A fresh look at the six day war





By Tom Segev

Translated by Jessica Cohen

Metropolitan Books, 645 pages, $44

As Israelis celebrate the 40th anniversary of their speedy triumph over hostile neighbours, both internal and external critics are questioning the Six Day War's justification, let alone its results. The pivotal moral question regards Israel's decision to launch its pre-emptive air raid, which destroyed Egypt's air force on June 5, 1967. Did Israel act rashly? Did the attack reflect a delusional anxiety rather than a realistic threat assessment?

In 2002, historian Michael Oren's majestic Six Days of War emphasized the miscalculations that triggered this unwanted war. Nevertheless, after examining Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian, American and Soviet sources, along with Israeli archives, Oren concluded that Israel's leaders had no choice but to attack.

Those who condemn Israel's decision generally minimize Arab leaders' genocidal threats, the skirmishes with Syria and Egypt's decision to blockade Israel's southernmost port after dismissing the United Nations buffer force on its border with Israel.

And indeed, in his sweeping, gripping and contrarian book examining 1967, Israeli journalist and historian Tom Segev censures Israel by focusing too narrowly on Israel. Rooting the conflict in the country's economic, social and psychic crisis of confidence in 1966, Segev paints a devastating portrait of a small, insecure society, exorcising inner demons by overreacting to external demons. "Obviously," he concludes, "Israel was too weak to avoid war."

The author of provocative looks at British Mandatory Palestine, Israel in 1949 and the Holocaust's lasting impact on Israelis, Segev is an indefatigable researcher and a master storyteller. This book, published two years ago in Hebrew, and ably translated into English by Jessica Cohen, shifts effectively, lyrically, from Israelis' everyday experiences to their politicians' power struggles. With his eye for the evocative detail, Segev describes the quaint Israeli practice of positioning one's telephone in the entrance hall, so neighbours could share the precious phone without invading each other's privacy too much. With his knack for personalizing experiences millions shared, Segev vividly incorporates firsthand accounts, including the war diaries of Private Yehoshua Bar Dayan and the letters of a U.S.-born Jerusalemite, Edith Ezrachi. And with his critical flair, Segev punctures what remains of the myth of Israel's sabra superman; he joins several other modern chroniclers in depicting Moshe Dayan as a mercurial, showboating, Machiavellian cad.

Segev's sympathetic portrait of Israeli Prime Minster Levi Eshkol is particularly subtle. Since the agonizing weeks preceding the war, many Israelis have caricatured Eshkol as a wishy-washy dishrag unable to choose between drinking tea or coffee. Segev shows how Eshkol and his deliberative, Yiddish-speaking, eastern-European-born older cohort were dismissed as "the Jews" by the more assertive, Hebrew-speaking younger generation of native-born Israelis. Segev's Eshkol is a proud peace-seeking statesman, more sensitive to the Palestinian plight after the war than many of his peers, and humiliated as the wily Dayan elbows him aside as defence minister just before the war.

A shrewd observer of the Israeli zeitgeist, Segev captures Israelis' emotional rollercoaster in 1967 by recalling two jokes. Before the war, Israelis predicted a sign hanging near Lod Airport's boarding gate would ask "the last one out of the country to turn off the lights." After the war, while planning their day, one officer suggested: "Let's conquer Cairo." The other wondered: "What will we do after lunch?" Segev finds the first mood too bleak; the second immorally arrogant.

Ultimately, however, Segev's book suffers from a tendency to be excessively self-critical, to focus on Israel's shortcomings without looking at the menacing pan-Arab front massed against that country. He shines a harsh light on Israeli society, showing the panic induced by recession, the divisions between European-born "Ashkenazim" and Middle-Eastern born "Mizrahim," the aggressiveness of the sabra soldiers, the insensitivity to Palestinian sensibilities, the post-war messianism. But examining the 1967 war's causes without delving into what was happening on the Arab side makes little sense.

Segev's use of loaded language suggests a broader political agenda. Opposing war does not always prove an adviser's "sanity." Sometimes, war is the necessary and logical response to provocations. Similarly, calling Soviet weaponry captured during wartime "looted" is harsh and inaccurate.

Segev's lopsided criticism of Israel's decision to launch its pre-emptive strike will make many readers bristle. Yet even critics will find it hard to resist his colourful, compelling, recreation of Israel circa 1967, at an essential turning point that shaped today's world.

Gil Troy is a professor of history at McGill University.


Story Tools
