Ask Mubarak how Egypt planned to soak Israel in poison gas.

Ask Mubarak how Egypt planned to soak Israel in poison gas.

By Avraham Azrieli*

Writing a novel is a long process that begins with an idea, followed by research, which could be tedious until you hit gold—a nugget of historic fact that surprises, or even shocks you. That’s what happened to me while conducting research for my new novel, The Jerusalem Inception.

Even though I grew up in Israel and experienced several wars as a child, teenager and a soldier, my research led to a shocking discovery: Egypt’s preparations to rain poison gas on the young Jewish state on the eve of the Six Day War.

Apparently, Egyptian forces under President Gamal Abdul Nasser had used poison gas while fighting in Yemen in the sixties, exterminating whole villages as well as thousands of Saudi soldiers. In May 1967, Egypt transported the deadly stocks to the Sinai Peninsula and expelled all UN observers from the southern border in advance of a massive carpet bombing of Israeli towns and kibbutzim with shells containing poison gas, delivered by artillery and planes. At the time, the Jewish state was merely eighteen years old, its population of two million mostly confined to an eight-mile-wide strip along the Mediterranean coast as well as parts of the Galili, the Negev Desert and the western enclave of Jordanian-held Jerusalem.

In late May, despite detailed briefings by the head of Mossad and the CIA, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson refused to assist Israel in any way for fear of igniting a confrontation with the Soviets. The Israeli chief spy flew back home in a cargo plane filled with tens of thousands of gas masks, donated by the Americans. Meanwhile, public parks in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were dug up to serve as mass graves for the expected victims.

Especially revealing are the documents and testimonies included in Six days of war: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford Press 2002) by Dr. Michael Oren (currently the Israeli ambassador in Washington). The records show how Egypt’s genocidal plans terrified Israel’s leaders, who were Holocaust survivors, and triggered their decision to launch a preemptive strike. (See pages 40, 48, 63, 104, 133,136, 179, and sources cited there)

Why is this so important today?

I believe that the recent revolution in Egypt is an opportunity for that nation to come to terms with its past. Egyptians should learn how close their nation came to replicating Nazi crimes by gassing to death countless Jewish civilians, a horrendous catastrophe that was prevented only through Israel’s preemptive strike. Egypt can remove this stain from its national history by taking moral responsibility for inciting the 1967 war and for its lingering consequences.

It is fortuitous that ousted President Hosni Mubarak had served in 1967 as an air force officer. He likely took part in the planned mass poisoning of Israel’s population and should be questioned about this issue during his upcoming trial in Cairo for massacring many of his own people.

And most important of all, as Israelis and Palestinians struggle to resolve the territorial and demographic challenges created by the 1967 war, it is essential for all the historic facts—and causes!—to be known and acknowledged, thus facilitating a better understanding of the parties’ passionate feelings and their understandable fears of history repeating itself.

*Avraham Azrieli lives in Columbia, MD. He served in the IDF (Intelligence Corps) before graduating from Columbia Law School in NYC. His latest novel is The Jerusalem Inception. On the web at www.AzrieliBooks.com