In response the Israelis went on war footing, gave Moshe Dayan the Defense Portfolio. Abba Eban was told in France that France would initiate a "arms" embargo against the Israelis. In Britain, Eban was dismissed. In the US, the Americans told Eban that if "Israel goes it alone, they will be alone."
Finally after almost three weeks, Israel struck first by destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground.
Who started the war? Well, technically the Israelis did. They pre-empted.
Recently, I had an argument with a person who argued that since Nasser did not really want war and was only being provoked by Jordan, that the Israelis were fully and totally to blame.
As if the conflict should only be defined by the anomosity between Jordan and Egypt. (Leaving Syria and the Soviets out of this tale on purpose) As if Israel should have just known twenty-two years after the Holocaust that what was going on along their borders was just an exercise of Arab one-upmanship.
Therefore, responsibility for the war rested soley on the Israeli and Nasser gets a free pass because what he wanted outweighs what he did.
This is the same argument being advanced by some in defense of Lincoln's decision to resupply Sumter.
That only works if Lincoln is the only actor that counts. He is not. The South's known and stated reaction (Petigru and Pickens just to name two) to his attempts to resupply Sumter should hold more the weight, since Lincoln sent Lamon to find out how South Carolina would react if he resupplied or reinforced the fort.
Now, the argument disintegrates. Where's my quote? If I can't provide the exact quote, then Lincoln is in the clear.
I don't need an exact quote. I have plenty of proof from those who knew Lincoln well. If NS is correct that no one can know what Lincoln was thinking and certainly not his friends, cabinet, and secretaries.... then how does NS know so emphatically Lincoln's motives. But that's another matter.
NS believes that Lincoln's secretaries were wrong, his friend was wrong, the memo is wrong, the cabinet deliberation had nothing to do with the ramifications of what would happen if Lincoln resupplied the fort, and the answers Lamon brings back for Petigru and Pickens had no bearing on Lincoln's thought processess. Then there were his own words about collecting tariffs, holding forts, etc.
No (according to NS), Lincoln sailed into the harbor hoping against hope that somehow cooler heads in the South would prevail and realize his good intentions just to give bread to a few hungry soldiers.
Can an objective historian draw an accurate picture of what Lincoln knew and did not know. Yes, just as a historian can firmly place the blame on Nasser for the Six Day War.
For the construct of Lincoln's innocence in resupplying the fort to work... Lincoln must become the only person in the entire country that did not realize what his actions would reap.
Now we can argue about whether he was justified in his actions, but there is no way any objective historian can reason he did not know his actions would be the spark to start the war.
As for me, this argument is finished. If NS wants to post his version of the events, he certainly can. But for those who have read the thread... hopefully both sides have been presented. You are more than able to make up your minds.
What do you want to discuss next?
No, it's a current matter. You've demanded a yes or no answer, did Lincoln know his actions would provoke the war or not? When I tried to answer by saying I didn't know for sure but what I believed was...you accused me of tap-dancing around the issue. Now you accuse me of emphatically knowing? Please. Apparently I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.
Can an objective historian draw an accurate picture of what Lincoln knew and did not know.
And what objective historian has done that? David Donald has written the most definitive biography of Lincoln in the recent years and he couldn't state definitively. McPherson and Goodwin couldn't say for sure. Which objective historian has? You?
The continuing argument you got a piece of from your fellow-discussant is an interesting one, but somewhat different from the arguments that roil ACW threads.
For one thing, the argument you encountered is one I've never heard in 50 years of paying attention to affairs in the "Muddle East" but which may have been current in Arab and Arabophile circles for a long time. The Arabs specialize in outre' theorizing, speculation, and canard-generation as a substitute for rational discussion. They have no use for rationality, in fact, since argumentation serves a completely different function in their culture. They don't care about truth, as we understand it. To them, truth is about upholding the family, tribe, nation, Umma -- and about cashing in and making good various claims presented under the rules of vendetta. It isn't that justice and fact-finding are alien to them, it's that group loyalties count for much, much more than mere facts. In the Arab-Israeli conflict, the destruction of Israel and the Jews is the truth, and anything that impedes that truth is a lie, a canard, a base personal insult to the intelligence and humanity of every person who whom it is offered.
I say that in all existential humility, yielding to the better insights offered by people like Bernard Lewis and Fuad Ajami, who try to educate the rest of us. Because one feature of Middle Eastern argumentation, among the Arabs especially, is obfuscation and confusion: they don't want to know your truth, or any objective or objectifying truth, and more importantly, they don't want you to know it either, so they obfuscate and lie continually, to protect the "truth-telling" and claim-presentation processes of their own dysfunctional society.
As far as I can tell.
Which is why, for example, multiple canards, and canards based on completely different lines of logic, are tolerated simultaneously, for their operational value in confusing and disinforming you. So the canard about Gamal Nasser's "real motivation" may have been around for years and quite current in Arab society, and now it is uttered to you, to disinform your understanding of the history of the Six-Day War.
IMHO.
For me, the Western narrative is straightforward and truthful. You're right, the Israelis struck first after detecting numerous fatwas and gross death-proclamations against them, and I know of nobody in the West, other than case-hardened, often white-shoe "Arabist" antisemites and their more recent Leftist supporters, who has professed to disbelieve that narrative.