By: Ivor Middleton

Ivor Middleton — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:50:33 +0000

David, it is a great image, capturing the moment. It became part of the thrilling story of the time, of David against Goliath and the bravery of a nation. It brought the world onside.
That was how I used to see it too. Now I see things very differently. It is part of the myth. The “feeling of approaching doomsday” was not shared by the Israeli leaders or military. They were certainly happy for the people and the world to think that. However, then, as now and as in 1948, they knew full well that they were the military superpower in the region.
Ahead of the war, Meir Amit, head of Mossad, saw US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara. McNamara asked him how long the war would take, and how many casualties there would be. Amit’s reply, “less than a week” and “less than the war of independence”.
So I question this “ignored fact” which you raise. It is part of the myth too (which is not to deny that the people in the street had a very real sense of fear).
I am older and much better informed than I was then. I appreciate that there was a people already there, that it was not “a land without a people for a people without a land”, that it was fertile and productive, not a desert as claimed; and that the “the bride was married to another man”.
I also have a better grasp of what a state is and why it might exist. I see now why the world powers accepted Israel’s right to exist, and I see that they were not good reasons.
I see the refugees from the ethnic cleansing, still refugees over 60 years on. I read the eyewitness reports of what happened, and continues to happen. Gaza in January 2009 is just a continuation of a long history of murder and persecution, leading back through places like Sabra and Shatila in 1982, to the villages that were razed and planted over after 1947; and further still, to the tenant farmers who were thrown off the land they farmed when it was sold by absentee landlords.
I see a racial entity, on stolen land, with race enshrined in the law, and wonder how it is that we condoned this to come into being in the twentieth century, let alone still condone it now ?
I cannot see how there can be peace when children are still being born and raised in refugee camps, and told “there, in Occupied Palestine, is the village your family came from” and “this is how you came to be here” in squalor, unwanted and persecuted by every nation.

By: David Rubinger

David Rubinger — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:26:32 +0000

I happen to be the photographer who took the image illustrating this theme – an image which, without my wish or involvement became an icon.
It is important for me to stress one fact that the world seems not to know or else prefers to forget:
The so called Six Day War was an unforeseen victory which followed three weeks in Israel, of a feeling of an approaching doomsday, with three Arab armies poised to attack with the declared purpose of destroying Israel, the so called “Zionist Entity”.
Being one of those Israelis who detest and condemn the occupation which followed that victory, I believe to have the right to stress this ignored fact, which gave birth to the regretable outcome we all – both Israelis and Palestinians – suffer from

Comments on: John Sheppard Tribute Screening – The Six-Day War – Day 666

By: Ivor Middleton

By: David Rubinger