"'Zug tzu der goy az meer hoben tzu te'en mit chayes. Eer hert - chayes!' (Tell the goy we're dealing with animals. You hear - animals!)" - - Eshkol [1967]
Here with the interesting recollections of Yehuda Avner. Served on the staff of five Israeli Prime Ministers. Avner is an important source of information on the decision of the Israeli to go to war with the forces of the Arab world - - 1967. [as originally reported in the Jerusalem Post - - one year ago now!]
"Bygone Days: Countdown to the Six Day War"
"It was the beginning of June 1967, and with mounting mendacity escalation followed escalation as Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser made common cause with Syria, moving his vast army and air force into the Sinai, ousting the United Nations peacekeeping forces, blockading Israel's Red Sea port, Eilat, and pretentiously signing a war pact with King Hussein that put the Jordanian Army under Egyptian command"
[Radio Cairo priot June 1967 also made an entire series of bombastic, incendiary, inflammatory and provocative broadcasts that "stirred up the pot" in a big way. Apocalyptic pronouncements that did no one any good at all.]
"'Field intelligence reports that poison gas equipment has been spotted in Sinai. There is a possibility the Egyptians intend to use it. Nasser used poison gas in the Yemen. And we [Israeli] have no stockpiles of gas masks.'"
Especially so, the movement of that "vast army and air force into the Sinai" was particularly troubling to Israeli military planners! This movement, termed rotem [a tree growing in the desert], was a repetition of a military exercise as carried out by the Egyptian army in 1962. Surely a sign that the Arab intended to ATTACK. MOVING THE MAIN BODY OF YOUR [Egyptian] MOST POTENT STRIKING FORCE TO WITHIN A SHORT DISTANCE OF YOUR SWORN ENEMY [Israel] IS NOT USUALLY INTERPRETED AS A SIGN OF PEACE!!
The American military historian Trevor Dupuy is emphatic that the Egyptian and other Arab military forces DID NOT INTEND TO FORCE A WAR WITH ISRAEL IN 1967. What Nasser had in mind was a show of force, a demonstration, a show of resolve, all to placate the Cairo "street" and the Arab world in general?
If indeed Nasser intended ONLY "a show of force, a demonstration, a show of resolve", he certainly went about things in a strange way!
This forward deployment of poison gas is something I never had heard of before. Surely a sign that the Egyptian did mean to fight, and fight rough, with all assets at hand?
Too, as even reported by Dupuy, in those days leading up to the Six Day War of 1967 - - "In the last week in May, the Egyptian Military Academy . . . graduated 750 cadets of the Class of 1967. Instead of receiving a month's leave, as was traditional . . . the new second lieutenants were given two days leave, and then ordered to report to their units most of which were in the Sinai."
It should be noted also that the Israeli military, especially the Israeli Air Force [IAF], was WELL PREPARED FOR THE 1967 WAR, an elaborate and well-rehearsed routine and preparation for a pre-emptive air strike on Egyptian airfields being put into place as early as 1965!!
Nasser did not count on war, and when he got it, was totally surprised, flummoxed, confounded, and defeated, in a way he had not anticipated?
Nasser had wished for war, and to his chagrin, his wish was granted?
coolbert.
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