Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Russia confirms Soviet sorties over Dimona in '67

Russia confirms Soviet sorties over Dimona in '67
David Horovitz , THE JERUSALEM POST 	Aug. 23, 2007
The chief spokesman of the Russian Air Force, Col. Aleksandr V.
Drobyshevsky, has confirmed in writing for the first time that it was
Soviet pilots, in the USSR's most-advanced MiG-25 "Foxbat" aircraft,
who flew highly-provocative sorties over Israel's nuclear facility at
Dimona in May 1967, just prior to the Six Day War.
Gideon Remez and Isabella Ginor, who co-wrote the recent book Foxbats
over Dimona, which asserts that the Soviet Union deliberately
engineered the war to create the conditions in which Israel's nuclear
program could be destroyed, on Thursday described this "extraordinary
disclosure" as "official confirmation of the book's exhibit A and the
source of its title."
Published in June by Yale University Press, the Israeli duo's book
asserted that the Soviets flew sorties over Dimona in the still-
experimental and top-secret Foxbats both to bolster a deliberate
Soviet effort to encourage Israel to launch a war, and to ensure that
the nuclear target could be effectively destroyed once Israel, branded
an aggressor for its preemption, came under a planned joint Arab-
Soviet counterattack.
Soviet nuclear-missile submarines were said to have been poised off
Israel's shore, ready to strike back in case Israel already had a
nuclear device and sought to use it. The Soviets were also said to
have geared up for a naval landing on Israel's beaches.
The book, hailed by experts such as the former US ambassador to Israel
and Egypt Daniel Kurtzer for marshalling a "compelling argument,"
nonetheless featured what the authors acknowledged was a dearth of
incontrovertible documentation that would back up central aspects of
their thesis. They noted at the time that it was "entirely possible
that few corresponding documents ever existed," that key documents may
have been destroyed, and that "the accounts of numerous Soviet
participants refer to orders that were transmitted only orally down
the chain of command."
However, a delighted Remez and Ginor told the The Jerusalem Post that
official confirmation of the Soviet Foxbat sorties had now been
published by Drobyshevsky in an article posted on the official Web
site of the Russian Defense Ministry. The "extraordinary disclosure of
a hitherto secret operation," they noted, "apparently was included
inadvertently - in a statement that was published in a completely
different context": to mark the anniversary of the test pilots' school
from which one of the pilots who participated in the 1967 flights
graduated.
The relevant section of Drobyshevsky's article states (in
translation): "In 1967, the military valor and high combat training of
Col. Bezhevets, A.S. (now a Hero of the Soviet Union, an honorary test
pilot of the USSR, [and] retired Air Force major-general), were
demonstrated while carrying out combat operation in Egypt, [and]
enabled [him] to perform unique reconnaissance flights over the
territory of Israel in a MiG-25RB aircraft."
Remez and Ginor said this high-level admission of the Soviet sorties,
which was first posted on the ministry's Web site last October, "comes
as close to an official document as one can hope for in the
foreseeable future, given the prevailing circumstances in Russia."
They noted that it corroborates the personal testimony of Bezhevets's
senior colleague, Lt.-Gen. Aleksandr I. Vybornov, who is quoted in the
book as having described the missions on several occasions.
The book's findings were first published by the Post on May 16, under
the heading "Soviets engineered Six Day War 'to destroy Israel's
nuclear program.'"
Remez and Ginor told the Post that this article "was widely
reproduced" and "aroused intensive discussion" in the FSU. Several
respected news media outlets, notably the Russian daily Komsomolskaya
Pravda, they said, "contacted some of the veterans who were among the
main sources for the book, and they reiterated their accounts."
Among such veterans confirming their stories was Gen. Vasily
Reshetnikov, the commander of the Soviet strategic bombers, said to
have been given maps for the planned strike at Dimona.
The "conventional view" of the events leading up to the 1967 war,
Remez noted when the book came out, "is that the Soviet Union
triggered the conflict via disinformation on Israeli troop movements,
but that it didn't intend for a full-scale war to break out and that
it then did its best to defuse the war in cooperation with the United
States." The book, he said, "totally contradicts everything that has
been accepted."
Having received information about Israel's progress toward nuclear
arms, the book asserts, the Soviets aimed to draw Israel into a
confrontation in which their counterstrike would include a joint
Egyptian-Soviet bombing of the reactor at Dimona.
The Soviets' intended central intervention in the war was thwarted,
however, by the overwhelming nature of the initial Israeli success,
the authors write, as Israel's preemption, far from weakening its
international legitimacy and exposing it to devastating counterattack,
proved decisive in determining the conflict. Because the Soviet
Union's plan thus proved unworkable, the authors go on, its role in
stoking the crisis, and its plans to subsequently remake the Middle
East to its advantage, have remained overlooked, undervalued or simply
unknown to historians assessing the war over the past 40 years.
The Israeli authors' thesis, they told the Post this week, had now won
over Komsomolskaya Pravda's Col. Viktor Baranets, a noted military
correspondent and former General Staff officer. They quoted him as
having written recently that "the time has apparently come to set the
record straight. So far, the facts have often been replaced by
inventions. No one can dispute the obvious: the USSR 'orchestrated'
that war... The USSR was prepared for an invasion of Israel. The
confessions of our own officers prove this."
The Russian media also recently contacted Bezhevets himself, the
authors said, but even though he has now been officially praised by
his own Defense Ministry for making the Foxbat flights over Israel, he
denied doing so. According to Remez and Ginor, this "indicates that
Drobyshevsky's [Defense Ministry] statement relied not on the pilot's
testimony but rather on the air force's own documentation." This, in
turn, they said, "illustrates the point... that full and direct
documentation of the Soviet role in 1967 is still being suppressed."
Remez, a longtime prominent Israel Radio journalist, fought in the Six
Day War as a paratrooper. Ginor was born in the Ukraine, came to
Israel in 1967 and is a noted analyst of Soviet and post-Soviet
affairs.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779146277&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

 stessa, nel quadro della Guerra Fredda.
Non mi pare questo il senso della notizia.
Che sta invece nel fatto (abbastanza noto agli storici) che l'urss abbia 
piuttosto vigorosamente spinto per la guerra in quella estate del 1967, anche 
rifilando qualche polpetta avvelenata ai compagni nazionalsocialisti della RAU.
Tb
-- 
Libertą per i comunisti siriani in carcere: Fateh Jamus, 'Isam Dimashqi,
Basel Hurani, 'Abd al-Halim Rumieh, Ratib Sha'bu, and Doha 'Ashur
al-'Askari 
http://snipurl.com/1oqtm

 del dispositivo occidentale senza essere parte della NATO.
Una scelta consensuale, ma anche fortemente israeliana.
Comunque, se la notizia "spiega" che il ruolo israeliano era quello di 
esercitare una minaccia sull'urss, mi sa che si è sppiegata male :-)
Hint: furono i sovietici a volare su Dimona, non gli israeliani sull'urss.
Tb
Ps: si legge molto sui giornali israeliani di un possibile avvicinamento 
strategico con la Russia. Chissà che vediamo sergetto postare quanto prima i 
comunicati di Yisrael Beitenu :-)
-- 
Libertà per i comunisti siriani in carcere: Fateh Jamus, 'Isam Dimashqi,


la Russia.
Pura fantasia senza nulla a sostegno.
-Stefano

consideravano Israele parte dello schieramento occidentale?
Perche' chi possiede armi atomiche e' sempre un potenziale pericolo, che
faccia parte o meno di qualche schieramento?
-Stefano

come e' stato detto da molti.
Certo, certo....
*pat pat*
-Stefano

 mentre prima gli israeliani ricorrevano ad armi francesi.
Non che avessero scelta: De Gaulle bloccò ogni ulteriore fornitura di armi 
mi sembra. Ricordiamo che furono però le bombe francesi Durandal a 
distruggere le piste egiziane nella guerra.
Ciao,
Federico Antola.