Article paru sur NRO, mais qui n’est plus disponible sans abonnement .
Forty Junes Ago
The Six Day War marked a terrible turn
DAVID PRYCE-JONES
The Six Day War that broke out on June 5, 1967, just 40 years ago,
appeared at the time to be another episode in the ongoing Cold War,
alarming but not quite so fraught as the Cuban Missile Crisis five years
previously. Out of the blue that April, the Soviet Union accused Israel
of mobilizing for an invasion of Syria. There was no truth in the
accusation, but Soviet officials, including embassy staff on the spot in
Israel, persisted. The lie had the long-term effect of shifting the
political scene internationally, leaving the Arab-Israeli conflict
virtually insoluble, and dividing Muslims from non-Muslims, and Left
from Right everywhere. Here is one of the taproots of the
anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism that now nourish Islamist terror in
the wider world.
The Soviets at the time had the imperialist aim of extending their
influence in the Middle East through the financing and arming of Arab
nationalist movements. Brezhnev and Kosygin in the Kremlin thought of
themselves as realists rather than adventurers. The leading Arab
nationalist of the day was Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had seized the
presidency of Egypt following a coup in 1952. Potentially an Arab Fidel
Castro, he had reduced his country to an Arab version of a Soviet police
state. Syria similarly staked its place in the Soviet orbit.
In the weeks following the Soviet lie, Nasser advanced from one
bellicose step to the next, blocking Israel by closing its shipping
lanes, and moving his forces into the demilitarized Sinai Desert where
they confronted Israel from the south. Syria mobilized simultaneously on
Israel’s northern border. King Hussein of Jordan had long been the
ideological opponent of Nasser, but he flew hurriedly to Cairo, to
commit his army on Israel’s eastern border. If the Israelis chose to
break out of this encirclement by attacking, « ahlan wa-sahlan, » Nasser
said, infusing the traditional Arab greeting of « welcome » with his
special brand of mockery and menace. Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer,
Nasser’s colleague and rival at the head of the Egyptian armed forces,
boasted, « Soon we’ll be able to take the initiative and rid ourselves of
Israel once and for all. » The Arab world exulted at the prospect.
In the post-1945 years, the Holocaust had been an issue of conscience
for Europeans. For the Left in particular, the founding of Israel was a
repudiation of Nazism and an honorable act of reparation and justice.
The word « Auschwitz » triggered the reflex reaction « never again. » A
second holocaust was now in preparation. As the crisis mounted
throughout that spring of 1967, a wave of sympathy and fear for Israel
swept the West.
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