Originally Posted by Yirmeyahu

shek,

I.
A. The fact that blockades and embargoes are inherently different is irrelevent to the fact that the logic in both situations is precisely the same.
To remind everyone, I was given a logical formula which said that the Israeli attack upon Egypt was justified because Egypt engaged in an action which it knew Israel would regard as an "act of war".

Applying the same logic, the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor would be justified since the US engaged in an action which it knew would be regarded by Japan as an "act of war".

B. The closing of the Straits of Tiran was not an "internationally recognized casus belli".

II.
A.
1. As I've noted previously, Rabin saying the decision to attack Egypt was "a question of our national survival, of to be or not to be" does not lead to the conclusion that Israel was under threat of imminent attack from Egypt.

2. Such a statement was self-serving at the time, and was certainly not representative of the facts.

3. Rabin's later statement that "I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai would not have been sufficent to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it" seems to be a more honest acknowledgment (was not self-serving) and more closely represents the facts, including both US and Israeli intelligence assessments that in the event of war, Israel would win within a matter of days (which certainly was certainly proven to be the case).

B. Rabin is not the only leading Israeli who has acknowleged the truth of the matter.

1. "The Egyptian buildup in Sinai lacked a clear offensive plan, and Nasser's defensive instructions explicitly assumed an Israeli first strike." -- Avraham Sela (a colleague of Michael B. Oren at the Shalem Center)

2. "In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him." -- Menachem Begin

3 "There was no danger of annihilation. Israeli headquarters never believed in this danger." -- General Chaim Herzog, Commanding General and first Military Governor of Israeli Occupied West Bank

4. "We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such possibility." -- Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev

5. "There was never a danger of extermination. This hypothesis had never been considered in any serious meeting."

6. "The Jews of the Diaspora would like, for reasons of their own, to see us as heroes, our backs to the wall. This desire of theirs, however, will not affect the reality of the situation." -- Ezer Weizman

7. "The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail, and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory." -- Mordechai Bentov, Israeli Minister of HOusing

8. "The Yom Kippur War was not fought by Egypt and Syria to threaten the existence of Israel. It was an all out use of their military force to achieve a limited political goal. What Sadat wanted by crossing the canal was to change the political reality and, thereby, to start a political [peace] process from a point more favorable to him than the one that existed." -- Yitzhak Rabin

C. Rabin was talking about Egyptian forces relocated on in May 1967. The map shown above shows troop movements on June 5 and 6, 1967.



That's an interesting story, but unfortunately it's fiction.