Friday, May 20, 2011

1967 Borders

So ... if I have this straight, the West Bank was designated as part of Syria when Israel was originally created by the U.N. in 1948.  Jordan was called "Trans-Jordan" and it was to be the Arab Palestinian State.  But during the civil war that immediately followed the creation of Israel, Jordan took it from Syria.

In th 6-Day War of 1967, if we look at the series of events, Israel took it from Jordan when Jordan attacked Israel.  Same with the Golan Heights and Syria.

Now if Jordan and/or Syria had won that war, they would have expected to retain any of Israel they conquered and not be questioned about it. (Jordan nabbed the West Bank from Syria in 1948, and they expected to keep it, right?) However, in 1967 Israel captured in the fighting after Jordan attacked Israel as mentioned above -- and for some reason it is considered illegitimate for Israel to expect to retain territory it conquered.

Israel also took the Sinai peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt.  The aggression on that front of the war is a little fuzzier.  Apparently the Russians mis-fed information to Egypt that Israel was massing troops on the border there, and Egypt started massing troops on their side in "response".  The buildup on the Egyptian side of the border had been going on for some time, and Israel blinked and destroyed Egypt's airforce in one day as it sat on the ground ... in a pre-emptive strike, thus kicking off the famous Six Day War.

But Israel gave the Sinai back a long time ago (1978? though one could argue that she shouldn't have had to ... but she did), and Gaza just a few years ago went to "The Palestinians", who elected Hamas to govern them.

After destroying the highly technical agricultural infrastructure Israel just gave to them, Hamas immediately began shelling Israel from Gaza.  But I digress -- the important point here is that those areas are back to the 1967 borders already.

Which leaves the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.  Which as we've demonstrated above were justly conquered territories, and the Golan Heights, especially -- is a very strategic position from which the Syrians had routinely shelled Israeli towns over the years.  I can see why Israel'd be reluctant to give it back.

And I now turn it over to Bill Whittle to illustrate what belongs to whom.  (I know he's talking about Lubbock, TX, but try to follow, m-kay?  I assume we all have enough grey matter to draw the parallel)

2 comments:

Whitehawk said...

It seems the Libressives have the same view of Israel as they do of the United States. They feel we have no right to defend our borders, check citizenship of potential illegal aliens, deny them entitlements (American resources), stop them from teaching anti-American propaganda in our own schools. In other words no right to be a nation. They say Israel has no right to it's own resources or to defend its borders, they belong to the Palestinians. Mr. Obama wants Israel to parcel itself into non- existence. He's doing the same with his economic policies here in the form of financial bail-outs.

Seems like they (liberals/progressives)and Mr. Obama hold the same view our Jihadi enemies hold. "America and Israel have no right to exist."

Is it ok to say that there are forces home and abroad that are working against all that is good?

Cylarz said...

Unfortunately for the American Left, Israel isn't particularly interested in their idiotic prescriptions for that country's future.

Israel's got a fraction of our problems with airplane-related terrorism. This is one of many observations about Israel which is lost on the American Left.

They're not keen on national suicide or handing their country over to its most bitter and unrelenting enemies. Makes you wonder why we can't seem to adopt the same attitude about OUR country.