for political purposes, free speech, that you might say. they wanted to spout their opinions. these were immediately dubbed propaganda stations by the regulators and when they were renewed they were told to be very careful about expressing their opinions. >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. [inaudible conversations] we will get started. welcome. good afternoon, everyone. welcome to the porter wilson national center for scholars and welcome to this national history project seminar and book launch

of the six-day war: the breaking of the middle east by doctor guy laron. to my right, it's a great pleasure to welcome him and welcome all of you to this event. i'm christian and i direct the history and public policy program at the woodrow wilson center. it's a program that tries to provide to bring historical context to current public policy issues. the discussion of public policy issues in washington. many of you are familiar with the subprojects of the history and public policy program, the program we've run here for 25 years almost more than 25 years. a project that's devoted to uncovering, collecting, disseminating, making accessible

and discussing new evidence fror communist world archives but the mission has sort of crept to now include really all hard to access archives around the world. we are delighted to launch with this event today a series of activities, discussing on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the six-day war. we will have today the launch of perhaps the most important new publication in international history to come out on the war. i think you're all in for a treat and we are also doing what is called our sweet spot here in the historical universes where we will be publishing a number of new documents from archives

around the world and along with some the first takes of these documents from our blog, new history and public policy entitled sources and methods. there's a link on the blog from our west side from the history of public -- i invite you to check that over the next few weeks there will be a number of new publications and documents available to you by our digital archives and this blog. let me also say we are delighted to host the session because it's yet another step in the direction of of an area that in many ways is still a blank spo

spot not entirely but still a blank spot are kindly speaking anyways. recent and national cultural history and the project, the program is planning over the coming years to spend a lot more time there in the archives, hopefully, building networks and facilitating access to material archival and historical material from recent international history. before i introduce our keynote speaker, let me think our sister program here at the the middle eastern program that has kindly cosponsored this event here this afternoon. let me think my dedicated staff that has been helping to put this event in place, these events happen not by themselves

and a lot of work goes into this. i want to thank our lead on the middle east work, kian. with that, let me turn to die, professor guy, guy laron, at the hebrew university in jerusalem and in the past has been a visiting scholar at the university of maryland and i see jeff in the audience at the university of oxford who is also a fellow at the wilson center with the cannon institute in 2008. he's long been involved with the culture of natural history project and another sister project. [inaudible] guys articles have appeared in journals like the third world quarterly, international journal

of middle east studies. before the six-day war, the breaking of the middle east, guy explores the development of the crisis with the book aptly named to the origins of the us crisis which we were pleased to publish a number of years ago through the wilson center press. guy will start us off with thoughts, some of the arguments of his book and then will help to open it up fairly quickly to all of you. we have the better part of an hour to do this. after an hour or so i'd like to invite all of you to a reception on the fourth floor. so, two floors down. there will be a reception to celebrate and to toast guy laron on this accomplishment. let me ask you to, if you

wouldn't mind, turn off your cell phones and other devices so we don't get interrupted and i think i've cleared it all out. you are on, guy. welcome. congratulations. >> thank you, kristian for this lovely introduction. you will soon realize i need to think christian in more ways than one. what i'm going to do today is a basically tell you about the biography of the book. this means i will tell you about how i came to write it. i will talk a lot about myself and also a little bit about the book and the reason i am doing that is, not only because i'm an academic and an agnostic, the reason i'm doing that is because i want to show you that there's something analogous or the story

of how the book was written what neared the story of how the six-day war came to be. the first chapter of the biography starts here in this very hall. i arrived to the woodrow wilson center in 2005 and it was my first time in washington, first time in america. i sent to christian and e-mail, he was already the director of the cold war international history project, and i sent him an e-mail with a draft of the paper attached which was based on check documents and i was really excited by the fact that he agreed to meet me. i knew i had to dress up this special occasion i still remember what i wore like i had black jeans and a white shirt

and a sweater with a zipper in the middle. i looked at myself in the mirror and thought i was dressed to kill. then i entered this building, the elevator stopped at 45 and i get out and see all the people with suits and the cufflinks and the ties and i immediately realized that i looked like an albanian sheepherder. no offense to albanian sheepherders. they're not known for their sense of fashion. then i met christian and he brought the paper along. he was reading it and he said with a mixture of surprise and amazement, your reading czech and there was silence. i don't like silence. i can't deal with it. i immediately berlin it out but i need to open the dictionary everything second sentence. he was surprised and the first

thing of self-promotion, not self-deprecation and he thought for a second and said you might want to improve your tech language skills because we might want to work with you in the future and i did try to improve my language skills and this is how i got attached to the cold war international history project. the next intervention of christian happen two years later when he invited me to an event in 2007 that then commemorated 40 years to the six-day war in this very hall and at first i wanted to say no. i was a student and i had difficult tunnel vision of graduate students and i thought

i'm writing a dissertation about the crisis talking about an event that happened ten years later so i felt a responsible future already. i'm going to participate in that and my wife politely remembered that i just applied to 12 postdoc programs in the us and got no from all of them. maybe it's not the right time to say no to a major think tank in washington. she was right, obviously. i had about two-three weeks to decide what i'm going to do and some documents in czech, russian and arabic and then i familiarized myself with the history or august the of the six-day war by printing out a few articles and reading them on the transatlantic flight and the event that took place here was a book launch of another book

titled. [inaudible] the main claim, argument of the book was that the soviet union wanted a war to erupt in the middle east of 1967 and this is a known argument in literature and they took it a step further and argue that the soviet union wanted to destroy the nuclear reactor in dimona and thus prevent israel from acquiring nuclear weapons. from the documents i read before i came here, i thought they were wrong what i saw was that the soviets were as surprised by the rapid turn of events in the middle east the end of may of 1967 as all outside observers were and this event and the fact

that some people approach me and thought this was a very interesting documents, can you translate them for us and send them christmas i thought, hey, those documents are so interesting i will write an article about them. so, this is how i started my project about the six-day war and for me it was a mystery wrapped inside an enigma the riddle was the certain event that happened on the 13th of may, 1967. the soviets of the kgb and other channels delivered an intelligence memo to the egyptians in which the alleged that israel will attack syria in the second half of may. now, at that point in time egypt has a military pact with syria so they were like the three

musketeers. one for all and all for one. if syria is intact you must intervene. indeed, after receiving the intelligence memo nasser the egyptian president mobilize the egyptian army and send it into sinai which was demilitarized and the attacks started flowing towards the border of israel. thus, started the mad chain of events that led on the fifth of june, 1967 to the interruption of the six-day war. it's all about the soviets. now, either the soviets lied or someone lied to them and i didn't think that syria light on purpose and i was trying to lied to them. the main suspect was the syrian regime and when i was doing the

research i read a book in hebrew with a not so patterned with struggles in the kremlin and their influence in our region. from the footnotes i gathered that he was able to see us and assigned publication of the syrian party and that looks like a very promising avenue. so, 40 years after he wrote the book, the book was published in 1970, i called the telephone company. he lived in a small settlement near galilee and his name was. [inaudible] they located his number, i called him and 40 years after he wrote this book he picks up the telephone. said hello, i'm. [inaudible] and i'm doing research on the six-day war. i want to see what was wrote. he was a german jewish in his

accented hebrew he told me that he thought they gave them to the justice center. i said thank you and hung up. i called the justice center and they said they don't know what were talking about. we don't have archives or paper. you know what one of the worst places to be in the world is between me and the formation i need for my research. i didn't think twice. i called him again and the man is 80 what else does he have to do in this world other than answer my phone calls. hello? it's not the justice center. where is it? let me think. i think it was in 1948 i'm pulling my hair at the other end because he doesn't remember, there's no chance in the world that will help me locate these papers.

then another voice, more mature personality says wait. try to make him talk about that time. maybe he will recall. i start asking him how those documents came to be in his possession in the first place. then he told me a story i can relate to because it turns out he was as upset about the research as i was. the story is that in 1965, two years before the six-day war, he wrote a book about arab socialism, found a lot of material about egyptian socialism but not so much about syrian socialism. syria, wasn't he,. [inaudible] on the 11th of june when israel is rejoicing because he wanted the decisive victory against the arab military coalition he thanks about one thing. if you go up the golan heights which up to then was part of syria and he reached the

regional capital maybe he can locate and there he can find related publications. he hitchhiked his way along the golan heights, smoldering tanks and all. he meets some local and they point him out to the local and he tells me i arrived too late because their soldiers are stopping to use the paper as a toilet paper. someone left and he jammed it into a sack everything he could find and he went back to. [inaudible] there, rummaging through the materials, he saw a headline that interested him. a secret report about the village of our delegation, the syrian delegation to the soviet union in april of 1966. there he found the syrians were

telling that there were rival factions in the kremlin. informal settings, the syrians were told not to provoke israel into more but in oral conversations and corridor conversations they were told to actually it was okay to conduct hawkish foreign policies toward israel. then he recalled whom he gave the papers. they were at the tel aviv university in the archive center. i arrived there a few days later and all those papers have waited there for 30-35 years without anyone looking at them. when i finished taking photos with my digital camera, i was looking like a coal miner -- i was covered in the dust of

documents. you want nothing more. after i had those documents i started reading around and i was really surprised at what i discovered about syria at the time. when i was doing the research syria was a very boring place, closed society held by the iron grip of the and it turns out in the 50s-60s they experience the slow-motion civil war toward society torn my really strong tensions between rural farmers from minority and they were extremely poor and they were fighting yes, the rich sunni land owners and industrials living in the big cities and i didn't know all that. fairly, it's a good background to what's happening in syria

right now. there were articles that said the syrians. [inaudible] and the other said egypt was no pawn of the soviet union and then headed to own interests in may of 1967. then i left it at that. a couple of years later i got a tenure-track position at the hebrew university which is like the holy grail, some find it in many don't. from day one i was told grants, grants, grants. if you don't get a grant, you won't get tenure. not getting tenure is almost as bad as death for academics. so, i applied. i applied to two funds and i didn't expect to receive either but i did, i received both. now, i had to do something with the money so i hired a few research assistants which is a true tower of babel polish and

german, another translator documents and so forth. i had what social site is called a dataset. i still wasn't sure what i wanted to do with it. three years later i get the news that i'll have a fellowship in one year without you. i love my students but one year without teaching? that's fantastic. you can get a lot done so i wrote a history of the developing world. i had a year off and then it was june 2014 and i don't know if it happened to you but you wake up from a night sleep and you have this whole complete thought in your head like you thought about it the whole night. my thoughts was that in three years it will be exactly the 50 year anniversary to the six-day war. if i start working fast and use the fellowship here to write the

book i might make a buck out of it. that looks really promising. so, then the race started. basically, the race to write the book on time. then while researching the book, i realized that i wanted to write something different from the kind of articles i had produced a couple of years beforehand. then just after my dissertation and i call it writing from the trenches -- basically, the main driving force of the essays i wrote then was like this is an interesting document and it's interesting because i found this interesting document and the next paragraph is another interesting document. you get the view of the infantry fighting in the trenches. i wanted a book that would give a wider view, the one of a

general standing on the hill looking at the battlefield. yeah, that's the point i'm starting to tell you about the book, actually wrote in the book. what i figured out after reading a few books written about the war is that all of them focus on the war themselves and those six action-packed days on the battlefield on the un and moscow and washington and there's not enough that explain why the war happened in the first place. being in israel, you should be surprised i'm trying to understand how wars happen but they disrupted my life. in fact, one more is responsible for the fact that i exist. my generation in israel is known as the winter of 1973 generation.

what happened in 1973: the war. lots of young husbands went back from the front and they wanted to deal with the fact that they almost died by creating new life and then when i was eight-nine there was the first lebanon war. my stepfather was recruited and he was serving at the front and i remember how we would watch the news every night because the last segment was when they would read was killed in action. like the vietnam war each day brought a new list of people that died at the front. then in 1991 there was the first gulf war and this unrelated regional crisis in the gulf and certainly, missiles started raining on israel and i had to see my holocaust surviving

grandfather with a gas mask on his head so, i'm obsessed with question of how war starts. and how wars in general start. talking specifically about the six-day war and i came to the understanding -- at least this is my argument, that you should see the war in a global context because even before were starting to deal with what happened on the 13th of may and why he acted the way he did when he received that memo we should think of all the facts that the whole developing world was experiencing a severe economic crisis at the time and all the countries that fought the six-day war were developing countries, some more developed than others. israel, more than egypt but they were all developing countries.

what happens in the mid- 60s is basically, the business takes a decade beforehand in the mid- 50s everybody let's say in places like the us, in washington, new york, even in moscow, they looked at the developing world like people looked at china until the two years ago or before hand the way that people looked at japan and thought it would rule the world they sought rapid growth and they extrapolated into the future. but what happened was the developing countries got a lot of foreign aid money both to the soviet union and the united states and eastern and western europe. but the money was mis- invested so there was rapid growth at first and then it tapered off. you see specifically around the mid- 60s that there are statistically military coups in the third world and they are

related to the crisis. what happened is there are civilian leaders in developing countries, they preside a decade over a booming calming untrained economy and then when it stops when the economic crisis sets in then they lose their legitimacy and they lose their popularity. what kind of institution steps in? usually a military. it's a tool for internal repression or it's used to buy some popularity by pursuing adventures abroad to seek victories that you can't achieve anymore in the context of the national economy. so, that's what happened also in the middle east around the mid- 60s, there's an economic

crisis in real, economic crisis in egypt and in syria, the military takes things into his own hands by february of 1956. the military was ruling syria. the title i gave the book was generals of the home because this is what happened. generals were more dominant in the decision-making process and they preferred hawkish foreign policies to make things worse there was a superpower intervention. intervention...intervention...

iran saudi arabia israel and jordan to the tune of $800 million. in the wars preceding the work.

in the soviet union now they are promising more for the countries would give the soviet fleet permanent access in alexandria, the important egypt. and in syria. the superpowers basically exacerbated the crisis by not giving for enable exactly one developing countries and specifically middle eastern countries needing the most and five pursuing policies that basically strengthened generals that were pursuing foreign policies. so when you get to the summer of 1967 we have a situation where a word doesn't have to happen. but it is very very likely.

these two stories, the one i told you about i came to write the book and the story about how they answer one of the perennial questions in history two great men lead history or are they slaves of circumstances beyond their control? so now we have the answer because you might plan to do your research project on something not related to this six-day war. or you may plan to not have a war if you are a leader in middle east in the 1960s. and if something comes up you get a grant, a fellowship, and then you stumble into fighting a war, writing a book you did not plan on doing in the first

place. thank you for listening. [applause] >> thank you guy laron. the floor is now open for your questions. i'm sure that he will be happy to talk more about other parts of the book. if you could please, wait for the microphone.let's start here and then state your name and affiliation please.>> my name is alexis - after listening very carefully to you specifically because i think the book transiently was total rubbish - my question number one is so for the soviet in the kremlin who supported the idea

of bringing it back to egypt? my last question is how in the world, knowing that - was the epicenter and the only obstacle under his way to -- one would think that soviets could convince that syria was under traffic it was that he had rightful he became the leader of egypt. so how can this rubbish could ever be - become a bestseller? >> okay three questions. all of them excellent. let me tell you in shorthand

the story of the soviet intelligence. i started my talks with the one that was delivered on 13 may. i'm obsessed with this story. i think i found the answer. so what happens is something like this. they gave post to operations against israel. so the option was in the israel launches an offensive against syria and then complicates things because syria has a pact with egypt. and there also backed by the soviet union. so it might not be a regional war. i mean the army convinced itself, convinced itself they can localize the work. the prime minister did not think so. so the syrians are getting more and more cheeky towards may

1967. i think as a last resort, they use the secret weapon. the secret weapon was a double agent that is really employed if soviet kgb - that was the person for all of you called work offs, that was the person that deliver the secret speech in february 19 56 so he was the secret weapon russians thought he was working for them. actually he was working for us. meaning israel. and he was fed with reliable information to deliver to his

soviet contact person. but also he was fed with some false information. and specifically one day before you get this alert reach into moscow there is a cabinet meeting in israel. and there is a decision. a sacred decision to deliver a warning the syrians through one third party. and the third party where the soviets. that psychological operation number one. in their psychological operations number two. it is happening in damascus. even before this news was delivered to moscow from the eighth of may. the syrian regime is on the verge of collapse. huge riots in the streets. you can't get bread, milk,

eggs, nothing! a complete shutdown of commercial light. and israel is about to attack us in they would do it with jordan and iran. so when what happens first is that information is delivered by the double agent to the soviets. then they meet and they authorized syrians when the syrians hear this report - yes, not only are they going to attack us there already is zero troops on the border. 11 for grades. they were not a living brigades at all in the israeli army at the time. and the soviets by that peers they deliver the news to egypt. in egypt already was hearing from the syrians that israelis playing a war against them. syrians are four crying wolf. so they don't believe them but now they have a corroboration

from moscow. so that looks reliable. and on top of that i said the political situation was pretty tense. they have to take into consideration the option that if it won't allow the chief of staff to deploy egyptian troops in sinai. it was a possibility. that is the story about how this intelligence alert came to be. and this is why egypt made a major error of judgment in getting involved in all of this. they thought they would lock their way through the crisis. and then, and then things just started to be more and more complicated for them. they did not back down. factions in the kremlin. basically that's a faction led

by - he represents a kind of civilian intelligence of people who run factories, the people who run the ministries and they don't want war in the middle east. and they fulfill it important role in the story because he is the only person to meet with the egyptian minister for about a week before the war starts. and he does everything he can. to warn him. they should climb down the tree that they should open - and then there is the faction that vibration and he's supported by the party obviously secret services and most importantly the military. and it is a soviet military that insists that egyptian intelligence what is developed

is true. even though they say they are no concentrations on the syrian border, the soviet secretary of defense basis but yes it is true the end israelis only postpone the operation but they will launch it eventually. and then most famously when the egyptian minister for this one with the for the war after all of the words of - just before -- he tells them you know, we are in the mediterranean. with weapons that you are not aware of their enormity. and if something happens we will fight by your side.if you need us, just whistle and we will appear in every place you need us. that is quite a commitment. and that is exactly what was reported.

so the fact that the kremlin was talking from the two sides of its mouth, - >> first i want to make a comment in the sense of scholars and academics. we are not by definition narcissists. and just the opposite. we try and focus on things that are not us. so i didn't really know what your argument is because you spent most of the time talking about yourself. that is a problem. and i am not convinced. so here is a simple - >> how come you are not convinced? >> i have evidence over the

course of and a half hour to understand what your argument is. >> read the book. >> well, now i am not sure i will. >> okay. quest the question is this. there's a simple estimation for the six-day war. which is the lead is a series that they could destroy the city of israel he made a bunch of misjudgments based on a lot of hatred.and these misjudgments led to disaster. fortunately israel was prevented them from accomplishing what they wanted to do. that is in accord with everything that they were saying publicly. when he did in the weeks preceding the war, the israelis had every reason to believe that united arab republic and iraq and jordan were intent on destroying the state of israel and they failed. so my question to you, and i'm getting an opportunity to explain your basic thesis is, why is that assertion that

interpretation of the origins of the war wrong? because what you offered was a variant of economic reduction. namely - >> so i have an argument. >> but it was not elaborated in great deal. basically there was a crisis in the business cycle and in order to get out of domestic problems, these people went to work. that is an argument and alternative evidence about why these nations went to war. and so you are offering an argument that is up against a lot of evidence over many decades. now i am giving you an opportunity to justify it in one more depth. >> you raise an interesting question which is beyond what people said publicly. let's say the side intentions. let's talk about capabilities.

that is something that i researched in-depth because i wanted to say something about that. and i wanted to footnote eight. so they knew quite well because israeli intelligence, israeli knowledge about the capabilities was excellent. it goes beyond the fact that israel had to top high-level spies up to the mid-60s. both in damascus and cairo. they also used secret unit, the secret commander unit two plant bugs unrated telephone lines. both in sinai and in syria. there lots of ways of knowing what is going on in the other side. so what was going on on the other side both the syrian and

egyptian army had plans for limited attacks. not major offenses. they had no way of actually doing that. why? they were not trained. they were equipped. what if the objections, with they had limited israeli over the israelis would have done it to them? if the bomb does plans on the ground. so they never gave egyptians enough range to reach israeli airfields. it only had heavy bombers and it wasn't trained in a way that would have allowed them to evade israeli system. beyond that the fact that there

were lines - millions of dollars of the soviet union. the whole doctrine of fighting for both of the egyptians and the syrians was basically to hide behind them. wait for israel to break its offensive peace against his bunkers and trenches. and then perhaps launch a counterattack. they did not have the capability. they did not have the weapons, they did not have the leadership, they did not have the training. forgot to mention the fact that so the egyptian army and yemen. they were hastily constricted. they were thrown into the desert, corrupt dictatorship, no water, no food, no maps, new uniforms, weapons. he is really know that. they listen to the radio

transmitters. they hear them well to their commanders that they did not supply them with water. there in the desert and they are not getting any. they also captured a few egyptian prisoners before the war even started. they knew exactly what was going on. things were a mess. the commander of j -- of the egyptian army is a drunk. the basic plan defense that they prepared for many years he ruined it. so it was less the case of israel under a military existential crisis and more of a case that israeli general staff quietly knew that they were going to win the war big. they had an excellent plan. they are professionals. a plan for that over a decade. they were absolutely ready. from the first point was wiping

out the air force to armored warfare. and you have to give them credit. those were really professionals in the israeli army. so it's not just me talking. is the cia. the cia said all the time egyptian forces are in posture. they don't have a chance in the world to win against israel. if israel attacks it will win in one week. it doesn't matter that is with the cia said. that is what they wrote in a memo that they delivered. so i do not think that they could have tenant. >> thank you. let me ask a little bit about you already hinted in your talk about the sources. talk with us more about the sources that went into that you consulted for this book and talk about what are some of the

areas where the evidence still very frightened terry where one on thin ice perhaps. >> okay. so i regret the fact that i did not have general security documents because those would have been valuable.don't think i will ever see them. i think there waiting to be declassified.when the date arrives it will simply shred them that is what i was simply told. i did not have syrian or egyptian archives. you can mitigate the fact for egyptian archives for the fact that people in egypt like other countries, they take documents back home with them after they finished their role or their function and they used it for political purposes.later they publish them so had the protocol, the full protocol of the meeting between the

egyptian minister -- you can see in telegrams that were delivered by egyptian foreign ministry. the british, the american archive, the israeli archive were very helpful but i, if i heard anything from a western sources i felt pretty certain you know there was always a document or a check telegram protect francis my story and i talked a lot about it in the book. with the rivalry between nasser and his commander. because after the war, the version that he gave was i did not do it.

amer did. i did not have anything that was going on inside the army because he was inspiring to launch a crew against me. so it is a version after the fact. so a lot of the egyptian men talk about this. certainly people that worked with nasser say that there that i had checked documents that these were reports from cairo and they said explicitly like a few days before the crisis starts. that nasser was seeking to cut armor. i think i have, did not have all the sources i wanted on the soviet and arab side. but i had enough to corroborate my assumptions. thank you. >> we will take a couple of questions. start of front here. >> thank you so much for your interesting presentation. >> please introduce yourself. >> abraham -- thank you for

your interesting presentation. i look forward to reading your book. my question relates to the role of the europeans particularly in getting ready for the war. i happen to serve in the israeli air force in the six days war. and to the best of my recollection all of the planes were french. the mirage, the lead fighter, the farmer, the transport plan which moved soldiers from one to another. after a little flying on the morning of the federal relief unsuccessfully the egyptian airfield on both sides. and later on the air force was also helpful with advancing the three - in the sinai desert. by june 9 israeli tankers were already swimming in the canal. to your point about the bunkers

and the fortification, the israeli had a huge advantage. they had a huge advantage they were there 11 years earlier and they knew the terrain, the new the mountain passes. the commanders knew where they are going. there is a huge advantage. >> your question? >> my questions about france in particular the europeans. what was the -- >> let's take another question so we can bundle them. >> my name is thomas -. i thought of asking you to compare what you have done to michael orman's book but i think you pretty will explain the differences there. you might want to comment anyway but i do have a question you referred to the cia always unanswered question. there been various explanations offered none particularly convincing. his address that. and if you want to compare that

book to yours i would appreciate it. i think your sources have very good by the way. >> thank you. it is a good question on the crisis. it is a common misconception to see that israel won the war thanks to american weapons system. it is not just - israeli victory in the six-day war is manufactured in west europe. two thirds of the tanks in the israeli myrtle grade in 1000 at the time and i will remember this for a couple of years and then i will forget it. but i still to, they were 1000 tanks. about 650 centurion tanks made in the uk and 100 percent of

all of the planes in the israeli air force were french made. now this is a lead to a more interesting story. because what the israeli air force told to the world and israeli republic is that there are jewish geniuses. they came up with this idea of how to circumvent around soviet radars and surface to air missiles. just geniuses. they invented it all from scratch. that is not true. what is on this exciting amazing operation operation that they conducted on the first three hours of the six day war. they did it to all of them. that was an implementation of front technology and french

doctrine. and soviet weapons.this is exactly how it was supposed to work. but not in the middle east.it was supposed to work in europe, this was the french document. this is how they wanted to start their war against the pack. they planned everything in advance for the plan for plans that the mirage. they compromised on the weight that the mirage would be able to take with it. a load would be layered but it would be able to drop the bombs from low altitude. now the deal was that it would be able to drop nuclear bombs from low altitude. that is why they insist on purchasing those plane from france. because israeli air force commander was a big supporter of the israeli nuclear project.

so eventually it was translated into a conventional rather than a nuclear attack. everything that happened on those three hours including the fact that the israelis were able to suppress soviet signal, those also french equipment. that was french equipment for the warfare. and it worked on the first hours of the war. so france had a big role to play. they were not very pleased by the results. but they basically equipped israel in a way that helped win the war. and even announcing an embargo, the french industry they saw them as a reliable client. they supplied israel in the very first hours of the war. they said anything you need, tell us and we will supply it.

and it was like an air train coming from paris to tel aviv in the same thing was happening in the uk. the british were doing the same. publicly they were not supportive. but behind the scenes they helped israel get the hardware until the very last minute. liberty. i will tell you the truth, liberty was not essential to the kind of argument that was trying to make. i love conspiracy theories. but the common sources, they did not suggest, they suggested a major major mistake. the israeli chief of staff when he heard what happened he went and almost fainted. he had hysteria which depicts his state of mind throughout

this whole war. but that is another story. all of the senior israeli decision-makers, they were shocked to learn what happens to the liberty. so the explanation that i know of seems to be the most plausible in that israelis fail to identify which ship is it and then there was this competition between the navy and the air force. and there were so obsessed with it that they did not see all of the warning signs that should have suggested to them that it was not an air vessel. i need to be careful because everything is recorded. well - my book is better. but seriously i think my book

is a prequel to oren's book. basically the title of the book is six days of war. that is what this book is about. you get day 180 pages, day two 90 pages, date three and so on. so is book does a wonderful work of events as they happened in a very short span of time. but i do not think he talks about what happened before hand. one might argue that this is also a political decision because if you look at things from the vantage point of the 14th of 15 may egypt is the aggressor. clearly it shuts down the israeli motivation for the straits. if you look at things from three or four years earlier you

might want to second-guess military operations at israel conducted against jordan and syria that really helped to push nasser into a corner which he felt he has to do something otherwise he would be completely destroyed in terms of being a regional leader. >> thank you. go over here. >> david fishman george mason university. you said a little bit about the soviet union situation with - what was the us position at that time and how did the nature of the us russia relationship or the russia soviet relationship at the time. affect the situation in terms of starting the war, exacerbating it, allowing it to come to an end for making it

come to an end when it did.>> thank you. let's take the second question as well. >> five isaacson, george washington university. i have two quick questions for you. you are up - is there a smoking gun were your argument about the role of economics and shipping arab policy? is our standard document, a set of documents where we can really trace that? second, the remarks on the limited capacity of the arab states for offensive war. can you speak a little bit about the potential for falls of relying on israeli military. because we know it will fail spectacularly six years later. >> thank you. i will start with your third question. i wasn't relying only on israeli intelligence sources. i said that the israelis knew

very well what was going on but the whole recreation of events while i told you about arab military doctrine, is something that egyptian general telnet memoirs. they say that it just shouldn't have even planned for an offensive that was a complete folly on our side to even think about it. we had a good plan. it is called the conqueror. we had a good plan. had we stayed where we were supposed to stay, if we did not try to block - which never appeared in a contingency plan we had a fair chance to hold her own against the israelis. so when i said was not based on the on israeli sources. he said about the israelis fail spectacularly, that is the thing you have to assume.

israel intelligence always great about capability. always terrible about intentions. it made the same mistake on the six-day war. what they told the government for three or four years, we can do operation against syria. nasser would never intervene. and so it knew everything about the egyptian army. and it bungled the intelligence assessment regarding intentions. not usually because intelligence chief always depended on the opinion of the government. and on the chief of staff. whoever wanted to prove that you could localize this theory that is with the intelligence said. smoking gun. you don't find a smoking gun

for this type of argument. you usually have circumstantial evidence. no one would say you know what? rick in an economic crisis we need the short betrays war. that's why we're going to war. it is not something - had this kind of discussion with a professor in my department. and he said to have a smoking gun for your argument? and i said we have department meetings and we argue about things, has anyone ever - it is the same thing! the american role in the crisis. here is where my book i think differs with oren's book and

other books about the american role. the usual story, the accepted story that washington wanted to solve the crisis by diplomatic means. organizing international armada. it would go through the - and show that nasser has no intention to implement but the truth of the matter is that the rest of the story is that you know after a few weeks washington realized that they had no partners to do that. it was deeply involved in vietnam. it could not allow itself to find itself fighting the war against the egyptian army in the middle east. when i found is that washington, just like moscow was talking from the two sides of its mouth. the state department, the pentagon, they were looking at

things strategically. they were more critical toward israel. they wanted to take a harsher line toward israel. and then there was the white house. in the white house was very political. from the very beginning of the crisis, signals from the white house and the cia were like, don't ask us! you're not going to - understand the hate. and some people chanted the foreign minister did not want war. so the signals that they got from the state department. during the war itself, that is the interesting thing. just three days before the war starts the - was in washington.

i found the american doctors and he was like an elephant in a china shop. that he told americans one thing that was important and was implement to join the war. he told the head of the cia, we do not need your help. we can do this without your help. we want you to set aside and say nothing. but if the soviets were trying to intervene, you would move to neutralize them. and that happens in the very last hours of the war because people in moscow - they see that the israel army is about to mascot damascus and they deliberate telegram to the hotline to the white house and saying we will take any measure to stop this including the military. they said okay so you take the

navy and start moving towards the mediterranean. eastern mediterranean. and i think nothing came out of it eventually war besides that - wesh2 kept inside of the deal. >> thank you. we will take questions over here. >> thank you very much. i was wondering. -- i was wondering whether you can say a little bit more about the soviet side in particular also about the junior allies. because a sea of bulgarian files, german files so a little bit more about that. >> thank you. and russ johnson behind you. >> russ johnson. in the run-up to the outbreak of the war in israel, was there

assumption that the outcome would be a larger israel? and was that post we are planning to is that thought about what one with delicious new territories? >> the first question i did not hear it clearly. >> is one question. in israel, in the run up to the war was a postwar planning and thinking about what one would do with expanded territory and - >> there was postwar planning. it wasn't very good. the west postwar planning to the occupation of the west in gaza. that was meticulous good they prepared it years in advance. there was a military commander to the west bank since 1963.

-- would later be the president of the state of israel. he would be recruited and he would get intelligence briefing, he recruited his own people and they started to devise the shape of military occupation and then there was also the legal branch. they also planned everything since 1963. that's because in 1963 they were on the verge of conquering the west bank. they were about to fall from power. but ever since then they prepared kits for the judge's. that would sit in the west bank. they even devised the west bank to districts and you have exactly how many courts you want to create in them. they translated into hebrew several books about

international law regarding military occupation. they even translated the jordanian book of war. they decide which laws they want to uphold and which laws they going to abolish. so indeed the israel occupation of the west bank and gaza in the first years went on swimmingly. it was a success generally speaking.the other stuff is what they thought about doing with the territory they conquered. and again i'm talking about the military was the only institution that was planning and it was also the main institutions that were thinking of using the next war in order to conquer more territory. the argument was always if we get there before israel, get to the jordan river, these are natural lines and descent. it is like in antitank hurdle

for the canal, rivers, the mountainous terrain. and then we will be secure. one thing they never calculated was the number of trips they will need in order to hold these lines. and then only after the war it was like wow! we have such a long line of defense against egypt and then they started becoming evicted to magical thinking. they didn't say in hindsight, maybe was a good idea actually to -- we have no real chance of effectively defending that line. simply said we are much more superior than the arabs technologically self 80 to 60 tanks will be able to stop the avalanche of tanks. then the second would be that it would be enough to have 200

tanks in the canal between 67 and 73. in that will stop the attack of an army of half a million people. and to add to that, the zeros did not have buffer zones anymore. so before the war they knew the egyptian army is getting into sinai. that is a sense for israel to prepare the war. after the war the distance between israeli physicians and egyptian positions are 60 to 80 meters. that postwar planning work disastrously. in the first few days of this. >> thank you. >> i do not answer the question of the soviet allies. they did not have a lot of -

before the war but is an interesting story about what happens after the war. before the war in general that european allies were more critical about the whole issue of foreign aid. the soviets were giving way too many - we are losing good money. we should stop this. especially countries that had nothing to sell to developing countries .: for example. they consult potatoes to egypt for example. so they were against that. obviously during the war itself panic and more so in east germany, people are convinced that they are on the verge of world war iii. it started pulling their money

out of banks. they start to hoard food, super markets are empty after a few days. after the work two things. they are worried that forces due to the warsaw pact - with the israeli did with application of the trench technology on soviet technology. and in several discussions of the warsaw pact no less than three summits of the warsaw pact were diverted to the crisis in the middle east. many of them try to argue that it is a good sign for us to stop investing in other people and start investing ourselves in the eastern bloc. other were gung ho about using this opportunity to get even

greater access. east germany was certainly one of those countries. also yugoslavia. i think reading those discussions is interesting. did hey, - do they have input in 1968? this is one of the reasons that the block fell apart. it was never integrated enough. final question. over here. >> thank you. i have two if you allow it. first is that there is a really interesting human element to the story which is the state of mind of many of the key players especially the israeli leaders. we already know about the state of mind and the start of this episode.

i wonder if by any chance you are able to gain any other insights into what was going on there. the second question is you are clearly breaking a lot of dishes here. at least one of the reviews that i read because you something like deep - deeply discouraging. >> your second question is easy. no response. they don't know the book exists. it's in english! the spokesperson of the - tried to convince the daily news show they try to convince them to interview me about the book. it is yale university press. i said we don't do items unknown hebrew books. okay so nosy sponsor israel yet. i'm trying to publish an article and then i will leave the country or something.

about the state you know so that is an interesting point. - collapsed and had a nervous breakdown before the war. he did not recuperate from that. he didn't run the war. and then - collapses. he gives up. he agrees to a point the minister defense and from that point onwards effectively lost the affairs. he took everything. he once said in a cabinet meeting, they wanted to do a vote. they want to take this and they want to do a vote. and he said on these matters i do not accept democracy. and they feared him so much

that they did not take the vote at all. but then after the audit no less than 10 or 12 hours later, he has his own collapse. he rise from the pit. he gets up and gives the order to launch an attack. and he has all sorts of i just saw the intelligence and suggest that the syrians were collapsing. they were not collapsing. not more than the usual. later on in an interview he gave before his death, in an interview which he told the journalist he will publish it only after i am dead. he said i gave up. i had all that pressure on me

and i knew that people would say after the war that i am to blame. i could not take it on myself. all of the stories. about -- and the mental collapse. that he gave up. distributed power of the military as an institution. if they didn't appoint - on 1 june israel will not have found itself in war five visited. every time the military pushed, the pressure was so strong that even a capable general of a very experienced politician, a hard-nosed person, all of them basically gave up. >> thank you.

i think we will need to bring this discussion to an end. it is important and sensitive issues. i think your book has raised a lot of questions as you can tell from the audience reactions and the comments and questions. i thank you for your questions, for the comments. we will, there will be lots more on the six day war. we will try to make more documents accessible in our digital archives in the coming days. we'll have a number of scholars from all sorts of backgrounds and expertise provide additional insight into the war. jeff will be contributing as well as other dollars connected

with the project good i invite you to visit our website and the history of public policy block your sources and methods. google sources and methods and you will come to a blog. lots more information there. we invite you to join that discussion. and now i would like to invite you to first to a reception downstairs on the fourth floor to continue this conversation a bit more informally. and invite you to a round of thanks and applause to our future speaker this afternoon. thank you. [applause] >> by the way, the book is on so outside. very low price. i am just saying!