al-Nakba: the Palestinian "Catastrophe"

Ironic, how quickly innocent victims can become ruthless victimizers

Home

Why focus on Israel?

Do Jews need a state?

Index of topics

Who are we?

Our directors

Our methods

Community actions

Sponsored events

Community television

Using the internet

News & Views

Our ongoing commentaries

Palestine: Just Justice!

Balfour Declaration

UN partition resolution

UN Charter

Universal Human Rights

VFP resolutions

The Zionist project

Origins: 1948

UN terrorism chronology

UN resolution 194

Israel founding document

US recognition

Admission to UN

"A land without a people"

Pix of Arab life before

Pix of Arab life after

Jewish refugees

1967 war

Admission of deceit

USS Liberty

UN Resolution 242

1973 Yom Kippur War

The Samson Option

Arab oil embargo

Invasions of Lebanon

1982

2006

al-Nakba continuing

Memoricide

Cultural strangulation

Land theft & destruction

Jewish National Fund

Israeli massacres

Extrajudicial actions

Killing the children

4th Geneva Convention

UN resolutions

US enabling

The Lobby

The soft lobby

duplicitous media

Resistance

Palestinian terrorism

1st intifada

2nd intifada

Jenin

Spirit of resistance

Attacks on internationals

an Apartheid state

Israeli racism

Israeli laws

Occupied Palestine

Israeli self-destruction

Solutions

Counter-Zionism

2-state model

The "peace process"

Peace process products

1-state model

a 2-stage model

a 12-step model

Right of Return

Arab Peace Initiative

Beyond Zionism

non-violent force fields

The MLK method

local activism

Sources & resources

web sites

books and videos

In 1967 Israel attacked Egypt, Jordan and Syria, seizing the Sinai from Egypt (which Israel subsequently returned under US pressure), the Golan Heights from Syria (from which Israel gets about a third of its water), and Jordan from which it retrieved Judea and Samaria (now known as the West Bank) that it had ceded to Jordan in 1948 in exchange for Jordan's non-intervention.

1967 may have been chosen as an opportune occasion since the US was distracted by the Tet offensive in Viet Nam.

Israel justified these invasions, which were illegal under the United Nations and Nuremberg charters that prohibit aggressive war, as pre-emptively defensive, claiming that Arab troops had massed on their borders for imminent invasion.  Menachim Begin and Israeli generals subsequently admitted that this was entirely false, that they intended to attack and manufactured a pretext.

During this war Israeli aircraft attacked an American intelligence vessel, the USS Liberty, killing 34 sailors and wounding 171, probably fearing that the Liberty had detected Israeli war crimes in the Sinai.  Israel falsely claimed that the attack was accidental due to misidentification, an assertion flatly contradicted by a mountain of eyewitness testimony and other evidence summarized by James Bamford in his book, Body of Secrets.  The Liberty crew members were enjoined by the US government from telling the truth, and the formal investigation findings were whitewashed.  This is the only occasion in US history where an American naval vessel was attacked without retaliation.

The Palestinian land seized by Israel has remained under a brutal occupation ever since in defiance of international law and UN Resolution 242 that demanded that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders.

Demand Freedom, Justice and Equality in the Holy Land