Sorry, missed this amongst a few less knowledgeable replies.
Generally, I understand the Arab states as the aggressor in that.
The Israeli attack was a first strike but happened with multiple armies deployed along its borders.
It’s been awhile since I read about that war but my memory is that someone (Egypt?) cut off a Israel’s access to a major maritime route. Israel reiterated its decade long position that such an act was grounds for war. In other words saying “if you do this, we consider a war to have begun.”
The Arab states deploy troops and units along multiple Israeli borders. A quick look at total troops available to the new Arab defence pact suggest they outmanned Israel’s by almost 2:1, with more than 2:1 and 3:1 advantage in aircraft and tanks respectively. (I admittedly I have no memory of quality of those forces.)
The destruction of the Egyptian airforce is pretty famous in military history and based on those facts, I’ve always felt the Arab states as the aggressor in that one.
What parts or acts, other than the act of existing, am I ignorant of or misremembering that make Israel the aggressor?
What parts or acts, other than the act of existing, am I ignorant of or misremembering that make Israel the aggressor?
The fact that they struck first. Closing a maritime route is not a cause for war just because someone says it is, just like Ukraine applying for nato wouldn’t be. Any action done by a country within its own borders is up to them, that’s sovereignty. Saying those acts are a cause for war and invading them for doing so is a violation of that sovereignty.
Almost every invader in history claims their attack was a pre-emptive strike and/or the other countries legitimate peaceful sovereign actions are a cause for war. Japan told the u.s. if it continued its oil embargo that it would be a cause for war. The u.s. continuing that embargo doesn’t make pearl harbor a legitimate response. Poland began massing troops on the border prior to the nazi invasion, that doesn’t make them the agressor.
The Arab states had done nothing that broke the peace prior to the war. They cut off maritime access through a strait completely within their territory and then massed troops on the border of a state that had invaded one of its neighbor a decade ago and was threatening to do so again.
There’s a reason the UN doesn’t recognize preemptive attacks, they’re just excuses for aggressors to invade.
So your position is they should have waited until the massed armies that outnumbered them 2:1 attacked?
That seems like an insane demand to thrust upon a people who had years earlier been murdered on an industrial scale.
You’re assuming they were going to attack when there is no evidence for that. Amassing troops at the border doesn’t mean you’re going to attack, like with Poland in 1939 it could just mean you’re trying to defend yourself from an expansionist nation who is threatening you. Israel a decade before 1967 had invaded Egypt to take the Sinai peninsula with the help of the French. It makes sense if you have a neighbor like that who just made a threat to you for exercising your sovereignty to put troops on the border in case they try to invade again.
Yeah Israel had a gun to its head, but so did the Arab states, it wasn’t as if Israel wasn’t also fully mobilized and ready to attack. International relations, especially in the nuclear age, is a series of guns pointed at the heads of everyone else. With ICBMs and nuclear submarines, any enemy of the u.s. is constantly under the threat of nuclear annihilation. That doesn’t give Iran the right to attack the u.s. because it constantly threatens them and is afraid they will nuke them.
Even ignoring nukes the north Koreans constantly have missiles and artillery pointed at Seoul, ready to level it at any moment, and vice versa for south Korea and the u.s. If either side attacked both could credibley claim they felt threatened, especially the north with the world’s most powerful country on its doorstep, who carried out a near genocidal bombing campaign against the north in the last war. If either side launched a “preemptive strike” they would rightly be called the agressor and should be condemned for breaking the peace. They definitely shouldn’t be rewarded with more land.
