Moshe Dayan Quotes

The 6 Day War began less then 6 months later. This was another failure of U. S. Intelligence. Essentially, Rusk and others took the belligerent speeches of Nasser and other Arab leaders as rhetoric meant only for local consumption and did not realize that the Arabs had so deluded themselves that they thought that they could really destroy the state of Israel. American intelligence assumed that they knew better and their threats were just traditional Arab exaggeration and boasting.

When the United Nations partitioned Palestine into separate Jewish and Muslim states, the armies of all the Arab countries attacked the new nation which did not even have a formal Army. The Israelis were able to win the war.

The Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the PLO were preparing a coordinated attack on Israel. After statements like this, the Israeli’s preempted the attack, routed the Egyptian Airforce and Army, and then defeated the other three. The Arab “War of Liberation” resulted in the Arabs losing more with Israel tripling it’s control of area. The quotation however cast a pall over attempts thereafter to create a Palestinian State as in effect the PLO had announced a policy of a Holocaust—the extermination of the Israelis. The dispute over land was not for the Jewish state a land negotiation amenable to compromise and give and take, but instead was an existential threat to Israel whereby any compromise might result in the death of the entire population. As the ultimate intention of the PLO had been revealed.

Al-Alusi attended an anti-terrorism conference in Israel. He was arrested by conservatives who cited a law passed under the Hussein regime prohibiting any contact with Israelis. However, he was immediately released citing the new freedom of Iraqis to travel anywhere they want and meet with whomever they want.

Nasser was indeed planning an attack. Israeli intelligence had discovered it, and the Israeli’s informed President Lyndon Johnson who in turn called Kosygin. Nasser and the Arabs had miscalculated again and ended up being not only defeated in the war they wanted but totally embarrassed by the incredibly poor performance of the Arab armies who greatly outnumbered the Israelis but had no stomach for a fight.

This illustrates one of the reasons that the Israeli Arab conflict has been unsolvable over the years. A thousand years ago, the Arabs were a leading intellectual and military power in the world. The rest of the world has moved ahead and they have actually retrogressed. So the Arabs seek dignity which is very elusive. They have never wanted to negotiate terms with Israel when they have been weak and feel defeated. So the pattern has been that they feel they cannot negotiate for justice as they are too week. So periodically they attack Israel which has always defeated them and hoped that after the Arab defeat, permanent negotiations for peace could take place. But the Arabs were feeling too weak. So they just repeated all their extreme demands. After a few years, they would try another attack, lose again and the cycle would repeat. The Israelis fear that if the Arabs every won a war, the Arab moderates might be willing to reasonably negotiate, the extremists would want to continue the fighting and “drive the Israelis into the sea” as they have so often threatened.

Mohamed Anwar El-Sedat

The Arab Countries are notoriously corrupt and undemocratic. Huge amounts of national resources are looted by the politicians in power and their supporters. Before Israel existed, the Jews and Arabs of Palestine both had a standard of living that was considerably less than that of Egypt. The Palestinians under the Palestine authority after 50 years have a standard of living that is still less than that of Egypt. But the Israeli citizens have a standard of living that is now far greater then the other Palestinians, but many times greater than Egypt. And that goes for the Israeli Arabs living in a free democracy also; they too are far better off than their non democratic co-religionists. See {588744}.

Syria constantly goaded Nasser and Egypt to attack Israel. However, Nasser was receiving huge foreign aid in the form of wheat which was needed to feed his population. See {595373}