> 1. Egypt had no intention of attacking Israel (as we now know for certain).
Where are you getting this idea from? A leader with no intention of attacking Israel would not have made statements like
"We will not accept any possibility of co-existence with Israel. [...] The war with Israel is in effect since 1948." (Nasser, May 28, 1967)
and then proceeded to amass ~100k troops near the border, or in Nasser's words: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ..."
As far as preemptive strikes go, it really doesn't get any clearer than this.
Not to mention the naval blockade which was in itself an act of war, making the question of who started the war rather moot.
The internal deliberations of the Egyptian government at the time are all publicly known now. The Egyptian leadership feared that Israel was planning an attack on Syria, which is why they mobilized their own army. They had no intention of attacking Israel.
The Israelis had been planning their own attack on Egypt for years. Ben Gurion had aggressive, expansionist foreign policy views, which the crisis with Egypt allowed him to implement.
The Israeli public was afraid of Egypt, but the leadership was extremely confident that Israel had massive military superiority over the Egyptians and would rapidly win any war. That's also what American intelligence thought, and what they told the Israelis.
As for Egyptian public statements about Israel, remember the political context: Israel had been founded 19 years earlier through the mass theft of Palestinian land and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Israel had carried out terrorist bombings in Cairo in the early 1950s in order to try to politically destabilize the country, and had invaded Egypt in 1956, as part of a conspiracy with Britain and France to take over the Suez Canal. The Egyptians had good reasons to view the Israelis as enemies and loudly complain, but we now know they had no intention of attacking.
Your position boils down to an unverifiable claim about Nasser's mental state. Egypt had a plan (Operation Dawn) to invade Israel. Nasser had not approved it yet, but that doesn't mean he wasn't going to.
Even if Nasser planned to wait and induce Israel to fire the first shot, how would Israel know when Egypt's actions, as well as many of their statements, were perfectly consistent with a military preparing to immanently invade?
Taking this to the extreme, if Russia launched a silo of ICBMs targeting DC, and it turned out that they were all convincing decoys with no payload, would you say the US "initiated the war" for responding with real munitions?
Realistically, pre-emptive strikes don't get any clearer than this. If one objects to this pre-emptive, one would pretty much have reject the notion of pre-emptive strikes categorically. There can be a legal argument that pre-emptive strikes never technically fall under then narrow language of Article 51, but that's more of a strict textualist argument and not a pragmatist one.
It's not at all unverifiable. There is a lot known about the Egyptian government's internal deliberations at the time, such as the fact that they feared Israel was planning to imminently attack Syria.
> Taking this to the extreme, if Russia launched a silo of ICBMs targeting DC
Your analogy has already gone off the rails, because Israel held massive military superiority over Egypt. The Americans and the Israelis both knew that Israel would rapidly win any war with Egypt.
The military escalation that preceded the 1967 war was triggered by Israel's own attack on Egypt in November 1966. Israel was pursuing an extremely aggressive foreign policy. It took actions that caused a massive increase in tensions, but then claimed those actions gave it the right to launch a preemptive war (though actually, when the war broke out, the Israeli government just chose to lie and claim that Egypt had attacked Israel first).
> The Americans and the Israelis both knew that Israel would rapidly win any war with Egypt.
I don't think that's accurate, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the discussion anyway. The point was just that the instigator of a war isn't necessarily the side that technically fires the first munition.
> Israel's own attack on Egypt in November 1966
What do you mean? There was no Israeli attack on Egypt at that time.
> then claimed those actions gave it the right to launch a preemptive war
Not sure what you mean. Israel's justification was the naval blockade and Egypt's apparent preparations for an invasion, nothing else.
It is accurate. There are many declassified documents from the time that discuss Israeli vs. Arab military capabilities. They come to the conclusion that the Israelis enjoyed massive superiority. Here's one [0]:
“The judgment of the intelligence community is that Israeli ground forces 'can maintain internal security, defend successfully against simultaneous Arab attacks on all fronts, launch limited attacks simultaneously on all fronts, or hold on any three fronts while mounting successfully a major offensive on the fourth.'”
Here's another [1]:
“They would try to destroy the Egyptian airforce first and thus gain ability for a tank strike to take Sinai and the Straits. Secretary McNamara said the Israelis think they can win in 3–4 days; but he thinks it would be longer—7 to 10 days.”
> What do you mean? There was no Israeli attack on Egypt at that time.
I mistyped. Israel attacked Jordan in November 1966.
> Israel's justification was the naval blockade and Egypt's apparent preparations for an invasion, nothing else.
Israel actually cycled through a number of different justifications. Their initial justification was just a pure lie: they claimed that Egypt had attacked first.
The theory that Israel could make up for its massive numerical disadvantages with some better training, tactics and morale, with some caveats ("If this assumption should prove wrong, Israel might well be in trouble ..."), doesn't really match your claim that "Israel held massive military superiority over Egypt".
You're not reading what they're writing. They all were predicting a rapid Israeli victory, within mere days. They believed that Israel could take on all the Arab states at once and still win.
If you want a more colloquial version of the US assessment, this is what Lyndon Johnson told the Israelis before the war (paraphrased in the official US diplomatic records):
“The US assessment does not agree with that of the Israelis: our best judgment is that no military attack on Israel is imminent, and, moreover, if Israel is attacked, our judgment is that the Israelis would lick them.”
Where are you getting this idea from? A leader with no intention of attacking Israel would not have made statements like
"We will not accept any possibility of co-existence with Israel. [...] The war with Israel is in effect since 1948." (Nasser, May 28, 1967)
and then proceeded to amass ~100k troops near the border, or in Nasser's words: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ..."
As far as preemptive strikes go, it really doesn't get any clearer than this.
Not to mention the naval blockade which was in itself an act of war, making the question of who started the war rather moot.