richard lightner

Nov 18, 20234 min read

Martin Gilbert

Martin Gilbert. Israel: a history. 1998.

“Since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in AD 70, the Jews, who were dispersed all over the Roman Empire, had prayed for a return to Zion. Next year in Jerusalem was - and remains - the hope expressed at the end of every Passover meal commemorating the ancient exodus from Egypt. (3)

“For two thousand years the revival of the Jewish state in Palestine had been the passion.” (186)

About “25,000 Jews reached Palestine between 1882 and 1903. . . . many of them lived by tilling the soil and by recourse to the financial support of the Rothschild family, which had for several years encouraged the work of Jews on the land and in the vineyards which the Rothschilds owned.” (5)

“In 1883 a Jewish immigrant from Russia, Rueben Lehrer, built a house in a Arab village, Wadi Henin, in the coastal plain. Several other Jews, among them a fellow immigrant from Russia, Avraham Yalofsky, soon joined him. Until the War of Independence in 1948, Jews and Arabs lived peacefully side by side in the village. . . . [They] planted citrus groves and engaged in bee-keeping. . . .[Nevertheless] Arabs - not from the village - ambushed Yalofsky and killed him.” (7)

Other European Jewish villages were attacked as well. (9)

Most Zionists concentrated on “agriculture” so that “they “could redeem the land.” (8)

While the end of the nineteenth century saw “considerable Jewish activity in Palestine.” This was not universally known among European Jews. They looked at Palestinian Jews as medieval. (9)

Interestingly, the chosen architect and founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl knew nothing of this. (9) For Herzl the deciding issue for the Jews in Europe was the Dreyfuss trial in France where a Jewish officer was falsely accused of treason. Many believed the trial an act of anti-semitism. (10)

Many considered Herzl insane for his vehement advocacy of a return to Palestine by the Jews. (10)

Herzl never traveled to Palestine. He wanted massive migration, mainly for Russia, to Palestine. (10)

In the late 1930s’ as hostilities between the Arabs and the Zionists grew many in Britain believed “biblical prophecies about the return of the Jews to their land as something, to be welcomed.” Haganah soldiers also believed that they were fulfilling God’s and Jewish will in fighting against the Arabs. (93)

“On October 21 [1948] the Government of Israel took a decision that was to have a lasting and divisive effect on the rights and status of those Arabs who lived within its borders: the official establishment of military government in the areas where most of the inhabitants were Arabs. Regulations promulgated for these areas established security zones and prohibited permanent residents from leaving them without a permit. Entry into the zones was also not allowed to those who were not permanent residents unless they were in possession of a permit. . . . this led in the summer of 1949 to the expulsion of the Arab residents of three villages . . . who were not subsequently permitted to return.” (234)

In 1963 the Arab position in the Negev Desert was precarious. Following the Israeli War of Independence Israeli policy was “to move them [the Arabs] out of most of the areas in which they lived and to concentrate them in the north-eastern part of the negate and to the north of Beersheba.” (359)

Prior to the Six Day War the Israeli public panicked over the actions and threats from Egyptian President Nasser. They demanded the return of General Moshe Dayan to lead the armed forces. (380)

“Israel’s military position was, on paper, precarious. On the Egyptian front at least 100,000 troops and 900 tanks in Sinai. On the Golan Heights Syria had more than 75,000 men and 400 tanks ready for action. The Jordanians had 32,000 men under arms, and almost 300 tanks. This made a total force of 207,000 soldiers and at least 1600 tanks. A further 150 tanks were moving into Jordan from Iraq, which was determined to join what was being called in the Arab world the final battle. Should it become necessary Egypt was able to send from the west of Sinai a further 140,000 troops and 300 tanks into that battle. Against this substantial Arab force, Israel had, with full mobilization of the civilian reserves, 264,000 soldiers and 800 tanks. An estimated 700 Arab combat aircraft were also ready for action. Israel had only 300.” (381)

Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban told his government that the “frenzy in the Arab streets belonged to the tradition of hot fanaticism which, in earlier periods of history, had sent the Moslem armies flowing murderously across three continents.” Also, Egyptian generals appeared to oppose Nasser’s wait to be attack view and want they wanted to attack Israel. (382)

After Israel’s victory in the Six Day War “a few people urged with urgency that the West Bank and Gaza Strip ought to be given back as quickly as possible, that even a temporary occupation would hold grave disadvantages to the occupying power. (396)

Dayan vehemently opposed forced removal of West Bank residents. (397) He did not want to infer in daily life or become like the British under the mandate. “It will be bad for us.” (398)

Many Israelis “felt an affinity” to the West Bank. “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried in it . . . David had ruled from Bethlehem, two Jewish kingdoms had been established over it, in Judea and Samaria.” (397)

The Balfour Declaration was a letter to British Lord Rothschild on November 2, 1917. After the First World War excited Jews throughout the world migrated to Palestine. (34)

David Ben-Gurion cautioned that the Jews would have to make it their land and “bring about their national redemption.” (35)

Bình luận

Different Points of View over the future of Atomic weapons.

During the Afghan War, President Donald Trump (GAG!) authorized a General to use the Mother of all Bombs, a bomb just shy of the power of an atomic bomb, on his own. Notice that this had no positive affect for the US in the outcome of the war. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/asia/moab-mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan.html)

There is a plethora of information about the development and use of the atomic bomb during World War II. Much of the world was astounded that the US used such a bomb on civilians. Others said, drop more.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 9, 1945, “served as the symbolic coronation of American global power.” Nevertheless, the use of the atomic bomb in World War II brought international condemnation. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946-1948, Justice Pal of India cited the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. U.S. President Harry S. Truman responded by publicly saying that the atomic bombs were dropped “in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands of young Americans.” However, President Truman in correspondence with John Foster Dulles that his reasons for dropping the atomic bombs were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the murder of our prisoners of war. “The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

“In the summer and fall of 1945, US atomic policy left us troubled and perplexed. Roosevelt, we thought, had been committed to a policy of international understanding and conciliation. . . . Truman’s policy, however, appeared to have the opposite aim: to keep a monopoly of the atomic bomb in U.S. and British hands, and to use it as a strong trump card in tough political bargaining with the Soviet Union.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xi)

And, well before the bombings FDR and Churchill “rejected steps that might have led to the international control of atomic energy.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

According to nuclear physicist Hans Bethe who worked on the Manhattan Project, “Many of us had been influenced directly or indirectly by Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist. He argued that only international control of nuclear weapons could save the world from a nuclear arms race, and that such a race would imperil, not enhance the security of the United States and Great Britain. Many other scientists, especially at the University of Chicago Metallurgic Laboratory, at the initiative of Leo Szilard, had come independently to the same conclusion.

Martin Sherwin, George Mason University History professor who specialized in the history of nuclear weapons, wrote that, this interpretation by physicists and historian is wrong. Roosevelt decided, with Churchill, “that the bomb should remain and Anglo-American monopoly.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xii)

However, this is not mentioned in Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial, by Robert Jay Lifton and Gregg Mitchell.

KOREA

There are numerous arguments about whether or not the atomic bomb should have been used in Korea, Vietnam, or other existential circumstances.

In late 1950, following their invasion of Korea, Chinese forces surrounded U.S. Marines. “Distraught himself, the chief executive (Truman), told a press conference on November 30 that nuclear bombsight be used against the enemy and seemed to indicate that the decision would be MacArthur’s.” (William Manchester. American Caesar. 608, 610; Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 30)

The U.S. developed the ability fire an “atomic shot from a cannon.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

“In mid-May Ike (President Dwight Eisenhower) told the [American] National Security Council that using nukes in Korea would be cheaper than conventional weaponry, and a few days later the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended launching nuclear attacks against China.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

This is interesting since Eisenhower’s reaction to Hiroshima was, we didn’t have to use that awful thing on them. (Lifton, Robert Jay and Mitchell, Greg. Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial. 1995. 213)

Operation Hudson Harbor - flying lone B-29 bombers over North Korea to simulate a dropping of an atomic bomb. North Korean leaders must have had “steel nerves” as this simulation was eerily similar to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Operation Hudson Harbor concluded that the use of atomic weapons would not be “useful” as it was difficult to identify “large masses of enemy troops.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 157-159)

The United Nations/United States forces faced defeat in Korea but Truman looked strong because he “threatened to use the atom bomb against China.” However, this “made peace talks virtually impossible.” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 213)

Major General Emmett (“Rosy”) O’Donnell, commander of the Far East Air Force’s Bomber Command . . . [stated that] “We have never been permitted to bomb what are the real strategic targets, the enemy’s real sources of supply.” He said that the strategic bombing commanded been “designed to deliver the atomic offensive to the heart of the enemy” and indicated very clearly that he thought the bomb should have been used against the Chinese.”” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 245)

RICHARD NIXON

Richard Barnet, former State Department aide, activist and scholar, who founded the Institute for Policy Studies (Wikipedia) warned “of the danger that the United States government might resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Barnet then cites Vice President Richard Nixon speaking to the Executive Club of Chicago on March 17, 1955 as saying,

“The weapons which were used during the Korean War and World War II are obsolete. Our artillery and our tactical Air Force in the Pacific are now equipped with atomic explosives which can and will be used on military targets with precision and effectiveness.

“It is foolish to talk about the possibility that the weapons which might be used in the event war breaks out in the Pacific would be limited to the conventional Korean and World War II types of explosives. Our forces could not fight an effective war in the Pacific with those types of explosives if they wanted to. Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional and will be used against the military targets of any aggressive force.”

Of course, we are not aggressors by threatening China or invading Vietnam.

VIET NAM

1964 American Republican Presidential candidate Senator Goldwater of Arizona was a reserve Air Force General and “suggested that the United States could isolate the Vietcong in South Vietnam any bombing the supply routes connecting China and North Vietnam.” He also proposed using nuclear weapons “to clear the jungles where the Vietcong were presumably hiding. The public reaction to those notions was one of horrified alarm.” (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 2) It turns out that the United States bombed Southeast Asia the equivalent of many atomic bombs through out the war.

“Although Goldwater was finally persuaded to stop talking about nuclear weapons.”

Although Goldwater’s advocacy of atomic weapons scared people his idea to win the war did not. Johnson portrayed himself as “responsible” as opposed to Goldwater who he implied would get us all killed. (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 9)

Noted military writer Hanson Baldwin believed that the US should use its overwhelming technological power to counter communism even if that meant nuclear weapons. Of course, only for “defensive purposes.” “If we cannot do this, he says, we had better “call it quits.” (Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia. 52)

General Curtis LeMay advocated the use of nuclear weapons to end the conflict with communism once and for all. “We ought to nuke the chinks. . . . We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile.” (Thomas Powers. The War at Home. 40; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Lyndon B. Johnson: the Exercise of Power. 538)

So, there is pretty much agreement that the use of the atom bomb was on the table. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely ignored.

In 1954 the United States “assuming the Chinese Communists intervene would engage in a “highly selective atomic offensive.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 46) However, if the “Chinese Communists do not intervene” then the use of atomic weapons would occur if it would aid the US in the war. (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 47)

McNaughton drafted a “Proposed Course of Action” to McNamara. In his long list of actions McNaughton noted risks. One was the “escalation to the use of nuclear weapons.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 442-445, passim)

Presidential assistant for national security, Walt. W. Rostow, wrote a memorandum on May 6, 1967, analyzing U.S. bombing strategy in Viet Nam. One of his conclusions was “we do not want a nuclear confrontation over Viet Nam.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 585, 588)

Martin Gilbert

Recent Posts

Bình luận

Atomic Bomb

Viet Nam War

Subscribe here to get my latest posts