Product Description

Customer Reviews (10)

Foxbats over Dimona
Excellent, timely comments based on a misterious, unfamiliar yet best informed and directly involved source, the Soviet, temporarily open archives. historical.
As Head of Israeli Air Force Planning and Operational Requirements during the years preceding the "Six Day War", this book widened my scope, be it post-factum.

Cold War Context for the Six Day War
FOXBATS OVER DIMONA:THE SOVIETS' NUCLEAR GAMBLE IN THE SIX-DAY WAR is an excellent book which provides a lot of new information from Soviet Bloc archives and personnel about the Six-Day War in the Middle East.Authors Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez mine a lot of difficult, complicated archival material and supplement it with interviews of surviving participants to provide a Cold War context for a crucial regional war.

In so doing they are forced to step outside their skins and try to see the Six-Day War from the Soviet perspective. Previous accounts tend to ignore the Cold War context and interpret the Soviet role as a mirror of the US role. In other words, both sides tried to contain the conflict and make sure that a larger, nuclear war didn't break out. That makes sense in the West, because that's what Western militaries tried to do, especially the US which was increasingly bogged down in Vietnam.

Ginor and Remez, however, describe Soviet plans to intervene actively in a war they promoted.The authors also place the Isreali development of nuclear weapons at the center of Soviet plans. I hadn't ever heard of the MiG 25 being used in the Middle East until the early 1970s and yet they document a number of "Foxbat" (the NATO code word for the MiG 25) missions over Dimona before the Six-Day War started.

It looks like the Soviets planned to neutralize Dimona and help their Arab allies wipe Israel off the map.Israel wasn't a US ally in 1967. This operation involved landings and TU-95 strategic bombers.Given the Soviet operations in Hungary and especially Czechoslovakia (which came as a complete surprize to US intelligence), the authors may have a point.

The Soviet Union may have been much more involved than was previously thought.Indeed, the authors mention that more Soviet ships were in the Eastern Med than I ever suspected and that they seemed more involved in the LIBERTY incident than was previously suspected.Israeli radar contacts with what they thought was the LIBERTY, for example, showed it proceeding at a twice its maximum speed indicating clearly that it was a destroyer or similar war ship instead of a converted transport.There were Soviet destroyers in that area. Did the Israelis lock onto one of them by mistake?

There are other gems in this book such as the fact that the USS PUEBLO was the LIBERTY's "sister ship" and that less than a year later, "a Soviet naval vessel did open fire ...[on the PUEBLO] killing one crewman and injuring three others, to assist in its capture by North Korea."[p. 180].

If you're interested in military history, Israel, the USSR, the UAR, Soviet strategy, the USS LIBERTY, Dimona, or the Six-Day War, you'll enjoy FOXBATS OVER DIMONA.It brings new insights into that important period of history and places it all within the context of the Cold War.

I liked the book and gave it five stars.

Persuasive, detailed and focussed
The authors focus on the USSR's instigation of and preplanning for the Six Day war. The book takes on new relevance given recent testamentary confirmation by a Soviet MiG 25 (Foxbat) combat pilot. They claim the USSR not only planned and instigated the war through Arab proxies, but committed their best technology at that time, the experimental Mach 2 MiG 25 jet and issued preprepared instructions for landings and retaliation on Israel after the war began. The main Soviet objective was to neutralise Israel's nuclear program (allegedly weaponised just before the war) and to weaken US regional hegemony.
Their direct sources vary widely varying and are well referenced. Most damningly of all they include a 2003 Soviet official anthology which multiply and apparently inadvertently corroborates the thesis.

The book is short, though tightly reasoned and reads easily.
Personally I suspect the Soviet-Egyptian relationship was stormier than they depict. Amer's proposal of the preemptive 'Dawn' attacks must have been a profound irritant to the Politburo if the thesis is true. Nasser's closure of the Tiran straits (though not the withdrawal of UNEF) also would have undermined Soviet plans to avoid a multilateral 'regatta' like initiative, and smacks of Nasser's own impulsiveness, borne from the success of Suez.

Nevertheless the thesis is impressive and persuasively made.
Given the resurgence of Russian and nuclear interest in the Middle East, it serves as an important and instructive antecedent.

conspiracy trash
This work has no value. I will not call it a book because its in reality an amaturish collection of strung together material marked as "chapters". Its arguments are more based on paranoid conspiracy theory than in facts or research.

Reducing all the events and all the of complexity of the six-day war down to a plan to stop Israel from acquiring nuclear weapons is to be frank, silly. The book presents all kinds of citations in an attempt to prove its point by volume of irrelivant facts.

In the end, its a throwback to cold war literature written when the archives of the other side were unavialable. While this kind of speculative book might have been allowed by circumstances of access decades ago, its unacceptable now. If a case to be made that something happened, that case needs to be made based on relivant sources and facts. Not wishful thinking.

Don't bother with this book.

A good book but at times you wonder why you're reading it
This book makes a very strong assertion: that the USSR almost became actively engaged in the Six Day War, to the point where the Soviets intended to land troops on Israeli soil.

The authors have collected a good deal of information which supports this theory. However, the presentation of the material makes it hard to follow at times. Nevertheless, an important book if you are interested in the 1967 conflict. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1899, a year after the Convention of Peking leased the New Territories to Britain, the British moved to establish control. This triggered resistance by some of the population of the New Territories. There ensued six days of fighting with heavy Chinese casualties. This truly forgotten war has been thoroughly researched for the first time and recounted in lively style by Patrick Hase, an expert on the people and history of the New Territories.

After brief discussion of British Imperialism in the 1890s and British military theory of that period on small wars, the heart of the book is a day-by-day account of the fighting and of the differences of opinion between the Governor of Hong Kong (Blake) and the Colonial Secretary (Lockhart) as to how the war should be fought. ... Read more

Product Description
The Six Day War was the climax in the deterioration of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The downturn began in 1957 when Nasir began preaching the idea of Arab nationalism, while placing the Palestinian problem at its centre. The decade between the Sinai War and Six Day War was marked by preparations by both sides for an all-out military confrontation which both sides viewed as inevitable. As the Arab states formulated their positions on the conflict's goals and the ways of attaining them, differences of opinion erupted between Egypt and Syria. Nasir wanted to decide the time and place for the war that would 'liberate Filastin'. He was determined to meet Israel on the battlefield only when he was certain that the outcome would mean a decisive Arab victory. He consciously and strategically led Egypt to war, carefully weighing the implications of each political/military step. This study, based almost exclusively on hitherto unavailable Arab primary sources, sets out the crystallisation of Arab strategy to reveal conclusions substantively different from previous scholarly and political-military assessments.Issues dealt with include: the relevance of the Filastin problem as key to understanding the descent to war; the pivotal Syrian water struggle as a key motivating factor; Nasir's military blunders with respect to advice received from the Egyptian High Command; Nasir's acceptance of the principle that Egypt had to absorb the first Israeli strike, to be followed by Egypt's delivery of a second, decisive strike; the 'political process' approach to solving the conflict as evidenced by the Khartoum protocols notwithstanding the '1948 refugee problem'; and, the Hashemite regime's response to Palestinians' heightened national awakening. The enlistment of all the Arab states to Nasir's moves in May 1967 testifies not only to the president's charismatic leadership, but also to the depths of the 1948 trauma (al-nakba), which lies at the heart of any future compromise or agreement. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Arab Politics, Palestinian Nationalism, and the Six Day War
In this latest book, his fifth in English, Shemesh, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Ben Gurion University, makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of Arab politics in the decade before the Six-Day War. Well-referenced and injecting new Iraqi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Palestinian documents into the narrative, Shemesh's book challenges historians' conventional wisdom. He argues, for example, that the Palestinian issue was far more important to Arab states in the decade before the Six-Day War than earlier historians believed. He also dismisses the idea that the war occurred because Nasser's recklessness caused events to spin out of control. Rather, Shemesh suggests that the January 1964 Arab summit set the region down the path to war. In 1967, Nasser "marched to war open-eyed," believing Arab victory to be assured.

Shemesh also examines both internal Palestinian Arab dynamics and the interplay of Palestinian nationalism within intra-Arab relations of the period. Palestinian fida'i terrorism, for example, changed the dynamics of the Arab fight against Israel. No longer did Arab states alone seek to eliminate Israel on behalf of Palestinian Arabs; Palestinian groups began to take an active role in the fight against Israel. Shemesh argues that while, prior to the Six-Day War, Palestinian terrorism did not gain the prominence that it would in later years, by 1965, fida'i activity along Israel's borders with Syria and Jordan posed a serious security threat and hastened the war.

Arab Politics is a welcome relief from the trend by which Israeli "new historians" such as Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, and Neve Gordon eschew serious research for polemic. Shemesh may seek to revise the existing narrative, but he does so meticulously, offering evidence for each claim he makes. Nor, unlike so many of his contemporaries, is Shemesh afraid to document his work. He reproduces facsimiles ranging from a cover of Fatah's 1959 monthly Filastinuna; to a 1965 Jordanian military report on acts Palestinian terrorists might perpetrate against Israel; to a 1967 letter from Hafez al-Assad, at the time still Syria's defense minister, regarding Israeli troop movements.

While dry, Arab Politics is a necessary addition to any serious library or scholar's bookshelf. Shemesh deserves congratulations for breaking new ground.

Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2009
... Read more

Product Description
A multi-archival documentary history of British policy towards Nasser's Egypt under the Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Home and Wilson governments. The primary focus of the study is an enquiry into the causes of the Anglo-Egyptian Cold War from 1952 to 1967. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very well researched but...quite verbose
This book does a great job of capturing the events that led up to each of the events that are covered, the main three being: 1952 Egyptian Revolution, Suez War (1956), and the Six Day War (June 1967). McNamara clearly did some hefty research on these subjects and gives some great conclusions with a nice summary of all of the events in the last chapter. The only aspect that downplays this book is it can get quite redundant reading every high-ranking officials perpective of the tiniest event. Other than that, if you are interested in the subject it might be worth it, but $115 is a little hefty as I found mine at a competitors for $65. ... Read more

Product Description
In this comprehensive study, Gat looks at British policy in the period leading up to the Six-Day War. Although Britain holds center stage in this account, the study discusses in some detail American policy and its effect on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It also focuses on the Middle East water dispute, its impact on future events, and eventually the outbreak of war in 1967. This is a fascinating look at the process by which the Middle East became yet another Cold War playground. ... Read more

Product Description
Part of the "A Day that made History" series, this book tells the story of Israel's surprise attack on Egypt on the first day of the 1967 Six Day War and then investigates the causes and consequences of these events in more detail. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Midstream, published by Theodor Herzl Foundation on May 1, 2003. The length of the article is 4263 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Volunteers, six-days plus. (History).(in Israel just after the Six Day War)
Author: Michael A. Zimmerman
Publication: Midstream (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2003
Publisher: Theodor Herzl Foundation
Volume: 49Issue: 4Page: 23(5)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
Brand new LEATHER BOUND book accented in 22kt gold. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from American Jewish History, published by American Jewish Historical Society on March 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1247 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Six-Day War and World Jewry.(Book Review)
Author: Andrew Furman
Publication: American Jewish History (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2002
Publisher: American Jewish Historical Society
Volume: 90Issue: 1Page: 83(4)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Historian, published by Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. on September 22, 2008. The length of the article is 11125 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Retaliatory raids as an accelerating factor leading to the six-day war.(Report)
Author: Moshe Gat
Publication: The Historian (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2008
Publisher: Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc.
Volume: 70Issue: 3Page: 462(24)

Article Type: Report

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Refaat Ali Suleiman Al-Gammal (Arabic: ???? ??? ?????? ???????) (July 1, 1927 ? January 30, 1982), better known as Raafat Al-Haggan (Arabic: ???? ????????) in Egypt and as Jack Beton in Israel, was an Egyptian spy who spent 17 years performing clandestine operations in Israel. Most information about him is still confidential. According to the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID), he moved to Israel as an Egyptian Intelligence asset in 1956. He was well-known in the Israeli society and was involved in commercial projects. According to the Egyptians, he provided the Egyptian intelligence service with important information while operating a tourism company as a front. Al-Gammal's intelligence concerned, among other things, the Six-Day War and he had an important role in the Yom Kippur War by providing Egypt with detailed engineering data about the Bar Lev Line. Al-Gammal is considered a national hero in Egypt. ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Richard H. Nolte (December 27, 1920 ? November 22, 2007) was an American Middle East expert and diplomat. Nolte was the second director of the Institute of Current World Affairs. He was appointed ambassador to the United Arab Republic, which was the name of Egypt at the time, but never served due to the Six-Day War.Nolte was born on December 27, 1920 in Duluth, Minnesota to Julius and Mildred Miller Nolte. He earned a bachelor's degree in European Studies at Yale University in 1943.He served as a U.S. Navy pilot in World War II from 1943 to 1945 following his graduation. He returned to Yale following his discharge from the Navy and earned a master's degree in international relations in 1947. He earned a Rhodes Scholarship and began studying Arabic, Arab history and Islamic law at Oxford University in 1947. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Middle East Conflict Reference Library, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 804 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.UXL's Middle East Conflict Reference Library is designed to meet the pressing need for a lucid, comprehensive and objective overview of the people, events and documents that are key to understanding the region. The Almanac volume gives an overview of the history of the conflict as well as the ways in which the conflict continues to effect the region and the world, while the Biographies and Primary Sources volume explore the various conflicts more in-depth by viewing them through the lives of the people who influenced them and the documents that shaped them. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from New Internationalist, published by Thomson Gale on May 1, 2007. The length of the article is 4050 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: 40 years is enough.(Six Day War anniversary)
Author: James Robertson
Publication: New Internationalist (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 400Page: 21(6)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more