It was on June 10, 1967 that the Six-Day War ended, which means June 11, 2007 marks the four-decades anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s current reality. I’m not going to go into the historical, strategic, political and sociological implications of the war; I’ll let JTA’s Middle East correspondents
do those honors
Six-Day War special section). But in the arts and culture vein, let me take a moment to recommend a book and a film that deal with the war, giving us both perspective on why it broke out and, in hindsight, a good view of what its effects have been.
The book is historian Michael Oren’s “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East” . I re-read it as the 40-year anniversary dawned, and again found it fascinating, full of freshly dug up information that sheds new light on the war and extremely well written. Oren has a novelist’s eye for the telling detail – in addition to being a Princeton-educated historian, Oren actually has published a novel – along with the wonderful ability to say things interestingly rather than in that dry, technical way historians often do. This is a book of history that can be devoured in a few sittings, like a good novel. It was published in 2002, but nothing has come along since to upend it as the definitive book on the Six-Day War.
The movie is Abba Eban’s “Israel: A Nation is Born”. It’s a six-part series chronicling the birth and development of the Jewish state. The whole package is well-worth watching, with rare interviews and archival video of Israel’s founding fathers and mothers (David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, a young Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon) and insights by Eban, Israel’s late, uber-eloquent ambassador to the United States.
The section on the Six-Day War is particularly enlightening, as it reminds us of just how dark the days were in Israel leading up to the war, with the threat of destruction perceived as very real and Israelis fearful for their lives and homeland. In retrospect, and in light of Israel’s extraordinary victory, this can easily be forgotten. With Iran now rattling its saber, watching this section of the film is sobering.
