In the campaign to delegitimize Israel we frequently hear it said that Israel started the 1967 War by launching air strikes against Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi aircraft. The supposed illegitimacy of that war is often invoked to support the demand that Israel withdraw from every inch of the territory it acquired, including portions of Jerusalem recaptured in 1967. Many Jews, especially our college kids who first hear this claim after they leave home, don’t know why Israel fired the first shots in that war, and therefore think it was unjust. Adat Shalomers, I believe, should be informed of the facts, which are largely undisputed. Hence this summary.
The predicate for the 1967 War was laid at the end of the 1956 War when Israel agreed to withdraw from the Egyptian Sinai, which it had conquered, in exchange for two principal guarantees: 1) A United Nations Expeditionary Force would be stationed on the Egyptian-Israeli border to separate the combatants and prevent the renewal of hostilities. 2) Egypt would not again be allowed to close the Strait of Tiran, arguably one of the 1956 War’s causus belli. The Strait is the narrow seaway between Egypt and Jordan where the Gulf of Aqaba, then Israel’s oil lifeline to the rest of the world, empties into the Red Sea. A blockade is itself an act of war, and the U.S. and other maritime powers promised that Israel’s right of passage under international maritime law would not be denied again in the future.
In the years between 1956 and 1967 Egypt, Syria, and Jordan played “chicken” with the Israelis. The story is much too long to tell here, but among its highlights were: a stream of statements by the leaders of those countries that they intended to obliterate Israel as soon as the time was right; Syrian attempts to divert vitally needed water upon which Israel depended from the Jordan River (to which, when diplomacy failed, Israel responded with artillery and tank fire and by sending its fighter planes into Syrian air space which Israel came to dominate); Syrian artillery attacks on farmers working in the demilitarized zones and on kibbutzim and Israeli towns in the north; and, in 1964 the formation of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) to organize and strengthen the cross border attacks on Israel with guerillas emanating from Syria, Jordan (i.e., the West Bank), and Egypt (Gaza). After the PLA, and its offshoot, Fatah (headed by Yasser Arafat) were organized, Egypt trained, armed, and equipped a 10,000 man Palestinian brigade in Gaza and Syria sent soldiers to accompany the Palestinians on their raids into Israel. Those attacks cost many lives and damaged vital installations during the period.. All of this took place in the context of struggles within and among the three nations that had formed a public alliance dedicated to the destruction of Israel and between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. That rivalry had led the Soviets prodigally to provide war material and advisors to both Syria and Egypt and continually to threaten Israel and denounce it as a tool of capitalist imperialism, among other things. Summarizing the situation as it stood in late 1966 Michael Oren writes:
The conflict[s]...had created an atmosphere of extreme flammability. In such an atmosphere it would not take much-a terrorist attack, a reprisal raid——to unleash a process of unbridled escalation, a chain reaction of dare and counterdare, gamble and miscalculation, all leading inexorably to war.1
Into this seething caldron the Soviets dropped a glass of nitroglycerine in May, 1967. They told Anwar Sadat, then a colonel in the Egyptian army on a side mission to Moscow, that the Israelis were massing troops in the north, and were about to invade. The Russians had earlier told the Syrians the same thing. On both occasions, they knew the claim was false and in 1967 they rejected Israel’s invitation to come and see for themselves. Egyptian President Gamal Abdal Nasser subsequently confirmed its falsity by sending his Field Marshal to Syria on a trip that enabled him to look down on the north of Israel. Meantime, in response to taunts from the Syrians that he was doing nothing to destroy Israel, and to their invocation of a mutual assistance treaty in response to the Russian claims, Nasser sent troops, tanks, planes, and guns pouring into the Sinai. He continued with that reckless course, even moving heavy bombers to forward bases, after he learned for certain that the Soviet warning was false. Next, Nasser demanded that the UNEF be removed from the Israeli-Egyptian border and from Gaza, and, astoundingly, the UN Secretary General, without waiting for Security Council or General Assembly action, complied. Four days later Nasser sent war ships to the Strait of Tiran and announced that “No Israeli ship will ever navigate it again.” Nor would any vessel carrying “strategic materials” be allowed to pass.
All Israel’s frantic efforts to obtain assistance from the United States and
other maritime powers and from the UN failed. Nasser announced to the Egyptian
Parliament that “The problem presently before the Arab countries is not
whether the port of Eilat should be blockaded or how to blockade it——but how
totally to exterminate the State of Israel for all time.” Meanwhile, Iraqi forces
moved into Jordan (with its consent) and both entered into military pacts with
Egypt (Syria already had such an agreement) that placed all their forces under
Egyptian command. The Egyptian commander, his forces poised on the Israeli
border, told his troops “...this is the day of the battle to avenge ... 1948....
We shall, God willing, meet in Tel Aviv and Haifa.” The PLO’s Ahmed Shukeiry
told a press conference that the Arabs were prepared “to liberate the country
... our country....” and that if the Arab attack succeeded, “Those [Jews] who
survive will remain in Palestine. I estimate that none of them will survive.”
Syria, too, massed its troops, tanks, and artillery hard upon the Demilitarized
Zones established after the 1956 war. Hafiz al-Assad ordered his troops to
“strike the enemy’s [civilian] settlements, turn them into dust, pave the Arab
roads with the skulls of Jews.” 2. (These are only a small sample of the poised
powers’ bellicose statements at the time).
In troops, tanks, war planes, and artillery the combined Arab forces
outnumbered the Israelis. It was clear that war was imminent and that, unless Israel
acted, the war would be fought in and over the centers of Jewish population-as
indeed the Arab states promised. Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, all would be
bombed from the air with untold casualties — for it was the Arab states’ announced
plan and past practice to attack civilian, not just military, targets. Since
the pretext for the Arab mobilization was that Israel was about to attack
them, and since Israel hoped to obtain assistance from other states and the UN, it
delayed mobilization until the very last moment. (Israel’s army depended and
now depends heavily on civilian reserves.) Following the Arab troop movements
and Egypt’s blockade, Israel tried desperately to resolve the crisis through
diplomacy, but that effort failed. The UN Security Council was paralyzed by the
Soviet veto and the United States, despite its promises and President
Johnson’s earnest desire to help, would do nothing. 3
Once the Israelis were
convinced that the surrounding Arab states meant what they said, and that the U.S.
and the U.N. were not going to act, Israel launched its planes and a powerful
ground attack early in the morning of June 5th, 1967. It did not attack Jordan,
however. It told King Hussein it had no interest in capturing the West Bank
or Jerusalem and urged him to stay out of the war. But after Jordanian
artillery fired 6,000 rounds at civilian targets, killing many and wounding a great
many more, the Israelis engaged the King’s famed Arab Legion as well.
Fortunately, though many desperate battles were fought and the casualties were heavy,
the Israelis ultimately routed their enemies.
No doubt the claim that Israel was the aggressor sounds credible to some
because Israel’s victory turned out to be so swift and complete: the war lasted
only six days. Anyone who studies the military history will learn that, though
the Arabs were surprised, the victory stemmed from numerous other causes as
well. If one wades into the events that preceded the Six Day War she cannot
escape the conclusion that Israel fired the first shots because it correctly
concluded that Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan meant what they said and were
determined to destroy the Jewish State and annihilate its inhabitants, and that
further delay would accomplish nothing except to make the Arab fantasy come true or,
if Israel survived, to vastly increase its military and civilian casualties,
to say nothing of the material destruction. Those who claim Israel ought to
have waited before preemptively attacking the forces poised to invade should be
asked “waited for what?” Alan Dershowitz puts the matter in the proper
perspective by asking “Would any reasonable nation faced with comparable threats have
acted differently?” 4
Rabbi George Driesen
1. Oren, M.B., Six Days of War, p. 32 (Oxford 2002)(Oren). This recently published work contains a detailed and scholarly history of the “Six Day War,” as it came to be known, based on original sources on both sides. For a shorter version of the facts, see Sachar, H.M., A History of Israel 615-666 (Knopf, 1982).
2. Oren, p. 92. Since Gaza and the West Bank were in Egyptian and Jordanian hands at the time the term “settlements” here does not refer to Jewish towns and villages in those areas, as it is often used today, but to the places within Israel where Jews had “settled.”
3. Israel’s frantic efforts to put the genie Nasser had let out of the bottle back in it are detailed at length in Orem and are summarized in Sachar, A History of Israel, pp. 625-639 (Knopf 1982).
4. Dershowitz, A.M., The Case for Israel , p. 92 (John Wiley & Sons 2003).