Israel loses the 1973 war

See, that doesn't square, at all, with anything that I've ever learned about history. Public hate of the Nazis and their crimes was extremely high post-WW2 and opinion on Jews and Judaism went from "mixed" to "holy shit the Nazis did WHAT???" pretty quickly as those soldiers started marching home. Not to mention, we were selling military gear to Haganah and other such scum at fire-sale prices, and I don't think that was entirely because the war had just finished.
That weren't governments deals. All the efforts and buying was undertaken by NGO's, under the counter. I don't deny btw they were unsuccesfull efforts, especialy the Exodus stunt.
 
How irrational is it when all your neighbors have been spouting propaganda about the violent destruction of your nation for DECADES on end? How irrational is it when everyone in your nation knows full well what happened last time the jews just rolled over? In the same scenario, I would GLADLY start nuking my neighbors.

At any rate, I suppose the best case scenario for the Arabs is the US parking a couple carriers off their coast and telling everyone to sit down and shut up before they start sailing into the wind, and from there hoping for a "Ceasefire in Place" setup before any counterattacks.
Well, when you're a violently imperialist power I'd say suck it up and get used to the hate because of course the people you threw out of their homes, drove from their land, and shot up in ethnic skirmishes for decades before you did that hate you.

Again, I don't see Romani people taking over someplace and threatening to shoot off nukes.
 
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Well, when you're a violently imperialist power I'd say suck it up and get used to the hate because of course the people you threw out of their homes, drove from their land, and shot up decades before you did that hate you.

Again, I don't see Romani people taking over someplace and threatening to shoot off nukes.

Believe me, if you knew one thing about the middle east you'd know that the Palestines and Arabs are not innocent babes either. The Israelis are only special because they did it first. Do you honestly think if the Arabs had won in 48 that we'd be seeing a Palestine state? Hell no! It would have been split three way between Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
 
Yep. The Soviets far more heavily supported the formation of Israel in the UN then the US. The Soviets also helped organize the only formal albeit secret deal by the proto IDF to buy weaponry from the Czechs. At the time the Arab world was dominated by French/British colonies or allied semi puppet monarchies.

Post war the Soviets changed their tune quick as those Arab monarchies started falling and the rise of Arab Socialism began.
Don't forget how Israel's "founding fathers" were largely socialistic in their politics as well.
 
Believe me, if you knew one thing about the middle east you'd know that the Palestines and Arabs are not innocent babes either. The Israelis are only special because they did it first.

Well and at least these days they have a lot more power to do bad shit to Palestinians can to Israeli's.
 
1) The US gave or sold Nuclear warheads to Israel and that's how they got a nuclear arsenal
2) The Israeli nuclear arsenal was a couple of bombs that couldn't reach the US
3) Haganah was a heavily British run and funded organization and the British government heavily supported the formation of Israel.
4) The US heavily supported the formation of Israel beyond the UN vote and gave/sold massive quantities of weapons to Israel in 1948.
Answering in PM so as not to derail further.
Believe me, if you knew one thing about the middle east you'd know that the Palestines and Arabs are not innocent babes either. The Israelis are only special because they did it first.
Sure, everybody in history's been a dick at one point or another. When all this was taking place George Takei had just been let go from a concentration camp in the USA.

The point is that if Israel has justification to be insanely, twitchy-nuke-fingers paranoid then so do the Romani. And LGBT people. But they don't.
 
Sadat maybe, but what about Assad?
Sadat was doing the heavy lifting in the Sinai, he would have the power to tell Assad to reign it in if necessary. Don't get me wrong, I think Assad would be OK with letting his goon squad loose on civilians, but Sadat was a much cannier guy and wouldn't be stupid enough to let his cause get tarnished to that degree.
...no? Support for Israel became a bipartisan thing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, what with the Gulf War and the growing tide of Islamic Extremism.
Really? That...doesn't fit with Nixon's ability to literally fly F-4s to Israel and hand them over while in the middle of Watergate.
 
Really? That...doesn't fit with Nixon's ability to literally fly F-4s to Israel and hand them over while in the middle of Watergate.
IIRC Nixon only did that because Israel was threatening to nuke the Middle East. Alongside this, Kissinger kept making threats about supporting a ceasefire resolution.
 
OK - remember this is 1973.
The PLO has already been around for 10 years. The PLO, which had at least lip service support from ALL the Arab countries in 1973 had a policy of the complete elimination of the State of Israel. This means that these states, at least as far as what they said, agreed with this goal. Of course in their heart of hearts they may not have agreed, but nobody can speak to that. Based on what the various Arab states, to say nothing of the PLO and other Palestinian groups said OPENLY the result of a complete victory would be the elimination of the State of Israel and the removal of the Jews who had not been there during the Mandate or even sooner (depends on which speech you listened to). Basically everything the Jews could not carry with them; businesses, apartments, autos, etc would stay behind without compensation - and it is questionable whether things like money or jewelry would be able to be taken away.

Between 1948 and 1973 in various places in the Arab world you had the Jews of Iraq, a community that had existed there since before the birth of Muhammed, expelled with 2 suitcases and stripped of all valuables, the Jews of Yemen (an impoverished group) were expelled with what little they had confiscated, and other similar instances.

Based on what the Arabs, both "resistance groups" and governments were saying on a regular basis since 1948, and on the actions in many parts of the Arab world, to say nothing of the preachings of al-Husseini the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Jews of Israel would expect the best case scenario to be a low level of rapes and murders during the fighting, followed by the bulk of them being expelled with little more than the clothes on their back. Worst case scenario, lots of dead Jews and very few living to be expelled. A lesson the world learned with Hitler was that when somebody tells you what they are going to do, believe them (and BTW Pol Pot and his merry men made no secret of their plans as another example). For the Israelis to think, "oh these threats from the Arabs are just hot air" would be suicidal.

As far as Egypt goes, you do not need to nuke Cairo etc - simply take out the Aswan High Dam and the resulting flood will completely take out those two cities and the bulk of Egypt's industry and population - just one low yield weapon is all it takes. As far as Russia goes, I very much doubt they would nuke Israel if as a desperation measure Israel unleashes nukes. Doing that has too many risks for Russia. In 1973 the Israelis had both the A-$ and F-4, both of which were certainly nuclear capable although not delivered as nuke versions could have been made so very easily. They also had air-to-air refueling capability. I am fairly sure that had the Israelis felt the Russians might play they had plans to have assets ready to strike Russia - low level one way missions at least as far as the Crimea if not further in Southern Russia were possible. Sure the Russians could have turned Israel in to green sand, but if they thought it would cost them a few cities in the Motherland - to retaliate for a few Arabs - get serious.

If the Israelis are losing that badly, unless the US Marines are landing and US aircraft are helping to drine the Arabs back across the borders (which ain't happening minus Skippy the ASB), the Israelis are not going to care about "US support".
 
IIRC Nixon only did that because Israel was threatening to nuke the Middle East. Alongside this, Kissinger kept making threats about supporting a ceasefire resolution.
OK, but it'd be really difficult to pull that off without support from the Democrats, and Nixon was running low on political capital by '73 what with the Watergate probe in full swing.

Man, the one time that Kissinger might actually be the less terrible guy by comparison...
 
OK - remember this is 1973.
The PLO has already been around for 10 years. The PLO, which had at least lip service support from ALL the Arab countries in 1973 had a policy of the complete elimination of the State of Israel. This means that these states, at least as far as what they said, agreed with this goal. Of course in their heart of hearts they may not have agreed, but nobody can speak to that. Based on what the various Arab states, to say nothing of the PLO and other Palestinian groups said OPENLY the result of a complete victory would be the elimination of the State of Israel and the removal of the Jews who had not been there during the Mandate or even sooner (depends on which speech you listened to). Basically everything the Jews could not carry with them; businesses, apartments, autos, etc would stay behind without compensation - and it is questionable whether things like money or jewelry would be able to be taken away.

Between 1948 and 1973 in various places in the Arab world you had the Jews of Iraq, a community that had existed there since before the birth of Muhammed, expelled with 2 suitcases and stripped of all valuables, the Jews of Yemen (an impoverished group) were expelled with what little they had confiscated, and other similar instances.

Based on what the Arabs, both "resistance groups" and governments were saying on a regular basis since 1948, and on the actions in many parts of the Arab world, to say nothing of the preachings of al-Husseini the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Jews of Israel would expect the best case scenario to be a low level of rapes and murders during the fighting, followed by the bulk of them being expelled with little more than the clothes on their back. Worst case scenario, lots of dead Jews and very few living to be expelled. A lesson the world learned with Hitler was that when somebody tells you what they are going to do, believe them (and BTW Pol Pot and his merry men made no secret of their plans as another example). For the Israelis to think, "oh these threats from the Arabs are just hot air" would be suicidal.

As far as Egypt goes, you do not need to nuke Cairo etc - simply take out the Aswan High Dam and the resulting flood will completely take out those two cities and the bulk of Egypt's industry and population - just one low yield weapon is all it takes. As far as Russia goes, I very much doubt they would nuke Israel if as a desperation measure Israel unleashes nukes. Doing that has too many risks for Russia. In 1973 the Israelis had both the A-$ and F-4, both of which were certainly nuclear capable although not delivered as nuke versions could have been made so very easily. They also had air-to-air refueling capability. I am fairly sure that had the Israelis felt the Russians might play they had plans to have assets ready to strike Russia - low level one way missions at least as far as the Crimea if not further in Southern Russia were possible. Sure the Russians could have turned Israel in to green sand, but if they thought it would cost them a few cities in the Motherland - to retaliate for a few Arabs - get serious.

If the Israelis are losing that badly, unless the US Marines are landing and US aircraft are helping to drine the Arabs back across the borders (which ain't happening minus Skippy the ASB), the Israelis are not going to care about "US support".

Basically. The Arabs are not worth a single Soviet City. So the USSR will make propaganda all day long, and whip up an awful noise about it, but ultimately... if it comes down to ensuring that the Arabs cannot carry out their decades worth of rhetoric by killing a good part of them first, not a single Israeli general is going to lose any sleep on that.
 
Basically. The Arabs are not worth a single Soviet City. So the USSR will make propaganda all day long, and whip up an awful noise about it, but ultimately... if it comes down to ensuring that the Arabs cannot carry out their decades worth of rhetoric by killing a good part of them first, not a single Israeli general is going to lose any sleep on that.
Carrying on the grand old tradition of Israel slowly digging its own grave.

But yeah. Unless Israel nukes the Soviets, they live. If they nuke the Soviets, they die (followed shortly by the rest of humanity).
 

CalBear

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There is a scenario where the Egyptian attackers can do better. Sadat did not take it because of what he saw as his obligation to the Syrians. Egypt and Syria, although acting in concert, had very different goals for the war, although Sadat made statements about liberating all of the territory seized in '67 what he really wanted was to get back the Sinai and have the U.S. and maybe the Soviets broker a long term peace deal. Syria, on the other hand, wanted to stomp the Israelis, get back the Golan, "liberate" the West Bank, and put Israel in as tough of a position as possible.

Sadat's troops actually achieved most of their initial goals, but the Syrians failed by the numbers after a brief initial surprise surge. When the IDF managed to get its feet back under it they tore into the Syrians with a will, leading Damascus to scream for help from Egypt. Sadat sent his forces forward, out of their SAM coverage and wound up with X Egyptian Army eventually fully surrounded in the Sinai and IDF ground forces 60 miles from Cairo.

If Sadat leave the Syrian Keystone Kops to their fate, he gets a tactical victory, at the cost of the entire Arab world hating him to the 10th Generation, but it would, nonetheless be a tactical victory. Instead the Egyptian Army was comprehensively defeated. Ironically Sadat did eventually get his lasting peace with Israel, although it cost him his life at the hands of assassins two years later.
 
Quite frankly, I think that the alleged Israeli attitude in this regard is pure irrational paranoia.

"Never Again" is a real thing over there.

and it's not so much what the victorious Arabs would do, or planned to do, but what the Israelis though they would do, going on 20 years of some in the Arab World with the whole ' Drive them into the Sea'
 
"Never Again" is a real thing over there.

and it's not so much what the victorious Arabs would do, or planned to do, but what the Israelis though they would do, going on 20 years of some in the Arab World with the whole ' Drive them into the Sea'
Sure, but how many other imperialist powers got fanatical revanchism and hate from their colonies' neighbors? That's what being an imperialist power and colonizing people entails. And like I say all the time, I don't see the Romani adopting this mindset, and they have at least as much reason to fear literally everybody around them as Jews in general, much less Israel.

It really does, IMO, boil down to irrational paranoia, especially in a world where UN-backed attempts to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing were rapidly becoming a thing and Jews had the benefit of protected-class status (that, just as an example, the Romani still don't in much of Europe).
 

CalBear

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Sadat was doing the heavy lifting in the Sinai, he would have the power to tell Assad to reign it in if necessary. Don't get me wrong, I think Assad would be OK with letting his goon squad loose on civilians, but Sadat was a much cannier guy and wouldn't be stupid enough to let his cause get tarnished to that degree.

Really? That...doesn't fit with Nixon's ability to literally fly F-4s to Israel and hand them over while in the middle of Watergate.
Well, these two points are not really correct, at all.

Assad more or less hated Sadat, partly because Sadat was actually competent and partly because Sadat stood between Assad and what he thought would be leadership of the entire Arab World. The only way Sadat could stop Syrian troops from excesses is if he had Egyptian forces attack them directly (good luck on that one, just keeping their conscripts reined in was going to be a full time job for the Egyptians).

Nixon reacted when the October War started to turn against Israel and IDF started to, quite obviously, begin prepping their Nuclear Deterrent (which was exactly WHY the Israelis made the preparation so bloody obvious). Israeli use of Special Weapons against Syria, a major Soviet Ally, was one of those nightmare scenarios that tended to escalate to a full exchange in the blink of an eye. A full nuclear exchange qualifies as a bad thing. Nixon also went full Cold Warrior once the Soviets started to talk about intervention, hence his taking SAC to DEFCON Three to remind Moscow just what the stakes were. Nixon didn't support the Israelis due to political calculations (or looking to capture the "Jewish vote") by then his only political calculations related to staying in office and out of the slammer), he supported them because failing to do so could have resulted in Armageddon.
 
@Worffan101 : At the risk of getting involved in a flame war exactly what genocide and ethnic cleansing since 1945 has the UN stopped? By the time the UN has actually done anything the slaughter is mostly done. Of course in some cases, like Srebrenica, the UN forces thoughtfully gave the bad guys nice new weapons (the Dutch blue helmets under the ROEs could not do much and when surrounded and told to give up their weapons did so). While the USSR is not going to risk any of the motherland getting a dose of instant sunshine for the Arabs, all they have to do is hold things up procedurally in the Security Council for a bit while the Arab armies advance to the sea. No obvious veto necessary, so by the time the UN gets involved all they will do is establish temporary camps and oversee the loading of Israelis on planes and ships out of Palestine.

If you think the cross-border hatreds and ethnic conflicts in many places in the world are due to imperialism and colonizing, think again. India/Pakistan - imperialism?? Mynamar/Rohyngia - colonizing? The mess that used to be Yugoslavia???

BTW you are not paranoid if they are really out to get you.

last I'll say, no desire to upset Ursus Californicus.
 
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