The Jewish Story: Six Day War, part I: Beginnings Near and Far

the older I get said Dwight the Eisenhower the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first a process he says which often reduces the most complex human problems to manageable proportions well I've got a pretty complex story to tell and I'm gonna try to take it piece by piece cuz I'm Roth my foyer and this is the Jewish story episode 27 six-day war part 1 and pauses near and far so we've got a really favorite story to tell we're on our way to the six-day war and I gotta admit I've had an awful hard time getting started this is the war which drew the map of the Middle East as we know it today it birthed a new messianism which is still shaking the foundations of judaism and it set the stage for a good chunk of the development of us jury up to our time so this is going to take a while and like I said I've been quite troubled by where exactly to begin and of course as soon as I said that many of you probably said but you already have which is of course the problem is it ever really an honest act to point to the origin and causes of something so complex as the six-day war now by the way this is not just our problem a local issue this is a global dilemma and it has a certain historical dimension I mean for example when did world war 1 begin was it the shot from Gavrilo Princip gun wasn't when Archduke Ferdinand actually died when austria-hungary gave the Serbs the July ultimatum when Russia mobilized its troops you see the problem right because we could extend the chain of questions of causality backwards in time as well and start picking apart the web of international treaties that created a situation so unstable that one death brought on tens of millions more and historians like to talk about proximal and distal causes or sometimes triggers and causes and we all agree that Princip triggered the war I guess literally in this case but how far back can we trace the and if I say that the 1815 Vienna conference which created the idea of a balance of power in Europe was a cause of World War one then haven't we actually reached the point of the absurd I mean everything leads to everything else basically any major world event is too complex to grasp in toto and that means we can often learn more about the historian from their assertions of causality and beginnings then about the history itself which by the way is true in personal work as well from my experience one of the first questions I always have a client write about is where does your story begin and I find that the more times I ask the question the more answers I'll actually get which rolls us over into what I'll call the cultural dimension of this problem of beginnings assertions of causality and beginnings are never values neutral often they're explicitly tools in assigning responsibilities subtly drawing moral conclusions from historical events take for example the innocent question of when the civil war in America began and what worked causes now it goes without saying that if you ask that question in Boston and you asked it in Savannah you would get radically different answers you might even learn that it was actually the War of Northern Aggression or at very least the War Between the States and not a civil war we've claimed knowledge of when a conflict started and asserted its primary causes often we're engaging in narrative warfare we're attempting to kick the legs out from under somebody else's version of the past and remember you should always be careful knocking down narratives you never really know what they're holding up alas but certainly not least it is into the historical problem and this sort of cultural narrative dilemma when you identify how conflict began you're often intentionally or not defining when you think it ended as well and for the Six Day War in particular this problem will be quite acute seeing as practically speaking I could say it's still not over did it begin with the birth of Israel in 48 well then we know how was it the formation of the PLO in 64 that brought it on how about Nasser's occupation of the Sinai in 67 these questions of how the state war began when it ends and therefore what it was all about are going to prove to be particularly important for the next phase of the Jewish story and I'm still quite not so sure how to tell it so any thoughts you have on what you'd like to hear in season 4 now's a good time to send me an email Rob Mike Feuer at gmail.com or hit me up on Facebook that's arrived Mike for our Facebook and just tell me what you'd like to hear but for now just remember our story began way back at the beginning of season 1 with Daniel and the dream of the future he was privileged to see you can go back to that first episode and do some review but for now just recall that since the destruction of the first temple the Jewish story has been about kingship in the hands of the nation's not in the hands of um Israel at least on the national level with those classic tools of kingship as we know them state culture army and one of the questions posed by the massive victory of the six-day war will be where are we in that vision of the future that Daniel was privileged to see do these events hold out hope that a kingdom of flesh and blood will once again represent the kingdom of God on earth or they just another round of power play another battle between kings and their armies in other words was the system or just another in a long chain of socio-political conflict or did it offer a new beginning a new creation even as the very name six-day war implies so like I said I've got my work cut out for me if I'm gonna tell a full honest and meaningful story and I think I could do worse than starting with one of the key characters who's been actually part of our tale for quite some time but in an unseen role 1967 was a transition point in Israeli and Jewish history in countless ways and one of the actually most significant of them was the rise of a generation of native-born leadership within the State of Israel and among that generation there's perhaps no one better known in our day then get sacra beam Rabine was you xiaomi he was born in the holy city on March 1st 1922 to Nehemia beam and Rosa Cohen and he was the Israeli equivalent of a red diaper baby both his parents were active founding members in the octavo da party that Ben Gurion founded only three years before his birth although in all fairness to calm a red diaper baby is actually a misnomer because aku Dada was founded by ben-gurion in order to split from the more hardline communist elements within the labor movement what I meant when I said that was that it's haq absorbed the two central values on which the party was built Hebrew labor and Hebrew language from the very youngest age which made him a Sabra in the deepest sense of the word that's that prickly cactus which is the name for a native-born Israeli you know hard on the outside but oh so sweet in the middle now significantly do Tavo da was also an advocate of Greater Israel and the rejection of territorial compromise would be part of her beans worldview at least until much later in his life so young if it's cocked schooling started at 18 Oakland elvadine right the school for workers children in Tel Aviv which should come as no surprise but his actual education really began at the Kaduri agricultural school near mount cavora in the lower Galilee this legendary school was founded in the early 30s together with a sister school for Arab students into a calm but the Iraqi Jewish philanthropist Elise Kaduri with the mission of developing the land and all of its people it was a noble vision but one which soon fell prey to the conflict which was even then brewing in the Middle East and the whole world now if you've been listening since the second season you may recall the Arab revolt of 1936 to 1939 you can go back to season 2 episode 33 for the full story but for now know that ye atacama beans first taste of war and not just war his first taste of the Jewish Arab conflict which would dominate his life came when the Kaduri school was attacked by Arabs from a neighboring village it was Yigal Allon fellow Kaduri graduate who swooped in like a knight in shining armor to organize the boys in a self-defense unit and seeing as alone was also an awkward Avada activist and the commander in the Hagana not to mention a dashing figure that all the boys looked up to he did some recruiting as well the Arab revolt ended in 39 but heat sucker beans association with alone and Hagana had only just begun in 1941 he was among the first to join the Palmach the newly formed striking arm of the Hagana and during their first two-year initial cooperation with British rule we're being actually fought in Lebanon it was the same conflict in which Moshe Dayan lost his eye from here on out his military career was only onwards and upwards ravine was deputy commander of the Palmas force battalion he led numerous operations in the pre state phase in October 1947 during the war of the roads that awful first phase of the war independence he was appointed operations officer of the Palmach and became responsible for the convoys supplying Jerusalem during the siege once the state was declared the Israel Defense Force the IDF absorbed the pre state militias into its infrastructure and though the Hagana became its backbone many of the Palmach McKim were sidelined by ben-gurion he had suspicions over their loyalty to one another as opposed to the state many of them actually quit the military altogether in protest despite the fact that the war was just over but Utah carbine was a man who consistently chose service to the state over loyalty to any individual and so he went on to many compan positions during the war including operation Danny when he oversaw the expulsion of the Arab population from Ramallah load and go back to season 2 episode 44 that story and perhaps it was this proven loyalty that caused ben-gurion to send Rabine and his men to the beach of Tel Aviv on a hot day in June to intercept the alte Lena if you don't know the tragic story of this ear goon armed ship sunk by the IDF in the midst of the War of Independence it's there in season 2 episode 40 as well I'm not telling it all all you need to know for our now is that under orders from Ben Gurion it was yet Sakura beam who gave the command to fire upon his fellow Jews killing more than a dozen like it or not there is a certain narrative of modern Israeli history which is encapsulated in the assertion made by voices in our society today that the bullet which assassinated of being in 1995 was actually the last shot fired in the Battle of Yalta Lena but for now there was no question that Rabine emerged the victor in 48 and in 49 when ben-gurion made his final purge of the ranks the IDF leadership of the remaining palmach nickim Rabine managed to retain his command we don't really need to go into any further detail about his career suffice it to say that he attack Europeans appointment as chief of general staff of the army at the end of 1963 met with widespread approval from both the public and the military and it was a particularly important victory for the man who appointed him new prime minister lay V ash Cole you may recall that lavash Cole took over the twin posts of Prime Minister and defense minister and Ben Gurion after the old man quit in protest over the last round of the LaVon affair scandal but you also might remember that ben-gurion was never one to go quietly into the night when he finally realized that the map I party which he had built was not going to beg him to come home he formed a new party called Rafi regime at pol Sol the Israeli workers list in order to rejuvenate the politics of the country as he claimed and of course regain power together with his protege Shimon Peres Moshe Dayan Teddy Kollek and others ben-gurion hoped to recapture the public's imagination as well as the leadership of the country by campaigning on a platform of electoral reform and a hard-line stance on security matters and this last one was really the wedge he hoped to use in order to regain the prime ministership one of his primary tools was to paint Levi Eshkol as a mill Terry ignoramus could not be trusted to guide Israel through the dangerous waters of the Middle East and so a school pointed the hero soldier urban as his chief of staff now the mid-1960s were not simple days for the IDF the Sinai campaign of 56 may have bought the economy a crucial decade of quiet allowing it to develop and grow but the army received no such respite and Eshkol may have lacked personal experience of combat but he well understood when an army needed to win wars this is the point at which the Arab states are undertaking a massive rearmament as the Soviet Union floods the Middle East with its weapons buying influence in that old imperialist style we spoke back in episode 24 of this season about how lavash goal was actually the first Israeli prime minister to receive an official invitation to the White House and how his primary goal was to obtain American arms now the French are still officially Israel's largest arms supplier at this point in our story - Cole could read the writing on the wall he saw that France was beginning to ship its foreign policy away from Israel and toward a more let's call it post-colonial stance on the Middle East and he understood what that would mean for their support in any coming conflict and so when he went to the White House ash Cole was particularly interested in acquiring Patton tanks and American Skyhawk fighters something he actually ultimately succeeded in doing now one might rightly say that the arms race which began back in 1955 with Egypt's first major purchase of Soviet arms and which is now picking up rapidly in the mid 60s is a major factor if not a downright cause in the conflict the coming I mean after all what's the point of having all those guns if you're not going to use them from his first days in office ash Cole sent himself to rearm upgrade intelligence and restructure the Army's command infrastructure and it was done in partnership with the attacker beam whose three-year tenure was so successful that late in 1966 the Prime Minister extended it for additional year which faithfully placed him at the head of the army in the coming war but we're not there yet cuz for now when lieutenant-general Rabine became chief of staff on january 1st 1964 the Arab armies surrounding Israel were rapidly robbing like I said and his mentor Prime Minister Eshkol was moving heaven and earth to match them but the arms race wasn't the only problem muddying the waters in the Middle East at this point there was also the ongoing border conflict the so-called west bank of the Jordan River conquered and annexed by Transjordan but then of course changes named Jordan in the war of 48 is still a constant source of infiltration and will speak a little bit more about that in a few minutes but in 1964 it seemed clear that Nasser at least had learned his lesson from the 56 Suez war the border with Gaza was quiet and it seemed at least on the Egyptian front that the Palestine issue was in deep freeze so much so in fact that the other arab states will go to him continually toward action and we'll see how that results when a time come but no such thing could be said about Syria Israel's northern border Israel's northern border has now replaced the Egyptian one as its most volatile and at least until Nasser rolled his tanks into the Sinai in the spring of 67 u.s. analysts were certain that the next war would actually begin there maybe they just knew the ancient truth the Jeremiah teaches in the first chapter meets ofone the Fatah Jara or maybe they were just watching the news closely we've mentioned a few times in the last couple of episodes how Syria was attempting to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River those were efforts that led to not only bombing raids by Israel but also a relocation of the source pumping station from the national water carrier there were also constant clashes with Syria over the attempts by Israeli farmers to cultivate land within the demilitarized zones that had been established between the two states by the post 49 ceasefire now these zones were open to civilian use but the Syrians didn't care and their artillery fire made farming their a lethal pursuit just imagine it by the early 1960s armored tractors were standard equipment and of course the response of Israeli fighter bombers only led to increased shelling truth is since 1949 Syrian guns had dominated a good chunk of northern Israel through their commanding positions on the Golan Heights at this point more than a decade of shelling had created what was known as door Hama club team the shelter generation young men and women raised in the kyboot semen agricultural villages of the Galilee for whom it had become a way of life to flee for shelter into the deep rock bomb shelters built under their houses it's a situation which sadly has actually reduced itself in our day in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip in addition to its efforts to choke Israel's water supply and prevent the agricultural development of the Galilee Syria had become a primary if not the primary state sponsor of Terror we spoke a couple of episodes ago about the birth of the PLO the Palestine Liberation Organization in a particular about its most militant member the Fatah by the time Tatas undertook its first guerrilla attack not surprisingly attempted sabotage on a national water carrier pump their base was firmly established in Damascus and when it came to thwarting serious attempts to diverting Israel's water sources or even stopping their artillery the chief of staff consistently rejected or any reprisal which might require entering Syrian territory instead as I mentioned Air Force interventions were increased along with Israel's own tanks and artillery but when it came to terror Rabine believed that a state was accountable for all hostile operations launched from its own territory he therefore held Siri responsible for terrorist operations originating from any other in the north nevertheless he was still reluctant to authorize Israeli reprisals against guerrillas who were embedded in a civilian population but you know in war logic rarely derives all decisions and so in November 1966 another piece of our puzzle leading up to the Six Day War fell in place when Rabine and Prime Minister Eshkol deviated from that policy on November 11 1966 three Israeli paratroopers were killed by a landmine placed not far from the southern town of Arad it was a tragic event but hardly a surprising one because while it's true that cross-border raids into Israeli territory had dropped significantly since the Sinai war nevertheless the threat of terror remained quite real and truth is in the latter half of 1960s it was growing in fact with that strong backing from the new bethis regime in Syria Palestinian terror groups were launching regular raids into Israel mostly from Lebanon and Jordan the situation was fast coming to resemble the Fedayeen raids that had been a major impetus for Israel's invasion of the Sinai in 56 and so it should come as no surprise that Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and the IDF General Staff felt that this latest provocation required a robust response it's been 13 years since that disastrous could be retaliation raid that we spoke about back in episode 6 so apparently that's long enough to forget the risk of playing with fire when the General Staff gathered considered situation commander of the southern front ejo gavage suggested a broad daylight raid on Jordanian territory using tanks and APCs now you may wonder why after all the terrorists were Palestinians and their backers were in Syria not only that King Hussein of Jordan was the most conciliatory toward Israel of all the Arab leaders since 65 it seemed he'd been working quite hard to stop the PLO from using his territory as a base for terror basically because he knew full well that he had the most to lose out of any conflict which might result so the answer that question is really that Israel was already dancing around war with Syria it was no longer a matter of shelling and bombing when a much larger ground of conflict erupted 'add after the final Israeli destruction of Syrian earthworks attempting to block the headwaters of the jordan happened in July of 1966 it pushed the bass in Syria to put aside their differences with Nasser and to make a mutual defense pact the final agreement which tied their military ships so-to-speak together was signed only a week before the murder of the paratroopers the Israeli leadership now felt increasingly trapped they knew that a decisive show of force was necessary to maintain any deterrent power furthermore Ashville himself was suffering in the polls and had Ben Gurion nipping at his heels claiming that he was too weak to respond but they feared to make any response to decisive now that Syria and NASA were tied together they might actually trigger the war they were trying to avoid just picture them dancing around a powder keg with a candle in their hands one misstep and boom and so it was Jordan and not Syria which received the blow now we're being sorry chief-of-staff ravine had been arguing for more than a year that despite King Hussein's claim to be making his best efforts in reality the Jordanians could stop 95% of the photic raids which were then taking place from their territory looking at all his intelligence assets the chief of staff had come to the conclusion that Thornton cross-border raids before they occurred from the Israeli side was all but impossible the time had come for Israel to force the King to eliminate Fattah himself and this was a strategy with some risk a hostile my kingdom after all is the most colonial of middle eastern states and the natives are getting increasingly restless the occasional bloodshed and mayhem on the Israeli side of the border served an important purpose it kept their focus away from the royal family which ruled over them now recall or if you don't know then know that the Hashemite family that rules in Jordan to this day originated in Arabia it was the Sharif of Mecca and his sons who first found international fame assisting Lawrence of Arabia and the British efforts against the Ottomans and war one go watch the movie it's really worthwhile or into Arabia now they were subsequently ousted from the Arabian Peninsula by the houses south that's why it's the Saudi Arabia and not oh no Hashemite Arabia but in recognition of their service the British in good colonial fashion carved out several new states for them including Transjordan which was cut from the Palestine mandate in 1921 as well as Syria and Iraq but by the time we reach our point in the story in the 1960s King Hussein of Jordan is last king standing because so-called progressive mathis regimes are now ruling in both Iraq and Syria and Hussein is far from secure on his throne more than half his population even then were Palestinian and they hate him as a foreign ruler only slightly less than they despise the Zionist entity across the border which they claimed stole their homes as a young boy Hussein actually witnessed the assassination of his grandfather at the hands of a Palestinian Nationals on the Temple Mount and so he knew full well that his rule depended almost entirely on the power of his military and the pacification of the Palestinians under his rule it sucker beam knew this as well nevertheless only weeks before the paratroopers death in a speech at the IDS higher Military College ravine declared that Israel should no longer fear the fall of the ostrich King no Jordan that there was no danger whatsoever of whatever rose in its place becoming a militant satellite of Nasser I Egypt as they deemed Syria to be instead Rabine stated we have to make Hussein choose either he puts an end to fought off activity or he loses his throne in two days after the terror attack he was presented with that choice Operation shredder was meant to be a surgical strike a quick and brutal retaliatory raid along the lines which Moshe Dayan had perfected back in the 50s except that things went wrong almost immediately first of all the scale of the operation seemed all out of proportion 400 Israeli soldiers accompanied by tanks and APCs crossed the border into Jordan and now to the terrorist sympathizing village of saml it was actually the largest Israeli military operation since the Suez war which in itself risked unexpected escalation now add to this the initial dubious choice of Jordan as opposed to Syria as the original target and then finally a dose of bad luck the troops wreath sama without incident and we're in the process of evacuating the villagers before destroying their homes when a unit of a hundred or Damien Legionnaires on patrol stumbled across their perimeter the firefight was erupted transformed a surgical raid into a pitched battle and when both sides called in for air support one jordanian hawker hunter jet was down and the situation threatened to spiral into all-out war the israelis eventually managed to slug their way back across the border leaving behind 15 dead jordanian soldiers and three civilians the village Isamu was essentially gone over a hundred homes have been reduced to rubble during the fighting in 96 of the villagers wounded and they themselves hardly fared any better 11 IDF soldiers were dead including the commander of the raid the initial fallout from the operation was as Swift as it was predictable confusion within the cabinet and the IDF general staff and who exactly had authorized a raid of that scale UN condonation Arab threats of unified retaliation but what Israel didn't see right away was the impact which operations shredder had on King Hussein of Jordan and in particular on his political perspective like I said Hussein is in a delicate position and perhaps that's why he had always maintained discrete lines of communication with the Israeli leadership at least since the earliest days of his reign despite the obvious risks both domestic and international this is certainly why he saw the Sam arrayed as an act of outright betrayal as he complained to the US ambassador in Amman Finlay burns for the past three years I've been meeting secretly with Golda Meir I've even and others I told them amongst other things I could not absorb or tolerate a serious retaliatory raid they accepted a logic of this and promised there would never be one as far as I'm concerned this attack was a complete betrayal by that of everything I have tried to do for the past three years in the interest of peace stability in moderation and then he added a crucial suspicion I never fully trusted their intentions toward me or toward Jordan he said in assessing Israeli intentions I asked you to put my experience with them into your equations Hussein perceived his position as delicate visa fee Israel largely because he'd been watching them in their record expansion for over a decade truth is the King's greatest fear aside from a coup from within had become an Israeli takeover of the rich agricultural land of the West Bank which he thought they needed in order to have room to grow the Ambassador duly communicated the Kings concerned to the US State Department and he was in turn instructed to assure the king that the u.s. government had expressed its full displeasure to the Israelis over the salmon raid and to reiterate American commitment to the territorial integrity of all states in the region but Hussein didn't get even the slightest hint what he really wanted which was an expression of u.s. willingness to intervene militarily on the behalf of Jordan in case Israel did invade remember US Army is deeply deployed in Vietnam in 1966 if they're gonna stretch themselves in order to intervene anywhere else it's not going to be in the Middle East frankly the State Department was inclined to view Hussein's concerned as purely psychological meaning he's just scared the CIA on the other hand saw things in a very different light their assessment was that Hussein's weakness in the face of Israeli Itali Asian was highly likely to end in an army coup so as I said more than half of Zane's population were Palestinians which he ruled none too kindly and they were a primary target for the incitement generated by Nasser Radio Cairo broadcast which never failed to label the king as a coward and Western stooge part of that conservative if not reactionary element in the middle which nasara Egypt was committed to kicking out in desperation Hussein sent his top aide general America mosh to plead with Secretary of State Dean Rusk for an immediate airlift of American arms which could shore up his control of the military kamar unknowingly confirmed the CIA's assessment when he warned that while the king was still strong without us support November 13th which was the day the Sam arrayed was likely to become Jordan's new National Day meaning the government was in jeopardy Camacho also tried to play the Cold War card ever popular in the 60s he told Rusk that Israel intact Jordan rather than Syria which Israel really held responsible for terrorism because they were backed by the USSR hint hint hint that the Americans balked at anything more than a symbolic arm sail and that's when Hussein threw his final card if the Americans could not arm him immediately he would do something he resisted for 10 years something which Nasser in the bath as'hab n demanding for that entire time he would transform the West Bank into a military Protectorate and allow Saudi and Iraqi troops to defend it it seemed a bitter pill to give up on the dream of the Jordanian Jerusalem but absent fool us support and considering his fear of Israeli conquest it suddenly appeared to be a viable solution for his aim militarizing the West Bank would satisfy the violent desires of those Palestinian militants and the radical Arab regimes that threatened to topple him while simultaneously uncoupling the security of the West Bank from that of his own Kingdom but it would also push things much more rapidly toward war he would suddenly have an aggressive army on the West Bank and not the more compliant Jordanians and just like that Hussein tip the balance of power in the Middle East the Americans who tended to see the whole region truth is the whole world through the east-west conflict lens of the Cold War woke up too late to the local reality of Middle East politics in the long run they'll come to see Jordan as the keystone to preventing conflict between Israel and the radical Arab regimes it's still the way foundational to their and Israel's world ooh today but right now in our story the sama raid convinced Hussein that war was inevitable the Israel was not to be trusted and that in order for his bone to survive he was safer on the radical side of the Arab divide so we've got a new key personality India top ravine we've seen a bit of the chain of events which begins with Operation shredder and the disruption of samu what we need now before we can bring this opening episode to a close is a little bit more context because the path event leading up to the Six Day War made the gun in the heat of border clashes but much of its groundwork was laid by the Cold War arguably America has had at least one hand in Middle East since Truman's recognition of Israel in 48 and certainly the West as a whole in the form of the British Empire has been there far far longer and you may recall that in the episodes around the Suez Crisis we mentioned the Baghdad pact that 1955 defence treaty between Turkey Iran Pakistan and the United Kingdom remember that the aim of that pact was to create alliance of strong states along the southwestern frontier of the Soviet Union basically on the model of NATO States that could prevent its expansion into the Middle East a key provision was US and British access to military bases to the region meaning it wasn't just about containment it was about immediate threat containment was the general Western policy toward the Soviet empire and thus Moscow's first real foothold in the Middle East actually came we mentioned it on May 17th 1955 when Nasser formally recognized the People's Republic of China meaning Communist China as the quote/unquote legitimate government of the Chinese people now that may not sound so impressive to you but the struggle on the international political stage between the Soviets and the Americans over who would recognize the Nationalists or the Communists as a legitimate government of the Chinese people was actually a significant Cold War battleground at the time but remember all victories common and what no surcharge became apparent in September of the same year when he announced the Czech Egypt arms deal at the low low cost of just 83 million dollars in arms the Soviet Union outflanked the Baghdad pact the deal marked the failure of containment in the Middle East the Russians were now there to stay aside from the arms race Middle Eastern oil was of course also a crucial context in the coming conflict remember the Middle East right now produces about a quarter of world oil supply although who knows what's happening in world oil supply but in general before the current crisis and it holds between two-thirds and three-quarters of all known reserves and for that reason alone both west and east have always defined the region as vitally important so important in fact that already back in 1949 the Truman administration had developed what they called an oil denial policy that meant their concern over what would happen to the balance of power in the world if the Soviets controlled the oil of the Middle East was so severe that a plan was developed in coordination with the British as well as oil companies and without the knowledge of Arab governments in the region to move explosives to the Middle East where they would be stored in case of a Soviet invasion but not in order to stop the Soviets but rather as a last resort the oil installations and refineries were to be blown up the oil fields plugged to make it impossible for the Soviet Union to even use the oil resources so great was America's fear that the administration actually explored deploying what they called radiological weapons to do the job it was an option ultimately rejected by the CIA whose explanation by the way is downright chilling so it's worth reading it to you they say denial of the wells by radiological means can be accomplished to prevent an enemy from utilizing the oil fields but it could not prevent him from forcing quote unquote expendable Arabs to enter contaminated areas to open well heads and deplete the reservoirs therefore aside from other effects on the Arab population it's not considered that radiological means are practicable as a conservation measure well makes your blood run call huh unless you think oil fears were passing phase of the late 40s as fears of regional instability grew in the wake of the suez crisis the Eisenhower administration actually moved the explosions into place and evidence suggests that the denial plan remained in place at least through the early 60s but last certainly not least we've got to speak about nuclear weapons which of course in terms of explosive potential far outpace oil as early as 1964 the US ambassador to Egypt had warned President Johnson that the only trigger for Egyptian Israeli war would be quote an Egyptian conviction that Israel had started the production of nuclear weapons if NASA had proof of this he might well attempt a preemptive strike truth is Ambassador John s Badu was just repeating NASA's own warning from four years early prompted by a report in The New York Times about the real nature of the Damona facility quote Israel's development of nuclear weapons would prompt the Arab states to launch a preemptive war you'd go back to episode 19 of this season for some of the complexity which surrounded Israel's nuclear program in its relationship with the United States and the region but for now just know that there were two wildcard factors in the mind of the Israelis which governed the future of any war that was an Egyptian strike on Damona and Soviet intervention an intervention of course that itself could be nuclear don't forget it was the nuclear ultimatum which was an ultimate significant factor in getting Israel France and Britain to cut the Sinai campaign short but little did Israel know that the Soviet themselves had been watching very closely the progress of what was happening in Dimona and that the Israeli nuclear program was a deep concern a nuclear ally of the United States in the Middle East was a significant breach in the security of the USSR so significant in fact that they might be willing to go to war or better at least encourage their Arab clients to do so but that is a part of the story that we'll have to explore in a coming episode I want to say a few thank-yous before I sign off I want to thank all the folks that give their hard-earned money to help make this show happen keep it free widely available I want to invite you to join them you can do that in two ways if you want to dedicate an episode you can contact me Rob Mike Feuer at gmail.com or you can find me on Facebook and Rob Mike we're at Facebook and if you would like you can go to my website right now in the upper right hand corner you'll see a button that says be a patron you can click on that make a little bit of her podcast or remember put your money where your ears are every dollar counts I also want to thank the folks at the Land of Israel Network that's the Land of Israel comm for creating a platform that allows me to reach so many amazing people I want to thank the partes Institute dar es org that IL for building an educational institution that gives me the privilege of teaching so many fantastic Jews and I want to thank you for the