6 Days - 1 Journey: The Story of the Six Day War (Part 3)

6 Days - 1 Journey: The Story of the Six Day War (Part 2) Join Dr. Hagi Ben Artzi as he tells the story of the 2nd day of the 1967 war - the liberation of Binyamin, Samaria & the Jordan Valley.

ELDER OF ZIYON: If the Six Day War hadn't happened...

• Would there be a Palestinian Arab state today on the West Bank and Gaza?
• Would Israel's Arab neighbors consider the 1949 armistice lines as "borders" today?
• Would Jews would be allowed to visit their holy places in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron and elsewhere today?
• Would Israelis in the Galilee be safe from fire coming from the Golan Heights today?
• Would there have not have been another war of aggression mounted against Israel since then?
• Would the Middle East would be a safer place today?
• Would worldwide terror today be lessened?
• Would the Palestinian Arab "refugee" problem have been solved by now?
• Would Israel-haters hate Israel any less?

If the answers to all of these are "no," and they almost certainly are, then why does anyone think that Israel turning the clock back to early 1967 would improve things - today?

Israel one Month after the 6-Day War

ד"ר מרטין ריכטר ז"ל מבזל (שוויץ) ביקר חודש לאחר מלחמת ששת הימים בארץ. הוא סייר בירושלים ובעיר העתיקה, שכם, עמק הירדין, יריחו, ים המלח, חברון, מערת המכפלה, קבר רחל ובית לחם. הוא תיעד את ביקורו בסרט צבעוני. מדובר במסמך היסטורי. עריכת הסרט על ידי בנו, אלכסנדר אבידן.

Dr. Martin Richter from Basel (Switzerland) visited Israel in July 1967, one month after the 6-Day War. He toured Jerusalem and the Old City, Shechem, the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea, the cave of Machpela, Hebron, Rachel's Tomb and Betlehem. He documented his visit with a movie in color. This movie is a historical document. It was arranged by his son Alexander Avidan

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Israel retweeting Six-Day War

The IDF is retweeting the 1967 Six-day War this week as it happened. 

Israel's army was Wednesday giving a "live" blow-by-blow account of the 1967 Six Day War, tweeting each air strike at the exact time it occurred 46 years ago in an epic replay which began early in the morning.

@IDF1967 "is an official Israel Defence Forces account that is aimed at retweeting the events of the Six Day War in live time," an army spokesman told AFP.

The account was tweeting key events in the battle against the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria that took place from 5 to 10 June 1967, and includes pictures and videos, the army said.
The tweets are mostly in Hebrew, with some translated into English.

"In response to repeated provocations by Egypt, the State of Israel and the IDF are going to war. We will not sit idly as the enemy forces tighten the noose around our necks," the opening tweet said around 8:00am (0500 GMT) when Israel landed its first pre-emptive air strike 46 years ago.

By Wednesday afternoon, @IDF1967 had more than 1,000 followers, its posts showing pictures of Israeli soldiers and tanks in Sinai, and various other battle footage.

Sounds like fun. 

Have We Lost the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, Too?

Israel Harel thinks and writes so.


Through a lack of vision and assertiveness, Israel's governments have relinquished the Temple Mount and the Western Wall and weakened the state's claim to other parts of the Jewish homeland.
   
And explains that in 1967


From Lions' Gate, the fighters broke through to the Gate of Tribes and, after a short battle, liberated the Temple Mount. Following a short pause of amazement at the site, they rushed in unstoppable yearning toward the Western Wall. There they let loose an uncontrollable flood of tears. At the wall, not on the mount. They were soon followed, also through Lions' Gate and the Gate of Tribes, by national leaders and commanders from the 1948 War of Independence. They too did not stop on the mount. Even Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the Israel Defense Forces Chief Rabbi, blew the shofar at the wall and not on the mount, a historic blast that has reverberated since.

In these moments, the attitude was set regarding Gen. Motta Gur's famous words, “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” Israel's government at the time and those that have followed it, have turned his words into a fiction. The poet Uri Zvi Greenberg referenced this legacy, saying, “You have betrayed your mountain, the highest in the world/your support in this world/without which Israel is not Israel.”

The transferring of control of the mount to the Waqf and the folding of the flag symbolize a lack of vision as well as the confusion that accompanied the shock of that victory. The result has been the missing of myriad opportunities to establish irreversible facts on the ground.

...Jewish hesitancy, Jewish diffidence and Jewish ambiguity were picked up by Arab seismographs, as well as by other opponents of Jewish rule over our capital and other parts of our homeland.

Born on the Fourth of June by Bret Stephens

On June 4, 1989, parliamentary elections in Poland gave Solidarity 99 out of the 100 seats they were allowed to contest. For those who still doubted it—and there were many—the vote illustrated the utter illegitimacy of Communist rule in central Europe. Five months later, the wall came down in Berlin. Two years after that, the hammer-and-sickle was lowered, hopefully for the last time, over the Kremlin.

Also on June 4, 1989, soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army seized control of Tiananmen Square in Beijing from the students who had been occupying it for the previous several weeks. The result, in that case, was the death of hundreds, maybe more, the imprisonment of thousands, the reconsolidation of hard-line Communist Party rule and the emergence of China not as a nation tracing a slow but steady course toward freedom but as a new form of dictatorship, one that sought to harness the energies of private enterprise to the ambitions of despotism.

What’s in a date? It was surely coincidental that two epochal events took place on the same day. Yet sometimes coincidences can illuminate deeper truths. In these cases, they remind us of the brittleness of tyrannical regimes, but also of their brutality; of their susceptibility to sudden collapse, but also of their capacity for endless slaughter; of their inner weakness, but also of their will to power.

Above all, they remind us that tyranny is a scandal—not a scandal in the sense of Watergate, or of Eliot Spitzer’s socks—but in the sense of being a gigantic lie hiding in plain sight, a lie that seeks to violently compel others to submit to its claims or else participate in them. As with any lie, it is sustained only to the extent that it is believed. And, as with any lie, it is undone the moment one person—whether that’s Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Natan Sharansky or Václav Havel or Liu Xiaobo or Ayaan Hirsi Ali—stands up and says: It is not so.

And so the fourth of June ought to be a date to mark in our calendars. It is a reminder that a core democratic task is to preserve the capacity to be scandalized by tyranny: wise enough to fear it, bold enough to resist it, persistent enough to expose it, and idealistic enough to believe it can be brought down.

Yet there aren’t the only fourths of June from recent history that ought to matter to us. There is also the fourth of June, 1967. It was a Sunday, the day before the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and the Arab countries surrounding it. It was the eve of battle, the moment of decision.

On the fourth of June, 1967, Israel—deploying 275,000 troops, 200 combat planes, and 1,100 tanks—faced off against combined Arab armies that fielded nearly twice as many troops, more than four times as many planes, and nearly five times as many tanks.

On the fourth of June, 1967, the commander of the Egyptian army, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, told Ahmad Shukeiri, the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization, “soon we’ll be able to take the initiative and rid ourselves of Israel once and for all.”

On the fourth of June, 1967, Israel had not received emergency military aid promised by the United States; nor had the United States mounted a promised international armada to break Egypt’s blockade of the Straits of Tiran; nor had Israel gotten any relief from France, which just then decided to turn on the Jewish state with an arms embargo; nor had it gotten any diplomatic relief at the United Nations, which had instantly capitulated to Egyptian demands to withdraw peacekeepers from the Sinai.

On the fourth of June, 1967, a divided Israeli cabinet met to decide what to do. One minister urged his colleagues not to go to war without an ally. Another insisted Israel needed a more clear-cut casus belli, even if it meant sending an Israeli ship on a suicide mission through the blockaded straits. Even David Ben-Gurion, no longer prime minister but still politically influential, felt Israel was acting in too much haste.

On the fourth of June, 1967, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko summoned Israel’s ambassador in Moscow to warn him that the Soviet Union would not brook “Zionist aggression” and that it was prepared to interfere on behalf of its Arab clients. As Gromyko was delivering that warning in Moscow, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol received a letter from Lyndon Johnson, who wrote to “emphasize the necessity for Israel not to make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities.”

And yet, despite this litany, it was on the fourth of June, 1967, that Israel chose to strike—and strike first. “They will condemn us,” Yigal Allon, the labor minister, told his cabinet colleagues. “And we will survive.”

All of this should sound familiar to us today—the threat to Israel’s existence, the political divisions within the country, the muddle of U.S. policy, the global opposition to Israel, Israel’s fear of being blamed for starting a war. And yet the gap between what the fourth of June, 1967, ought to mean to the world and what much of the world takes to be its meaning appears to be a bottomless chasm.

Five years ago, on the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, the Economist published an editorial arguing that the war was “one of history’s pyrrhic victories….A calamity for the Jewish state no less than for its neighbors.” One has to marvel at the mental gymnastics required to come to that conclusion. You have to ignore everything Israel did to avoid the war, including beseeching King Hussein of Jordan not to join in, and you also have to ignore Israel’s immediate—and immediately rejected—offers to return the Sinai and the Golan Heights, as well as its efforts to establish an autonomous Palestinian authority in the West Bank.

You have to suppose that it is somehow “pyrrhic” that Israel remains a sovereign and prosperous state today, 45 years later, whereas it took the Romans a mere four years to make the original Pyrrhus’s victory proverbially pyrrhic. You have to deny that history’s losers typically aren’t given a second bite at the apple—just ask the East Prussians, or the Mexicans of San Diego, San Antonio, and Santa Fé. You have to think that the trade-off between France’s Mirages and America’s Phantoms, or between soft European support and hard American backing, was a bad one.

Above all—and this is the decisive point—you have to believe that the confidence and self-respect Israelis gained in the wake of the Six-Day War was prideful and sinful, and that the possession of political power ill befits the Jewish people, and that weakness is the only sure token of virtue.

Yet that is precisely how so much of the world has come to see the war. Thus, the day when the Jewish state had its back to the wall is now regarded as the last day Israelis could hold their heads high—because they weren’t occupying someone else’s land. The day when Israel stood behind borders that tempted its neighbors into war is now regarded as the day to which history must rewind—those notorious 1967 lines—in order to achieve a lasting peace. The day when Israel achieved one of the most unexpected military victories of the 20th century is now regarded as Israel’s original sin, the moment it began its descent into ethnic chauvinism, international ostracism, and national suicide.

Triumph: Israeli army paratroopers (L-R) Zion Karasanti, Yitzhak Yifat, and Haim Oshri stand beside the Western Wall after capturing it, June 7, 1967.

How did this come to be? How did the meaning of the fourth of June get turned on its head?

One answer—and a powerful one—is that excuses for hating Jews are surely one of the world’s inexhaustible resources. It may be highly convenient to treat the Six-Day War as the moment Israel went rotten, but it’s an argument that can be sustained only by amnesia, ignorance, or bad faith. Israel was hated be fore the fourth of June as much as it was hated after the fourth of June. And you can be sure that, in the event that Israel withdraws from the last inch of “occupied” territory, the hatred will not abate, but only shape-shift into some other form.

A second answer is that history never gives us the counterfactual, the what-might-have-been. It’s always possible to argue that things might have turned out much better for the Jewish state if only it had stayed its hand before the war, or if it had acted otherwise after it.

Even so, it’s amazing how anyone can make the case that Israel suffered a “calamity” as a result of the Six-Day War. In 1967, the country had a per capita GDP of $1,500. Today the figure approaches $30,000. In 1967, support for Israel could barely muster 80 or so signatures in Congress. Today pro-Israel legislation routinely gets near-unanimous support in both houses. Since 1967, Israel has been deemed guilty of the sin of occupying a notional country called “Palestine.” In 1967, Israel was “Palestine.” Is Israel really so much worse off today?

But there is another answer, a deeper one, which perhaps can explain not only why the meaning of June 4 has been twisted, but a few other mysteries as well. And that’s the morality—the false and dangerous morality—of pity.

On the fourth of June, 1967, there were excellent reasons to side with Israel. It was a democracy besieged and assaulted by tyrannies. Its maritime rights had been violated by Egypt’s closure of the Straits of Tiran; international law was on its side. It had compelling reasons to believe it was under mortal threat. It made no territorial demands on its neighbors, much less call for their destruction. It was a net contributor, scientifically and culturally, to the march of civilization. Simply put, the Israelis were the good guys.

Yet the reason usually cited for sympathizing with Israel that fourth of June is that it was the underdog—the proverbial 98-pound weakling versus its big bullying neighbors. And this was true, albeit only partially true, because Israel quickly demonstrated that it wasn’t such a weakling after all.

But it’s hard to make a defensible case for siding with the underdog based on underdog-status alone. Was Saddam Hussein hiding in his spider hole a better man than he was in his palaces? Were the allies in 1945 less deserving of victory than they were in 1942? Was Israel’s cause less right on June 12, right after the war, than it had been on June 4? These are the kind of nonsense propositions you are bound to wind up with if you make moral judgments based on underdog- or overdog-status alone.

The instinct to side with the underdog arises, at least in part, from the guilty pleasure of pity—the feeling of superiority that the sensation of pity almost automatically confers. Pity, it turns out, is not a form of sympathy, or empathy, or a genuinely humane concern for the misfortunes of others. On the contrary, pity is really a form of self-congratulation, an act of condescension, a sublimated type of narcissism. Little wonder, then, that the politics of pity should thrive in what the late Christopher Lasch called our culture of narcissism.

Consider the ways these politics plays out in our lives today. Remember that headline inLe Monde from September 12, 2001—“Nous Sommes Tous Américains”—“We Are All Americans”? Le Monde’s editorial pity lasted just so long as the wreckage of the Twin Towers smoldered in the ground, and then it was straight back to bashing the hyperpuissance. Or take the condemnation of the United States, by outfits such as Amnesty International, for the killing of Osama bin Laden. Poor Osama, defenseless before those marauding SEALs!

Yet nowhere do the politics of pity play out more vividly than when it comes to the Palestinians. How is it that, at least on the left, the Palestinians have become the new Chosen People? Part of the answer surely lies in the fact that Palestinians, uniquely, are the perceived victims of the Jewish state, and therefore another vehicle for castigating Jews. If you believe that Jews can do no right, you’re probably disposed to think that Palestinians can do no wrong—especially when they are attacking Jews.

But that’s not the whole answer. People who really aren’t anti-Semites or knee-jerk enemies of Israel nonetheless are disposed to make all kinds of allowances for Palestinians that can only be explained by the politics of pity. How many billions in international aid have been given to the Palestinians, and what percentage of those monies has been squandered or stolen? How often have Palestinians made atrocious political choices without ever paying a price for them in terms of international regard?

The reason Palestinians don’t have to earn global sympathy by showing themselves worthy of it is that they are the perceived underdogs and are therefore automatically entitled to the benefit of every doubt. And it is because “caring” for the Palestinians flatters the vanity of their sympathizers. I don’t think the world really loves the Palestinians. But, as the late Donna Summer might have said, it does “love to love” them. Being pro-Palestinian, as that term is typically used, is not a testament to compassion. It is, more often than not, an act of self-love. It’s moral onanism.

Dogs of war: Israeli tanks advance toward Egyptian positions in the Sinai, June 4, 1967.

In recent years, friends of Israel, and many Israelis as well, have sought to reengage the world’s affections by trying to portray Israel as the real underdog—in other words, to enter a contest of victimhood with the Palestinians. This, too, is an effort, albeit a misguided one, to get back to the fourth of June.

Today, no visiting dignitary in Israel is allowed to leave the country before making the obligatory visit to Sderot, the hard-hit town near the Gaza Strip. No promotional videos by Jewish-American groups can avoid some touching exposition about how their money has been spent to help Sderot and its people. When Barack Obama visited Israel as a candidate in 2008, he famously said that if his daughters had to face what the children of Sderot do, he would want to do something about that, too. And it was largely on that basis that American Jewry decided that Obama “got” Israel.

Am I alone in finding this Sderot fetish vaguely obscene? Nobody should gainsay the courage of the people who live there. Nor should anyone doubt that Sderot is a reminder of how Palestinians fight and what Palestinians have chosen to do with the Strip they made their own after Israel ended its presence there in 2005.

But whatever else it is, Sderot should not be turned into advertisement for Israel in its bid to make itself more popular. On the contrary, Sderot is an indictment of Israel for its longstanding failure to stop the attacks from Gaza. The foremost responsibility of any government is the safety of its citizens. It was bad enough that Israel allowed more than three years to pass between its withdrawal from Gaza and Operation Cast Lead, in which Israeli forces entered Gaza again to degrade the Palestinian terror machinery. Much worse was the all-but-official Israeli policy to milk Sderot for pity value.

What’s more, it’s the Palestinians who are the real pros at calling attention to their misfortunes, real or invented. Why would Israel want to compete? Toward the end of the second intifada, in 2004, the scorecard of Palestinian to Israeli deaths stood roughly at 3:1. This was an empty statistic that took no account of guilt, innocence, or discrimination in the use of force, but which was nonetheless wielded to some political effect against Israel. But let’s ask the question: Would it have been better if the ratio had been reversed, with three Israeli fatalities to every one Palestinian?

Or, to take another example, would the Israeli cabinet have done better on June 4, 1967, to decide to sit and wait for Nasser to strike the first blow, and to accept several thousand more dead—as Golda Meir would six years later by waiting for the Arab attack that began the Yom Kippur War? What would that have achieved, other than, at best, a more victimized victory?

That would have been perverse. Israel was not founded to serve as another vehicle for showcasing Jewish victimhood, but for ending it. That day may still be very far off. But if the memory of the fourth of June means anything, it’s that statecraft cannot be conducted as a beauty pageant, and that the “benefit”—if that’s the word—of being seen as the righteous victim should count for nothing against the moral imperative of ensuring one’s survival.

This is a lesson that, for better or worse, the world has never let Israel long forget. But it’s also a lesson we here in the United States could stand to learn anew. The fourth of June ought to mean something for Americans as well.

Several years ago, Bill Clinton explained that part of his foreign-policy doctrine might be called the “Can I Kill Him Tomorrow?” theory of international relations—the idea being that if the military option against some particular threat remained viable for another day, diplomacy could still be given a chance to work.

This bit of characteristic moral preening by the former president was intended to demonstrate that the possession of vast power did not tempt him to lose his sense of moral restraint (except maybe with an intern or two). But it also betrayed the great assumption of his generation of baby boomers, which is that the principal task of statesmanship isn’t to make the hard call when it comes to the inevitable choice of evils. It is to postpone—and, with any luck, to avoid—having to make that call at all. It is the idea that politics can be about whatever we want it to be about.

So this was Clinton’s mañana doctrine. Which is how, under his watch, the massacre of thousands in Srebrenica, Bosnia, happened. How the Iraqi crisis was allowed to fester. Why there was no significant response to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, or the Khobar Towers bombings in 1996, or the East African embassy bombings in 1998, or the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. And that’s how Osama bin Laden easily escaped the half-hearted efforts in the 1990s to capture or kill him.

It’s the same story with the Obama administration today, whose approach has largely been to deal with the world as we would wish it would be, not as it is. In the wish-it-would-be world, a reset would have been achieved with Russia, a grand bargain would have been struck with Iran, anti-Americanism would have been carried away on the breeze of the president’s rhetorical uplift, the Taliban would have been moved to embrace democracy, and we would be greening the industrial economy while moving toward a world without nuclear weapons.

The world as we would wish it to be is not a world in which Syria is bleeding, the Chinese are increasing the rate of annual military spending by a double-digit percentage, the Arab Spring is turning to an Islamist winter, Europe is imploding economically, and Iran is brazening its way to a nuclear bomb. That world is the real world, and it is the world the rest of us inhabit: the world of the concrete fact, the world of the worsening circumstance. It is the world in which decisions are made harder, not easier, by delay, in which delay increases the chances of failure, and of death.

It is a world choked with pity, yet pitiless.

In short, it is the world of the fourth of June—the fourth of June as it really was, and as we should try to remember it. It is the world as we find it when we have given up illusions. But it is also a world to seize.

Seventy years ago, in June 1942, the Nazis took revenge for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague by murdering the entire village of Lidice, in Czechoslovakia. Edna St. Vincent Millay memorialized that massacre—and its meaning for America—in a poem.

Oh, my country, so foolish and dear,
Scornful America, crooning a tune.
Think, Think: are we immune?
Catch him, catch him and stop him soon!

Those lines were written when it was already too late for Lidice, too late for European Jewry, and nearly too late for the United States. They ought to remind us: Time is rarely on our side. Hard choices can’t be avoided without hard consequences. The world doesn’t wait. Act, act, before it’s too late.

About the Author

Bret Stephens is a deputy editorial page editor and the foreign-affairs columnist for theWall Street Journal. This article is adapted from a speech he delivered atCommentary’s annual dinner on June 4 at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City.

On Ammunition Hill, almost half a century later, fighters from both banks of the Jordan find a kind of peaceFlowers replace rifles at a unique encounter between Israeli and Jordanian veterans of the Six Day War

Nearly 18 years have passed since Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein signed the Jordan Valley peace agreement, normalizing relations between Israel and Jordan. But even the most obsessive observers of Israeli-Jordanian ties find it hard to remember an encounter as extraordinary and emotional as the one that took place in Jerusalem mid-June, away from the limelight, between veterans of the Six Day War from both sides.

A group of 20 veterans, mostly-high ranking Jordanian and Israeli retired officers, met in Jerusalem June 18 and 19, and toured the sites of battles that pitted them against each other nearly half a century ago. “We once looked at each other through the barrels of guns,” said one man. “Now we shook hands and exchanged war stories.”

‘Humanity hasn’t yet found the way to avoid war, but when you meet the soldier who fought against you, you realize he’s just a person and you ask yourself, “What were we doing killing each other?”‘

The meeting was organized by the Israeli Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF) and Jordan’s Amman Center for Peace and Development (ACPD), and funded by the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The Israeli veterans, unsentimental warriors in their seventies and eighties, told The Times of Israel they were deeply moved by the encounter with the Jordanians.

“This is the first time such an event took place in Israel,” said Colonel (res.) Yossi Langotsky, who served as commanding officer of the Jerusalem Reconnaissance Unit when the 1967 war broke out. ”It wasn’t easy. I personally killed Jordanian soldiers at close range.”

The highlight of the event, agreed participants, was a memorial service held at Ammunition Hill, the site of one of the fiercest battles. Thirty-six Israeli soldiers and 71 Jordanians lost their lives on Ammunition Hill and the adjacent police academy on June 6, 1967.

At the wrenching ceremony, the site now decorated with flowers, an Israeli veteran read out the names of the IDF’s fallen soldiers and a Jordanian veteran read out the names of the Jordanians. Israeli poet Haim Gouri, who served as company commander during the battles of Jerusalem, read  his famous poem “Here our Bodies Lie,” translated into Arabic for the ceremony.

Yossi Langotsky was a major (res.) in 1967 (photo credit: Courtesy)

“That was a chilling moment,” said Langotsky. “The whole event was deeply moving. It highlighted the absurdity of war. Humanity hasn’t yet found the way to avoid war, but when you meet the soldier who fought against you, you realize he’s just a person and you ask yourself, ‘What were we doing killing each other?’”

Langotsky, who won the medal of distinguished service for his bravery in the battles near Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, said he never felt any animosity towards the Jordanian soldiers.

When the group reached the kibbutz, Langotsky read out a letter written by Captain (Res.) Yaakov Eilam to his wife Ruthie and baby child, just two days before he was killed at the battle of the Kidron valley in Jerusalem.

“If we could only be assured that this would be the last war between peoples, regardless who is right and who is wrong, I would dedicate my entire being and all my means just to be able to leave a legacy of peace,” wrote Eilam in his letter.

Langotsky married Eilam’s widow Ruthie following the war.

Nachum Baruchi, a member of Kibbutz Be’erot Yitzhak, was a mechanized infantry company commander in the Harel armored brigade, which fought the Jordanians north of Jerusalem. He said that although he had met Jordanian officers before, visiting the battle sites with them was different. Baruchi even discovered a tank commander who fought against him in one of the battles and was forced to abandon his tank after being hit by Israeli forces.

“He aimed his cannon at me,” recalled Baruchi, “and then I saw his tank go up in flames.”

“For the entire length of the visit I perked my ears, trying not to miss a word,” Baruchi told The Times of Israel. “The entire visit took place in an atmosphere of mutual respect, honor and reconciliation.”

Nachum Baruchi explains the battle that took place at Sheikh Abd Al-Aziz (photo credit: Courtesy)

Baruchi said he had always respected the Jordanian army.

“Ever since I was a child I considered the Jordanian army professional and fair in the way they treated our prisoners of war,” he said. “They were not savages.”

The inevitable question of memory came up during the visit, Baruchi said, but he added that historic accuracy was less significant than sharing experiences.

“It is natural for both sides to embellish the stories as time passes,” he said. “Everyone has a measure of cognitive dissonance and tries to adjust his memory to make himself appear victorious.”

A retired Jordanian major general who attended the meeting commended the “bravery and manliness of the Israeli warriors,” saying that the Jordanian contingent came to Israel to convey a message of peace to the Israeli side.

‘It is natural for both sides to embellish the stories as time passes. Everyone has a measure of cognitive dissonance and tries to adjust his memory to make himself appear victorious’

“Arabs are interested in peace,” he told The Times of Israel, albeit on condition of anonymity. “Israel now faces the opportunity of achieving peace with 57 Muslim states through the Arab Peace Initiative.”

Baruchi said he had no doubt that Jordan’s ruling echelon allowed the meeting to go forward in order to send Israel a political message.

“Our scriptures say ‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,’” he said. “It’s time to make that happen.”

IAAF 1967, six days war aircombat footage

The IDF Liberates Jerusalem: A Look Back

Arab political cartoons on the eve of war, 1967

"The neck of the bottle - the Straits of Tiran" Rose al Youssef, Egypt, May 29, 1967

"The Zionist to Hell," Syrian army newspaper, May 30, 1967

The mouths of the guns of eight Arab countries: Sudan, Algeria, United Arab Republic, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Al Jarida , Beirut, May 31, 1967

Armored forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Al Hayat, Beirut, May 31, 1967

The clubs fall on the head of Israel: Israel asks: Where can I run? Al Goumhourya , Baghdad, June 6, 1967

"Holy war" Al Goumhourya, Cairo, June 8, 1967

"Using the Star of David," Al Manar , Baghdad, June 8, 1967

"The Zionists into the sea," Al-Arabiya Al-Jamahir , Baghdad, June 8, 1967

"The barricades of Tel Aviv," Al-Jundi Al Arabi , Damascus, June 6, 1967

Nasser kicking the Jew (Israel) into the sea, with the armies of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq supporting him.  Al-Farida, Lebanon

Most images from here, last one from here.

The Six-Day War: Day One

This week, Jewish Ideas Daily commemorates the forty-fifth anniversary of the Six-Day War with a day-by-day synopsis, for which we are indebted to Michael Oren's comprehensive Six Days of War.  Below, the second of a seven-part series.  Read part I here. 

As the sun rose on June 5th, 1967, squadrons of Egypt's MiG fighter jets took to the skies for their morning patrols. Fearing that an Israeli attack would begin at dawn, their aim was to be ready to meet any Israeli planes. With an air force twice the size of Israel's, consisting of over 400 modern combat aircraft (supplied by the USSR), they were more than a match for their adversary in the air. But finding everything quiet that morning, they returned to base for breakfast. At bases from the Sinai down to Luxor, the most powerful air force in the region stood inert on the tarmac, without even hangars for protection. 

Military historian Bill McQuade on "standing to" at dawn

Unbeknownst to the Egyptians, the Israelis were wise to their daily routine. They had gathered intelligence not only on every Egyptian jet, but on every pilot, down to the sound of his voice. This intelligence was the basis of "Operation Focus": the plan, revealed to only a handful of ministers, to attack the Egyptian air force at its most vulnerable. Still, no one expected what was to follow.

At 7:10 a.m., the Israeli Air Force set off for what looked like routine patrols. But although the planes appeared to be Mirage jets, they were in fact no more than a mirage: the real fighter jets, flying below radar detection, were about to begin the assault on Egypt's airfields. Some flew out into the Mediterranean, to come back around to hit targets from Al-Mansura in the north, to Cairo, and still further to Al-Minya in the south. Others flew south over the Negev before turning east to hit targets across the Sinai peninsula. Still others continued on over the Red Sea, on their way to Luxor.

Just after 7:30 a.m., the first bombs were dropped. By 8 a.m., Egypt had lost 204 planes. Before the end of the morning, Egypt had lost 286 combat aircraft, together with 13 bases, 23 radar stations—and a third of its pilots. Even the head of the IAF, Motti Hod, refused to believe the initial reports. It was only after debriefing his pilots that he reported back to Yitzhak Rabin: "The Egyptian air force has ceased to exist."

IAF footage of air raids

If Hod and Rabin were surprised by Focus—and they were, almost to the point of stupefaction—the Egyptians remained blissfully unaware of it. In the wake of the attack, the Egyptian government released the following communiqué: "With an aerial strike against Cairo and across the UAR, Israel began its attack today at 9 a.m. Our planes scrambled and held off the attack." Cue wild celebrations on the streets of Cairo. But it wasn't only the Egyptian populace that was shielded from the truth. Abdel Hakim Amer, the Egyptian Chief of Staff, had seen the reality with his own eyes: his plane had just taken off when the assault began, and as it flew from airbase to burning airbase, Amer witnessed the scale of the devastation, barely making it to Cairo International Airport before he was shot out of the sky himself. Yet he never revealed this to Nasser, who persisted in believing his own government's propaganda.

Meanwhile, the ground assault on the Sinai desert (codenamed "Red Sheet") had begun—though for the time being, the Jordanian front remained quiet. For Eshkol, Dayan, and Rabin, all-out war with Jordan was to be avoided as far as possible. Artillery, ammunition, and men had been diverted to the Egyptian front. As tensions flared along the border in Jerusalem, and Jordan's King Hussein weighed his options, he received a telegram from Israel, telling him that Israel would not attack unless Jordan opened hostilities. But Hussein didn't trust the Israelis. So when Nasser called him confirming the reports of massive Israeli casualties, and claiming that the planes flying over Israel which had showed up on Jordanian radar were not Israeli jets returning to base but Egyptian MiGs raiding Israeli airfields, Hussein resolved to join the fray.

Military historian Bill McQuade on why Jordan’s King Hussein joined the war

Suddenly West Jerusalem came under sustained artillery bombardment. Hadassah hospital was hit; twenty civilians were killed, and over a thousand injured. Dayan retaliated by bombing the Jordanian airfields, destroying her twenty Hawker Hunter jets as they refueled after bombing raids on Kfar Saba and Netanya. Yet Israel's retaliation remained muted, and when the UN attempted to negotiate a ceasefire, she accepted. Jordanian forces responded by seizing UN headquarters at Government House Ridge. Still, it was only when Jordanian radio announced the capture of Mount Scopus that Dayan began to worry: not because the Jordanians had already taken it, but because if that was their next target and they took it successfully, West Jerusalem would be easy prey. Meanwhile, Iraqi forces were massing in the West Bank, threatening to strike the coastal corridor and cut Israel in half.

Asher Dreizin and his reservists were charged with retaking Government House Ridge from the supposedly invincible Arab Legion. Dreizin started with eight WWII Sherman tanks, five of which broke down en route. Yet with more guns and men, Dreizin broke through. The Legionnaires fled, but Dreizin's men gave chase. For four more hours they fought, at times hand-to-hand. By 6:30, Dreizin, with only ten men left, had beaten the Legion back to Bethlehem.

Meanwhile, Dayan orchestrated an assault on the cannonry at Jenin and mooted capturing the Latrun corridor. Rabin objected: Why give Hussein a pretext for further attacks? But Dayan had already given the orders to the troops.

For the watching world, as the dust settled on the first day's fighting, the spoils were even. With only Arab propaganda to guide them, the London Times reported that the Syrians had destroyed the Haifa oil refinery and that the Iraqis had bombed Tel Aviv. Though at least one cartoonist was less convinced:

Jak, Evening Standard, published June 6, 1967

In reality, the dust hadn't even settled: at 10 p.m., under cover of night, Ariel Sharon was intensifying artillery fire on Egyptian defenses in the Sinai until they were under constant bombardment. Only a select few in the Israeli government knew the full extent of the damage wrought against the Arab forces. And though Eshkol preached caution, the prize of the Old City was coming into view. 

"The tension in the Middle East over the Gulf of Aqaba blockade develops into full-scale war."
(Universal Studios Newsreel) 

On the Eve of the Six-Day War

This week, Jewish Ideas Daily commemorates the forty-fifth anniversary of the Six-Day War with a day-by-day synopsis.  Below, the first of a seven-part series.

Forty-five years ago today, on June 4, 1967, Israel and the Jewish world were in suspense. Today, we recall the Six-Day War as a stunning martial victory by the Jewish state; but on the war's eve, this outcome was wholly unforeseeable. Indeed, the odds appeared firmly stacked against Israel; that is why its victory became such an inspiration to Jews worldwide—an experience as formative, to the generation that watched it, as the Holocaust and Israel's founding were to the preceding one.

But how did war break out?  Michael Oren, historian of the war and current Israeli ambassador to the United States notes, "Even a discussion of a context must have a starting point," even if this point represents a somewhat "arbitrary choice."  One starting point is Soviet-backed Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.  He came to power in 1954 and by 1956 had already fought a war with Israel in the Sinai.  Israel routed the Egyptians in that conflict but withdrew from Sinai after promises that it would have freedom of navigation through the vital Straits of Tiran, off the Sinai coast.  As insurance, the United Nations put a peacekeeping force on the armistice line. 

Nasser was also president of the United Arab Republic, a union between Egypt and Syria, and made the UAR position on Israel clear.  "I announce on behalf of the United Arab Republic people," he declared in 1959, that "we will exterminate Israel."  Egyptian Fedayeen guerrillas mounted cross-border attacks.  There were occasional Israeli reprisals.

Another starting point is Yasser Arafat, who in 1964 led an abortive attempt by al-Fatah terrorists to infiltrate Israel.  In that year the Arab League, meeting in Cairo, founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which Arafat would later lead.  The PLO's announced goal was to liberate the "usurped part" of the "Palestinian Arab people's homeland"—not from Egypt, which held Gaza, or from Jordan, which held the West Bank, but from Israel.

Tensions also mounted with Syria, which was engaged in a dispute with Israel over access to water resources.  Israel also had larger reason to fear Syrian plans.  "We have resolved," Syria's then-Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad addressed Israelis in 1966, "to drench this land with your blood, to oust you as aggressor, to throw you into the sea."  Though some Israeli leaders considered trying to topple Syria's regime, Israel took no military action.  But the Soviet Union falsely informed the Syrians that Israel was massing forces on the border.  Syria responded by massing its own troops there.

Levi Eshkol, Israel's Prime Minister and Defense Minister, prepared for war but hoped for peace.  "There is no lack of temperance and responsibility on our part," he wrote to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.  "On the other hand, the problem is not solved indefinitely by inaction."

Egypt and Syria showed no such ambivalence.  "Our basic goal," Nasser reaffirmed in 1967, "is the destruction of Israel."  Syria's Information Minister said the coming battle would be "followed by more severe battles until Palestine is liberated and the Zionist presence ended."

"Egyptian President Nasser kicks Israel into the sea."   Al-Farida, Lebanon (1967). 

 "Israel submits to the tanks of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon."   Al-Hayat, Lebanon (1967). 

"Jewish skulls piled in the ruins of Tel Aviv."  Al-Jundi al'Arabi, Syria (1967). 

Supporting the Syrian mobilization, Nasser moved Egyptian troops into the Sinai in May, 1967.  On May 16 he ordered the UN peacekeepers out.  British Foreign Secretary George Brown reacted acerbically: "It really makes a mockery of the peacekeeping work of the United Nations if, as soon as the tension rises, the United Nations force is told to leave."  On May 22 Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran, denying Israel the access it had been promised in return for withdrawing from Sinai.  The blockade was an act of war.  Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban explained, "There is no difference in civil law between murdering a man by slow strangulation or killing him by a shot in the head."

Geographically, Israel was surrounded by its enemies:

Israel was also at an enormous disadvantage in personnel and equipment.  Egypt and Syria had expanded their alliance to include Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco.  All began to contribute forces.  The Arab armies numbered 550,000 men, with 2500 tanks and 950 aircraft.  Israel had 240,000 under arms, 800 tanks, and 300 aircraft; it faced a very real possibility of annihilation.

That realization stirred world Jewry.  Derek Lewis, a British Jew, reacted typically:

Looking back to 1967 when I was 19 years old, I cannot believe how little I understood about Israel's precarious position in the world. . . .  I had not thought of the place as a homeland.  Then, as the tension escalated suddenly, it hit me: This place was part of me, and for some unaccountable reason the whole Arab world was poised to destroy it and kill "my family."

Israel now faced a political crisis as well: Eshkol was losing popular confidence.  He tried to promote calm with a radio broadcast that was widely viewed a disaster.  Calls for his resignation mounted.  On June 1, Eshkol relinquished the post of Defense Minister to Moshe Dayan, former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and a hero of the Sinai War, and invited Menachem Begin, leader of the opposition Herut Party, into the Cabinet. 

Israel now had a national unity government.  The country's mood changed overnight, and Ezer Weizmann, IDF Deputy Chief of Staff, delivered his famous line: "The Arabs have surrounded us again—poor bastards."  It was a brave piece of what looked like gallows humor.

Government radio announcers began to call up the reserves.  Israeli poet Abba Kovner remembered the moment:

I was leaning on a newspaper stall at the time.  The newspaper seller was in the very act of stretching out his hand towards the paper I wanted when suddenly the radio voice caught his attention.  His eyes widened, he looked through me rather than at me, and said, as if in surprise, "Oh!  They've called me up, too."

It was hamtanah, the waiting.  The country's economy came to a halt while the citizenry held its breath.