From BBC News

 

Egyptian pilot: We felt humiliated

 

Israel wiped out much of the Egyptian Air Force on the morning of June 5, 1967, the first day of the war. Egyptian pilot Mustafa Hafez was stationed at one of the 11 Egyptian air bases that were targeted.

 

He told military historian and BBC website reader, David Nicolle, what happened that day.

 

"In the build-up to war, I was sent to a squadron based at Kabrit, flying MiG-17Fs and MiG-17PF night fighters.

 

We didn't really think that there would be a war, and if there was one, I was confident that Egypt would win.

 

I was then a Flight Lieutenant and I was 26. Our confidence was not based on anything specific, but our morale was high.

 

On the first day of the war, 5 June, at about 8.20am I was in the mess, since I was due to fly later that day. No particular aircraft had been allocated to me. This was normal in our air force; we flew what was available.

 

Suddenly I heard explosions and went outside the mess; I asked people what was going on.

 

That was when I saw an Israeli aircraft attacking, very low from south to north, coming in towards the runway. It was a Super Mystere.

 

My first instinct was to run towards a ditch, but when I got there I thought, what am I doing here like an idiot? So I ran to the squadron bus so I could get to the squadron headquarters.

 

 

I didn't have any plans, only to try to defend the airfield. I hadn't even cleared my take off with the control tower, I just took off

 

There I found the Regimental CO who was heading for his car; so I got in too. The CO drove to the nearest available aircraft, and I helped strap him in, though we weren't absolutely sure the aircraft was ready to go.

 

I think he took off on a sub runway as the main runway had already been hit.

 

Then I tried to find another aircraft. They were all either damaged, or being serviced, or weren't ready to go. Then I went to a hangar. By this time the mechanics were starting to come back after having run away as the first bombs fell.

 

That was when I took off in an available MiG-17F. I didn't even check if it was armed, but only asked if had been fuelled.

 

I didn't have any plans, only to try to defend the airfield. Once I was up in the air I could see the smoke from other airfields which had been attacked. I hadn't even cleared my take off with the control tower, I just took off. Nor did I have any idea what the rest of the squadron were doing.

 

Then I saw something flying very low. It was a n Israeli Mirage going west to east, so I half rolled in behind it. It was probably doing a reconnaissance as it was on its own and was not attacking targets on the ground. As I followed it I tried to cock my guns three times, but my plane was too slow to keep up and after a while the Mirage just flew off.

 

Lack of training

 

Of course I was angry and frustrated because I was unable to shoot down that Mirage. There was a switch in the cockpit that changed the armament from rockets to guns, but I had not been trained for that particular modification.

 

And I wasn't the only pilot to make the same mistake.

 

Then I landed safely.

 

Very soon afterwards I took off again in a different aircraft. There had been no time for me to report or to be debriefed. I merely changed aircraft.

 

As I started the engine the airfield came under attack again, for perhaps the second or third time. I was still inside the hangar, in the cockpit, when I heard the attack. I cleared the hangar doors at full throttle and afterburner. The aircraft was swerving and rocking from side to side; I was afraid the wingtips would hit the ground.

 

I took off without a pause... the Israelis were about 100m ahead of me. I counted one, two, three, four, so I pulled up and tried to follow the last one.

 

A MiG-17PF night-fighter plane

The MiG-17PF Mustafa flew on 5 June, damaged in combat

 

All five of us started circling, then one came at me head-on and opened fire. This made me so angry that I swore out loud. The Israeli turned to the right. I turned first to the left and then to the right to try and follow him. A head-on attack is very difficult.

 

That was when I was hit in the right wing. We were all flying at 200-300m. My right aileron was damaged and I continued turning right, unable to straighten out, so I gained height.

 

The Israeli couldn't keep with me as a MiG-17 is better in a climb. My aircraft juddered several times and almost went into a spin. I thought it odd that it tried to spin under those conditions.

 

While three of the Israeli aircraft attacked our airfield, the fourth one followed me. After the three had strafed the field, the fourth one did the same, then they all flew home.

 

Meanwhile I was still turning to the right, unable to straighten up. As I lined up on a runway I used the aileron trim to straighten out. This wasn't standard procedure. I don't know if I invented it or maybe it just came by instinct, but it worked. I had no communication with the ground, but I landed OK.

 

Humiliated

 

It was about twelve o'clock when I finally landed. There was no further activity after that... we were mainly concerned to disperse and save whatever aircraft we could.

 

The air force felt very angry and humiliated by this war. Once, during the war, two of my fellow officers had to stop me banging my head repeatedly against a pair of concrete pillars at our air base.

 

Another time, still during the war, I and some others were sent to stay in a hotel in Cairo, but the waiter in the hotel was too sympathetic and even placed his hand on my shoulder to comfort me.

 

This was so embarrassing, we asked to be taken back to the base."

 

This interview was conducted in Cairo in 1999. Mustafa Hafez died two years later.

From BBC News

 

Syria's 1967 war goes unmentioned

By Magdi Abdelhadi

BBC News, Damascus

 

Syria is not marking the 1967 war for obvious reasons. Countries do not celebrate defeats. Syria suffered its worst military defeat in living memory and lost the strategic Golan Heights to Israel.

 

Paradoxically, however, the first week of June finds Syria in a festive mood, albeit an officially sanctioned one.

 

An extravagant piece of pageantry is touring the country to celebrate the "re-election" of President Bashar al-Assad for another seven years in a referendum in which he was the only candidate.

 

It is a grandiose spectacle featuring Phoenician chariots, Syrian farmers and Baath party boy scouts.

 

The ostentatious display is nearly 2km (1.2 miles) long and is touring the whole country with huge posters of the president bearing the slogan minhebak (We Love You).

 

The machinery that created the personality cult around the president's father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, shows itself to be still well oiled in this extravagant display of love and devotion to the "eternal leader".

 

No-one here wants to hear anything about the 1967 defeat.

 

One party member taking part in the parade in Damascus looked shocked when I suggested to him that maybe the ruling Baath party was to blame, since it was in power then and still is.

 

"Mistake?" he retorted. "No. The party never made any mistakes."

 

In a bizarre way, the most visible legacy of that war is not so much Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights, as that the political system that presided over the defeat has survived more or less intact.

 

Syria's minister of defence in 1967 was Hafez al-Assad. He later became president and ruled the country for 30 years.

 

Unfathomable defeat

 

Here is how the war is described in a history textbook for secondary school students:

 

"As the Arab nationalist tide of liberation grew stronger, and some Arab revolutions became victorious, the Zionist aggression on 5 June 1967 had the aim of bringing down the Arab progressive forces with the help of the United States."

 

This is a vintage Arab-nationalist interpretation of what happened.

 

It is almost identical to the passionate appeal by the Baathist president broadcast on the day Israel stormed the Golan Heights.

 

President Nur al-Din al-Atasi took to the airwaves on 9 June and urged his people to turn Syria into a graveyard for "the Anglo-American Zionist invaders".

 

The idea that British and American forces were assisting Israel's war effort was hatched in Egypt, disseminated by its popular Arab radio station Sawt Al Arab (Voice of the Arabs) and picked up by Damascus.

 

It was a desperate attempt to justify the devastating defeat of three Arab armies in less than a week by tiny Israel.

 

Arab leaders in Egypt and Syria had promised to wipe Israel off the map in the run-up to the war.

 

There is an ongoing defeat because we are living under the same political and perhaps cultural structures that brought about that defeat

 

Throwing Britain and America into the equation was clearly intended to deflect public anger.

 

From the start of the war, the Arab public had been fed lies about their countries' military prowess on the battlefield.

 

Enduring crisis

 

Talk of foreign conspiracies against Syria and the wider region is still very much the official prism through which the current turmoil in the Middle East is seen in Damascus. Predictably, critics of the Baath regime disagree.

 

Syrian writer Yasseen Haj Saleh does not dispute the role of the West in buttressing Israel but believes that 1967 was a symptom of deeper malaise in Syria and other Arab societies.

 

Mr Saleh, who spent 16 years in a Syrian jail, says:

 

"There is an ongoing defeat because we are living under the same political and perhaps cultural structures that brought about that defeat. That is why we are still living with it.¿

 

Today the majority of the Syrian population was born after 1967 and many of the young do not even remember that date.

 

But a young Syrian student spoke for the majority of Syrians when I asked him about the occupied Golan Heights:

 

"The Ottoman Turks occupied our land for 400, the Crusaders were here for 60-70 years but as long as there is the will, we will get what is ours back.

 

"By war or by political means, we will certainly get it back one day."

 

Tangled web

 

The Syrians believe that history is on their side, that right will somehow overcome the Israeli military might.

 

Syrians attend an independence rally near the cease-fire line with Israel

Syrians can look into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights

 

Ethics aside, today the conflict between Syria and Israel has become caught up in a wider regional power struggle between Israel and America on the one hand, and Iran on the other.

 

In 1967, during the heyday of the cold war, there were only two sides to the conflict, the Arabs, backed by the former Soviet Union, and the Israelis, supported by America.

 

Today, the Arab side has fractured into rival camps.

 

Syria has allied itself with Iran, which has ambitions to become a regional power and the standard-bearer of Muslims against Jewish Israel and the Christian West.

 

Despite official denials, Damascus is also embroiled in the turmoil in Iraq and Lebanon.

 

Washington is directly involved in the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbour in ways that were inconceivable back in the 1960s.

 

The old fault lines are now criss-crossed with new ones.

 

Peace between Syria and Israel - if it ever happens in the near future - may have to begin by disentangling a web of regional, international and growing national, even sectarian, conflicts.

From BBC News

 

Why did Israel attack USS Liberty?

By Raffi Berg

BBC News

 

For former US seaman Gary Brummett, the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war has stirred painful memories.

 

As a 21-year-old third class petty officer, Mr Brummett was serving on board the USS Liberty off the coast of Egypt on 8 June, when, without warning, the vessel came under fire, first from fighter planes, then torpedo boats.

 

The attack, which lasted at least 40 minutes, resulted in the deaths of 34 of Mr Brummett's fellow crewmen, at least 170 injured and catastrophic damage to the ship.

 

Alarmingly, the assault had been carried out not by enemy forces, but by the US' closest regional ally, Israel.

 

Israel insists it mistook the Liberty for a hostile Egyptian ship, the El Quseir, and numerous US and Israeli inquiries have concluded the attack was accidental.

 

But for Mr Brummett and a growing body of conspiracy theorists, the authorities are guilty of a cover-up.

 

"I have more trouble with it today than when it happened because I know more of the facts about what was going on," said Mr Brummett.

 

"There's been an egregious wrong done here, there's been an extreme number of lies told to the American people and the American people do not know the truth about what happened."

 

'Sitting duck'

 

The attack on the Liberty - the gravest incident in the history of US-Israeli relations - has been a source of controversy for the past four decades.

 

Claim and counter-claim as to what happened have been fought out in every corner of the media, with the advent of the internet helping to reinvigorate the debate.

 

Israel's supporters say the incident is merely being used as a tool by critics to malign the Jewish state, while accusers say the attack was a war crime which has never come to light.

 

According to Israel, the incident was a tragic case of friendly fire occurring in the fog of war.

 

It says it believed the ship had been bombarding Israeli forces fighting in the Sinai, and that its pilots did not see any US flags (survivors say there were three) on the vessel before they opened fire.

 

Sceptics however claim the attack was premeditated and that the truth has been suppressed. The assertion of a cover-up was lent weight by a 2003 independent commission of inquiry which reported that the attack on the Liberty "remains the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress".

 

Among the most popular theories as to why Israel would take such drastic action against its superpower ally is that the Liberty, a $40m state-of-the-art surveillance ship, was eavesdropping on an Israeli massacre of Egyptian prisoners of war.

 

Israel strongly denies its troops executed Egyptian POWs, saying those who died in an incident at that time were 250 armed Palestinian fighters killed in action.

 

Another is that the ship had learnt of secret Israeli plans to invade Syria's Golan Heights two days later and had to be destroyed.

 

'US collusion' theory

 

Perhaps the most sinister motive is that put forward by journalist Peter Hounam in his 2003 book "Operation Cyanide".

 

Mr Hounam claims secret elements within the US and Israeli governments colluded to bomb the ship and blame the attack on Egypt and their superpower ally, the Soviet Union, triggering massive retaliation which would ensure Israeli victory.

 

"The attack on the Liberty was pre-planned, perhaps from at least a year beforehand," Mr Hounam says.

 

"The Liberty was sent into a very dangerous situation, where it was, in my view, placed in a position to be attacked."

 

Mr Hounam says the intention was to sink the ship and kill everyone on board, but as the Liberty remained afloat the plan was aborted and has been hushed up ever since.

 

'Presidential order'

 

Successive US and Israeli inquiries, and the declassification of thousands of pieces of information, have done little to dampen suspicions.

 

One of the most powerful claims of a cover-up has come from retired US Navy lawyer Capt Ward Boston, counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry into the incident conducted just days after the event.

 

Capt Boston says the court's original findings, which he signed, were changed afterwards by government lawyers.

 

He also claims the president of the court, Rear Adm Isaac Kidd, told him he was ordered by US President Lyndon Johnson and Defence Secretary Robert McNamara to conclude the attack was a case of mistaken identity.

 

However, Capt Boston's version of events - and the notion that what happened was anything more than a tragic accident - are disputed by numerous academics and authors who have investigated the incident.

 

"It was a series of blunders by both the United States and Israel that resulted in a terrible tragedy and nothing more," says Jay Cristol, a federal judge and author of the book The Liberty Incident.

 

"All the official reports came to the same conclusion.

 

"Unfortunately there are a number of people who are on the other side of the Arab-Israeli conflict who think this is a way to attack the otherwise very strong relationship between the US and Israel, and they keep stirring the pot.

 

'No evidence'

 

It is a view with which historian Michael B Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem academic research institute, concurs.

 

"Many thousands of documents related to the Liberty have been declassified and in none of these documents will you find a scintilla of evidence to suggest any of these conspiracy theories are true," he says.

 

"The Golan one is the easiest to disprove because of where the Liberty was, not off the coast of Israel, but Egypt. Its listening devices weren't that powerful that they could listen in on communications in Tel Aviv.

 

"Moreover the Israelis were very upfront in telling the US that they planned to capture the Golan Heights and the Americans agreed to it.

 

"Regarding a massacre of Egyptian POWs, there's no evidence of that. And why would the Israelis try to cover up one atrocity by committing another?

 

He says the attack has remained a source of controversy because "it has all the ingredients of a good spy scandal. It involves espionage and it involves the Israelis, who are forever a focus of conspiracy theories.

 

"If I could prove the Liberty was attacked in a premeditated fashion, I would write it - it would be a great historical scoop - but the truth is far more mundane."