Independent headline claims defensive war is illegal

The Independent, famous for publishing the baby - eating Sharon cartoon, has proven again that its editors are incompetent, mendacious and biased with the following headline: "Secret memo shows Israel knew Six Day War was illegal." It is published here: news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2584164.ece

The Independent offers not a scintilla of of proof for their assertion. Not even close. Defensive war is not illegal. Egypt had given Israel Cassus Belli by closing the straits of Tiran. Jordan and Syria were firing on Israeli towns. How could the Six Day War have been illegal?

What Independent tells us instead has no relation at all to the headline:

A senior legal official who secretly warned the government of Israel after the Six Day War of 1967 that it would be illegal to build Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories has said, for the first time, that he still believes that he was right.

Meron said nothing about the war at all. The memo was sent after the war. The Israeli government could not have known anything about it before the war. The settlements were not contemplated until after the war. What could the Independent be going on about?

A different version of the same nonsense was written up in an AFP story as:

A SECRET memo proves that the Israeli government knew that its occupation of Palestinian land was illegal...

In this case, the mistake is that the article says Israel knew the occupation is illegal. Meron wrote nothing about the occupation. Britain, France, the United States and USSR occupied German. It was not "illegal."

Meron's opinion regarding the settlements is a different matter.

Ami Isseroff