Reply #12: None of this is relevant

[JonScholar]

In the end, it was Israel that decided to launch the attack. The fact that the countries were not *officially* at peace, did not justify a renewal of hostilities from Israel. The closing of the Straits of Tiran did not justify a war the ended with the deaths of thousands of people, at most it gave Israel the authority to break the blockade. The Israeli officials/generals quoted above hold views that are completely opposed to yours, and these are people who in positions that make them inherently more informed regarding Egypt's military capacity and intentions at the time. Rabin doesn't believe the forces Egypt had moved into the Sinai were sufficient for an invasion of Israel, nor does Peled. Despite your desperate attempts at apologizing for Israel's aggression, all of these gentlemen confirm that it was Israel who made the ultimate decision to go to war. Go away hasbara

Edit, a great summary of the events leading up to the 1967 war, for observers: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/05/973396/-Revising-the-June-1967-Arab-Israeli-War

Moshe Dayan himself conceded that the “nature and scale of our reprisal actions against Syria and Jordan had left Nasser with no choice but to defend his image and prestige in his own country and throughout the Arab world”. (cited in Finkelstein 2003:127) Nasser decided to send troops into the Sinai, in a move interpreted by Israel, correctly, as an effort to deter it from attacking Syria. (Maoz 2009:89) Before proceeding further, we should clarify two points about which a scholarly consensus exists but has yet to be communicated successfully to the public. First, Nasser had neither the intention nor the capacity to successfully attack Israel; and second, Israeli officials were well aware of this. Thus: “Egypt was not ready for a war; and Nasser did not want a war” (Mossad chief Meir Amit); I “did not believe that Nasser wanted war” (IDF chief of staff Rabin); “The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai... do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” (1967 National Unity government minister Menachem Begin); Egyptian forces in the Sinai were in a state of “total chaos” (IDF intelligence chief Yariv, at the end of May); the Egyptian army was “perhaps in a defensive orientation only” (IDF chief of staff Rabin, in the crucial 2 June cabinet meeting); etc. US intelligence at the time was clear that Nasser’s formations in the Sinai were “defensive in character” and were “merely gestures” Nasser felt compelled to make “in the interests of the fiction of Arab unity” (CIA Appraisal). President Johnson told Israeli representatives at the end of May that “no military attack on Israel is imminent” and that if Nasser attacked, even in concert with the other Arab states, “you will whip the hell out of them”. Mossad chief Meir Amit declared that Israeli intelligence was in full agreement with US intelligence on these issues. As he assured Eshkol: “If strikes first, he’s finished”. In public Israeli leaders fretted about a looming “second Holocaust”, but the documentary record reveals this posture to be, in the words of Israeli general Mattityahu Peled, “a bluff”. (quotes from Finkelstein: 2003)