Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #357466 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
"'Here is a book that is truly revisionist, challenging what we thought we knew about the origins and conduct of the Six-Day War, Israel's crushing victory over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria 40 years ago. The exact role played by the Soviet Union has always been murky. The authors work their way through the murk, meticulously using every snippet of relevant information from an extraordinary range of sources.' Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs (included in its list of outstanding new books). 'Ginor and Remez, an enterprising pair of Jerusalem researchers who have been trawling Soviet archives and double-agents, explain the war as a Kremlin plot gone wrong... It's a terrifying story, thoroughly sourced, and much of it is entirely new... If you want to grasp the background to tonight's 10 o'clock news, read this groundbreaking book.' Norman Lebrecht, Evening Standard"

Review
"An ambitious and thoroughly revisionist account of the origins of the Six-Day War. By placing Israeli nuclear ambitions-and the Soviet reaction-as major links in the chain of events, the authors have produced a book that will stand out in the debate about the Cold War and the Middle East."-Odd Arne Westad, co-chair, Cold War Studies Centre, London School of Economics (Odd Arne Westad )

"A unique contribution to the history of the Cold War in the eastern Mediterranean. The authors challenge the predominant view of the 1967 war, and theirs is certainly an original explanation that has been little appreciated if not entirely ignored by Western historians."-David Murphy, former chief of Soviet operations, Central Intelligence Agency (David Murphy )

"A fascinating, plausible, and hitherto untold tale. The authors demonstrate that the Six-Day War marked a major Soviet political-military defeat comparable to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Carefully researched and reconstructed, fast-paced and well-written, this book represents a major contribution to the history of the modern Middle East."-Dov S. Zakheim, former U.S. Under Secretary of Defense (Dov S. Zakheim )

"A well-researched and provocative new look at the background to the 1967 Israeli-Arab war. Its central thesis appears unreal until one assesses the myriad sources and deep documentation that add up to a compelling argument. This book will immediately assume a place of prominence among the must-read sources for understanding the war."-Daniel C. Kurtzer, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Egypt, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University (Daniel C. Kurtzer )

"This book resolves one of the great mysteries of the Six-Day War, putting the Soviet Union at the center of the drama. Written with a wealth of documentary evidence, it has all the intrigue of a detective story, and all the pace of a novel."-Sir Martin Gilbert, author of Israel: A History (Sir Martin Gilbert )

"This fascinating new book brings to light new, original research on the origins of the 1967 War. While data and facts are still coming in and skeptics may scoff, the Soviet role now appears to be larger and more intensive than many of us may have realized."-Thomas R. Pickering, Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs 1997-2000, Ambassador to Russia 1993-96, Ambassador to Israel 1985-88 (Thomas R. Pickering )

The text reads like the solution to a mystery, amassing information from voluminous sources... and making an intuitively compelling case... (Daniel Pipes New York Sun )

It's a terrifying story, thoroughly sourced, and much of it is entirely new. (Norman Lebrecht Evening Standard )

"Ginor and Remez bring to the table new insights . . . and a profound challenge to the conventional wisdom. . . . [It] should become standard reading not only on the Six-Day War, but for Middle East history as well."-Mark T. Clark, Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (Mark T. Clark Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa )

"A welcome addition to the history of the Soviet role in the 1967 Six-Day War and the USSR's strategic deception. . . . priceless in fostering knowledge about the Kremlin's methods to provoke crises and conflicts to advance its interests and power . . ."-Ariel Cohen, Middle East Quarterly (Ariel Cohen Middle East Quarterly )

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Good book with a new of thorough rewrite to make it readable for the lay reader.
The basic premise of the book is very interesting. That having been said I found the book difficult to read for the following reasons--
1. It seems to be a set of articles strung together in chronological order as a book. That in itself is not bad; however, there is no real cohesion or flow from one chapter/article to the next.
2. The book is set in an academic readership lever and not directed to the general public which makes it difficult for a person not immersed in the material to really comprehend. Good readability requires that a book be "dumbed down" for lay readers;
3. Because the book is a connection of articles--rather than a book of its own right, a most important chapter is missing between chapter 13 and 14--what happened on June 5 and the 6-day war(i.e., the wiping out of the UAR airforce, etc.) and how did that force the change in Soviet policy. We have to rely on our own memories of 1967 instead of having it put there to put the whole book in context. Again, this is probably a result of the book being on a higher academic level and a string of articles in which the reader is "presumed" to know everything;
4. On a more picky level, I find that endnotes which are common in academic matters should be replaced with footnotes. Footnotes do not detract from the book and would help the lay person immensely.
In addition, I find the font/set-up makes reading difficult.
5. All that criticism having been said, I find the book very interesting but difficult to slog through.

A New Perspective on the 1967 War
This book, exhaustively researched over many years by the authors, carefully elucidates the heretofor unknown but seminal role of the Soviet Union in the genesis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

In brief, the author's hypothesis is that the USSR, by a campaign of incitement and disinformation (such as informing Syria of the non-existant massing of Israeli troops on the Northern Frontier) fomented an incidiary situation with the deliberate attempt to start an Arab-Israeli war. Why? The USSR was constitutionally opposed to the possession of nuclear weapons by the Israelis. US and Soviet intelligence services estimated that completion of a deliverable nuclear device by Israel was immenent. Soviet overflights of the Dimona reactor (using the MiG-25 "Foxbat") were part of a coordinated plan for a combined sea (amphibious), air and land campaign integrating Soviet armed forces with those of it's Arab allies to demolish the reactor and ultimately to destroy the Israeli State.

While Soviet involvement was never a secret, the conventional line is that the USSR exercised a "restraining" role vis-a-vis it's Arab allies (the short-lived "United Arab Republic" and, to a lesser extent, Jordan). The authors of this book convincingly demonstrate that the Soviets took a diametrically opposite approach: instigating the conflict, promising military, logistical and diplomatic support and encouraging aggression.

As is well known, the proximate causes of the conflict were the removal of the United Nations Observer force from the Sinai, closure of the Strait leading to Eilat (violating UN "freedom of the sea" resolutions and international law) and, not incidentally, a massive influx of Soviet arms and advisors. This and other aspects have been dealt with by many other authors (beginning with the Churchills and, more recently, by Michael Oren in "Six Days of War"). This book concentrates on the Soviet role and, as a result, assumes some background knowledge of the conflict.

Perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of the book is the explanation of the Israeli attack on the US "spy ship" the "Liberty". This action was attributed by the authors to confusion by Israeli radar monitoring: by their explanation, Israeli equipment detected a rapidly moving (~28 knots) ship which they assumed to be a Soviet war vessel. This ship was in relatively close proximity to the "Liberty". As the entire US Sixth Fleet had, in response to Soviet and Arab allegations of US participation in military actions with the Israelis, withdrawn by hundreds of miles from the vicinity with the sole exception of the "Liberty", the potential for a mistake was high. Some conspiracy theorists allege that the ship was deliberately attacked by the Israelis to thwart US interference in further military actions: the authors show that there were National Security Agency linguists abord, but they were all experts in Russian and Arabic; none spoke Hebrew. Given this finding, the conspiracy angle becomes less enticing. The attack appears to have occurred for this reason and (albeit hard for some to accept) a stupid blunder by the Israelis and by the Americans, as well.

The book was difficult to read: it is written as a factual exposition and has none of the novelistic style that entices a casual reader. There are exhaustive references and a mountain of minute detail, all of which support the author's premises, but do little to ease the burden of the reader.

In summary, this is a fine journalistic work and provides a firm basis for further research. Ultimate clarification will depend upon release of still-classified documents from US and Russian archives. Some elements may never be confirmed, as the USSR Politburo often cloaked important decisions in propaganda and sometimes did not record them at all. Nonetheless, the book is convincing and worth attention from any student of the Middle East and it's apparently incessant wars.

Interesting controversial and perhaps true
The major idea of this book is that the Six- Day War did not break out as many believe simply as part of an Arab plan to destroy Israel. It did not break out as many others believe because of mistakes made by both Egyptians and Israelis in reading the intentions of their enemies. Rather the idea here is that there was a Soviet- Egyptian plan to induce Israel to make a first strike- and that this in turn would be countered by a joint Soviet- Arab counter-attack, which most importantly would destroy the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona. The book claims that the astounding and surprising success of the Israeli airforce in destroying the airforces of the Arabs on the ground obviated the plan.
The authors provide much source material for their well- written story. Whether their thesis is correct or not is however not at all finally clear. The Soviets in general in their foreign operations had a very cautious and conservative side. Something about this plan does not sound like them.
Nonetheless this is a welcome read to the growing literature on the Six- Day War. I would only complement this book with Michael Oren's book on the Six- Day War which has a very different conception of the Soviet role.