Eban's Conception Of War
In Norman Finkelstein’s essay he is critiquing the main stream conception of the 1967 June war between Israel and Jordan, Syria, and Egypt as stated by Israeli Foreign Affairs spokesperson Abba Eban. Finkelstein challenges Eban’s assertions that Israel did not in any way provoke the war, as well as that the Israeli preemptive attack was defensible, and that Eban’s interpretation of UN Resolution 242 was in line with how the UN conceived it. To make these assertions Finkelstein points to historical documents and scholarship. In the case of Israeli diplomacy he argues that Eban’s agreement that Israel attempted to avoid the war is proved false by the fact that Israel preemptively attacked ignoring US mediation attempts, repudiated UN mediation,