Syrian Protesters Again Rush Israeli Border; Israeli Military Opens Fire

This is the second such incident in a month. Syria's Bashar al Assad knows that his regime is under a serious threat from the ongoing protests against his brutal regime, so he's falling back on the region's one constant relief valve - find a way to bring Israel into things.

Syrians again rushed the Israel-Syria border fence, and Israelis opened fire on those attempting to infiltrate into Israel.

Syrian television says four protesters were killed. An Israeli army spokesman said about 12 demonstrators were wounded but said he could not confirm any deaths.

The Israeli army says its troops had "no choice" but to open fire after hundreds of demonstrators ignored numerous warnings to stay clear of the boundary fence on the Golan.

The demonstrators were marking the anniversary of Israel's capture of the Golan Heights, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The fighting occurred over several hours and throngs of Syrians repeatedly attempted to illegally enter Israel.

The way the border works, there's a series of fences and zones. There's a Syrian fence, a no-man's land that happens to be mined, and the Israeli fence. These Syrians, including armed individuals, got past the Syrian fence, and were moving towards the Israeli fence

Two armed men were identified near the border fence in Kunetra, on the Syrian side of the border, the IDF Spokesman told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday afternoon.

There was no further official information about he identity of the gunmen, or their proximity to the border but a security official suggested that the men could be Syrian police or army forces

Prior to spotting the armed men, according to the IDF spokesperson, around 150 people managed to cross to the Syrian side of the fence, entering a mined zone between the two fences in the Majdal Shams area.

Curiously, Syria has done nothing to stop protests on its side of the border with Israel even as Lebanon has taken steps to prevent further border events. Lebanon declared the area a closed military zone, but Syria, with its ongoing protests against Assad, is using Israel as a foil to deflect attention from his barbaric crackdown that has killed at least a thousand protesters opposed to his regime.

Reflections on the Six Day War

The Six Day War was a stunning victory for Israel. For the first time since the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Israel was truly within secure borders. It was able to protect itself from attack from the Golan Heights or across the Sinai/Israel border and no longer had to fear that a Jordanian armored advance could cut Israel in half where Israel was nine miles wide between the West Bank and the Med. It was in control of all of Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest city.

Here's how Time Magazine reported the war in the days after the war ended.

In the flush of a victory that surprised even Dayan and his officers ("I thought it would take a day or two longer," Chief-of-Staff Rabin said laconically), the Israelis are clearly not yet sure what to do with their spoils. Indeed, they hardly had time to count the full cost of their victory—or of the Arab defeat. Casualty figures, as yet, are fragmentary, but the few days of desert warfare may well have accounted for more dead than a whole year's fighting in Viet Nam. And historians will be a long time calculating the price in Arab morale, to say nothing of Russia's tremendous loss of face as it stood helplessly by, watching its expensive Middle Eastern adventure being ground to dust by the advancing Israelis. Among the major Israeli spoils were several captured Russian SAM missiles.

What seems certain now is that, for the moment at least, Israel is the absolute master of the Middle East; it need take orders from no one, and can dictate its own terms in the vacuum of big-power inaction, U.N. fecklessness, and Arab impotence.

How did Israel manage to win so big so quickly? Much of the answer can be found in the almost incredible lack of Arab planning, coordination and communications. Despite their swift defeat in 1956, this time the Arabs seemed to expect a long, leisurely war of attrition. Though two squadrons of Algerian MIG-21s arrived, they were a fatal 24 hours too late because Egyptian commanders had failed to instruct them which airbase to head for. In retrospect, it might have been even worse if they had arrived in time for the Israeli raids. Five planeloads of Moroccan troops actually got to Cairo, but five others were grounded in Libya because Egypt had not given them clearance to enter Egyptian airspace. More than 100 truckloads of Algerian troops crossed southern Tunisia on the way to the Sinai front, which crumbled long before they arrived. Tunisian troops ready to move for Nasser were never asked for by Cairo.

The Third Temple. Though the destruction of Arab airpower played the largest part in turning the battle, the Arabs' field performance was nothing to write home about. Their Russian-trained officer corps was a disaster; it fought far better with words than with weapons. Of all the Arab troops, only the Jordanians handled themselves ably and well—and paid for it with what Hussein called "tremendous losses" that included as many as 15,000 dead. Lebanon fired not a shot at Israeli ground forces during the entire war; as they manned their border positions, its soldiers played a backgammon-like game called tricktrack and watched the Syrians and Israelis trade shellfire. Breastbeating to the contrary, Syrian ground forces made no significant move to relieve the pressure on Jordan and Egypt. Few Arab pilots had a chance to show their skills; and those that did came out second best. The Israelis shot down 50 Arab fighters while losing only three.

To this day, Israelis are still trying to deal with the repercussions of that war. Israel has made peace with Jordan and Egypt, but the Palestinians and Syrians continue to agitate for Israel's destruction.

Elder of Ziyon notes Nasser's lies and Arabs' sense of honor continue to provide a wealth of alt-reality to the leftists and thugs that dominate the Middle East. Of course, that alternative reality/revisionist history continues to this day. Yid With Lid has the details.

My earlier coverage is here. Honest Reporting has a good archive of information about the situation leading up to the war.

Just like today--The United States tried to prevent the war through negotiations, but the other side did not want peace, The US could not persuade Nasser or the other Arab states to cease their belligerent statements and actions. Still, right before the war, President Johnson warned: “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone.” Then, when the war began, the State Department announced: “Our position is neutral in thought, word and deed.”

While the Arabs were falsely accusing the United States of airlifting supplies to Israel, Johnson imposed an arms embargo on the region (France, Israel’s other main arms supplier, also embargoed arms to Israel). By contrast, the Soviets were supplying massive amounts of arms to the Arabs. Simultaneously, the armies of Kuwait, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were contributing troops and arms to the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian fronts.


Today, the retrospective tell a different story, the tale of the cynical Zionist nation that saw an opportunity to deal a blow to the Arab nation, expand her territory, and rule over the Palestinian people. All of these articles that I have been reading say that looking back on it, Maybe the Six Day War was not the best thing for Israel, "since it lead her to become the evil rogue nation she is today"

But there is one indisputable fact that todays revisionist history keeps forgetting, if Israel didn't fight and win the Six Day War---there would be no Israel today. Just as if Israel doesn't protect herself from the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah today--there will be no Israel in 40 years.

Israel continues to defend itself to this day against terrorists and regimes hellbent on Israel's destruction. They may seek to undermine Israel with papercuts - Fatah, or with kassam rockets - Hamas, or invasions and bloody wars - Hizbullah. Those terrorist groups are proxies of regional thugs in Damascus and Tehran who want to exert their power and influence and don't care how many are killed in the process.

As Ralph Peters notes:

We Americans face a fundamental problem in interpreting Israel's history: We imagine that every problem has a solution, if only we can figure it out. But there are no solutions - none - to the Middle East's problems, short of atrocities too horrific for us to contemplate. Israel may dream of peace, but must be content to survive and muddle through. An erratic ebb and flow of violence may be as good as the region gets.
The Six-Day War didn't create the Middle East's problems, it only changed the math. For Israel, it marked a coming of age. Taken together with the Yom Kippur War six years later - two rounds in a single fight, really - the war of June 1967 meant the end of Israel's basic struggle for existence and the beginning of its "quality of life" wars.

We also forget that those two intertwined wars in 1967 and 1973 resulted in four decades of de facto peace between Israel and the Arab states it had fought in four wars. Intifadahs make great TV, but they can't destroy Israel.

Intifadas might not destroy Israel, but proxy wars could - and that's exactly what Hizbullah seeks to do. They've got the firepower of a military force, that while insufficient to destroy Israel's vaunted IDF, is sufficient to wear down Israeli resolve and destabilize Lebanon and Israel's northern border.

The situation also shows the folly of the US attempting to play neutral in the conflict. Time and time again, the US is accused of assisting Israel, despite all facts to the contrary. Israel is forced to go it alone, while Israel's enemies receive support from all corners of the Middle East and the Soviets/Russians. Expect to see China get involved in the game as well.

Others with posts on the Six Day War:
BabbaZee, Fiery Spirited Zionist, and LGF.

UPDATE:
And the Arab World characteristically finds yet another reason to gather and blame Israel for all their self-inflicted woes (via LGF):

Forty years after Israel’s stunning victory over three Arab armies, the defeat still lingers in the Arab world — so much so, some blame it for everything from a lack of democracy in the region to the rise of religious extremism.

On June 5, 1967, Israeli warplanes destroyed 400 aircraft belonging to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq — most of them sitting on airport tarmacs. Egypt lost the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, Syria gave up the Golan Heights, and Jordan relinquished the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Trying to minimize the defeat, Arabs have long called the Six Day War the “naksa,” or “setback,” but its impact remains a deep wound.

Egyptian columnist Wael Abdel Fattah wrote in the independent weekly Al-Fagr newspaper that Arabs blame the defeat for “everything” — from “price hikes, dictatorship, religious extremism, sectarian strife, even sexual impotence.”

Let that last bit sink in. The hatred and disconnect with reality is pathological and is reinforced on a daily basis by thugs in charge who seek only to remain in power and use Israel as the ultimate bogeyman for their own failings.

Six Days in History

Forty years ago, one of the most intriguing conflicts began on this day and ended six days later with repercussions that are felt to this day. The aftermath of the conflict put Israel in control of the Golan Heights, which were captured from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza, which were captured from Egypt, and the West Bank including the Old City of Jerusalem, which were captured from Jordan.

Since 1967, the Israelis have returned control of the Sinai to the Egyptians under the terms of the Camp David Accord, and handed over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority in 2005. The Israelis have a peace agreement with Jordan, and Syria still seeks to regain control over the strategic Golan. Yet, the thorny issue of the Palestinians remains - the Palestinian Authority has control over Gaza, though I use that term loosely considering that the situation there is near anarchy and Hamas and Fatah are slugging it out for supremacy and the direction of Palestinian intentions towards Israel. Fatah is willing to destroy Israel with thousands of papercuts, while Hamas wants to destroy Israel yesterday. Hamas is unwilling to recognize Israel's right to exist, and considers it its religious obligation to destroy Israel.

It is against that backdrop that one of the best books on the subject is Michael Oren's Six Days of War: The Making of the Modern Middle East. He traces the origin of the conflict and the repercussions.

The Latest Lies From Hamas and Fatah

Moderate President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has been trying to coax his Hamas rivals into endorsing the document, which calls for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, in effect recognizing the Jewish state. He has endorsed the plan as a way to end sanctions against the Hamas-led Palestinian government and pave the way to reopening peace talks with Israel.

"We have an agreement over the document," said Ibrahim Abu Najah, coordinator of the "national dialogue" over the proposal.

The plan also calls on militants to limit attacks to areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War and calls for formation of a coalition Palestinian government.

The United States, Israel and European Union list Hamas as a terrorist group because it rejects the existence of Israel and has sent dozens of suicide bombers into the Jewish state, killing hundreds.

In other words, this does nothing to improve Israel's security. It says that Hamas and Fatah are free to continue launching attacks against Israelis living in the West Bank, and do so until the West Bank is judenrein (Jew free).

This is such a sham that it boggles the mind. We've got terrorists who are imprisoned in Israeli jails trying to broker a deal between rival terrorist groups who when not plotting to kill Israelis are busy trying to kill each other for control and dominion over the Palestinian controlled areas in Gaza and West Bank.

The document is the latest in a long line of documents that refuse to deal with the true underlying problem in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict - namely that the Palestinians refuse to explicitly accept Israel and continue their ongoing calls for Israel's destruction.

Nowhere is it stated that Hamas would have to revoke their charter provisions calling for Israel's destruction, nor does the latest document call for the revocation of the PLO charter provisions calling for Israel's destruction.

This is a strategic document designed to lull those foolish enough to believe that the Palestinians are serious about peace with Israel into making a deal that gives away Israeli security under the rubric of peace.

Israel would neither get peace, nor security by going down this route.

We should see this latest presser from the Palestinians for what it is. It's nothing more than a momentary diversion to keep the IDF from going through Gaza like a hot knife through butter to not only recover their missing soldier, but to deal with the ongoing terrorist threat/low intensity war between the Palestinian terrorists running the place and Israel.

UPDATE:
MSNBC thinks that this is some kind of breakthrough. Sorry, but it's nothing of the kind. This would be an agreement between two terrorist groups about what approach they should take in taking apart Israel piece by piece. Nowhere does it recognize Israel's right to exist, nor does it provide security guarantees to Israelis living in the West Bank. Indeed, the document declares Israelis and IDF forces in the West Bank and Jerusalem fair game for their terrorist attacks.

And it wont stop the terrorists from attacking Israel directly either, as witnessed by the attack earlier this week where an Israeli soldier was kidnapped, and the news that an Israeli civilian was kidnapped earlier today.

UPDATE:
There's a bunch of folks blogging the expected Israeli response to the ongoing violence perpetrated against them by the terrorists in Gaza.

The Moderate Voice, who notes that the Palestinians keep doing more to push Israel into responding with massive and overwhelming force.

Israel rules out a prisoner release. Well, no kidding. Any such release would only encourage further kidnappings of Israelis to secure the release of terrorists in Israeli custody. That's a completely untenable situation, as Michelle Malkin notes.

Meryl Yourish counsels Israel to take the action that's necessary - go into Gaza:

Imagine that Mexico was firing rockets on San Diego every day. Imagine that this happened in San Diego. Now imagine what the reaction from the government would be, and tell me why Israel is not allowed to do what any other sovereign nation would do.

Olmert needs to send the troops into Gaza. Olmert needs to tell Hamas that if the rockets don’t stop, no member of Hamas will be able to sleep in the same bed two nights in a row.

Funny how Kofi Annan doesn’t seem to think that daily rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel is worthy of a condemnation statement.

Well, no, not really. What time is it? Why, every time that question is asked, no matter what time it is, it’s Israeli Double Standard Time.

Carl in Jerusalem thinks Defense Minister Peretz should resign over his apparent incapacity to deal forcefully with the terrorists in Gaza.

Dave Bender seems some interesting parallels between the events leading up to the Six Day War and today, including questions about IDF leadership, the strain of command, and holding the fate of the entire country in one's hands where the wrong decision could been the annihilation of the state of Israel.

UPDATE:
Add Pastorius from the Infidel Bloggers Alliance to the list of those who think the so-called agreement between Hamas and Fatah is nothing but blowing smoke.

This Day In History

On this day in history, President Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State Cyrus Vance reiterates the President's dedication to advancing human rights. This comes on the heels of the Soviet Union cracking down on dissidents, including Anatoly Sharansky (now Natan Sharansky and a Member of the Israeli Knesset). Sharansky was freed years later, and emigrated to Israel, where he became a leading politician, who I had the great honor of meeting. He is someone who knows evil and has the will to confront it wherever it may be.

Thirty eight years ago, Israel and her Arab neighbors were busy fighting Day 2/3 of the Six Day War, caused by Egypt blocking the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping by blockading the Straits of Tiran, incessant cross-border raids, and a mutual defense pact signed by the Egyptians and Syrians. The Jordanians bought into the propaganda broadcast by the Egyptians who claimed that they were on the verge of defeating the Israelis.

In fact, the Israelis had decimated the Egyptian air force on the ground on June 4, 1967, and the Egyptians and Syrians were on the defensive from moments after the Israelis launched their attacks.

Jordan lost the West Bank and Jerusalem. Egypt lost Gaza and Sinai. Syria lost the Golan. The borders and the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East will forever be changed by those six days.

After the cessation of hostilities on June 10, the UN eventually drafted UN SCR 242, which lay the groundwork for Land for Peace, which was implemented in November 1967.

Ezer Weizman, RIP

Ezer Weizman, former President of Israel, and a hero to Israelis for his strategic vision and tactical victories during the 1967 Six Day War, died in Israel. He was 80.

I had the opportunity to meet him in 1993, and he was quite a distinguished gentleman. He had mellowed a bit by the time I got to meet him, but you could tell that he had a twinkle in his eye for mischief.

As commander of the air force from 1958 to 1966, Mr. Weizman assembled a potent fleet of fighter jets and personally led the training of its highly proficient pilots.

He was the military's chief of operations in 1967, when the Arab forces, led by Egypt, began gearing up for a coordinated offensive against Israel.

On the morning of June 5, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack, putting Mr. Weizman's air-based strategy into action with devastating results. In two hours, with just 300 combat planes, half as many as the combined Arab force, the Israeli Air Force destroyed 200 Egyptian aircraft, most of which never left the ground. By noon, another 200 Arab planes were downed in aerial combat. It was often said that the war, which lasted six days, was won by the air force in the first six hours.

Eleven years later, Mr. Weizman, then Israel's defense minister, made his reputation as a peacemaker by helping convince a skeptical Prime Minister Menachem Begin that a negotiated withdrawal from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula would make Israel more, rather than less secure.

President Ezer Weizman. Taken July 1993.