Wishful Thinking Of A Nutty Psychiatrist

When someone hears voices, he knows it is time to go see a psychiatrist and have his head examined. When the psychiatrist says he hears echoes from the past, the possibility is that he needs to have his head examined or that he is playing reverse psychology. To choose from among these two possibilities is what preoccupies you when you look into the latest creation of Charles Krauthammer who used to be a psychiatrist but is now writing a syndicated column. The latest that he wrote comes under the title: “Echoes of '67: Israel Unites” and the subtitle: “The country is ready militarily – and now politically – for an attack on Iran.” It was published on May 11, 2012 in the National Review Online.

The author writes about the decision of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scrap a plan that calls for an early election he devised a few days earlier. The scrapping was done in exchange for inviting the opposition Kadima party to join him in a coalition national unity government. In the article, Krauthammer argues that what happened here -- in May of 2012 -- parallels what happened in May of 1967. And so, he regards the Netanyahu move as being a prelude to attacking Iran, an echo of what Israel did when it attacked its neighbors long ago. It is that when it comes to anniversaries, Jews are a superstitious lot; when the Jew is also a former psychiatrist, the superstition becomes almost like a wishful thinking.

But given that there was a claim concerning a time-specific window after which it would be impossible to attack Iran, and given that the window has almost closed, it would be absurd to think that Netanyahu is planning to attack Iran in the first week of June as did Israel 45 years ago. And to say that he is planning such a move in partnership with the man who was opposed to it even when the window was wide open should sound like an illogical proposition even to a former psychiatrist. Thus, we must conclude that yes, Krauthammer could be nuts and in need of someone to examine his head, but he could also be playing reverse psychology with us, his readers. Whatever the case may be, however, let us not be angry with him for trying to fool us because he has performed a valuable service not knowing what he just did.

You see, my friend, it used to be that the Jewish leaders together with their writers, talking heads, septic tank thinkers and the like would paint full-scale landscapes of lies complete with an ocean of falsehoods flanked by hills and mountains of half-truths, and protected from above by massive clouds of pure deception. They did this to have things done their way, and they managed the whole operation without someone daring to push back against anything they said or anything they did. By the time someone had discovered that the entire sordid mess was a lie from top to bottom, from east to west and from north to south, things would have gone very far in the direction that was planned for them. Thus, no one bothered to do anything to reverse what was clearly wrong and visibly false. And the Jews almost always had it their way.

But things have changed for the better in the sense that there is now some push back -- however little that may be -- against the Jewish claims. The problem, however, is that people have forgotten what used to be said, or they never looked at history with the critical eye that it deserves. Enter someone like Charles Krauthammer who causes the past to blast on the scene, a happening that gives us the opportunity to examine the dubious past with the critical eye of today. And this is why we should not be angry with him but be happy for his nuttiness, and wish not that his head be examined – well, at least not for now.

Let us see what he says. He packs more than half a dozen assertions in the first paragraph of the column, all of which are either false or deceptive or meaningless while much else that is true, informative and meaningful is omitted. For example, he asserts that Egypt ordered U.N. peacekeepers out of the Sinai in May of 1967 “in brazen violation of previous truce agreements.” This is false because the agreements provided for the peacekeepers to vacate on a simple request from Egypt. In fact, the reason why this provision was inserted in the agreement is that the peacekeepers were supposed to have been deployed on both sides of the border following the tripartite invasion of the Sinai by Britain, France and Israel eleven years earlier, in 1956. But, as it often happens, Israel reneged at the last minute on this part of the deal, and Egypt was given the right to tell the peacekeepers: Thank you but you must go now. And so it happened in 1967.

Krauthammer goes on to say that Egypt “marched 120,000 troops to the Israeli border.” This too is false. In fact, when the Israelis attacked, and the Egyptians were left without air power to protect their tank force and their armored vehicles, most of the tanks and the vehicles that were destroyed in the initial attack were destroyed in the Mitla Pass which is a mini canyon that is closer to the Egyptian border and the Suez Canal than it is to Israel. When the attack came, the troops that were stationed there may or may not have been ordered to move eastward but they were still a long way away from Israel and posing no threat to it.

Krauthammer also says that Egypt “blockaded Eilat ... signed a military pact with Jordan, and, together with Syria, pledged war for the final destruction of Israel.” He is here repeating the story that was given to the general public in America at the time even though the big diplomatic, military and journalistic honchos knew better. Moreover, several Israelis of those who participated in the planning of that war have since written memoirs in which they bragged about the way they schemed the whole thing to take advantage of the fact that Egypt was embroiled in its own Vietnam-like quagmire in Yemen. It had the bulk of its elite fighting force in that desolate nation and was in no position to repulse a Nazi style full-scale Israeli blitzkrieg.

What has also been revealed about this history is that Egypt was prompted to react by the activities of Israel along the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan where the Jewish state was attempting to divert the streams of water away from the Arab countries, and make them flow into Israel. The Israelis had been doing this for years, but they were doing it in subtle ways and in small steps. This time, however, they did it in a big way, did it openly and did it provocatively. No one at the time understood why Israel was behaving in this manner but as it turned out, the theatrics were part of a scheme to force Egypt to act and thus fall into a trap set for it at a time when its military was bogged down in Yemen. Given that the peacekeepers had been in the Sinai for eleven years and had done nothing to bring peace to the region where a one-sided war was still raging while Egypt had its hands tied by an agreement it could revoke, Egypt did just that.

Revoking the agreement automatically meant that while the state of war between Egypt and Israel existed, the truce was maintained without the peacekeepers as it had been during the period between 1948 and 1956. The departure of the peacekeepers from the Sinai also meant that Egypt had the right to intercept ships bound for Israel and search them but the Israelis never tested this possibility. In fact, it is generally accepted that the Egyptians were not going to do a thing in this matter because their aim was not to have a war; it was to get the Americans to restrain Israel. They talked to the Americans, and President Johnson dispatched someone to mediate between the various players in the region. But like the Japanese who launched a sneak attack on the American naval bases at Pear Harbor as the peace talks were about to begin between them and the Americans, so did the Israelis who launched a sneak attack on Egypt's air bases as the peace talks were about to begin. They copied the Nazis and they copied the Japanese. Who will they copy next? Joseph Kony?

Another indication that the Egyptians did not expect or contemplate a war, and that the Israelis knew it, was the fact that the Israelis attacked the Egyptian airbases at nine o'clock in the morning when such attacks are usually carried out at dawn. The significance of this is that when you expect a war, you do not land your retaliatory airplanes then get the next batch up in the air. What you do is get the next batch up before you land the one that is up there. Yet, what the Egyptians had been doing every day during the standoff was that they landed the planes at nine o'clock (the end of their shift) before letting the next shift go up. Thus, there was a moment when all the planes were on the ground; and this was the precise moment that Israel attacked, inflicting severe damage to the Egyptian air force. Between this act and the situation in Yemen, Israel had nothing to fear contrary to the propaganda that the Jewish leaders were putting out at the time, and what Krauthammer wants us to believe even now.

But telling this history the way that he did gave him the opportunity to do something that the Jewish propaganda machine relies on heavily. It is to pick moments in history, exaggerate their importance and let the audience believe they were moments of glory that Israel can duplicate at will. To wit, beside the 1967 battle that started the six year war, there was the bombing of the Iraqi civilian nuclear power station and the bombing of the Syrian center for the irradiation of agricultural products. The first moment ended in the defeat of Israel, a war that forced the Americans to intervene and save it in 1973. The second prompted Saddam to attack Iran thus start a chain of events that made of Iran a superpower in the region. The third opened the door for Iran to get a strong footing inside Syria and elsewhere in the region. And so, it can be seen that instead of being a moment of glory, each Israeli action turned out in the long run to be a disastrous move for Israel and for America.

Despite all this, however, Krauthammer still wants to view the matter this way: “On June 5 [1967], Israel launched a preemptive strike … The Six-Day War is legend … on June 1, the ... opposition was … brought into the government, creating [a] national-unity coalition,” after which he concludes with this: “Forty-five years later … Netanyahu [brought] the main opposition party … into a national-unity government.” And you can see that he is here invoking a false moment of glory, a moment he says Israel can duplicate at will when it so decides which, he argues, will soon be the case. Or is it?

There is no credibility in any of that because Israel cannot launch a sneak attack on Iran the way it did on previous occasions given that its intention is known to everyone, including the Iranians. Thus, Israel's defeat will be as certain as it was when it did not have the advantage of surprise. This is what happened in the Sinai in 1973; what happened in the Eastern Golan, what happened in Gaza and what happened twice in Lebanon. You can be certain that Israel's defeat this time will come faster and will be more thorough than ever before. In fact, many highly placed military and intelligence Israelis sounded the alarm and warned Netanyahu not even to think about it. Sadly, however, what is happening is that instead of listening to those voices and doing what other writers have done which is to add his voice to theirs and tell Netanyahu to restrain himself, Krauthammer chose to attack the high ranking Israelis and badmouth them as if they were losers, not concerned citizens.

Those who counsel Netanyahu to seize the moment and go along with the position of his new coalition partner are optimistic enough to view his move as being a preparation to get serious about negotiating peace with the Palestinians. If they are correct, it means that Netanyahu will back off from his longstanding call to the Palestinians that they accept his continued rape of their motherland while negotiating what else they are prepared to offer him to appease his insatiable Jewish appetite to grab and grab, and then grab some more.

Opposed to the view of the optimists is that of Charles Krauthammer and others like him who would assert a half-truth then build on it a false theory. He says in his column that for two years Netanyahu has waited for Mahmoud Abbas to show up for negotiation but that “Abbas hasn't. And won't. Nothing will change on that front.” Left out of this affirmation is a condition to the effect that Netanyahu has always wanted to keep raping even as he negotiates. But in blaming the lack of negotiation on Abbas, the writer opens the door for rejecting the view that Netanyahu is serious about talking peace. This done, he expresses the opinion that Netanyahu must be preparing to attack Iran. Well, the month of June is only a few days away, and we'll see if his thinking is real or it is a wish.

Still, the columnist gives as evidence that: “Netanyahu forfeited September elections that would have given him four more years in power. He chose instead … 18 months during which … to stop Iran...” And this is where he unknowingly hints at something else going on inside his head. Given that the window of opportunity is almost closed, and 18 more months will not reopen it -- something he understands better than anyone – we are led to the following inevitable conclusion:

The psychiatrist most probably does not need to have his head examined. Instead, he will need to reexamine his method of using reverse psychology to deceive his readers.