Posted on 05/16/2007 2:41:29 PM PDT by Rodney King
'Soviets engineered Six Day War' David Horovitz, THE JERUSALEM POST May. 16, 2007
In a new book that "totally contradicts everything that has been accepted to this day" about the Six Day War, two Israeli authors claim that the conflict was deliberately engineered by the Soviet Union to create the conditions in which Israel's nuclear program could be destroyed.
Having received information about Israel's progress towards nuclear arms, the Soviets aimed to draw Israel into a confrontation in which their counterstrike would include a joint Egyptian-Soviet bombing of the reactor at Dimona. They had also geared up for a naval landing on Israel's beaches.
"The conventional view is that the Soviet Union triggered the conflict via disinformation on Israeli troop movements, but that it didn't intend for a full-scale war to break out and that it then did its best to defuse the war in cooperation with the United States," Gideon Remez, who co-wrote Foxbats over Dimona, told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday. Essentially, the Soviet Union at the time was regarded as having evolved "a cautious and responsible foreign policy," the book elaborates. "But we propose a completely new outlook on all this," said Remez.
# Did Israel want the Six Day War? # American writer's account of a miracle victory
Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the war, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War, by Remez and Isabella Ginor, is to be published by Yale University Press early next month. The title refers to the Soviets' most advanced fighter plane, the MiG-25 Foxbat, which the authors say flew sorties over Dimona shortly before the Six Day War, both to help bolster the Soviet effort to encourage Israel to launch a war, and to ensure the nuclear target could be effectively destroyed once Israel, branded an aggressor for its preemption, came under joint Arab-Soviet counterattack.
Soviet nuclear-missile submarines were also said to have been poised off Israel's shore, ready to strike back in case Israel already had a nuclear device and sought to use it.
The Soviets' intended central intervention in the war was thwarted, however, by the overwhelming nature of the initial Israeli success, the authors write, as Israel's preemption, far from weakening its international legitimacy and exposing it to devastating counterattack, proved decisive in determining the conflict.
And because the Soviet Union's plan thus proved unworkable, the authors go on, its role in stoking the crisis, and its plans to subsequently remake the Middle East to its advantage, have remained overlooked, undervalued or simply unknown to historians assessing the war over the past 40 years.
Remez said the work was based on "some documentary evidence, in combination with testimonies of rank-and-file and high-ranking participants."
Among these are quotations from the commander of the Soviets' strategic-bomber pilots, Gen. Vasily Reshetnikov, indicating that he and his colleagues were given maps for a planned mission to target Dimona, and from Soviet Foreign Ministry official Oleg Grinevsky to the effect that the outcome of the war "saved Dimona from annihilation."
The book also quotes Soviet naval officer Yuri Khripunkov detailing the orders his ship's captain gave him on June 5, 1967, to raise a 30-strong "volunteer" detachment for a landing mission in Israel. "The mission for Khripunkov's platoon was to penetrate Haifa Port - the Israeli navy's main base and command headquarters," the book states. Khripunkov was told that "similar landing parties were being assembled on board 30-odd Soviet surface vessels in the Mediterranean, for a total of some 1,000 men."
June 5 ended without any such attack, of course, because the initial Israeli attack "had been much more potent than expected."
Nonetheless, according to the authors, some aspects of the Soviets' intended direct intervention were actually put in motion, to help Egypt as Israeli forces advanced into the Sinai, before the cease-fire ended hostilities.
Remez, a longtime prominent Israel Radio journalist, fought in the Six Day War as a paratrooper. Ginor was born in the Ukraine, came to Israel in 1967 and is a noted analyst of Soviet and post-Soviet affairs. The authors, who live in Jerusalem with their teenage sons, say they "fell into this role of historical revisionism" after chancing upon Khripunkov's account of the planned naval landing - which was repeatedly postponed, only to be activated and then aborted as the ship neared the Israeli shores on the last day of the war - in a Ukrainian newspaper.
The authors acknowledge a dearth of incontrovertible documentation that would back up central aspects of their thesis, but note that "it is entirely possible that few corresponding documents ever existed," as was the case when former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev "tried in vain to find the formal resolution to invade Afghanistan, which was adopted less than a decade before he took office."
They add that key documents may have been destroyed, and note that "the accounts of numerous Soviet participants refer to orders that were transmitted only orally down the chain of command."
Historian Michael Oren, author of the landmark Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, told the Post Tuesday night that he had not found "any documentary evidence to support" the book's central claims. He noted that he had visited the Soviet archives and that "not a lot has been declassified." Oren said he had found "several reasons why the Soviets helped precipitate the war, and this wasn't among them."
Critics cited on the book's jacket are more enthusiastic. Daniel Kurtzer, former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt, for instance, says the central thesis "appears unreal until one assesses the myriad sources and deep documentation that add up to a compelling argument."
Odd Arne Westad, director of the Cold War Studies Center at the London School of Economics, states that "by placing Israeli nuclear ambitions - and the Soviet reaction - as major links in the chain of events, the authors have produced a book that will stand out in the debate about the Cold War and the Middle East."
And former US under secretary of defense Dov Zackheim says the book proves "that the Six Day War marked a major Soviet political-military defeat comparable to the Cuban missile crisis."
Marking it for later reading.
Gee, that really turned out well for the Soviets, didn’t it!
Very interesting. I was always curious about the apparent “confusion” in the Soviet political ranks that helped instigate the war.
It’s certainly plausible.
Yes, and good work, David.
The Kremlin was and is a sponsor of terror and other anti Western evils.
Of course they did. Oi...
At the same time, and unknown to the Israelis, the Soviet Union mounted a disinformation campaign pushing Egypt to join Syria against Israel. At that time, the Soviets were providing military and economic aid to both Syria and Egypt. On May 13, 1967 a Soviet parliamentary delegation visited Cairo and informed the Egyptian leaders that Israel had concentrated eleven to thirteen brigades along the Syrian border in preparation for an assault within a few days, with the intention of overthrowing the revolutionary Syrian Government. This was a complete fabrication designed by the Soviets to destabilize the Middle East. Similar false information may have been given to Egypt by the Soviets as early as May 2.
The build up and aggressive intent were denied by Israel. UN Secretary General U Thant reported that UNTSO observers on the Syrian border:
... have verified the absence of troop concentrations and absence of noteworthy military movements on both sides of the [Syrian] line.
Nasser probably correctly interpreted the Soviet information as an indication to him that the time was ripe for an attack on Israel and that he had their backing. With the United States deeply distracted by the War in Vietnam, the Soviets had reason to think there would be no US intervention.
Had the MiG-25 even been deployed at the time of the 6 day war? I know the prototypes pre-date that, but I don't think it was in service by that point.
So at this point, I'm not sure I'm ready to swallow his theories.
I dug this out, for what it’s worth:
Series production of the two initial variants, designated MiG-25P (’Foxbat-A’) (interceptor) and MiG-25R (’Foxbat-B’) (reconnaissance), began in 1969. The MiG-25R entered VVS service almost immediately, but the service entry of the MiG-25P with the PVO was delayed until 1972.
http://www.fighter-planes.com/info/mig25_foxbat.htm
So, that plan worked well.
‘Soviets engineered Six Day War’
And they lost it.
Bigtime.
And have been angry ever since.
LOL
I thought it was already known that the Soviets gave the Egyptians false info of a planned Israeli attack. Egypt put its forces on alert, and Israel then attacked rather than let Egypt strike first.
Ping
Ping
According to Wikipedia (I know, I know) the Mig-25 first went into operational service in 1970. It is, however, possible, that individual aircraft were operational in 1967.
Maybe it’s true, maybe it isnn’t but the fact remains Russia never really stopped it’s support of Islamic regimes bent on Israel and the USA’s destruction. In fact, in the last few years they have accelerated it, putting Iran very close to full nuclear capability. China assisted North Korea in their ballistic missle program also going now to Iran. Russia and China are enemies and are pushing for global hedgemony. Iran and North Korea are useful pets to take the blame for a nuclear terrorist attack that will cripple our country and disrupt our flow of oil. When that occurs, I have no doubt China and Russia will then make their moves.
When you consider the level of logistical support required for a prototype aircraft (consider all the unique systems) its unlikely that the Soviets would have sent a pre-production Foxbat on a shuttle mission to Egypt where the airbase wouldn't have any expertise in the type.
Also, the prototypes available in 1967 were the interceptor variant. It was a high-speed missile carrier designed to shoot down US bombers & recon aircraft -- it was NOT a fighter that you'd put up against Israeli Mirage III's in a dogfight. The Foxbat would have carried pretty crude AAM's by today's standards. Good enough for a bomber, perhaps.
The Foxbat-B was analogous to the USN's R5C Vigilante. Cameras carried internally, not in an external pod like today's aircraft.
So the article claims that the Soviets essentially sent their newest prototype on a non-recon mission, essentially unarmed against IAF defending aircraft, to an Egyptian airbase that really wasn't setup to turnaround the aircraft? Possible but unlikely in my estimation.
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