopolitical mood of the then-current world, Egypt had the unquestionable final say, legally, in who could pass through their waters. What was customary was irrelevant. Hopefully, it appears a little less biased. I'm going to hit a library tomorrow and see if I can put together something more comprehensive. Joe Caron 74.12.12.148 (talk) 05:37, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

removal of OR

This edit removed two links that were ostensibly sources, but in actuality OR. The first link is DeGaulle saying it is an act of aggression. DeGaulle is not "Arab countries". the second is just the government of Syria saying the same thing. Syria isn't "ARab countries" and in any event, even if it's a pre-emptive attack, that doesn't mean it's not pre-emptive. In fact, pre-emptive attacks are always aggressive.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 00:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Both sides of the argument

For the sake of neutrality, shouldn't Israel's claim that its attack was pre-emptive be accompanied by Arab's counter claim that it was an offensive attack?

e.g. "Israel launched an assault on the Egyptian airforce in what it called a pre-emptive attack. This claim was, however, disputed by the Arab states which asserted Israel had initiated an offensive war." Xullius (talk) 14:53, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

This phrase will of course be acceptable, just cite it properly. Off the record, this won't change the fact that Egypt actually started the war - by closing (or at least declaring them closed) the Straits of Tiran on May 22. The blockade violated the Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone, which was adopted by the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea on April 27, 1958, and provided Israel legitimate casus belli. The fact that Egypt didn't sign the convention shouldn't undermine the violation of IntLaw. What is more, on 28 January 1950, Egypt wrote in its memorandum to the US that 'This occupation [of Tiran and Sanafir islands by Egypt from Saudi Arabia] is not conceived in a spirit to hinder in whatever way it may be the innocent passage across the maritime space separating these two islands from the Egyptian coast of Sinai. It goes without saying that this passage, the only practicable, will remain free as in the past, being in conformity with the international practice and the recognized principles of international law.' --Sceptic Ashdod (talk) 19:24, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Violation of a treaty is not necessarily an act of war, else there would be far more wars in the world today. That this violation "started the war" is just one possible opinion of several. Zero^talk 23:46, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

There is much more involved than just the treaty. Both sides understood beforehand that closing the strait was a "red line" for Israel. It's hard to understand it as anything other than a deliberate provocation. The Soviets must have told Nasser, "We got a naval buildup going on in the Mediterranean. The U.S. is busy in Vietnam. Rise and shine." They had spent a lot of money of on the Egyptian and Syrian armies and certainly didn't want that going to waste. Kauffner (talk) 05:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Of course it was a provocation - as were Israeli threats and actions against Syria and Jordan before the war. --78.148.27.195 (talk) 22:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

This is nonsense. The Israeli cabinet made the decision to go to war on May 23 in response to the closure of the strait. There was no attempt to provoke a war earlier. The Russians had been building up their fleet in the Mediterranean since January. So they were already anticipating a showdown at that time. Kauffner (talk) 21:35, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Are not both 'offensive attack' and 'preemptive attack' politically spun phrases implying hard-to-document motivation? Why not simply use the term 'attack' or 'invasion' which are empirically descriptive? Motivations are discussed later in the article anyway. The references are detailed, however, an argue for both motivations. This is best discussed outside of the synopsis.

I, too, think it would be more appropriate only to mention the event without giving an inevitably subjective explanation in the introduction segment. I'll do that and add brief explanations of both cases under The Fighting Fronts / Preliminary air attack if nobody objects.Xullius (talk) 19:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Motivativation is an integral part of the story. "Preemption" is a judgmental word and shouldn't be in the lede. I want to see what happens when you mess with Jayjg's supermassive preemption footnote. Kauffner (talk) 22:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Declaring that a strait is closed isn't starting a war! Get real. If that is all it takes to start a war, Israel is launching a new war every week. Furthermore even if Israel was justified in acting in self-defence, invading and occupying the territory cannot be justified. If Germany couldn't get away with it, why should Israel? JohnC (talk) 08:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

This was a pre-emptive attack. Israel was seeking to eliminate a threat. That does not however mean that it was either justified or not an act of aggression. The Japanese attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbour were also pre-emptive. In fact Japan had rather more to worry about in 1941 than Israel had in 1967 - after all, America had just cut off its oil supply. It was arguably justified in attacking. So are we going to argue that Pearl Harbour was justified? Probably not. Similarly I don't see how Israeli aggression can be justified. It was ultimately just a grab for territory. The closer analogy is with the German invasion of Poland in 1939.JohnC (talk) 08:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't just closing a strait, though it was clear that was a red line for Israel, and Egypt knew this all too well. Egypt also expelled the peace keeping force from the Sinai, and deployed massive forces there. They also declared their full intention to destroy Israel. That's a clear declaration of war, and Israel was fully justified in launching a pre-emptive strike. Your comparison to Germany and Poland shows a tragic lack of knowledge both of that situation, and the Israeli-Arab situation. okedem (talk) 08:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Putting aside the significance of the strait (I mean, only a tiny percentage of Israel's trade goes through there, so it wasn't a massive threat to the economy), to be called a pre-emptive attack, there must be serious evidence of an impending attack from Egypt and Syria. not just a tense diplomatic situation, but evidence of an actual impending attack. This is disputable to say the least. So, I've rewritten the lead to say that Israel attacked Egypt and Syria and then followed it with the Israeli version (pre-emptive attack) and the dispute over this. I think using the phrase "pre-emptive attack" violates WP:NPOV - it's making an assumption.Steve3742 (talk) 23:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Important to note that Israel was involved in previous 1956 attack on Egypt in collusion with France and UK.Although the three belligerent nations were forced to withdraw by US, Israel would continue covert operations against Egypt.In one of these operations,Israel recruited Egyptian Jews to carry out fire bombing of western targets in Egypt (see Operation Susannah,Lavon Affair).Another negleted,note following 1956 attack and leading to 1967, is that France gifted Israel with a Nuclear reactor which was later suspected by CIA to be WMD manufacturing facility(See JFK, threatens Israel sanctions on Dimona WMD suspicion,prior to 1963 asassination).By 1967 Israel had assembelled 2 primitive Nuclear devices as backup to impending 1967 sneak attack.As Israel embarks on a threatened attack on Iran,it's important to unveil the machinations that pave the way for another Israeli war of choice.Eldura (talk) 15:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)eldura

The Israeli version does indicate that it was an offensive attack

(outdent) The motivation was regime change in Egypt. A first strike to take out the Arab air forces had always been a strategic assumption built-in to Israel's operations plans. It was part of standard military doctrine to establish control over the airspace above the battlefield. The quotes from Rabin, Begin, Dayan, Ben Gurion, and Bar-Lev that are already included in the article make it clear that the closing of the Straits, and the withdrawal of UNEF had nothing to do with the decision to go to war.

The lede of the article says there was a decision made to go to war on the 23 of May, but all of the accounts from Rabin, Peled, and others say the decision was only made after a discussion in "the Pit" on 2 June. see for example ISRAEL'S DECISION TO GO TO WAR, JUNE 2, 1967, by Col. Ami Gluska

The decision to go to war was made because the leadership felt that the IDF would lose its credibility as a deterrent force unless something was done to counter Nasser's moves, and that would lead to more serious threats. The military felt it would appear that the government lacked confidence in the capability of the IDF. Several of the participants published accounts which explained that further delays might have hampered the execution of the IDF's off-the-self battle plan. Gluksa's account of Peled's remarks during the meeting on 2 June make it perfectly clear that Nasser was the problem:

"We have heard something regarding Tiran, which lost its significance long ago. It was not important to start with and is even less important now. The entry of an Egyptian force into Sinai was nothing new for the IDF, having been anticipated and planned for in various exercises and war games. The only surprise was Nasser's audacity, since it was well known that his army was not ready for war."

Israel initially claimed it had been attacked by Egypt. All of the verbatim records of the official sources confirm that fact (e.g. the minutes of the UN Security Council, the documentary record in the "Foreign Relations of the United States", and etc.) Experts in international law (Michael Akehurst, John Quigley, etc.) have pointed out that Israel's changing story about the closing of the Straits and the withdrawal of UNEF only undermines the credibility of those sort of claims. see for example page 164 of Quigley's "The Case For Palestine".

A preemptive attack to preserve the right to freedom of navigation and innocent passage would have been confined to Egyptian territory. The US State Department had to remind Israel that the attack on the USS Liberty was an attack on international shipping in international waters (which sort of undermines any argument about the sanctity of freedom of navigation and innocent passage):

In a telephone conversation with Goldberg, Rusk told him that the next time he saw Eban, he should "hit him hard on this attack; if Israeli torpedo boats are attacking international shipping in international waters that is very dangerous business; if they were to hit a Soviet vessel that is extremely explosive." See Document 215. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Israel, Foreign Relations, 1964-1968, Volume XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967

Menachim Begin summed it up by saying: "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." The redeployment of Egyptian troops within the confines of Egyptian territory cannot be considered a casus belli under any circumstances. That should be removed from the lede. harlan (talk) 23:22, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Your opinion is fascinating, but of no importance. The closing of the straits was a widely recognized act of war, and against previous agreements. The expulsion of the peace-keepers and deployment of forces on the border was also against the previous agreements (following the 1956 war). Egypt and Syria made no effort to hide their intentions. They publicly announced their intention to launch an attack to destroy Israel. For a long time Nasser was building up for an attack, and was outspoken about it. Israel's motives for the specific course of action it took (a preemptive strike) are a side-issue, at most. okedem (talk) 05:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

What other choice did Israel have on June 2? The mobilization took too many reservists out of their civilian jobs to be sustained for any length of time. The other choice was to demobilize without result, while the Arab states remained mobilized, belligerent, and smelling weakness after Egypt closed the straits and got away with it. Kauffner (talk) 04:35, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Operation Rotem

Ben Gurion's War diaries and Rabin's memoirs both describe the confrontation between Ben Gurion and Rabin in 1967. Ben Gurion told Rabin that he didn't believe Nasser wanted a war, and that Ben Gurion held Rabin personally responsible for dragging the state into such a grave situation by ordering the mobilization of the majority of the IDF's reserve forces. Rabin mentions (page 50) that the process of events in 1967 had happened before, during "Operation Rotem" in 1960.

The lede says that the cabinet decided to launch an offensive on 23 May, but Rabin's memoirs say that the cabinet decided against taking any action at that time. Rabin relates that after the cabinet meeting, minister Shapira confronted him over the same issues that Ben Gurion had raised. Shapira told Rabin the Straits had been closed before and that they were unimportant. Rabin told Shapira (page 81) the buildup in the Sinai and the closure of the Straits were "humiliating pinpricks" (not existential threats). Rabin said that they were eroding the credibility of the IDF as a deterrent force. Col. Gluska's account at the link above says that during the 2 June meeting, Rabin had said the only significance of the Straits lay in the effect closure had on Israel's deterrent capability. Gluska said that Rabin briefed the assembled leaders that he was worried about inter-Arab cooperation and that he said it 'was crucial to act immediately and to inflict "a resounding blow" on Nasser, which would completely transform the situation in the Middle East.

The article doesn't even mention Operation Rotem, or the fact that the majority of official Israeli and US sources attribute Israel's decision to go to war to the IDF's "doctrine of deterrence", and not to any immediate threat that Israel faced. The Army and Air Force chiefs, Rabin and Weizman, and Prime Minister Eshkol's aide, General Lior, said that when Nasser moved his forces into the Sinai in 1967, the political and military leaders thought that he was simply repeating the same moves he had employed in 1960.

In early February of 1960 Israel publicly threatened Syria. The Soviets told Egypt that there was an Israeli mobilization in preparation for an attack against Syria. In mid-month Nasser moved the whole Egyptian Army into the Sinai. IAF recon flights made the discovery of the build-up near Israel's borders in late February. Ezer Weizman told Rabin 'We've been caught with our pants down.' Rabin wanted to mobilize all of the reserves, but Prime Minister Ben Gurion vetoed the idea. He only allowed 7,000 support and maintenance personnel to be mobilized to support Operation Rotem. The plan employed four reinforced brigades from the regular IDF force to defend the Egyptian invasion routes. Ben Gurion imposed censorship and briefed the newspaper editors on the situation. They kept the news about the Egyptian deployment out of the press, and began carrying stories to counter claims made in the Arab press that Israel intended to initiate hostilities.

The UAR had 16 brigades on Israel's borders. There were 500 Egyptian tanks and three brigades with SU-100 tank destroyers facing 20 to 30 Israeli tanks in the Negev. The Israeli representative to the United Nations, Joseph Tekoa, was directed to ask about the UN Secretary-General's plans for the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) in Gaza. Israel had received classified reports that the UAR had already started to negotiate the immediate evacuation of the UNEF should hostilities break out, and that the Secretary-General had already approved the move. Neither Hammarskjold nor Ralph Bunche were alarmed. They explained that in light of the tense atmosphere in the region, the UAR's military reinforcement along its borders with Israel was perfectly normal. Bunche pointed out that, given the poor state of the Syrian army, Nasser had no alternative but to demonstrate his readiness to come to Syria's aid. Ben Gurion demobilized the reservists, and let diplomacy take its course. By mid-March, Nasser started to send the Egyptian forces back to their home bases. For more information see "Early Warning Tested: The Rotem Affair and Israel's Security Policy, 1957-1960", by Yigal Sheffy, Maarachot Publishing; 2008; "The Failure Of American Water Medition: From Johnston Plan To Operation Rotem" in Turning Water Into Fire, by Ofira Seliktar, Middle East Review of International Affairs, Volume 9, No. 2, Article 4 - June 2005; Rotem: The Forgotten Crisis on the Road to the 1967 War, by Uri Bar-Joseph, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jul., 1996), pp. 547-566; and Ben-Gurion Diary, The IDF Archives, Giva'ataim, Israel, 29 January 1960 (onward). harlan (talk) 23:08, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Alan Hart ("Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews") calls Dayan's elevation to Minister of Defence on June 1st a "military coup" over Prime Minister Eshkol. Dayan was tremendously keen to seize more land (as he told journalist Tal) and got his chance, launching the attack less than a week later. Might as well have been Sept 1939 again. Sahel has done it's own thing with no reference to the government on other occasions eg over-running Lebanon in 1982. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.159.188.172 (talk) 20:07, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Egypt and Syria

OK, I'm not happy with this. We have an account of Syrian ceasefire violations followed by an account of Israeli ceasefire vioaltions - and then we have a load of unsourced and irrelevant stuff about Dayan. Three things:

1) The comment "some have said that his account may have been colored by his 1973 experince" is unsourced, uses WP:weasel words and is irrelevant. I'm removing it. If someone puts it back, source it, demonstrate its relevance, and advance a good argument as to why we should use WP:weasel words (some) here.

2) We then have a comment from a kibbutzim whose total substance amounts to a denial that the motive for Israeli ceasefire violations was that the kibbutzim wanted land. He doesn't deny that the violations took place. Hence I think this should be deleted also - it seems out of place.

3) Finally, we have Micheal Oren, who doesn't deny that Israeli ceasefire violations happened, he just tries to justify them. In fact, he affirms they took place. Again, I think its out of place.

At the very least, there's far too much on Israeli motives for ceasefire violations - 4 paragraphs. I think there should be less - 1 sentence, perhaps two. That's all the Syrians get on their motives. Steve3742 (talk) 11:01, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Poliocritis has changed most of the refernces to "Arab" land to "Syrian" land. Does anyone know how accurate this is? To what extent was the population Syrian and to what extent Palestinian? Is Syrian better than Arab in this respect? Steve3742 (talk) 13:01, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Regarding my latest edit. Last version by User:Steve3742 said "while Israeli armored tractors were cultivating land in the Demilitarized Zone owned by Syrian farmers, backed by Israeli armed forces illegally placed there." :

• Nowhere in the specified reference does wonership of the land appear. Furthermore, personal ownership of the land in question was hardly the issue here. It wasn't the cultivation iself but, as the reference points out, the perceived Israeli encroachment into disputed territory. I've thus changed the sentence to reflect this precise point.
• "Israeli armed forces illegally placed there" - again, the reference provided says no such thing. Furthermore, this is also incorrect. The DMZs themselves were quite small, tiny really, and also strategically very poor, at the foot of the Golan Heights, right under Syrian positions. Israeli forces were stationed further back, as attested by numerous accounts of those clashes. Dayan's quote is a good example, mentioning both air force and artillery. The former was obviously not stationed in the DMZs, while the latter were much farther back, in positions from which they cold actually target the Syrians up on the heights, something they were incapable of doing from right below. Poliocretes (talk) 13:26, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmmmm.

1) I don't think the point was whose sovreignity the land was under. The point was that Israel was cultivating land that was owned by Syrian farmers in violation of the ceasefire agrements and Syria objected to this. Syria possibly saw it as a prelude to a mass disposession of land owned by its farmers, as had happened to Palestinians in the northern DMZ earlier. Point taken about ownership of land not being specified in the source, I'll try to add another one.

2) "From a Syrian legal viewpoint..." it's not just a Syrian legal viewpoint, in fact it's arguably the other way round. I'll look for sources for this also.

3) I understand that Israel did have soldiers in the DMZ, which was illegal. So, I'll try to find a source for that and add it and revert to illegal presence of Israeli soldiers. You do accept, I hope, that irregardless of sovreignity the presence of soldiers in a Demilitarised zone is illegal? The clue's in the name.

Incidentally, do you have any info about my query above? About the relative amounts of Syrian and Palestinian inhabitants of the DMZ? Steve3742 (talk) 15:29, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Pre-emptive attack

It appears that someone inserted a sentence reading something like: "Israel claims that it was a pre-emptive strike, but the Arab states argue that it was an act of aggression". What? Where does it say that these two things are mutually exclusive? This sentence makes zero sense. I have reworded it. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 23:36, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

That was me. I take the point about how a preemptive strike is an act of aggression and so I'll reword this. But pre-emptive strike violates NPOV. It assumes something that, at the very least, can be disputed. Hence it is better to use neutral terminology - that Israel attacked Egypt (which nobody denies) followed by Israel's view of why and then the Arab disputing of that. To do otherwise is to give undue weight to the Israeli explanation, to assume that it is the truth and only argued against by a few crackpots and Arabs. That may be what you think. But it's not NPOV. To be NPOV, the evidence of an actual, impending Egyptian attack (as opposed to a tense diplomatic situation) would have to be indisputable, and it isn't.Steve3742 (talk) 21:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

What are you talking about? It was a preemptive strike. Do you actually have sources disputing that it was a preemptive strike, or is this your own research? We have about 30 sources already in the article that say it's a preemptive strike, and 0 disputing this. Your statement about having to have "the evidence of an actual, impending Egyptian attack" is irrelevant and against the Wikipedia policy of no original research. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 01:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It is fair to turn the tables and ask what exactly are you talking about? Even the accounts published by the Israeli decision makers, Israeli historians, and Israeli political scientists agree that the decision to go to war was made on the basis of the IDF's Doctrine of Deterrence, not because they seriously thought that they were preempting an impending Arab attack.

• Greg Cashman said that in late May 1967, Egypt had complained that the false Soviet report caused them to send troops into the Sinai. see An Introduction to the Causes of War: Patterns of Interstate Conflict from World War I to Iraq, page 185

• The Egyptians had already provided categorical assurances to Israel through the US Secretary of State and the UN Secretary General that they did not intend to initiate hostilities, and that they were willing to make concessions to avoid a war. see Cashman; Foreign Relations, 1964-1968, Volume XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967, document 132; and paragragh 9 of the report to the Security Council from the Secretary General of the United Nations, S/7906, 26 May 1967.

• Christopher Gelpi says that the government of Egypt had let it be known that their tough statements were "mere words designed for public consumption." see The power of legitimacy: assessing the role of norms in crisis bargaining, page 141

• David Rodman said that since the early days of the State, Israeli military doctrine placed a premium on offensive, rather than defensive warfare. Military leaders felt that there was a better prospect of deterring the outbreak of hostilities if the IDF transferred fighting to enemy territory as soon as possible. That strategy also compensated for limited finances and the absence of alliance partners. see Between war and peace, editor Efraim Karsh, page 153

• Dan Kurzman said Rabin was not concerned with the Sinai build-up. see Soldier of peace, page 202

• Rabin said the IDF GHQ Intelligence assessment was that Israel was facing a repetition of Operation Rotem (see the talk page discussion above), and that Egypt would eventually withdraw. He characterized the Sinai troop build-up and the closure of the Straits as "humiliating pinpricks" that would render the IDF's long term deterrent capacity worthless. During the meeting in "the Pit", he and the other military leaders said they were afraid that it would appear that the government had lost confidence in the IDF, and that the significance of the closure of the Straits lay in the effect on Israel's deterrent capability. see The Rabin Memoirs, page 80-81; Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present, edited by Itamar Rabinovich, Jehuda Reinharz, pages 212-213; and Israel's Decision To Go To War, June 2, 1967, by Col. Ami Gluska

• Avner Yaniv said that IDF doctrine was based on the assumption of the inherent disability of Israel to win a decisive strategic battle and impose peace on the Arabs. The leadership felt that Israel could not subdue the Arabs. It could defend itself, cause the Arabs pain, and destroy their armies for a while, but they felt that solving the problem once and for all was beyond Israel's capacity. The IDF relied on a strategy of active conventional deterrence that emphasized punitive and demonstrative use of force and the accumulation of dissuasive power not through one military victory, but through a succession of quick decisive blows to Arab military power. see National security and democracy in Israel, page 90.

• Avi Shlaim said there is general agreement among commentators that Nasser neither wanted nor planned to go to war with Israel. He said the Israeli economy would survive the closure of the Straits, but the deterrent image of the IDF could not. see The Iron Wall, pages 236-237.

• Yagil Levy says that the tendency to use force and generate escalation in order to bring about counter-reaction by the Arabs, ruled out possible options to settle the crisis other than by war. Israel's doctrine of deterrence called for "flexible retaliation" designed to deter the Syrians or provoke them so that Israel could launch a full scale response. He said that Israel became trapped in its own formula of deterrence. see Trial and error: Israel's route from war to de-escalation, page 107

• Re'uven Pedatzur said that any erosion of Israeli deterrent power is an impediment to peace in the region. He said that Israeli deterrence is greatly dependent on the IDF's capability to inflict great and painful damage to the enemy -- "deterrence through punishment." and that in the absence of comprehensive peace in the Middle East, deterrence will remain the chief component in Israel's national defense doctrine. see Limits of Deterrence, Ha'aretz, 28 March 1995 p B1

• Uzi Benziman described Israel's doctrine of strategic deterrence and Ariel Sharon's role in launching cross-border attacks into Jordan or Egypt where his forces would strike targets and disappear. see for example Sharon: An Israeli Caesar, pages 42-44

There are many popular and quite different histories of the war, e.g. 1967: Israel, The War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East, by Tom Segev; Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael Oren; and Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days that Changed the Middle East, by Donald Neff. The article quotes Rabin, Begin, Dayan and many other leaders who said they didn't think that Nasser was going to attack; that he didn't want a war; or that the war had been avoidable. Why do we have to include the theory about a "preemptive attack" in the lede? It isn't very well supported by the contents of the article or the various accounts. harlan (talk) 07:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I ask again, what are you talking about? None of the things you said are in any way relevant. Where does it say that a preemptive strike cannot also be a deterrent? The original editor who inserted the controversial information (Steve3742) disputed that it was a preemptive strike. I have 30 sources saying that it was a preemptive strike. Do you have any sources that contradict this? —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 10:14, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

You could try reading the footnotes. There are a number of references in footnote 14 that dispute the idea that Egypt was about to attack or that this impending attack was the reason for Israel's attack on Egypt. To quote just one: "Nasser had no intention of striking first and the Israeli generals were confident of victory... For the Israeli hawks, the crisis was less a threat than an opportunity - to smash Nasserish Egypt and the Pan-Arab movement while Israel still had military superiority."

Here it clearly says that a) Egypt was not about to attack and b) The motive for the Israeli attack wasn't to prevent an attack but to "smash Nasserish Egypt and the Pan-Arab movement". Hence not a pre-emptive attack.

Of course, I imagine you disagree with this, but that's not the point. There is a dispute about whether or not the attack was preemptive. Hence it would violate NPOV to say "preemptive attack" when talking about Israel's attack on Egypt. So, call it a "surprise attack" - nobody disputes that - and then say that Israel considers it a pre-emptive strike but the Arabs assert otherwise.

Regarding the meaning of preemptive attack, it has to include the idea that Israel was just about to be attacked. The source above and others dispute that this was the case and also dispute that Israel was motivated by this fear to attack Egypt. Of course, you could try stretching the definition to say that Israel was trying to smash pan Arab unity before it grew strong enough to challenge Israel or something like that. This is actually closer to the truth, IMHO. But that's not a preemptive attack. Attacking somebody to prevent what they may do in a few years time cannot be called a preemptive attack by any stretch of the definition. Apart from anything else, it's impossible to prove what people are going to do in a few years time. Or should we call the Arab attack on Israel in 1948 a pre-emptive attack?

Answering your criticism of harlan, he is not saying that a pre-emptive strike cannot ALSO be a deterrent, he is saying (and the sources show) that it was a deterrent INSTEAD of a preemptive strike. The phrase "preemptive strike" has a meaning - look it up on Wikipedia. Deterring people from possibly attacking at some unspecified time in the future is not a pre-emptive attack. It is not original research to not use the phrase "pre-emptive attack" when a considerable number of sources - the ones in note 14 and the ones quoted by harlan above (which I invite him to add to note 14, if he's reading this) - dispute this. In fact, as I've said before, it would violate NPOV to do so. Using an unqualified adjective in the lead implies that it's fact, that it's not in dispute. This is untrue. Steve3742 (talk) 12:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Most of the points you mentioned above are irrelevant, and the few that aren't - are just in hindsight. That some people thought Nasser wasn't planning to attack, and maybe he really wasn't, doesn't change what he actually said and did. He declared the coming destruction of Israel; he closed off the straits, an act of war; he expelled the peace keeping force, and moved large forces into the Sinai, both in contradiction to the agreements ending the 1956 war. In that time, there was a very real fear in Israel of a massive attack from several fronts. Due to Israel's very small size, and small population, it was always clear that it cannot withstand a massive invasion, as the supply bases and civilian population would quickly be overrun - it didn't have a huge desert as a buffer, like Egypt. Thus the need to fight the battles in the enemy's territory. Because of this, thinking Egypt (and friends) were about to attack, Israel decided a preemptive strike would be best.

Saying, in hindsight, that Nasser wasn't serious, that he was just flexing his muscles, that he was lying to his people - that might be of academic interest, but it doesn't change the character of the initial strike, and that entire war. okedem (talk) 17:14, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, firstly, all of what you have written above is your own opinion and uses your own reasoning. It's also using hindsight.

As far as I know, there's no Wikipedia policy against using hindsight, especially with historical articles, where it's often all you have. That being said, it's untrue - a number of the sources cast doubt on the idea that Israeli policymakers believed that Egypt was just about to attack.

If you're trying to say that the decision makers in Israel made a decision to attack Egypt because they believed, rightly or wrongly, that Egypt was just about to attack Israel, then you can say that Israel considers it a pre-emptive attack (which is, of course, what I have said in my edits.) But you're basing this on someone else's judgement of another country's intentions. Hence "Israel considers it a pre-emptive attack" To present it without this is to present it as fact, and, at the very least, it's disputed, both that Egypt was going to attack AND that Israeli decision makers believed that Egypt was going to attack. To say "it was a pre-emptive attack" violates NPOV because it assumes as fact things which are in dispute.

In my opinion, this applies to pretty much all uses of the phrase. All countries that attack anothe claim pre-emption. It was mentioned above that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour could be considered a pre-emptive attack (wrongly IMHO). They certainly claimed that at the time. And other countries that invaded other countries in WWII (I'll not mention them by name for fear of running afoul of Godwin's Law) also claimed pre-emption.

That Israel (and a number of historians) consider it a pre-emptive attack is not in doubt. Equally, there is no doubt that the Arab states (and a number of historians) consider that it was not a pre-emptive attack. In such circumstances we cannot say "it was a pre-emptive attack" without violating NPOV. Instead, it was a surprise attack that Israel claims was pre-emptive and the Arab states claim was not. Which is more or less what I have written.Steve3742 (talk) 17:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well first let me say, I also agree that Israel's action was a preemptive strike. However, opinions that Egypt wasn't going to attack can be found in reliable sources, as well as the majority opinion that it was. Unless the sources can all be discounted (a look at them suggests that might be possible with a couple of them), it seems that this minority opinion should be at least mentioned in a balanced article. I would, however, add that it was regarded as a preemptive strike by most western countries' governments and population, as well as Israel's. TastyCakes (talk) 18:00, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Most countries didn't know what to think, because Israel initially claimed that it had been attacked by the Egyptians. According to William Quandt, Secretary of State Rusk had warned the Israeli's that there would be consequences for the side that initiated hostilities. President Johnson told Foreign Minister Eban that he thought Israel had been unwise when it went to war and that he still thought they were unwise in October 1968. see Peace process: American diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967, page 443

In his letter to David Ben-Gurion dated 9 January 1968, President De Gaulle said that he was convinced that Israel had ignored his warnings and overstepped the bounds of moderation by taking possession of Jerusalem, and so much Jordanian, Egyptian, and Syrian territory by force of arms.[6] France stopped selling arms to Israel. harlan (talk) 20:57, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

TastyCakes, to say that Israel and most western countries' governments and population is a majority opinion is untrue and very western-centric (something Wikipedia is often accused of.) It's also inaccurate - in Europe at least I don't think you can say that it's the majority opinion of the population, though perhaps it is of the governments.

But even assuming it was the majority opinion of most western countries' governments and population, this wouldn't make it a majority opinion. Most of the rest of the world would disagree. And that would make the pre-emptive strike version a minority opinion.

Of course, you cannot say what is true or otherwise by popularity contests. But I mention this because you seem to be saying that the idea that it was not a pre-emptive strike is a minority opinion. It isn't.

To repeat: We have two versions of events. We should not give either undue prominence. Hence we explain what happened neutrally - Israel launched a surprise attack on Egypt - then give both versions. Anything else would violate NPOVSteve3742 (talk) 00:14, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Well it seems most of the voices I've seen saying that Egypt wasn't going to attack and that it was therefore not a preemptive strike have been Arab sources. Growing up, it was always presented as a preemptive strike in my education and in documentaries and the like that I've watched on it. Perhaps my Western upbringing was unusually biased and this really is less of a majority opinion than I believe, but I wouldn't bet on it without seeing some data one way or another. Also, it's not really "Western-centric" to say what the western's world opinion on the matter was, I'm not quite sure what logic you're using to say it is. Perhaps you mean it's unfair to mention the West's prevailing opinion without mentioning everyone else's, but I don't really know what the rest of the world's opinions are/were. Do you? If so, by all means I think they should be mentioned as well. As for your statement about not being able to say if it were true or not based on a popularity contest, I of course agree and believe that was the thrust of my last post. What I consider the minority opinion and you, apparently, consider the majority opinion should also be mentioned since it cannot be factually disproved. TastyCakes (talk) 21:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)TastyCakes the Israeli leaders quoted in the article were not Arabs. They said that they didn't believe that Nasser or the Egyptian Army was really ready to attack. They certainly were worried that time was running out for their side, but that was due to the impact on the Israeli economy of a prolonged mobilization of so many reserve forces. The doctrine of deterrence was adopted in order to avoid prolonged standoffs and stalemates. harlan (talk) 12:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I still don't understand how this is relevant. It is your original research. Thirty sources say it was a preemptive strike. What sources do you have that say it was not a preemptive strike? —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 13:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Essentially I guess my argument boils down to something similar (to Ynhockey). I think there are many more reliable sources that say it was a preemptive strike than those that say Egypt wasn't planning on attacking. That would seem to make it the majority opinion. But again, that doesn't mean the other opinion shouldn't be mentioned. TastyCakes (talk) 14:02, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Ynhockey, regarding original research, note that "Carefully summarizing or rephrasing source material without changing its meaning is not synthesis—it is good editing." If a number of sources claim that Israel did not consider that Egypt was about to attack, then it is good editing to say that a number of sources say that it was not a pre-emptive attack - that's what pre-emptive means, after all.

I'm also pretty sure that some of them at least (Avi Shlaim and Finkelstein that I know of) do come out and say that it was not a pre-emptive attack. I'll have a look.

Tastycakes, both opinions are mentioned in the lead. Neither is given prominence. Ynhockey seems to be arguing that the pre-emption version should be given prominence with the other version tagged on with some weasel words ("The Arab States claim...") I'm arguing that a neutral version should be presented ("Israel launched a surprise attack on Egypt...") followed by both versions as to motive. Doing otherwise violates NPOV Steve3742 (talk) 16:25, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Abba Eban said, "From May the 24th onward, the question who started the war or who fired the first shot became momentously irrelevant." Nonetheless, I'd like to see actual quotes from Israeli officials who said that it was a preemptive attack if the article is going to make that claim.

The article does cite Israeli officials, including several men that served as IDF Chief of Staff and as Prime Ministers of Israel, who said that Nasser wasn't ready to attack and that the war was avoidable. Those aren't just "some people" engaged in "idle talk'. The lede also makes it appear as though only Arab countries thought that Israel's attack was unwarranted. Wikipedia policy says that published sources should speak for themselves and that the lede should summarize the contents of the article. Right now the lede doesn't even reflect the published views expressed by the Israeli Cabinet Ministers and Generals who made the decision to go to war.

The neutral voice of the article is making an unsupportable claim that "Israel" always claimed that the attack was preemptive. Many of the sources cited to support that statement say no such thing. Most do not include any official Israeli statements on the subject, and some note that Israel originally claimed it was a counterattack. There are only two or three Israeli authors in the entire list. You can characterize what the authors have to say however you like, but the article really shouldn't attribute the remarks of this group to "Israel": Antonio Cassese, Erik Goldstein, David Roberston, Martin S. Alexander, Soren Von Dosenrode, Anders Stubkjaer, Avner Cohen, BBC, CNN, NPR, Funk & Wagnalls, The Economist, Michael Elliott, Marguerite Johnson, Encarta Answers, Microsoft Encarta, Shlomo Aronson, Warren I. Cohen, Richard K. Betts, Dan Reiter, Isabella Ginor, Seymon Brown, and Alan Dershowitz).

John Quigley said that Israel's representative told the Security Council that Egypt had attacked first and that the claim was untrue. He said that Israel never produced evidence of the Egyptian attacks and soon stopped making that claim. see Justice in the Palestine-Israel Conflict, page 11 [7] The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides a selection of key documents on Israel's foreign relations during the Six Day War: [8] There isn't any mention of a "preemptive attack" in any of them. They either say, or imply, that the Egyptian Army and Air Forces attacked Israel first and that Israel went into action to contain them. Here are some examples: [9] [10]

General Peled is quoted in the article as saying that the Egyptian forces were not in a position to threaten Israel, and that the survival argument was an excuse that was made up after the war. A similar statement was made by Mordechai Bentov, a Cabinet Minister and one of the signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. On June 3, 1972 the Le Monde reported that he said "This story about the danger of extermination has been a complete invention and has been blown up a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territories." see 'Perspectives on Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews', by James J. Zogby, Medina Press, 1977, 0914456172, Page 83. The published claims and evidence of "changing stories" deserves its own subsection and should be mentioned in the lede.

Col. Ami Gluska's article [11] details the discussion in the Pit on 2 June and General Peled actually did say that the Egyptian Army was not ready for war; the Straits of Tiran were irrelevant; and that Egypt's entry into Sinai had been anticipated:

"We have heard something regarding Tiran, which lost its significance long ago. It was not important to start with and is even less important now." The entry of an Egyptian force into Sinai was nothing new for the IDF, having been anticipated and planned for in various exercises and war games. The only surprise, he stressed, was Nasser's audacity, since it was well known that his army was not ready for war. Peled had an explanation to offer for Nasser's moves:
In my opinion he was relying on the hesitation of the Israeli government. He acted in confidence that we would not dare to hit at him.... Nasser moved an army which was not ready to the border and he derived full advantage from the move. One thing is acting in his favor and that is the fact that the Israeli government is not ready to act against him.

In their post-war interviews the Israeli decision makers dismissed the idea that Nasser was ready to attack. Rabin's memoirs and the interview that he gave Le Monde stated that he didn't think that Nasser was about to attack, and that neither did GHQ intelligence. Menachim Begin said Israel had decided to attack Egypt, and that the troop concentrations didn't prove that Nasser was ready to attack. Gen Bar Lev said 'the entrance of the Egyptians into Sinai was not a casus belli.' Defense Minister Dayan's remarks to the Ma'ariv interviewer and General Peled's remarks in the Gluska article make it clear that the closure of the Straits of Tiran did not make a war unavoidable. harlan (talk) 14:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, do you think you could insert some of the sources you've mentioned above into footnote 14?

I already knew that Israel had claimed (in 1967) that Egypt had attacked them but, as far as I know, they've not claimed it since 1967. I'm not aware of any historian, even the most pro-Israeli ones, who take it seriously. I don't know whether it should be put in the lead (which is meant to be a brief summary.) Perhaps it should be in the body of the article, along with the fact that no historian takes it seriously and Israel hasn't claimed it since 1967. In fact, a separate subsection could be created about the decision to go to war, it seems to be lacking at the moment.

I take the point that all the notes in footnote 13, the thirty sources that Ynhockey keeps talking about, are from historians and so are secondary sources. Perhaps Ynhockey could find a quote from an Israeli decision maker of the time? If not, I take the point that "Israel claims that..." hasn't been sourced. Perhaps something along the lines of "Many historians claim that..." What does everyone think? Steve3742 (talk) 18:23, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I think that the idea of collecting a long list of references to justify the choice of verbs in a sentence detracts from the article just to prove a point. It doesn't change the fact that other significant published viewpoints are supposed to be fairly represented, which is exactly how they were employed in this case. It is okay to provide a list when someone demands sources on the talk page, but they don't necessarily need to added to the article footnotes if they already contain other examples. There are external links and further reading sections for any members of the list that deserve special attention. harlan (talk) 23:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I also don't think there should be 30 references for the same fact in the article, and maybe it's true that it was originally done to prove a point. However, the reason it's there now is that some people just insist on arguing against well-known facts. You need to understand something: if someone says "we are not sure that Egypt is going to attack", it doesn't mean the strike can't be preemptive. That conclusion is your and Steve's original research. I am asking that you provide reliable mainstream sources saying not that "Egypt probably wasn't going to attack", but that "The Israeli attack was not a preemptive strike, because ...". If what you are saying is true, why is it so hard to provide such sources? —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 23:53, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Ynhockey, there isn't a single person that I've cited who said "we are not sure that Egypt is going to attack". They said the Egyptian army wasn't ready to go to war and that both sides knew that. I don't deny that Israel's assertion that the attack was preemptive is widely accepted. That doesn't make it the only significant published viewpoint, or a fact. Israel didn't even make that claim until the 7th of July, when it abandoned its earlier story that Egypt had attacked first.

John Quigley, Micheal Akehurst, and a host of others have written about that. Quigley said:

'Israel's change of argument created skepticism about both its versions of the facts. "At first Israel claimed that the Arab armies had attacked her first," wrote Michael Akehurst. "If this Israeli claim is false, why did Israel tell a lie?"... ...Various Israeli officials said later, however, that Israel had not in fact anticipated an imminent attack by Egypt when it struck on June 5th.' [12]

Quigley goes on to cite the Rabin quote from the Le Monde interview. I provided that citation to Quigley in one of my posts above, and it remains valid. I don't intend to supply a list of thirty more references just to make the point that I was NOT supplying my own WP:OR conclusion, or that the connection of the Rabin quote with that conclusion is NOT WP:Synth. harlan (talk) 02:24, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Hold on. You said: "They said the Egyptian army wasn't ready to go to war and that both sides knew that.". Does that mean that it was not a preemptive strike? Again, your original research. In 1948 for example, Egypt wasn't "ready" to go to war and "both sides knew that", yet they invaded Israel anyway (see Morris 2008). Therefore, it has nothing to do with the strike being preemptive. The Quigley quote is mostly irrelevant, and only briefly mentions that "Israel had not in fact anticipated an imminent attack by Egypt". Again, this does not necessarily mean that it was not a preemptive strike. We need a source that actually disputes the preemptive strike assertion, otherwise even if you use your logic to derive from the above that it was not a preemptive strike (OR), it would clearly fit under WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 03:39, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Ynhockey,

"Israel had not in fact anticipated an imminent attack by Egypt". Again, this does not necessarily mean that it was not a preemptive strike.

Actually, it sort of does. Pre-emption applies to imminent attacks, hence if Israel hadn't anticipated an imminent attack, Israel's attack was not pre-emptive. At any rate, I've found at least one quote that actually disputes the pre-emption theory specifically. I've put it into note 14. Regarding your accusations of WP:OR, see above.Steve3742 (talk) 18:37, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Ynhockey, your case would be easier to understand if you explained what "preemptive" means to you. Of course anyone can attack someone and claim that it was to prevent something happening at some time in the future, but that seems too general a meaning to me. With that definition a large fraction of the conflict articles in Wikipedia would need changing. Zero^talk 22:38, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Zero, the case for including the fact that it was a preemptive strike is based on its overwhelming prevalence in reliable sources, not my own opinion.

Having said that, I believe that the opponents of the term "preemptive strike" on Wikipedia take the meaning of the word as purely tactical, i.e. an offensive just before the opponent's offensive, and the time frame is hours–days. However, this is not necessarily the only meaning in the strategic sense, in a weeks–months time frame. It is well-known that before the war, both sides had significant forces ready at the borders to attack, i.e. each side had the assumed capability to launch a full-scale assault. Israel might not have been expecting to be hit that day because of the political atmosphere, but for example, it is logical to assume that calling off the reserves to prevent the economy from collapsing may have led to an Arab attack; therefore, attacking just before most of the reserves had to be called off (=likely Arab attack) would in effect be a preemptive strike.

Again though, that's my personal interpretation, and what Harlan and Steve said are their personal interpretations. They have so far failed to provide a single source that disputes that it was a preemptive strike. If this is such a widely-held viewpoint in some parts of the world, why aren't there dozens of sources on the subject, like there are dozens of sources calling it a preemptive strike? Just for comparison, for the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the major historiographical questions have all been discussed in published sources: for example, there are dozens of academic articles and at least one book on the question of whether Israeli forces were the David and the Arab forces were the Goliath, or vice versa; there are a number of academic articles asking whether Operation Pleshet was a decisive battle in the war, or whether Nitzanim's surrender was justified. Where are the sources questioning Operation Focus as a preemptive strike? Maybe I'm not reading enough? —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 01:12, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Ynhockey, I've never said the word preemptive strike can't be used, on the contrary I've said that all significant views must be included. You started this thread complaining about the inclusion of the viewpoints of the states that were attacked. There is no support in WP:UNDUE policy for advancing a single viewpoint. The guidelines given at Wikipedia:Fringe theories state that they are theories outside the mainstream that have not been discussed at all by the mainstream.

You are describing a preemptive war, not a preemptive strike. To the legal community those are two different situations. There is no basis for claiming that Antonio Cassese would support your viewpoint. In footnote 13 he was specifically discussing the doctrine of anticipatory self defense in which an attack is imminent.

Legal experts have a variety of opinions, and not everyone agrees that it was a preemptive strike. Yoram Dinstein (War Aggression, and Self-Defense, 3d ed. 2001) and Christine Gray (International Law and the Use of Force 2004) are two very mainstream legal scholars who have said that Egypt initiated hostilities. As a consequence, they say the air strikes on 5 June 1967 were not legally a preemptive situation at all. They consider them an intercept or counterattack and avoid the "doctrine of necessity" altogether.

In Assessing Claims of a New Doctrine of Preemptive War Under the Doctrine of Sources, James Thuo Gathii says that many scholars and state officials do not support the notion that customary law permits the unilateral use of preemptive force without UN approval. He notes that State practice, opinio juris, and some legal scholars do distinguish between preemptive wars (which are illegal) and preemptive strikes under certain rare circumstances, i.e. anticipatory self-defense when a threat is imminent. He says 'there has yet to be a good case in which the very limited and contested notion of anticipatory self-defence met the Caroline test. The closest case that might have, but is now regarded as not having met the Caroline test, was Israel’s first strike against Egypt in the 1967. Few regarded it as a good example of a permissible anticipatory attack under the Caroline test, especially after it became clear following the attack that there was no overwhelming threat that justified the attack to ensure Israel’s survival. Many States criticized the attack, which made it clear that the attack would not serve as a precedent to legitimize “a general right of anticipatory self defense.”' see Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 1-34, 2005

The Antonio Cassese quote that appears in footnote 13 is an extract from his 1987 discussion regarding the two different situations. The Quigley material that I quoted above, and the passage from Quigley that appears in footnote 14 is extracted from a more recent, but similar, discussion. Quigley like the majority of legal commentators does deny that the 5 June air strikes were an act of anticipatory self-defense in the cited passage.

The President of the American Society of International Law created a Task Force on Terrorism in 2002. It published The Myth of Preemptive Self-Defense, by Mary Ellen O’Connell. The report said that preemptive war must be distinguished from anticipatory self defense, and that any use of force in self-defense must respect the principles of necessity, proportionality, and cannot violate the jus cogens norm against unilateral use of force. O'Connell said that commentators have defended Israel’s attack on Egypt in 1967 on the grounds that it was anticipatory self-defense. She cited Rabin's remarks in the Le Monde interview and said: "Israel stated that it had convincing intelligence that Egypt would attack and that Egyptian preparations were underway. We now know that the Israel acted on less than convincing evidence. Thus, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war does not provide an actual example of lawful anticipatory self-defense." [13]

In The Use of Force and (the State of) Necessity, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 37, 2004, Andreas Laursen discusses "the necessity excuse" in international law. He says that necessity may constitute a circumstance precluding wrongfulness under certain very limited circumstances. He notes that Article 25 of the UN Declaration on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts [14] bars a defense of necessity if the State making the claim has contributed to the situation of necessity.

Tom Segev, Avi Shlaim, Yigal Levy and others have written that the premeditated raid on Samu, the downing of the Syrian aircraft over Damascus, and Rabin's threat to topple the regime in Syria led Israel down the path to war. The article notes that Moshe Shemesh, a historian and former senior intelligence officer in the IDF, said that Jordan's military and civilian leaders estimated that Israel's main objective was conquest of the West Bank. They felt that Israel was striving to drag all of the Arab countries into a war. After the Samu offensive, those apprehensions became the deciding factor in Jordan's decision to participate in the war. King Hussein was convinced Israel would try to occupy the West Bank whether Jordan went to war, or not. The publication of detailed accounts by the Israeli officials and public statements like those made by Yitzhak Rabin, Moshe Dayan, Mordechai Bentov, Menachim Begin, and etc. have cast doubts on Israel's motivations. "Anticipatory Self-Defense" and Other Stories by Jeanne Woods and James Donovan, 14 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 487 (2005) [15] discussed the Six Day War and said that "The on-going occupation of the territory set aside for a Palestinian State suggests the motive was a quest for land and resources." [16] harlan (talk) 09:20, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Most of the stuff you provided discusses the strike from a legal, not a military point of view. Feel free to add the material in the article body as an alternative legal theory, with specific citations of course. Not all of this material should be included though, as there are other relevant articles, including Operation Focus. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 11:53, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to be busy in real life for a couple of weeks, but plan to incorporate the information on Operation Rotem, the doctrine of deterrence, "necessity", and "anticipatory self-defense". harlan (talk) 13:45, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Made threats, disputed preemption?

(unindent) I don't get it. If the Arabs say that they were about to attack, then how can they dispute that the strike was preemptive? -- Heptor _talk 10:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Article 25 of the UN Declaration on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts bars a defense of necessity if the State making the claim has contributed to the situation of necessity. A number of published sources explain that Israel had already invaded the territories and airspace of the other states without permission from the UN Security Council. The UN Yearbook and other sources, including Dayan, Rabin, Segev, and Shlaim mention that Israel had kept Arab cultivators away from their lands in the DMZs, while sending in armored tractors and the air force to deliberately provoke Syrian responses. Israel launched a massive raid on es-Samu that was condemned by the Security Council. President Johnson's personal assistant, R. W. Komer, sent word to Prime Minister Eshkol 'that Israel was "going too far" in striking Jordan and had better lay off'. Eshkol authorized the use IAF fighters to conduct combat operations in the airspace over Damascus in peacetime and said afterward that Israel would have to teach Syria a sharper lesson than that of 7 April. Those were not "border skirmishes". Israeli historians, like Oren and Segev, and Israeli military leaders including Dayan and Lior viewed them as the actual starting point of the war. harlan (talk) 11:27, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, you are disputing the starting point of the war? -- Heptor _talk 00:04, 22 December 2009 (UTC)