Controversies relating to the Six-Day War

A number of controversies have arisen out of the causes and conduct of the war, namely: whether Israel's action was a preemptive strike justified by the threat of an imminent attack by the Arab states or an unjustified and unprovoked attack; whether the Egyptians killed stragglers from their own forces as they returned from the defeat; whether the Israelis killed unarmed Egyptian prisoners; and the extent of foreign support given to the combatants in the war.

At 3:10 am, Rafael woke ambassador Hans Tabor, the Danish President of the Security Council for June, with the news that Egyptian forces had "moved against Israel".

Egyptian artillery in the Gaza strip shelled the Israel villages of Kissufim, Nahal-Oz and Ein Hashelosha..." In fact, this was not the case,[4] and the US Office of Current Intelligence "...soon concluded that the Israelis – contrary to their claims – had fired first.

[6] Israel justifies its preemptive action with a review of the context of its position: Economic strangulation through the shipping blockade in the Straits of Tiran (90% of Israeli oil passed through the Straits of Tiran),[7] the imminence of war on three fronts (hundreds of thousands of enemy troops and hundreds of tanks massed on its borders), and possible social and economic difficulty of maintaining a civilian army draft indefinitely.

[12] In 2002 radio broadcast NPR correspondent Mike Shuster stated that "[t]he prevailing view among historians is that although Israel struck first, the Israeli strike was defensive in nature.

"[22] Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld has written that while the exact origins of the war may never be known, Israel's forces were "spoiling for a fight and willing to go to considerable lengths to provoke one".

"[26] It has been suggested that Nasser did not want Egypt to learn of the true extent of his defeat and thus ordered the killing of survivors who tried to escape.

[27] Winston Churchill, the grandson of the famed former British Prime Minister, notes that Egyptian soldiers who succeeded in making their way back to Egypt, never made it home and instead were kept in cantonments, "to prevent the spread of despondency among the civil population.

"[28] After the war, a national debate ensued in Israel regarding allegations that soldiers killed unarmed Egyptians.

During his visit, Dayan offered compensation to the families of victims, but explained that Israel was unable to pursue those responsible owing to its 20-year statute of limitations.

The Israeli Ambassador to Cairo, David Sultan, asked to be relieved of his post after the Egyptian daily Al Shaab said he was personally responsible for the killing of 100 Egyptian prisoners, although both the Israeli Embassy and Foreign Ministry denied the charge and said that it was not even clear that Sultan had served in the military.

Milovan Zorc and Miobor Stosic, a military liaison official, who were members of the Yugoslav Reconnaissance Battalion that formed part of the 3,400-strong UNEF deployed as a buffer between Egypt and Israel and witnessed the war, have cast doubt on claims that Israel executed Egyptian prisoners of war in the area where they were stationed.

[36] Declassified IDF documents show that on June 11, 1967, the operations branch of the general staff felt it necessary to issue new orders concerning the treatment of prisoners.

[38] According to George Lenczowski, as early as May 23, President Johnson secretly authorized supplying Israel by air with a variety of arms systems, even when an embargo on weapons shipments was placed on the Middle East.

[39] Stephen Green wrote in his book that the United States sent reconnaissance aircraft to track nighttime movement of Egyptian ground forces in order to facilitate daytime Israeli air attacks that proved important for Israel's advances.

[41] On the second day of the war, Arab state-run media reported that American and British troops were fighting on Israel's side.

Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, the chief of "Al-Ahram" in the Nasserite period, repeated similar claims at Al Jazeera channel.

On June 8, Egyptian credibility was further damaged when Israel released an audio recording to the press, which they said was a radio-telephone conversation intercepted two days earlier between Nasser and King Hussein of Jordan.

Indeed, it can be said without exaggeration that the enemy was operating with an air force three times stronger than his normal force.King Hussein, however, later denied the allegations of American military support.

[43] In September, The New York Times reported that Nasser had privately assured Arab leaders, gathered in Sudan to discuss the Khartoum Resolution, that his earlier claims were false.

As reported by the British Representative in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a country at odds with Egypt as a result of the Yemen war: President Abdel Nasser's allegation ... is firmly believed by almost the whole Arab population here who listen to the radio or read the press ... Our broadcast denials are little heard and just not believed.

Senior foreign ministry officials who received my formal written and oral denials profess to believe them but nevertheless appear skeptical.

I consider that this allegation has seriously damaged our reputation in the Arab world more than anything else and has caused a wave of suspicion or feeling against us which will persist in some underlying form for the foreseeable future ... Further denials or attempts at local publicity by us will not dispel this belief and may now only exacerbate local feeling since the Arabs are understandably sensitive to their defeat with a sense of humiliation and resent self-justification by us who in their eyes helped their enemy to bring this about.Well after the end of the war, the Egyptian government and its newspapers continued to make claims of collusion between Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States.

According to Israeli historian Elie Podeh: "All post-1967 [Egyptian] history textbooks repeated the claim that Israel launched the war with the support of Britain and the United States.

In fact, it transcended the Arab countries and spread to Iran, Pakistan and the Third World, whose delegates at the UN began adopting increasingly critical posture toward America.

[47] A British guidance telegram to Middle East posts concluded: "The Arabs' reluctance to disbelieve all versions of the big lie springs in part from a need to believe that the Israelis could not have defeated them so thoroughly without outside assistance.

"[48] In a 1993 interview for the Johnson Presidential Library oral history archives, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara revealed that a carrier battle group, the U.S. 6th Fleet, on a training exercise near Gibraltar was re-positioned towards the eastern Mediterranean to be able to defend Israel.

[52] In his book Six Days, veteran BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen claims that on June 4, 1967, the Israeli ship Miryam left Felixstowe with cases of machine guns, 105 mm tank shells, and armored vehicles in "the latest of many consignments of arms that had been sent secretly to Israel from British and American reserves since the crisis started" and that "Israeli transport planes had been running a 'shuttle service' in and out of RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire".

Bowen claims that Harold Wilson had written to Eshkol saying that he was glad to help as long as the utmost secrecy was maintained.