It's not the war, stupid - it's the occupation

[bemildred]

Lot's of talkbacks, not all dumb.

The 40 year mark of the Six Days War is coming, and with it a blizzard of articles, books, lectures and gatherings. The clear political line is now being drawn between two camps: Those who try to commemorate the war, and those more focused on the after-the-war events. The Arab American Institute, for example, has announced a "40 Years of Occupation: Tell Us Your Story" project.

In contrast, most of the American Jewish press (I browsed through many such examples) prefers to deal with the miracle of the sudden victory. Here's one example from the Baltimore Jewish Times.

The international coverage tilts heavily, and understandably, toward the occupation-camp. It is not just the political tendency of most publications (and world governments) but also common sense: The war is over; the occupation is still with us.

In the New Yorker, Editor David Remnick offered his assessment of the book by Tom Segev about the war, now published in English. Remnick compares this book to the Michael Oren bestseller "Six Days of War" and comes up with this conclusion:

"Segev's and Oren's books have their limitations. Segev, by design, ignores the Arab political situation and seems reluctant to credit the Israelis with a legitimate sense of threat; Oren, a more versatile scholar, has taken great pains to read whatever Arab sources are available (most archives are closed) and is more at home with big power politics, but he tends to scant the negative aspects of victory and conquest. The most complete book on the war's aftermath is journalist Gershom Gorenberg's riveting and deeply depressing "The Accidental Empire", which describes how, in the decade following the war, the mainstream Labor governments of Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin either feigned ignorance of the growing settlements or blatantly encouraged them. As a result, they helped to legitimatize the settlement ideology of their right-wing successors Menachem Begin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ariel Sharon."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=865422&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1

[ixion]

1. there is no 'war', there was an illegal invasion and subsequent occupation

all of which I have vehemently opposed. :grr: