On the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, Ukrainian pipeline workers found a mass grave of Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. That would be the one that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man who is counting down the days to Israel’s defeat, says never happened.
A mass grave holding the remains of thousands of Jews executed by the Nazis during the second world war has been discovered in southern Ukraine by workers digging pipelines.
The workers stumbled upon the remains by chance last month in the village of Gvozdavka-1, near the Black Sea port of Odessa, Jewish leaders said yesterday.
The discovery provides further chilling evidence of the scale of Nazi brutality in Ukraine, which was occupied by both German and Romanian forces in 1941.
According to Roman Shvartsman, spokesman for the regional Jewish community, the Nazis established a ghetto near the village. In November 1941 the ghetto was transformed into a concentration camp and at least 4,000 Jews were killed at or near the site between the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942.
The world media has been full of news articles spinning the 1967 victory as a “disaster” for Israel. A “wasted victory.” 40 years of “bitter harvest.” I have two words to say to those people: Bull and shit.
The world would have stood by if Israel had lost the war, and tsk-tsked as Israelis were slaughtered by the Arabs—who threatened exactly that: Extermination. The Saudi king, in an interview contained in the documentary “Six Days in June,” said the Arab goal was “extermination.”
Charles Krauthammer, quoting Michael Oren, points out another Arab threat of complete destruction of Israel’s Jews. (The PLO, remember, was formed three years before there were any “occupied territories” in Israel.)
Egypt, already in an alliance with Syria, formed an emergency military pact with Jordan. Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco began sending forces to join the coming fight. With troops and armor massing on Israel’s every frontier, jubilant broadcasts in every Arab capital hailed the imminent final war for the extermination of Israel. “We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants,” declared PLO head Ahmed Shuqayri, “and as for the survivors — if there are any — the boats are ready to deport them.”
These were the words of the true aggressors of the war:
Nasser ordered the UN Emergency Force, stationed in the Sinai since 1956, to withdraw on May 16. Without bringing the matter to the attention of the General Assembly, as his predecessor had promised, Secretary-General U Thant complied with the demand. After the withdrawal of the UNEF, the Voice of the Arabs proclaimed (May 18, 1967):
“As of today, there no longer exists an international emergency force to protect Israel. We shall exercise patience no more. We shall not complain any more to the UN about Israel. The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence.”
An enthusiastic echo was heard on May 20 from Syrian Defense Minister Hafez Assad:
“Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united….I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.”
Nasser challenged Israel to fight almost daily. “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight,†he said on May 27. The following day, he added: “We will not accept any…coexistence with Israel…Today the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel….The war with Israel is in effect since 1948.â€
The fact that Israel still has most of the territory captured in 1967 is not due to religious Jews or the “settler” movement. It’s because the Arab League met in Khartoum shortly after the war ended, and declared the three no’s: No recognition, no negotiation, and no peace with Israel.
Odds are that everything but the eastern half of Jerusalem would have been given back, if only the Arabs had agreed to live in peace with Israel.
Now, the Palestinians will have to settle for much less of the territory they could have had in 1967, and the Syrians may never get back the Golan. But the world should stop blaming Israel for doing her utmost in 1967 to prevent the discovery (in some horrible alternate universe), sixty years later, of mass graves of Jews—which doubtless would have been received by much head-shaking and tsk-tsking, while the elites wrote letters to the editor and op-eds about how Jews never should have tried to establish a state in the heart of the Arab world.
Fortunately for us, that scenario never came to be. With God’s help (and with a little help from the IDF and some flat-out Jewish ingenuity), it never will.
Meryl, Meryl, Meryl… Again you are showing your lack of multicultural sensitivity. Those bloodcurdling threats and vows from Arab leaders? That’s just colorful Arab rhetoric; they don’t really mean it. Deep down they only wanted a just and lasting peace with Israel. And the Israelis, eager to indulge their expansionist tendencies, seized on these picturesque words, allowed themselves to be distracted by armies massing ont their borders which were in fact only a manifestation of the rhetoric, and started a war.
By the way, you are absolutely wrong that the world would have done nothing if Israel had been destroyed. Remember that the progressives still felt affection for the kibbutzim, moshavim, and all that stuff. Had Israel lost the war in 1967 today on every campus in the western world there would be Israel Memorial Days.
Speaker after speaker would extol the light that was Israel and sorrow over the plucky, gallant little country that was lost. World sympathy would be extensive. I’d be willing to bet that not a few campuses would host Israel Studies programs.
Alas, as Ephraim Kishon pointed out, Israel with its usual lack of sensitivity forfeited world sympathy. That sympathy began to erode when they started fighting in 1967, and it ebbed away entirely when they won. We threw away our chance to be admired, to be what Golda Meir said the world wanted, a progressive, liberal, dead Jewish people.
However, world sympathy wouldn’t go all lthe way. If a few disgruntled ex-Israelis, unable to accept history’s verdict–that Jews should be objects of history, not actors in it–had decided to blow up Arab restaurants or airliners, world opinion would have firmly stated that no desperation, perceived or real, could excuse such barbarity.
But all this is mere speculation. The Israelis double-crossed those people who loved to feel sympathetic for them and such people cannot forgive Israel for betraying them.
In re the comments of Alex Bensky, I feel that it should be noted that the Arab nations’ murderous inclinations and behaviors are accepted by “progressives” as those of “little brown brothers”. If this appears to be the “..soft racism of low-expectations…”, perhaps that is because it IS. On the other hand, we must realize that truly “civilized” people, i.e. “jews” and “progressives” must NEVER lift a hand to offend, fend off, or otherwise interfere with the innocent activities of “emerging cultures”, aka “little brown brothers”. This should clearly illustrate the betrayal felt by “progressives” as Jews have the audacity to BOTH live actually “progressive” lives (physically endeavoring to uplift the truly downtrodden as opposed to singing and whining at concerts and cocktail parties) AND survive in the face of naked hatred. After all, nothing happens in “real life”, since it’s all subject to editing and editorializing by the deconstructionist left or the next 27 year old Hollywood script writer or CNN.
One tiny correction:
“The fact that Israel still has most of the territory captured in 1967…”
Withdrawal from Sinai 1979-82 resulted in the return of 90% of all lands occupied in 1967.
(I know you know this – just didn’t want it hanging around for the oyavim.)
http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/c.hsJPK0PIJpH/b.689861/k.7BC5/Israels_Withdrawal_from_Sinai_19791982.htm
During the runup to the 1967 war, the Arabs said they were going to “finish what Hitler started”. I guess since they’re now denying the Holocaust they should have said “we’re going to finish what Hitler allegedly started”. Luckily, the Arabs couldn’t finish a 100-yard dash if you gave them an 80-yard head start.
Never count on luck. They are rapidly gathering allies who can, and will, accomplish for the Arabs what the Arabs can’t do themselves, even if it means their own suicide.
We’re looking at a worldwide version of Iran’s Cultural Revolution, and being led by people too blinded by lies to realize they will be the first to be executed, should their hopes ever come to pass.