Monday, June 11, 2007

Egyptian X-files : 1967 war "Syrian Front part 3: The mother of all mysteries"

We all know what happened on the Egyptian front from defeat and reasons of defeat crystal clear but the mother of all Mysteries in the 1967 war is in Syria
You see the Golan Heights are very fortress from the geographical point of view; they are hills that can’t be easily invaded especially if there are military presence and resistance there which actually were not as expected there back in June 1967 not to mention the sudden withdrawal order with a fight given to the Syrian army [1]
According to historians the Syrian forces in the Golan were:
1. A reserve brigade
2. The fifth army
3. The ninth army
The fifth and ninth armies were already there to protect the hills from the IDF, because it was not the first time there was war because in 1950 or 1951 there was a small attempt by the Israelis to invade the Golan that was stopped by the Syrian army then.
The rest of the army units and regiments didn’t fight in the battle and didn’t fire a single bullet, the rest of the troops stayed to protect the regime like the 3rd army not from the Israelis as I believe but from any attempted coup or revolution.
Another Mystery is the announcement of Hafiz El-Assad the minister of defense and the head of the air forces [2]then the president later the fall of the Quneitra city on the 10th of June 1967 exactly at 9: 30 AM in the announcement no.66 even before the IDF reached to it!!
Excerpt from the announcement no.66

There is a great fight in the Quneitra city and its outskirts...
The problem was there wasn’t fight or one single Israeli in the city back then!!
I don’t know but how he knew it was going to fall as may be there could be a powerful resistance in it to hold back the IDF forces!! I always thought that in the military regimes and also democratic ones which are living war usually the news of the cities falling under the mercy of the enemy are carefully announced so it wouldn’t affect on the people’s spirits!!
Former Syrian Ambassador in Paris then and regime opponent now “Sami El-Genndy”[3] was amazed in Paris when he saw on TV the Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations announcing the fall of city and the arrival of the IDF to Damascus in front of the Security Council, of course the Israeli Ambassador denied these strange allegations because simply his arm forces didn’t reach the city!!
Later he knew from the Syrian foreign Minister “Ibrahim El-Makhous” that it was a skimp made to scare the world in order to save Damascus!! Of course it was a silly skimp as the world won’t fear for the fall of any Arab city whether a village or a capital, the world always believes Israel, I can’t believe this kind of thinking seriously.
Forget about that diplomat he may hate the Baath regime so much now after being one of the famous leaders in the party and thus he could say anything to defame them but what about the testimonies of the officers who were in the Golan during the war.
I found in the article of Mr. Khalid Al-Ahmed a testimony of a reserve officer he didn’t mention his name and I think we all know why because may be not only the reserve officer would be missing but his entire family would be if they knew his name.
According to this testimony the reserve officer was having breakfast with couple of soldiers when he heard the announcement 66 through the Damascus radio station, I forgot to say that this officer was in the city of Quneitra at the same moment .As soon as they had heard the announcement the officer and his soldiers left the breakfast to search in the streets for the enemy that succeeded in invading the small city but they found none!! When the officer returned back to his unit, he found out that his superiors had already fled away as soon as they heard the announcement even without looking through the window; it seemed that they trusted El-Assad so much that they believed him while he was in Damascus where as they were in “Quneitra” itself, man the Israelis should win us back then!!
Ok may be that unknown John Doe Syrian officer is also an enemy for the regime and the party what about a minister from the cabinet back then itself!!
Minister of Health “Abdel Rahman El-Akta” told one of his friends that he had been on the Syrian front in the Golan when the announcement was aired doing a field inspection visit and that he thought there was kind of a mistake and thus he called the minister of defense El-Assad to tell him that the “Quintiara” didn’t fall yet , instead of thanks for the joyful news the minister was met by rains from the most dirty insults[4] from the kind of “F**k” and “Son of B***” in the early morning with threats if he didn’t shut the F**k up and mind his own F**king business and in front of this lion[5] anger ,the minister apologized !!
You know something if you read the announcement no.66 in June in the language of numbers it would be 6/66 that is 666, what an omen!!
Already the whole world back then was amazed when it saw the Syrian defenses in Golan on how the Syrians left it without any considerable losses
Look to what the Time correspondent said about the Golan in August 1967 describing the Golan defense lines as fortress and powerful wondering how the Syrian could leave it so easily !!
Another incidents not testimonies that should be mentioned, they are very interesting me, number one was that the army commander returned back the emergency food supplies of the forces in the Golan before the war with two weeks to be replace with new, the problem was that the new supplies didn’t arrive in two weeks till the war and Soldiers were without emergency food supplies!!
Another incident the families of the high rank officers were deported from the Quneitra along with their furniture before the war despite the threats of the city governor back then “Abd El-Halim Khaddam”[6] that he would kill anyone who would leave the city !!
The worst part in that historical riddle was that the regime and its ruling government left to “Homs” for fear “Damascus” would fall too
Already if you invade the Golan Heights completely, the road will be open to you to invade “Damascus” because the distance between it and the city of “Quneitra” is only 40 kilometers but according to the historians the rest or the majority of the army was in the capital protecting the regime, but as I referred earlier not from the IDF but from any expected coup or public revolution.
It seems the Military regime in Syria was not willing to fight at all , not to fire a single bullet or defend one inch of its land I am afraid with my all respect but this is the conclusion any one would reach from reading the history , they were not willing to fight despite they were behind the escalation of the events till reached to the level of war , of course Israel anyway had planed to make war sooner or later then but the Syrian regime gave them the service of their lives , not only they entered with the Israelis war but they had dragged also Egypt and Jordan .
I don’t blame them as I said Israel was planning for war sooner or later just like in the case of the Lebanon War July 2006 ,they were only waiting for the excuse but on the contrary of Hezbollah ,the Syrian regime back then didn’t fight well ,sorry didn’t fight back at all !!
Another mystery from the mysteries in that war was the Syrian Air forces
As you see the IAF started its attack on Egypt since 5 AM on the 5th of June, all the air fighters were in the battle nothing left to protect Israel and its airports except 12 air fighters
So if the Arabic air forces from the Syrian, the Iraqi and the Jordanian had attacked Israel after or between 5 AM to 10 AM, it could have destroyed the remaining of the IAF and the Israeli airports, and intercepted the returning fleets of the air fighters coming back from Egypt with ammunition or fuel and thus it would be easy to destroy them
Imagine how the course of the battle and its result would have changed if that had taken place, the course of the history would have change.
I don’t know or have an idea why it didn’t take place, already historically the only Arabic air forces attack which was the Syrian took place at 12 PM Damascus local time and it was only targeting the oil refinery in Haifa!! 12 PM was exactly after one hour when the IAF finished its job in destroying the EAF completely in complete 6 hours from 5 AM to 11 PM!!
It would be very ridiculous to know that the Syrians didn’t start their attack because they were confident from “Sawt El-Arab” radio reports with the voice of Ahmed Said bringing the joyful news that the Egyptian forces destroyed 40 Israeli air forces !
It is not only me the Egyptian citizen whom after 40 years is amazed about what happened with the SAF which its high commander Hafiz Al-Assad then in an interview before the war by couple of weeks confirmed that it was ready to erase the Israeli existence from the surface of the earth but also late King Hussein of Jordan himself, the king of Jordan was surprised by the Syrian reaction and he shared his surprise with the French Journalists’ interview in the book “our war with Israel” [7]
We were waiting the Syrians, as without the “MEG” we couldn’t bomb the Israeli airports and since 9.30 am I called the commandership of the SAF and their answers were that they were surprised by what happened, that their planes were not ready, their pilots were having training sessions!! They asked to give half an hour then an hour, in 10:45 AM they asked for another hour and we said yes, then in 12 AM we couldn’t wait any longer, and so the Iraqi Air fighters took off along with out Jordanian air fighters in the mission and thus we didn’t start our operation except after 12 am[8]
The SAF made us miss a golden chance we could have used to for the Arabs’ sake, if the Syrians hadn’t hesitated, we would have started our operations in earlier time and we could have intercepted the enemy bombers in their way to return to their bases after bombing the Egyptian Air bases without enough fuel or ammunition, and we would have surprised them while they were on ground falling their tanks for another round , if that had happened ,it would have changed the course of the battle and results were switched.
Time only will reveal an explanation for several things but what I am sure of is that the SAF were not ready for the 5 of June war and the Israelis’ calculations were right when they left only 12 air fighters to protect their skies where the rest of the IAF to hit Egypt !!
I won’t speculate what all these mysteries mean from treason that was taking place in the Syrian regime, already this can go perfectly with the warning King Hussein sent to President Nasser before their meeting that he had got information that some members in the Syrians were working for some parties and that they wanted Egypt to be involved in the war as a set up
It is just like a puzzle for me you can bring its pieces to gather in order to have the picture completed, the problem here you find an ugly shocking picture in the end that would certainly will cause in the fall of false idols who ruled countries for decades by the name of patriotism by the charges of the grand treason.
I would refer here to something I read and post about from couple of months concerning the huge secret president Anwar Sadaat shared with his personal doctor Mahmoud El-Gama’, a secret that President Nasser was aware and shared with Sadaat, that Secret was …. The Golan Heights were sold and its price was paid

[1] I always hear from people in Egypt that the IDF didn’t fire on bullet in the invasion of the Syrian Golan because it didn’t meet any forces
[2] I don’t know how he kept the two positions at the same time; usually the head of the Air forces is promoted to minister of defense to leave his place for another one!!
[3] In his book “Piece of Bread”
[4] Just little remark the Syrian people has a very dirty diction for insults and it is something regular in the Syrian street despite their love to poetry!!
[5] El-Assad means lion in Arabic
[6] Now the triangle is complete “El-Assad, Talas and Khaddam”
[7] Published by “Dar-El-Nahr” of Lebanon , one of the most famous and prestigious publishing house in the Arab world
[8] After the complete destruction of the EAF

3 comments:

  1. Thank you very much for the very informing great post Zeinobia.

    It seems to me that all wanted to get rid of Nasser, the only man who had enough honesty and character to make something ou of the Arabs.


    Again you sutain my point, Arabs kill prophets, and excel at stabbing eachother at the back. Look they did same thing later to Sadam and the iraqi baath whichwas diffeent from the syrian one, as it managed to crete the most prosperous and developed Arab state in the 20th centure. Bu again...........they dont want an independent purely arabic strong stae in this region.

    I would like to inform you that according an international bank report issued in 1986. Egypt' econmic development from 1956 to 1966 was 4 times that of the 40 years preceding 1952!

    It would be worth mentioning that in 1966 our economic growth rate was 6.5 which was miraculöaous by the measures of the time, given that china was scoring 2.55 which was a very high rate back then.

    Arabs love to lose!

    I dont know why I was born an Arab........ that is a curse

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is the not the Arabs Amr , it is the leaders sorry the word leader is difficult to be used , anyhow we may have different opinions about Nasser and Saddam
    and that's why I tell you that there is no use for economic developement without democracy or freedom , two things Nasser and Saddam didn't know
    no use for economic development or military power without them

    ReplyDelete
  3. Individual liberties in sadam's Iraq was highly respected. It was at the same level of Europe.

    Freedom is not an absolute value it is context depndent. Political freedom cant be fully given to retrded medival ignarnat peoples like Arabs, untilll all people are fully developed educated in society where a strong secular middle class is predominant.

    ReplyDelete

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