The Jewish State still faces old threats and news hostile alliances, as its marks the 56th anniversary of the Six-Day War. While five decades of Israeli diplomacy has won over Arab allies in the Gulf, Iran is forging a new axis of terror in a bid to encircle Israel.
In the summer of 1967, Israel confronted the combined forces of three Arab armies — backed by the Soviet Union and several Arab-Muslim states. Arab forces, spearheaded by Egypt, kicked off military hostilities by blockading the Straits of Tiran.
On June 5, Israel responded with surprise air strikes on Egyptian airfields, obliterating the Soviet-supplied air force. The allied Syrian and Jordanian forces met the same fate, and in the ensuing battle, Israel managed to repel ground attacks on all three fronts.
The war ended with a resounding defeat for the Arabs states, giving Israel control over ancestral Jewish land, including the Holy City of Jerusalem as well as the regions of Sinai, Judea, and Samaria. Israel captured the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau used by the Syrians to shell Israeli towns and military positions in the north. The territorial gains gave Israel the strategic depth and high ground needed to withstand future attacks.
Less than three months after their military defeat, the Arab nations met in Sudan and issue their vengeful “3 Nos” enshrined in the notorious Khartoum Resolution: “no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel.”
It took more than 50 years for the Arabs to begin the process of reconciliation with Israel. In 2020, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the President Donald Trump-brokered Abraham Accords to normalize diplomatic relations with the Jewish State. The Trump administration brought other Arab and Muslim nations into the fold of the Arab Accords. President Trump also recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and acknowledged the Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Height, a move bitterly opposed by most European governments and Muslim states.
Unable to win on the battlefield, Palestinians — trained, armed, and funded by Arab regimes and the Soviet bloc — doubled down on terrorism as the means to bring Israel to its knees. They murdered innocent civilians, highjacked airliners, and planted bombs at Jewish and Israeli sites. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September murdered 11 members of the Israeli national team as the world watched in horror. Their Jew hatred continues to create new terrorist outfits to join the alphabet soup of Palestinian groups.
As the threat of a combined Arab military aggression subsides, Iran emerges as the biggest geostrategic and terrorist threat to Israel.
In April, Iran-sponsored proxies, Gaza-based Hamas, Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, launched a two-front terror assault against Israel. The Jerusalem Post reported that the Iranian “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force coordinated with the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations to launch rockets at Israel from Lebanon during the Passover holiday” and Ramadan.
Last month, Iran tried to incite terrorist attacks against the annual Jerusalem Flag March, celebrating Israel’s taking control of the Holy City in the Six-Day War. Israel’s police chief Yaakov Shabtai revealed that “terrorist elements motivated by Iran, through Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, are sowing false information on social networks about the route of the Flag March – and their purpose is to create wild incitement to terrorism against the thousands of Israelis who will mark Jerusalem Day with a series of events.”
This blast from the past sums up the 1967 war:
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