RUTHFULLY YOURS

June 5, 2018 marked the 51^st anniversary of the Six-Day War, which, as its name implies, was won by Israel in six days. This past Monday, one of Egypt’s chief propagandists during the conflict, Ahmed Said, died. Said worked for the Voice of the Arabs, a Cairo-based station used by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to stir up the masses and whip them into a frenzied state of base Jew-hatred. Ironically, his death occurred on the 51^st anniversary of the day that Israel humiliated his country and the Arab world at large. In three pivotal hours of the first day of the war, Israel transformed the Egyptian air force into an expensive heap of scrap metal.

Said was Egypt’s equivalent of the notorious “Baghdad Bob,” the nickname given to Iraq’s comical minister of information during the Second Gulf War, whose amusing government propaganda evoked both laughter and derision. While Israeli fighter aircraft – Mirages, Super Mysteres and Vautours – were flying over Egypt bombing and strafing Egyptian airfields, and Israeli armored and mechanized columns were thrusting into Sinai, Said was claiming that Egypt had shot down dozens of Israeli planes and that its tanks were marching on Tel Aviv.

Said’s imaginary phantom victory claims along with general Egyptian obfuscation as to the extent of the military disaster befalling the Egyptian army had calamitous consequences not only for Egypt but for Jordan as well. Fed on a steady diet of lies and misleading Egyptian broadcasts and government communiques concerning imminent Israeli defeat and Arab victory, Jordan’s King Hussein ordered his troops into action. Israeli pleas to the Hussein to stay out of the war had no effect on the “Little King,” who was by now undoubtedly intoxicated by the prospect of expanding his kingdom and “liberating” pre-1967 “Palestine” from the infidels.

Jordanian Hawker Hunter aircraft bombed the Israeli cities of Netanya and Kfar Saba while West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv’s suburbs were pummeled by Jordanian artillery. Israel still demonstrated restraint believing that Hussein was merely demonstrating solidarity with the Arab cause and had no intention to escalate further. Additional Israeli warnings to Hussein to stay out of the war were rebuffed. Hussein then ordered his troops to cross the 1948 armistice line. Jordanian forces invaded the demilitarized zones that straddled the border, seizing the so-called Government House, which served as the United Nations headquarters in the no-man’s land between Jordan and Israel.

The Jordanian intensification of military activity and aggression may have been prompted by a message from Egypt’s defense chief, Marshal Amer, a congenital liar who informed the Jordanians that Egypt had already destroyed 75 percent of Israel’s airpower and urged Hussein to open a second front. Hussein dutifully obliged his fabricating kinsman. Israel counterattacked with ferocity and in a matter of days broke the back of the Jordanian army, liberating the ancestral Jewish lands of Judea and Samaria from Jordanian occupation.

Of even greater import, after 19 years of illegal occupation, the Israeli 55^th paratroop brigade liberated East Jerusalem and united it with the western half of the city. After 2,000 years, all of Jerusalem was once again under Jewish sovereignty and restored to its rightful owners.

Egypt’s obfuscation during the conflict was so ingrained and pervasive that even Egypt’s overseas diplomats bought the comical act. While Israel remained largely silent during the initial hours of the war and kept communiques to a minimum, Egypt’s wild and bombastic claims, rooted in sheer fantasia and wishful thinking, grew in intensity with each passing moment.

When the U.N. Security Council called for an immediate ceasefire, Egypt’s U.N. ambassador rejected it. The sheer absurdity of the Egyptian rejection is reflected in the June 8^th headline of the New York Times which read; “Israelis Rout The Arabs; Approach Suez, Break Blockade, Occupy Old Jerusalem; Agree To U.N. Ceasefire; U.A.R. Rejects It.” By the third day of conflict, the entire world was cognizant of the sheer magnitude of the Arab defeat but the Arabs, living in an endless loop of lies and cognitive dissonance, still refused to recognize it. Egypt’s U.N. ambassador reportedly cried once he realized that Egypt had been soundly defeated and hurriedly agreed to convey his government’s eager willingness to accept unconditional ceasefire.

The lies continued even after Egypt realized it was defeated. Israel intercepted communications between Nasser and King Hussein whereby both were heard concocting a story to explain their defeat and humiliation at the hands of the Jews. The two dissemblers conspired to fabricate a story implicating U.S. and British aircraft carriers, which allegedly came to Israel’s assistance and helped it bomb Arab airfields. Israel later broadcast the intercepted communications to the world, which established that both leaders were not only liars but pathetic as well.

On June 10, the guns fell silent. Arab aggression had been thwarted and Israel had gained territory three times its original size. Unfortunately, the Arabs learned little from their defeat. The lies they spewed back then continue to this very day. In fact, their entire construct of the Arab-Israeli conflict is premised on the anti-Semitic lie that Jews are not indigenous to the Land of Israel and are a foreign colonial implant. This is not merely the view held by the Hamas terrorist organization but it is also the official position held by the leader of the so-called moderate Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas who, as an aside, also happens to be a rabid Holocaust denier. So long as the Arab world remains mired in lies and conspiracy theories, lasting peace will continue to remain unobtainable.