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Born on the Fourth of June

(Commentary) Bret Stephens - The 4th of June 1967 was the day before the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and the Arab countries surrounding it. Israel - deploying 275,000 troops, 200 combat planes, and 1,100 tanks - faced off against combined Arab armies that fielded nearly twice as many troops, more than four times as many planes, and nearly five times as many tanks. On the 4th of June, the commander of the Egyptian army, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, told Ahmad Shukeiri, the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization, "Soon we'll be able to take the initiative and rid ourselves of Israel once and for all." On the 4th of June, Israel had not received emergency military aid promised by the United States; nor had the U.S. mounted a promised international armada to break Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran; nor had Israel gotten any relief from France, which just then decided to turn on the Jewish state with an arms embargo; nor had it gotten any diplomatic relief at the UN, which had instantly capitulated to Egyptian demands to withdraw peacekeepers from the Sinai. Despite warnings from the Soviet Union and the United States, on the 4th of June, Israel chose to strike - and strike first. "They will condemn us," Yigal Allon, the labor minister, told his cabinet colleagues. "And we will survive." All of this should sound familiar to us today - the threat to Israel's existence, the muddle of U.S. policy, the global opposition to Israel, Israel's fear of being blamed for starting a war. Israel was not founded to serve as another vehicle for showcasing Jewish victimhood, but for ending it. Statecraft cannot be conducted as a beauty pageant, and the "benefit" of being seen as the righteous victim should count for nothing against the moral imperative of ensuring one's survival.
2012-07-27 00:00:00
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