Israeli Army Retweeting 1967 War As It Happened 317
An anonymous reader writes "This is a new one, twitter as a form of historical reenactment: 'Israel's army is giving a "live" blow-by-blow account of the 1967 Six Day War, tweeting each air strike at the exact time it occurred 46 years ago ... @IDF1967 "is an official Israel Defence Forces account that is aimed at re-tweeting the events of the Six Day War in live time", ... The account was tweeting key events in the battle against the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria that took place from June 5 to 10, 1967 and includes pictures and videos, the army said. The tweets are mostly in Hebrew, with some translated into English. "In response to repeated provocations by Egypt, the State of Israel and the IDF are going to war. We will not sit idly as the enemy forces tighten the noose around our necks," the opening tweet said around 8.00am (1500 AEST) on Wednesday when Israel landed its first preemptive air strike 46 years ago.'"
Liberty (Score:4, Informative)
So when are they going to reenact the attack on the USS Liberty?
Re:now they are nazis (Score:3, Informative)
Ah the 1948 war, where the arabs told the other arabs living in said regions that if they flee, they'll be able to live on the land of the jews that they those arab armies were going to ethnically cleanse. Never mind that said arab armies did in fact commit cleansing...of their fellow arabs, and in those regions among others. That's not new, news.
Re:Cool, why not reenact WW2? (Score:5, Informative)
That's done already! https://twitter.com/RealTimeWWII [twitter.com]
USS Liberty (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder if they'll tweet an "oops,our bad #fail #sosorry" when it comes time for them to lay waste to an American military vessel in international waters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident [wikipedia.org]
Re:now they are nazis (Score:5, Informative)
You are on the wrong side of history, and pretty much all of the nonsense you refer to is coming from you. The Arabs in Palestine were following the orders of the Arab leaders to evacuate. They had been making it clear that a genocide was coming, and who wants get pulled into a genocide? If the Israelis hadn't been able to defend themselves and stop the many attacking Arab armies, it is very possible that any Arabs that had remained behind and ignored the commands to leave would have been killed along with the Jews.
Time Now for a Declaration of Mideast Peace; Doomed Arab Refugees [nytimes.com]
In ''Semites and Anti-Semites'' (New York, 1986), Bernard W. Lewis quotes (page 270) from the memoirs of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, listing the factors that led to Israel's success:
''Fifth: the summons of the Arab governments to the population of Palestine to leave the country and take refuge in the neighboring Arab countries . . . this collective flight served the Jews and strengthened their position without effort. . . . Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes when we ourselves were the ones who induced them to leave them. . . . We doomed a million Arab refugees, by calling on them and insisting that they abandon their land, their homes, their work and their occupations, and we made them unemployed and homeless.''
Azzam's Genocidal Threat [meforum.org]
An October 11, 1947 report on the pan-Arab summit in the Lebanese town of Aley,[9] by Akhbar al-Yom's editor Mustafa Amin, contained an interview he held with Arab League secretary-general Azzam. Titled, "A War of Extermination," the interview read as follows (translated by Efraim Karsh; all ellipses are in the original text):
Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha spoke to me about the horrific war that was in the offing saying:
"I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre[10] or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.
"This war will be distinguished by three serious matters. First—faith: as each fighter deems his death on behalf of Palestine as the shortest road to paradise; second, [the war] will be an opportunity for vast plunder. Third, it will be impossible to contain the zealous volunteers arriving from all corners of the world to avenge the martyrdom of the Palestine Arabs, and viewing the war as dignifying every Arab and every Muslim throughout the world
"The Arab is superior to the Jew in that he accepts defeat with a smile: Should the Jews defeat us in the first battle, we will defeat them in the second or the third battle or the final one whereas one defeat will shatter the Jew's morale! Most desert Arabians take pleasure in fighting. I recall being tasked with mediating a truce in a desert war (in which I participated) that lasted for nine monthsWhile en route to sign the truce, I was approached
Re:now they are nazis (Score:5, Informative)
Ah the 1948 war, where the arabs told the other arabs living in said regions that if they flee, they'll be able to live on the land of the jews that they those arab armies were going to ethnically cleanse.
Ah yes, you're referring to this [palestineinformation.org]
The new state of Israel spread the story that all these Palestinians had left under orders from Arab leaders, citing "Arab broadcasts" telling people to move away so that Arab armies could "operate without interference.” There has never been any evidence for this story. Both US and British intelligence services were monitoring all broadcasts during the period, and not a single "Arab broadcast" telling people to leave was recorded. In fact, several Arab broadcasts were recorded telling the population to stay put. Israeli forces, meanwhile, were using threats, violence, and murder to force many Palestinians out of their homes.
It is no longer the official line of the Israeli Foreign Office that Arab leaders ordered Palestinians to leave Palestine.
Besides, I never even understood the reasoning behind this justification to condemn all Palestinians for an alleged radio broadcast supposedly sent from a different Arab country. If you're a civilian and not part of the military, since when does fleeing a region about to become a battlefield even considered a crime? Are you suggesting that non-military people should just stay there, Arab or not, while two armies are supposedly converging on each other?
Re:Liberty (Score:5, Informative)
The USS Liberty attack demonstrates why you shouldn't send your SIGINT assets into a volatile war zone. The incident was collateral damage and the Israeli's did apologize. Also at the time the US-Israeli relationship was nothing like it is today. They were not enemies but Isreal was not a US client. In 1956 the US forced France, Isreal, and Britain to call off their attempts to take over the Suez Canal. At the time the Russians were supporting Egypt and continued fighting might have dragged the US into a direct confrontation with Russia. In the 1973 war the US government did not resupply Isreal until after the Israeli's broadcast their intentions to enact their "Samson Option" in the clear so all parties could intercept the message. The Samson option meant they were loading their nukes on their F-4's and Jericho missiles. Nixon agreed the next day to re-supply the Israelis.
Re:now they are nazis (Score:2, Informative)
No. But it does equate to a double standard. A different standard is applied to Israel than to everyone else. What's worse is that the other Arab countries are treating their own people like shit.
Despite your flamebait moderation, you are essentially correct.
As far as a double standard against Israel, the UN is a great example of that.
From: Middle East Quarterly - Winter 2004
The Case for Israel [meforum.org]
... The Case For Israel ... Dershowitz points out that a full 27 percent of the U.N.'s country-specific resolutions critical of a state have been directed against it. In contrast, no resolution in the history of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has condemned Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe, all of which are self-evidently far worse violators of human rights. Israel, asserts Dershowitz, has a "far better record on human rights than any other nation in the Middle East and most other nations in the world." As evidence, he notes that "Israel is the only nation in the world whose judiciary actively enforces the rule of law against its military during wartime" and that "Israel has killed fewer innocent civilians in proportion to the number of its own civilians killed than any country engaged in a comparable war."... The Case for Israel [meforum.org]
Fighting the Lies Harder Than Fighting the War - Israel does not "deliberately" target civilians. [nationalreview.com]
Regarding the mistreatment of Arabs by Arabs, two interesting cases that immediately come to mind:
Black September - In Context [bbc.co.uk]
Hama 1982 – The Syrian massacre you never heard about [abovetopsecret.com] (Not for those of weak constitution. The SS had nothing on the Syrian Army.)
For some reason you never really hear about those. What makes it doubly interesting is that Black September was specifically against the Palestinian Arabs.
Once again, Zionists hoisted on their own petards (Score:5, Informative)
Israel's justification for starting the 1967 war is the Eygptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran. Which, for some reason, also entitled them to seize a great deal of surrounding land, most importantly the West Bank.
Except that means that any and all attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah in response to Israel's total blockade of Gaza are completely justified, according to Israeli rules. Just as Israel's possession of a couple hundred nuclear weapons means that they should be threatened with economy-destroying sanctions and military strikes, if Iran is threatened with the same in case they someday decide they want a nuclear weapon.
Re: The First in a Series! (Score:2, Informative)
Israel started the 1967 war with a sneak attack on the Egyptian Air Force, after Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran.
Blockades in international law are acts of war. You have it backwards as usual, but thanks for yielding the point.
The formation of Israel was impossible without ethnic cleansing and wars of conquest from the people living there, much like the formation of the United States.
The Jews that immigrated to Palestine bought land that nobody wanted and developed it. They paid high prices for other land. The Arab leadership had to threaten to kill anybody that sold more land to Jews to reduce the sales as the Jews were paying very good money. As noted in this post [slashdot.org], it was Arab leaders that ordered the Arabs of Palestine to leave their homes so that the invading Arab armies could commit genocide. In 1967 the Arabs nations again gathered their armies to commit genocide, and failed, losing land in the process to tiny Israel. You don't really have a good grasp of the history there.