P01135809 goes after "Liberal Jews" on Jewish New Year

[Dill]

(09-28-2023, 05:11 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Dill Wrote: Sounds like you are, obliquely, admitting that Israel did strike first (but that was ok!!),
without denying the consistency of the UN condemnation with international law,
Actually, no.  I specifically mentioned the irregular forces being used against Israel prior to the military mobilization of their neighbors with obvious hostile intent.  Here's a source for you.https://www.britannica.com/event/Six-Day-War
Prior to the start of the war, attacks conducted against Israel by fledgling Palestinian guerrilla groups based in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan had increased, leading to costly Israeli reprisals.
These are the irregular forces I mentioned.  Putin didn't invent the "little green men" strategy.  So, no, Israel did not start the conflict, those directly aiding the irregular forces and those forces themselves did. 
As for Israel formally striking first, I'd compare that to if the US knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance and ambushed the Japanese navy ute to Hawaii.

Had the US driven hundreds of thousands of Japanese from Hawaii and then occupied it? Until you can factor that into your counter-history, the analogy is pretty one-sided.

EB says "Prior to the start of the war." Then clearly identifies Israel's "pre-emptive attacks" against Egypt and Syria as the start. You want to argue that "irregular forces/fledgling Palestinian guerilla groups" really started the war, even though Israel clearly struck first. But if you are correcting the record out of "basic fairness," can you explain why should those fledgling guerillas want to do that? What was their motivation? Israeli provocation doesn't count?

Your defense of Israel always been decidedly Israel-centric, according Israel a right to take and occupy land belonging to others that is generally denied every other nation. For defenders of international law based on human rights derived from a presumed natural equality, the fact that some Arab nations and Iran want to destroy the state of Israel is an effect of the right-to-occupy that you grant Israel, not a cause.  That's why I so often seem to "omit" discussion of that as a driver of Arab-Israeli conflict. 

The consensus of professional historians since the '90s has been that none of the major belligerents' leaders actually wanted the war. But a series of miscues and incompetent diplomacy and poor to non-existence intel lead all actors to react the way they did.

E.g., there is Richard Parker, who was a U.S. official in Egypt when the war started, but is also an actual historian.

Richard B. Parker. The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East (Indiana University Press, 1993) and The Six Day War: A Retrospective (University Press of Florida, 1996).
A short cut: Before The Politics of Miscalculation, Parker wrote this essay which goes over the range of conspiracies about who started the war--The US, Syria, The Soviets, Israel, and Egypt. It's shorter than a book and covers a wide range of "causes" seen from different sides. Why read about "conspiracies"? As the conspiracies are book-based and dredge up a great deal of factual information, the essay gives one a comprehensive introduction to all the factors/lines of force that went into the "provocations" assumed by all sides and the actions which followed the very same logic. (E.g., Egypt's belief, thanks to a communique from the Soviets, that the Israeli's were massing for an attack. Perhaps they were thinking of Pearl Harbor too.) https://www.palquest.org/sites/default/files/The_June_War_Whose_Conspiracy-Richard_B._Parker.pdf

As time has proven the consequences of the war ever more problematic for Israel, Israeli historians have offered sterner assessments of their own leadership. E.g., Tom Segev's 1967 (2007) and Guy Laron's Six-Day War: Breaking the Middle-East (2017), place much more responsibility on the Israeli general staff for provoking the war (without letting Syria off the hook either) . (All books I've mentioned are on Amazon.)

(09-28-2023, 05:11 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: When is Poland returning Danzig and East Prussia to Germany then?  Is this why Obama did almost nothing when Russia annexed the Crimea?

Obama certainly wasn't going to invade a nuclear power. But he did lead the EU in organizing a sanctions regime and began the diplomatic isolation of Russia. Only NK and Syria have recognized the annexation. He did more about that violation than the US has done about Israel, for sure. It's not only Dems in the House and Senate.

Did Poland seize Danzig and East Prussia in an aggressive war? There are Israeli apologists who make a similar argument, hoping to construct a false equivalence. I think their intended audience is not people familiar with the legal principle actually applied to these rather different cases. These are generally the same people who argue that the occupation of the West Bank cannot be an occupation because the Palestinians were not previously a sovereign people etc. Meantime they are still human beings under brutal control of a hostile state, still settling their land by force.  But Iran . . .!