Advertisement

Israel Started It All

The Middle East was a battlefield for most of the 20th century, but one of the hardest fought wars of all was in 1973 when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against on Israel on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. For three weeks the battle swung violently from side to side it brought each in sight of victory and defeat and it brought the superpowers America and the Soviet Union close to a nuclear showdown. The Israelis where in no doubt they were fighting for their countries very survival. In this program reporter Peter Snow reveals how Arab and Israeli commanders astonished each other with the boldness of their strategies. No 20th century conflict has been as lasting and as bitter as the struggle between Israel and it’s Arab neighbours and this is the story of the biggest battle between them which is still such a sensitive issue in Egypt that they wouldn’t let the BBC film there for this documentary.

Join The Conversation

26 Comments / User Reviews

Leave Your Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  1. Its even worse now.

  2. It’s not a surprise that Jewish community would reject any or all of the truth you learn from this documentary(Think Jesus on the cross). Israel makes 1940’s Germany look like rational, peaceful place to live. There is enough hatred in one block, than all of Europe. And even more denial and victimization. Not all Jews are evil, but neither were Muslims or Nazi’s. History was and is being bought in favor of those who held/hold the shekels.

  3. I thought the title of this documentary was a joke at first.

    The title is irresponsible, and not just because BBC is supposed to be politically ‘neutral.’

    The title, does however reinforce my believe, that very few people engaged in the history and political studies of this conflict, actually care about peace.

    The historiography of the Israel and Palestine conflict might be vast, but it has less nuance than any other historiographical debate. When, it is not like 2 squabbling brothers whining to their mother about ‘who started it,’ it is like two sets of football fans, calling each other silly and petty names via chants devised by drunken louts on the terraces.

    If we really want to know ‘who started it’ then a bit more introspection is needed. Israel was born out of British Imperialism, meanwhile Zionism was born out of millennia of persecution of Jews in Europe. Without British Imperialism, there would be no Israel, and without over 1000 years of European anti-semitism, the Jews of Europe would have never needed there to be an Israel.

    While I appreciate that this is not the fault of Palestinian people, I also think that as europeans, we have no right to blame the Jews for landing on the heads of Palestinians, when it was us that set the building that they were forced to jump from on fire in the first place.

    Now, If we truly want peace in this region, and not via genocide, or the cleansing of one side via attrition and land theft, then we must stop talking about who started it and start talking about how this is going to end. War and conflict is caused by a constant cycle of self righteousness and feelings of victimhood. It is fanned by the uninvolved, chipping in with their two pennies worth and riling up each side even more.

    Can we as academics, journalists, humans stop fanning these flames and help the flre be extinguished. Peace is built in two ways. Either via the complete cultural obliteration of one party at the expense of the other, usually by war, colonialism, forced assimilation and ethnic cleansing. Or it is built by compassion, understanding, forgiveness, collaboration and compromise.

    I hope for all parties involved in this conflict, that peace in this case is achieved by the latter.

  4. Israel started it all is a pitiful joke of a documentary.

    Arabs (and I mean Arabs in this case, not Muslims)–have a habit of doing malevolent things as part of their bedouin history. Now–Muslims have a history of hate for Jews specifically, and Christian Infidels specifically, though the hate for Jews is intensified when the Arab is a Muslim.

    We have a very simple history. The Turkish Mandate was split in favor of Arabs who received 80% of the land. The British partitioned the rest, splitting it between Arabs (not Palestinians specifically) and Jews. Jews took their small piece of land (many didn’t like the deal, but Ben Gurion made sure that they kept quiet and accepted the partition, and the state happily): Arabs did not accept the deal. They wanted it all–not just because they were low-minded bedouins, but because they were Jew-hating Muslims. Thus, on the very day Israel was legitimated by the world in 1948, a so-called Pan-Arab league constituted of Arab nations, advised Arabs living in Israel (so-called Palestinians as of 1964) to leave, and 700,000 of them did. No doubt, Jews were not too disturbed by this and, in fact, helped some of them on their way. But many Arabs stayed. Those who stayed now are citizens and benefit from Jewish civilization ( a brilliant and beautiful thing in itself, but when compared to any Muslim state or city, a thing of pure genius). Those who left became the displaced Palestinians. The Arab nations that promissed to help them turned their backs on them and left them to create their intifadas against Israel

    In subsequent wars and limited wars, Israel has increased its hold on the West Bank, but it traded the Sinai for peace with Egypt and their has been peace–not a perfect thing, but a good thing–both sides agree. Israel gave Gaza back to Palestinians with the mere hope that peace would come as a response to the gesture. Israel agreed to give slightly more than 98% of so-called Palestine to these Arabs in 2000 (by right of victory, Israel could have kept all of it but was not interested in such a problematic scenario–even Arafat was in shock at the gesture. But bedouin Arabs always, as explained before, are too dim and too hateful (two sick traditions) to accept this “best” deal. Israel also returned Gaza to these Arabs hoping that they would get a peaceful quid pro quo–they got, instead, rockets, day after day and month after month. And now–they have the hatred of Europeans for having–what–done more than any civilized nation would do or even would feel compelled to do. But the Europeans are Nazis–they were Nazis before WWII and will remain so.

    So–Israel stared it all?

    Let the it sink in—in a world where Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims will never get over humiliation of their devolution, they will also never forgive the Jews for being…well…fucking amazing!!

    • Tl;dr– you fell for a bad title. and you are a typical zionofascist.

      First off, this is so obviously a troll title that it is funny as well as helpful: anyone that responded to it is outed as a soapbox fashionista. Silly title aside, the doc [actually a TV episode] is pretty spot on with the facts. there is very little political assessment made, and what is is a matter of record.

      For a cursory read on the Wars mentioned, this is a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War

      Now, to address the inane horseshit spewed by @yogi:

      >Arabs and Bedou are not interchangeable. The Bedouin are a sub group, and they are lovelly people in my experience, though i’m sure they have charlatans like @yogi in their numbers.

      >’you’ have a very complex history if you look at things like books and facts

      >700,00 Palestinians did not leave because they were asked. Irgun as well as other privately funded armies used the same tactics the Nazis used in Poland to cause a mass refugee crisis in their enemies territories. This is a matter of historical fact.

      >there are documentaries on this very site that detail the lives of Palestinians living within the Jew controlled lands. It is not a magical fairy kingdom of smiles and sugar dreidels.

      >currently, the second largest prison camp in the world is run by Jews for African immigrants seeking shelter from oppression, conflict, and genocide. The only bigger one is presumed to be in North Korea.

      >Israel was compelled to give up the stranglehold on Gaza by the US and European powers. Under Brother Bush, ‘democracy’ was handed to the pseudo-state. When Fata lost to Hamas, they soft war began.

      >Europeans are not Nazis

      >Arabs are not Jew hating Muslims

      >their are amazing jews. their are amazing americans. vicariously seeing oneself as amazing because a truly amazing person shares your ethno-religious background is childish in the extreme.

      You are a fool for commenting and not watching. You should be ashamed, but i have found, anecdotally, that many Jews have an incapacity for shame, though they tend to be American Jews.

      • and you are so obviously an uneducated infant, already aware of your own inferiority….one paragraphic editorial after another and you think that constitutes an educated response? Typical adolescent squirt.

        To wit, or in this case, the witless, you call the Bedouin a lovely subgroup—ho ho ho—find one historical document to confirm that dopey assessment. And your reference to a link on war….are you joking you little spermball? That is how you defend your claim of trolling?

        And as for the Palestinians, what you call a historical fact is not even close to that. You have universalized one questionable battle into an entire history of a war. Only a punk ideologue would do something so vain and vacuous, Palestinians fled at the insistence of a wide Arab appeal for them to do so as a tactic for later battle. A few were, indeed, scattered by Israeli forces,,,who would never even have done that had five Islamic nations not attacked Israel on her first day of statehood, But this is typical Muslim shit and…well, you know that don’t you? After all, you are a little Muslim yourself…..right?

        Okay…stop shaking in your desert sandals. You are safe,,,at least, for now.

        I

        • No links. Tons of insuilts. Obviously rage typing.

          You have embarrassed yourself twice. Care for a third round?

  5. I didn’t watch it. A BBC documentary on political issues is propaganda. The title is correct, though.

    • Fools talk. If you didn’t watch you should kindly fuck off.

    • you didn’t watch it yet the title is correct? Thus you are a dick of minute proportions. You have no right to be a human being. Go back to being a chunk of steaming turd you piece of microshit.

    • hmmm Egypt & Syria launch a surprise attack against Israel, yet you believe the title “Israel started it all” is correct …you may want to rethink your position, it makes no sense, in fact the 2 statements directly contradict one another but it does make you sound like a Nazi Hate Monger, which is most likely correct..

      • I think you need to watch the whole thing, m8.

      • Think you better learn your history and look back a bit further and see what happened what made Egypt and Syria launch a surprise attack before making comments like this !!

      • Why didn’t the jews just stay in europe, they already control all of it anyways.

        • *America

        • Fuck off, you dumbass anti-Semite.

        • a sliver of population controls all of Europe? that explains your anti-Semitism. You are one of those humiliated by his own failure. I love coming across zits like you. You pop at the slightest sound of the word :”Jew.” I doubt that you can read, but Sartres “Anti-Semite and Jew” is waiting for you. Read it to discover that you are a much bigger failure than you ever imagined.

          i wish the Jews owned everything (you think they do) so they could lock you up in a Turkish bath of other anti-Semites where you could each suck yourselves silly with the self-satisfaction of being nothing but tiny dicks attached to tinier bodies supporting a sub-cortex that was more sub than cortex.

        • Because Israel is their home

          • God took it away. The British gave it to zionists. Not God’s doing.

          • Hell is their home.

          • But it is home to the Palestinians too. I feel like some sort of compromise is in order…

          • The facts remain that zionists and their like like are committing atrocities against the palestinian people, as horrendous as as can be imagined.
            They have completely hijacked the holocaust to be singularly a day of remembrance for themselves; totally and slowly reducing all the other victims as an after thought.
            Judaism has always drawn strength from its ludicrous old testament mythology, which Hollywood still trots out today, all to solidify their position of power in the middle east.
            Their lobbying power is now so great they can interfere with with Western Democracy foreign policy to keep their
            fighting victim’ narrative alive.
            If Judaism is would practice what it claims to be it would cease bombing and murdering of children, the innocents, provocation by building illegal settlements, just because some slapped together hodge podge piece of historical expediency commands them.
            Do you need an anachronistic piece of fantasy of to guide your conscience?

          • The “holocaust” is a license for anything. Even starting a new holocaust.