From: Ismail Zayid [mailto:izayid@eastlink

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----- Original Message -----

From: Ismail Zayid

To: Halifax Herald

Cc: Bev Dauphinee

Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2008 4:38 PM

Subject: Historic Facts.

Aug. 3, 2008

The Editor,

The Halifax Herald.

Dear Editor:

Mike Forsythe [Letter, Aug. 2] describes the statements by the two former Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin, as to the June 1967 war, [quoted in my letter July 26], as bogus and trash. If there is any bogus or trash in this context, it is in Mr. Forsythe's letter. These statements are published in authoratative international journals, Le Monde and New York Times and are confirmed by many authorities. They are quoted, as published in The Herald, in the recent book: [" Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories" By Anna Baltzer, 2007, Paradigm Publisher, London, p385]. Furthermore, the essence of the statements by Messrs Rabin and Begin is supported by other cabinet ministers in Israel at the time, including the then prime minister, Levy Eshkol and cabinet minsiters Mordechai Bentov and Moshe Dayan:

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol stated :" The Egyptian layout in the Sinai and the general military build up there testified to a military defensive Egyptian set-up, south of Israel" [ Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, Oct. 18,1967].

Modechai Bentov, an Israeli cabinet minister at the time, stated: " All this story about the danger of extermination [of Israel in June 1967] has been a complete invention and has been blown up a posteriori to justify the annexation of Arab territory" [ Al Hamishmar, 14 April 1972, and quoted in Le Monde, 3 June 1972].

As to to attack on the Syrian Golan Heights, Moshe Dayan, Israel's Minister of Defence at the time, tells us the facts as reported by Serge Schmemann [ The N.Y. Times. May 11, 1997 ]. : " He [Moshe Dayan] said he regretted not having stuck to his initial opposition to storming the Golan Heights. There really was no pressing reason to do so, because many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland...... I know how at least 80% of the clashes were started. We would send a tractor to plow some area, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. and then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that is how it was".

I believe the readers of The Herald deserve to know the facts as they are.

Yours sincerely,

Ismail Zayid, MD.