Israel's stupendous military victory of 1967 that birthed innumerable legends and legendary heroes is only one part of the story of the Six Day War. The other is how the war changed the course of history forever
Time flies at a speed faster than we realise. Monday, June 5, marks the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War (of 1967) that saw Israel decimating the mighty armies of its Arab foes with a lethal swiftness that has no parallel in history. Recalling the war that indelibly reshaped and realigned the Middle East, I am reminded of endless debates in smoky Cairo cafes during which young Egyptians would passionately hold forth on how Palestine would have become a reality in 1967 had the US not helped the ‘Zionists’. In vain would I argue that Israel fought that war without any help from either America or Europe.
Well, almost without any help: The West German Government had sent 20,000 gas masks in anticipation of the Arabs using chemical weapons against the Jews. The macabre humour was, of course, lost on my friends, most of them American university students who publicly taunted the ubiquitous mukhabarat by flaunting chequered kafiyehs and secretly nursed the dream of migrating to the US or, in the least, securing a Green Card. This was long before the Revolution and the Revolution within the Revolution.
Popular history, largely spawned by school textbooks written under the watchful eyes of those who have scant regard and little respect for the truth, rarely reflects the course of events as they occurred in the past. So also with the versions of the Sinai Campaign of 1956, the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973 that find mention in Egyptian textbooks written in a manner no different from that of court scribes of the Pharaohs. The shifting sands of this ancient land have buried the past, but certain traditions have survived — recording history as perceived by the Pharaoh is one of them.
For instance, in those days the Government of Egypt wanted, and possibly still wants, the people to believe that the peace treaty it signed with Israel in March 1979 was a victor’s gesture of magnanimity to the vanquished. Hence, the Yom Kippur War is portrayed as a great victory for the Egyptian Army whose ‘valiant’ soldiers recovered Sinai from the clutches of Israeli occupiers.
A memorial, carved in granite and installed in the sprawling but spectacular wasteland of Sinai, commemorates this fictitious event; Cairo’s busiest road, an upmarket city built on land reclaimed from the desert (ironically with the help of Israeli technology) and a modern university have been named ‘Sixth of October’ to constantly remind Egyptians that Arab honour, besmirched by the crushing defeats inflicted by the Jews in 1948, 1956 and 1967, was restored on October 6, 1973, when a sly assault was launched on unsuspecting Israelis on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
The Yom Kippur War began with Egyptian soldiers crossing the Suez Canal and Syrian soldiers making their way up the Golan Heights in a coordinated attack on Israelis when they were least expecting it; after all, Ramzan, or Ramadan as Arabs call it, is a period of fasting and praying, not shedding blood — even that of the enemy. But the war didn’t quite end with either Egypt or Syria celebrating victory over Israel; historical evidence and records tell us it was the other way round. After the initial setback, Israel struck back with full force and demonic fury, chased the Syrians down and beyond the Golan Heights to 32 km of Damascus, crossed the Suez Canal and sent the Egyptians racing to Cairo. A retired Army officer told me how many of the soldiers never recovered from the trauma of that counter-attack.
Anwar Sadat was wise enough to read the writing on the wall and reconcile himself to the impossibility of finishing Gamal Abdel Nasser’s task of destroying Israel; rather than suffer further humiliation at the hands of a small nation, he chose the honourable exit route offered to him at Camp David in September 1978. He sued for peace, and Egypt still reaps the benefit of that single act of enlightened pragmatism. Sadat’s subsequent assassination and the Arab boycott of Egypt are now no more than mere footnotes of West Asian history. But that is not quite how Egyptians who have come of age in the post-Sadat era remember the Yom Kippur War; state-sponsored history has taught them it was an unqualified victory, never mind minor details like the enraged Israelis giving chase to harried Egyptians from Suez to Cairo.
So, infuriating though it was trying to convince my young friends in Cairo that they had it all wrong about the Six Day War, it was futile to try and convince them that the Americans had no role at all in ensuring the comprehensive victory won by the Israelis this week 50 years ago. In fact, the Americans tried their best to dissuade the Israeli leadership of the time from embarking on a pre-emptive strike. President lyndon B Johnson reneged on his promise to stand by Israel, pleading Congressional restrictions (latter day historians suggest he was angered by Jewish liberals backing the anti-Vietnam war movement in the US and decided to be cussed with Israel at its moment of crisis) while Secretary of State Dean Rusk insisted till the last moment that if “Israel fires first, it will have to forget the US”. The UN, then headed by U Thant, played along, admonishing Israel while placating Egypt.
Had it not been for the daring — and dashing — Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan and the Generals of the Israeli Defence Force, Prime Minister levi Eshkol would perhaps have never agreed to the air strikes of June 5, the first day of the war, when in an early morning raid, Israeli planes destroyed 400 aircraft while they were still parked on airfields in Egypt and its Arab allies. That single operation decided the course of the Six Day War and guaranteed Israel’s stunning victory over the mammoth Army put together by Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. The Jordanian war gear, including radars, had been supplied by the US while the Soviets had armed Egypt and Syria. The Israeli weaponry and planes were largely of French origin.
Israel’s stupendous military victory of 1967 that birthed innumerable legends and legendary heroes is only one part of the story of the Six Day War. The other part is about how the war changed the course of history forever — for Jews, for Palestinians and for Arabs. Jerusalem, divided till then, was united and the holiest Jewish site, Temple Mount, was restored to Jews. The impractical ‘Green line’, more a line in the sand, was erased forever. The West Bank and Gaza Strip became territories under Israeli control (Israel has since withdrawn from Gaza) and all this and more became what we now describe as the ‘new normal’. Faced by foes united in hate and deceit, Israel stood alone. The triumph of 1967 was also Israel’s alone.
The US decision to stay aloof remains an abiding mystery of the Six Day War. Was President Johnson unmoved by Israel’s cry for help because Premier Alexi Kosygin had informed him that the Soviet Union would not get involved in the impending conflictIJ Or was America’s indifference part of a grand strategy — that had already begun to take shape, if not form — which would allow Washington to have a foot in both Cairo and Tel AvivIJ Fifty years later, we are nowhere near a convincing answer to either question.
(The writer is Commissioning Editor & commentator at ABP News)