Israeli Historiography on Soviet Politics in the Middle Eastern Wars

Abstract

Soviet policy in the Middle Eastern conflict and, in particular, in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967– 1973 present a topic that has been comprehensively studied in foreign, and, above all, in Israeli historiography. Although Israeli specialists, as a rule, approach the study of this complex phenomenon on the basis of the accepted academic methodology and analysis of rather contradictory sources, the monographs discussed in this article present the reader with a very one-sided and biased interpretation of the role of the Soviet state in this historical period. They refute the traditional version that Moscow was interested in maintaining a controlled crisis, but not in its transition to a military phase, and tried to restrain the Arabs. Instead, Israeli authors I. Ginor and G. Remez set out to prove that it was the USSR, in secret conspiracy with the leaders of Egypt and Syria, that prepared attacks on Israel in 1967, oriented the Arabs exclusively towards a military solution to the conflict after the “Six-Day War” and prepared plans for a joint attack on Israeli positions in 1973. Soviet policy in the Middle East at that period was neither a model of “peacefulness and brotherly assistance”, as Soviet propaganda presented it, or a modern version of a “crusade” against the Holy Land, as Israeli authors portray it in the works under consideration. The complex interweaving of global and regional interests, ideological indoctrination, and internal political struggle for power were the main factors that influenced the process of political decision-making. Having excluded many of these factors from their research and rather subjectively approaching the selection of sources, I. Ginor and G. Remez presented a rather distorted and not credible version of events.