Six quick hot takes on the Six-Day War and Zionism

It's been 50 years since Israel either acted in self-defense, launched a totally pre-meditated war, or used legitimate Egyptian proclamations to up the ante into a pre-emptive war which we know how as the Six-Day War.

Zionism, especially in its harder core, first reared its head to American public visibility at this time.

But, it was nothing new, including in its dirtiness.

Per Scott Anderson's "Lawrence in Arabia," already in 1917, shortly after the Balfour Declaration he helped engineer, Chaim Weizmann said that Zionist settlers would behave properly at first, but would soon push Palestinians off their land. No, this was not him sadly predicting a terrible wrong; it was him laying out a course of action for imperialism — 21 years before Kristallnacht and 25 before the Final Solution. In other worse, Weizmann was calling on Zionists to be rapacious without excuse. He and other Zionists, like non-Jewish Brits, viewed Palestinian Arabs as "wogs," like the Brits did with Indians and American whites did with American Indians.

One cannot have an honest understanding of the war without that background. Another way to phrase it? Some 30 years before the Arab nations vowed to push independent Israel into the sea, Zionists vowed to push Palestinians across the Jordan.

Second? For Zionists, their American Religious Right allies or others decrying "Islamic terrorism" today? Menachem Begin was a terrorist, too.

Third? Israel did provoke that war more than it was provoked; at best, Option 3 at top, not Option 2, is true. Just a year later, Yitzhak Rabin admitted that the troops Egypt moved into the Sinai weren't enough to launch an attack. Speaking of Begin, he admitted the same, per that link, immediately after the war.

Fourth, the war itself can't be well analyzed without honesty about Israel's deliberate attack on the USS Liberty. It was deliberate, per a new revision of a book by a staff officer on ship. And Moshe Dayan wanted to sink it. Don't believe any Zionists who pooh-pooh that by calling it a conspiracy theory. The attack, even without the sinking, was part of the "pivot" to attack Syria fully enough to capture the Golan Heights and prevent US interference.

Fifth, the war sealed a US tilt that had been happening for some time. Ike had arguably been neutral over the whole Suez Canal issue in 1956. (Which was better than his spinelessness of about the same time when Hungarians, taking his administration's words at face value, actually revolted against their Soviet masters.)

But, Jack Kennedy, beginning with ignoring what Dimona's nuclear power reactor was really about, led the US tilt to Israel. Per the link about the Liberty book, LBJ was looking at arms sales to Israel as part of why we agreed to its whitewash on the Liberty.

Sixth and lastly? Most Americans of the right, and most Democrat-type librulz, don't know any of this. Some Zionist Americans in both halves of the duopoly will deny it — either because they don't want to look at the details, or, with some in high positions, they know some of the actual facts and help to keep burying them.

Same is true for many everyday Israelis, who are no more than "get along" moderate Zionists.

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Note No. 1: And, remember — and refute those who claim otherwise. Anti-Zionism is NOT anti-Semitism. For Americans who make that claim, whether Jew or goy, my response is always, in part, to say, the capital of my country is Washington, not Tel Aviv, let alone not Jerusalem. At Mondoweiss, though British not American, Tony Judt, from the past, reflects on these issues.

Note No. 2: The war is not an excuse for Islamic terrorism, and I never said that. Nor have I made other statements of "moral equivalence," for the types of people in Note 1. (At the same time, I don't reject that some Israeli actions are morally equivalent to some on the Arab side, or even possibly worse.)

Note No. 3: None of this excuses the government of Israel's hypocrisy in doing official, but black-market, business with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states.