Israeli Mythology -- Israel is the hapless victim always being attacked by its neighbors

The Israeli mythology that gets repeated the most often is that Israel has always been attacked by its neighbors.

The Arab-Israeli wars I know about happened in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1978, and 1982.

In 1948, the UN (which at that time pretty much meant the US and Britain), gave most of Palestine to the newly arriving Jews who at that point owned only 6% of the land. The Jewish immigrants accepted this UN resolution while most Palestinians rejected the notion (considered a moral duty in the West) that they should give their homes to total strangers and suggested instead a single state solution in which Jews would be welcomed as equals but they would have to acquire their land legally through purchase rather than conquest.

The Zionists of the time used terror tactics like bayonetting the abdomens of pregnant women and slaughtering whole villages (like Deir Yassin --which was well documented -- but many others as well) to empty Palestine of its people. They used wholesale terror to drive out the mass of the Palestinian population and took the land for themselves. What's more, they took over far more land than even the UN resolution at the time had allotted them crossing over the lines the UN had drawn up with impunity. And they also took over the best lands, the most arable, and the beach fronts. Palestinians were driven into the desert.

In 1956, Israel joined forces with Britain and France (the old Empires who were eager to get back into their former roles) and attacked Egypt ostensibly because Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal -- which was built with Egyptian labor. At that point, the US was not totally biased yet and Eisenhower ordered all three to just get out -- which they promptly did. The US was in no mood for competition to the region's resources. At this point, Israel understood that if it were to be able to continue its expansionist ways, it would have to strongly influence US foreign policy to its benefit -- so that the next time Israel acquired territory through force, it would not be forced to leave.

Such a time came again in 1967 when Israel attacked Egypt. It's incessantly claimed that Egypt attacked, but the fact is Israel attacked and even former prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yhitzak Rabin admit that Egypt was not even considering attacking Israel at that time. Rabin was quoted in Le Monde, February 29, 1968, as saying, "I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai in May [1967] would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it." On August 8, 1982, Prime Minister Begin made a speech saying, "In June, 1967, we again had a choice. the Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him" (New York Times, August 21, 1982).

In 1973, Egypt along with Syria and Jordan did not attack Israel, but attacked Israeli positions in the territories Israel acquired in 1967 in order to try to regain them. It is not widely known, but Israel was undertaking very brutal ethnic cleansing in those territories at the time.

The 1978 war is usually not even sited because it was a clear Israeli attack on Lebanon which left 2000 Lebanese dead and about a quarter of a million people driven out of their homes.

The 1982 war happened as a direct result of the peace treaty with Egypt. Egypt was removed from the conflict as a deterrent to Israeli aggression. This freed up Israel's army to go into Lebanon. The propaganda in the media was that Israel's northern border was being hit by Katyusha rocket from Lebanon, but the fact is Israel was routinely bombing Southern Lebanon for months attempting to elicit a response but there was no response. Eventually, Israel's deadly bombings (which had killed several hundred people in Lebanon) succeeded in eliciting a Katyusha rocket reprisal which was then used by Israel as a pretext for their planned invasion.

They indiscriminately bombed Beirut and other Lebanese cities killing 18,000 civilians. They razed around 340 buildings to the ground and most of the deaths resulted from people being buried in their own homes. The death toll was from an actual body count, but it was estimated that the death toll could have actually been as high as 50% more because many bodies were buried under highrises and could not be recovered. For a discussion on the body count (which was meticulous because it was understood that it would be denied if mentioned at all), see "Race and Class" Vol. XXIV (Volume 24), No. 4, Spring 1983. This is an academic journal found in most good research libraries.

If Arabs had done to Israelis what Israel did in just that one war, the media would have had a nervous breakdown. And we'd still be bombing till this day...

For an accurate picture of recent Middle East history, please see Noam Chomsky's "The Fateful Triangle" or "Pirates and Emperors."