All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
Next up, it's our friend Ray McGovern.
He's a former CIA analyst for 27 years.
Now he's a veteran intelligence professional for sanity.
Um, he writes for Robert Perry's site, consortiumnews.com.
He will give a speech to your community if you invite him.
Um, and he's written this piece that we're running at antiwar.com called applying the six day war to Iran.
Welcome back to the show.
Ray.
How's it going?
Thanks doing well.
Uh, good.
All right.
So you know what?
I don't know anything about the six day war.
Why don't you teach me all about it?
The 67 war.
When people say the 67 borders in Israel and the dispute with Palestine, they mean the borders as they were before this war.
That's right.
Yeah.
Um, in May of, uh, 1967, uh, Israel was making a case that, uh, it was under dire threat from Egyptian formations and from others that surrounded Israel.
And, uh, the myth was propagated that Israel needed to defect itself in the event on the 5th of June, uh, the Israeli armed forces launched an incredible attack, a blitzkrieg really on Syrian, uh, and the Egyptian forces and, uh, that's, and those in Jordan as well and decimated their aircraft and actually invaded, uh, Egypt, the Sinai and, and took over Gaza and went up onto the, to the place that used to be governed by Jordan.
The West bank took that went up into parts of Syria called the, uh, Golan Heights and took parts of Jerusalem as well.
Now those became the quote, uh, well, those enlarged the borders that existed before 1967, uh, by several times.
Yeah.
But whatever happened to every time Israel ever fought, it was cause those dastardly Arab surprise attacked them and they had to defend themselves.
And so tough luck.
If they lost their West bank, they shouldn't have started a war then.
Yeah.
That's what everybody, that's what the pro-Zionist folks say now, but you know, it's sort of embarrassing because, uh, prime minister Menachem Begin, uh, in a, in a fit of, uh, maybe it was hubris, maybe it was inadvertence, but he said in a major speech in 1982, quote, in June, 1967, we had a choice.
The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us.
We must be honest with ourselves.
We decided to attack him period.
And quote, that's the truth of the matter.
What the Israelis wanted to do was enlarge their borders.
Um, back in my day, uh, when World War II broke out, the term was Lebensraum, okay.
Um, more room for, for the Germans to live in.
Uh, and so they've, uh, actually held on to these occupied territories from 1967 until today.
And if my arithmetic is correct, um, next week they will be celebrating the 45th anniversary of the occupation.
That's what it is, an occupation.
Uh, and that's, uh, that's a couple of years longer.
Well, now let me ask you this real quick about the narrative here, because this is before my time, right?
I'm born in the seventies kind of guy.
So, um, I wonder if this is one of those things where if you were around then, and I know, okay, you were CIA or whatever, but even say a critical thinker out in the world back then, they really knew the truth of this.
And it was just, you know, for the rubes, the idea that, uh, Israel was attacked and was defending themselves.
You know, I'm thinking, um, I'm trying to think of a parallel where like say the Waco massacre, where if you were a damn fool, then you believed that it was a suicide.
But for anyone who knew better, come on, it was not a mass fire suicide.
Give me a break.
You know, um, that kind of thing.
Was it like that where, uh, now it's sort of funny to look back and see that the lie was successful after all these years still.
Well, uh, as you know, the, the media in our country and in Western Europe is not unbiased.
Um, the truth, uh, even though it came out when the prime minister of, uh, of Israel in 1982 admitted what had happened.
But what about in 67?
I mean, was it obvious what had really happened in 67?
Uh, not all that obvious.
No, because unless you were really well read into what was going on, uh, you, you could have believed that these Egyptian formations did endanger Israel because there were some formations in the Sinai.
Uh, the reason that, uh, it didn't really matter is because the Israelis had been preparing for years to do precisely this kind of, of, uh, of strike.
And it was very convenient to have the Egyptians do this foolish thing and marching some soldiers up to their borders.
Right.
So in other words, when Begin said this in 82, that was the first real chip in the wall of the narrative there.
That, you know, that's an authoritative statement by the Israelis themselves, you know, and when you have that, you don't have to be an intelligence analyst to recognize that you've got a gem.
I mean, there are all kinds of parallels of people saying things that, uh, that they slip, uh, or, uh, they're so proud that they forget that what they're actually revealing.
And this is one of them.
This is one of the classic ones that has never been, uh, you know, disavowed by Menachem Begin or anybody else.
All right.
Now, so then the consequences of this is, um, they of course moved a bunch of settlers in and they've had military occupations and the steady encroachment, the, the, uh, expansion of the facts on the ground, as you say in your article this whole time, uh, what was it?
45 years they've been under occupation.
And I guess they only just pulled the settlers out of Gaza in 2005, but it's still, as you say, in your article, just an open air prison, this is a severe lasting consequences from this war here for everyone.
Yeah.
For those who remember that the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe.
Well, um, the Israelis are occupying the Arab lands much longer, a couple of years already longer than, than the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe.
So this is against all international law.
It's against the UN security council resolution 242 of November, 1967, which the United States voted for.
Okay.
In other words, voted for condemning Israel and asking it to re revert to its pre 1967 borders.
Now there's been a lot of water under the dam since then.
And the Israelis have been able to, as you say, create facts on the ground.
You said groups or dozens or whatever of settlers where there are hundreds of thousands of settlers now on the choice real estate in the West bank.
And he put up and he put up on the goal on and in East Jerusalem.
So what Nixon Yahoo, and some of his predecessors were out to do was to make it historically impossible for the Palestinians to come back to their, to their native lands.
And now, even though a lot of verbiage is given to the advisability of a two state solution, in my view, that's no longer possible.
How can you have a two state solution when the one state would, would really amount to a bad to stand where you'd have little pockets of Palestinians surrounded by the Israeli settlers.
So the bottom line for me is, you know, there's a choice between a democratic country there where everyone is given a voice and a Jewish, a racist country where only Jews are given a voice.
And I think that history shows that no, no matter how firm and how strong the security forces are, as in South Africa, there comes a time when this kind of regime cannot any longer rule and majority rule does take place.
It's just a matter of time in my view.
And if Israel embarks on new adventures, I think we'll hasten the arrival of that time.
Well, you know, we talked with Niamh Gordon last week on the show about how, you know, Israeli kind of denial of the original Nakba atrocity, along with this kind of thing, too, where, you know, Israeli society, I guess, goes along with the old myths of this war, along with the rest of them.
And so, you know, that then leads to the consequences of like you're talking about, where they just continue on occupying the West Bank.
And as he put it, most Israelis just don't even pay attention to it at all.
You know, if they have to think about it, they have all these default myths to rest on that, hey, we're attacked and that's what happens.
You know, you lose some territory if you pick a fight with us or, you know, that kind of thing, and then they can just dismiss it and go on about their day.
So it's these foundational myths, same as here in America, that, you know, allow for the atrocities to continue.
And I'm sorry, we've got to take this break.
We'll be right back with Ray Miller.
Yeah, it's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott.
I'm online with our friend Ray McGovern from consortiumnews.com and raymcgovern.com.
And we're talking about the six day war and how the kind of fake accounting of it is the basis for a continued bad policy over there in the Middle East.
And then I was bringing up what Nev Gordon said about the fact that the over there in the Middle East.
And then I was bringing up what Nev Gordon said about the original knock back in 48, how it just gets ignored.
And the state of course has an official policy of playing it down.
And so it's one of those things out of sight, out of mind kind of a deal.
The danger here is that they're trying to apply this glorious victory and the experience they had during those six days in June of 67 to the quote, imminent danger, quote unquote, they face from Iran now.
And that a blitzkrieg of that of that moment should be should be arranged and fought and draws in.
Now, that's Charles Krauthammer and others who are pushing that line.
And the good news, and this just broke this morning, I'm not even sure you had a chance to see it.
But the good news is that our man in the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Amano, a Japanese diplomat that we've pretty much put in there and are paying extra for doing our bidding.
He went to Iran.
He went to Tehran just over the weekend, came back today and said, hmm, looks like a deal is very close.
We had good positive discussions there in Iran and the Iranians are saying the same thing.
So it looks very much as though the United States has been able to lean on Amano to come off his high horse about so-called violations.
Looks like the Iranians have been able to bend so far that Amano can satisfy himself that he's he's able to to mount very intrusive inspections.
And so it does look that look like the negotiations which begin tomorrow in Baghdad, of all places, are likely to achieve some success unless, OK, unless now we have the U.S. and virtually everyone else thinking that we don't want a war against Iran.
But there's one very powerful actor and unfortunately that actor has the initiative.
His name is Bibi Netanyahu.
And if you look at things from Bibi's perspective, you know, he's really eager for a victory here.
Israel's had a very bad hair.
Well, a bad hair year, so to speak.
They lost Turkey to the to the north.
They lost Egypt to the south.
And Egypt has 80,000, 80 million people to to Israel, six or seven million.
And worst of all, from their point of view, the contenders for the presidency in Egypt are talking about renegotiating the peace treaty with Israel and flinging open the borders to Gaza.
So they are in a very delicate diplomatic position.
They've lost more.
They're at more peril strategically than ever before.
And I can see that Netanyahu might see some incentive here to prove that it doesn't really matter because he's got the U.S., the sole remaining superpower in the world, walking in the president's word lockstep with Israel.
And so how better to do that than to start a dust up with Iran, force Obama to face the inevitable choice of jumping in with both feet, especially in an election year?
And whatever happens, happens.
But Netanyahu has caused it to happen.
And he's drawn the U.S. in for the whole world to see that the U.S. is still 110 percent in favor of Israel, no matter what it does.
And so I see that as a as a very palpable incentive to Netanyahu the way he thinks.
I hope this won't happen, but don't rule out don't rule it out because these negotiations are are viewed in a very, very distrustful way by Netanyahu, because when push comes to shove, Israeli leaders are not worried about a nuclear weapon in Iran's hands.
They want regime change there.
And, you know, they cut regime change in Baghdad and what a mess that is.
They can't get regime change in Cairo or in Ankara the way we want it.
Let's try Iran.
And it seems to be sort of a last guess sort of thing.
I hope it doesn't happen.
But Obama is not out of the woods, even if he gets the IAEA to turn around and say, OK, we can work out a deal with these Iranians.
Well, do you believe that or how certain are you, I guess, that Obama actually wants to make a deal this week?
I mean, this is the P5 plus one.
This is the entire permanent membership of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany supposedly laying it all on the line, right, to try to make a deal.
But is it just so that they have an excuse so they can say, look, we tried everything because that's been the game this whole time pretty much.
I mean, you'd have to be making the case to me that they've changed the plan to we really do want to make a deal and put an end to all of this.
Well, Obama doesn't want an Israeli attack on Iran.
That's one of the main reasons for the sanctions to buy off the Israelis, say, look, we're going to hurt him real bad.
Just wait.
OK, now the sanctions are a problem and they're a problem for the Iranians to be sure.
The Iranians want those things to stop.
If, as I suspect, and my intelligence colleagues agree, Iran has absolutely nothing to hide.
I think the case is pretty clear that they will invite intrusive inspections into Parcham and elsewhere to show even even doubting Thomas is like the head of the IAEA.
Hey, there is no weaponry being worked on here.
So the U.S. intelligence, the U.S. Defense Secretary and Israeli counterparts are right in saying, and I repeat, Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon.
Now, that's that those are the facts.
Now, what about the lies?
The lies are equally important.
What Netanyahu said two days ago is this.
Iran is out to destroy Israel, a variation on that wipe them off the map theme.
That's wrong.
That's a lie.
And Iran is working on a nuclear weapon with which to destroy Israel again.
I don't know if he's lying or not, but that's not what U.S. intelligence and Israeli intelligence say.
OK, now, if you accept those two premises, that Iran is going to use a nuclear weapon to destroy Israel and the rest of what the rest of what Netanyahu says makes sense.
Namely, they have to destroy their new nuclear development site there in Parcham.
They have to ship out the rest of their low enriched uranium and they have to stop working at all on nuclear uranium enrichment, even the kind that could be used for power reactors.
So those are his three demands.
Those three demands are never going to be met.
And they're all based on two premises that are outright lies.
And even his defense minister says, and I repeat, Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon.
We have the U.N. inspectors there, said the Israeli defense minister.
If they are thrown out, then come back to me, he says to a questioner on Armed Forces Radio, then come back to me and ask how soon the Iranians can get a nuclear weapon.
But until then, relax.
It doesn't matter as long as the U.N. inspectors are there.
They're not working on a nuclear weapon.
That's the Israeli defense minister.
Well, on the 16th of January of this year.
All right.
But let's get back to Kruthhammer real quick and the neocons, because they're setting up to be able to say we told you so.
And now we have to have a war, that kind of thing, I guess.
And based on the myth of the 67 war here, Kruthhammer is arguing in The Post that it'll be great.
We can launch this war and we'll just bomb all their nuclear facilities real good and their military, whatever.
We'll declare victory and like do this kind of thing, wiping the dirt off our hands when we're done.
And it'll be great.
Yeah, that's true, Scott.
And my point is simply this, that in answer to your earlier question, Obama does not want an Israeli attack on Iran.
He's been unable or unwilling to say openly, look, DB Netanyahu, you strike out of Iran or you provoke an attack from Iran and we're out of it.
You're on your own.
Now, I think he said close to that in private.
But the fact that he's unwilling to say that in public speaks volumes to people like Netanyahu.
And I could see him conferring with his associates and saying, look, you know, what did I tell you?
Obama's not even able to say publicly that he doesn't want us to attack Iran.
If we do, he's in with both feet.
Watch me.
That's what makes it so, so dangerous.
And I dare say I would have to agree with Netanyahu's diagnosis of Obama unless he gets a spinal transplant or or an implant, I guess, implanting a spine in his back because anytime Netanyahu, you know, sneezes, Obama reaches for the nearest handkerchief.
Yeah, that's one way to put it.
And of course, now Netanyahu is in such a stronger position politically in Israel.
I don't know if that really makes war that much more likely or less.
I mean, I guess from a certain point of view, maybe all of this warmonger has just been a way for him to solidify all his power, but he doesn't really mean it.
And maybe it's already worked.
And one side effect, of course, is takes attention away from the Palestinian issue, and that's very much to their benefit.
Israelis.
Yeah, of course.
All right.
Well, we got to leave it there.
Thanks very much.
Ray McGovern, everybody.
Ray McGovern dot com.
Thanks.
Most welcome.
