The Global Impact of the Six Day War
By Chris Mitchell
CBN News - Jerusalem Bureau
June 6, 2007
CBNNews.com - The Six Day War certainly changed the landscape of the Middle East, but the impact of the war reached far beyond the shifting Middle East borders to places like Moscow, Washington, and the capitals of Europe.
Israel's swift and complete victory changed the way Israelis looked at themselves, and it changed the way the world looked at Israel.
The Six Day War was fought in the shadow of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. The defeat of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan was a serious defeat for the Soviet Union, which had supplied its Arab allies with military hardware and training.
Inspired Russians
Israel's victory inspired Jews everywhere, but perhaps especially in the Soviet Union.
Forty years ago in the streets of Jerusalem, you would have heard people speaking Hebrew, English, and Arabic. Today, you'll also hear a lot of Russian. The Six Day War triggered a series of events that eventually brought more than a million Jews out of the former Soviet Union and into Israel.
Natan Sharansky is one of them. The world renowned human rights activist, who today serves as chairman of the Shalem Center's Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, says the Six Day War inspired him and thousands of other Russian Jews to stand up to the Soviet government.
Sharansky said, "In fact, the Six Day War built a bridge, a very strong bridge, between us, our brothers in Israel and in America and in other parts -- and in fact it made us part of the free world. The Six Day War was the beginning of counting back the days of the Soviet Union. The moment many Soviet citizens felt themselves free enough to speak their mind independently, the Soviet Union was doomed to destruction."
It took more than 20 years, but as the Soviet empire collapsed, thousands and then tens of thousands of olim (immigrants) -- Russian Jewish immigrants and their families made their way to Israel.
Sharansky and other Russian Jews compared their story to the Exodus of the Israelites in the Bible.
"And we Soviet Jews felt that we are the continuation of that Exodus, and we got our strength from the Six Day War and Pharoah -- the Soviet leaders were resistant for a long time, and then when they tried at the last moment to stop us, we left the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union was destroyed, disappeared," Sharansky said. "And our tradition believes that's the strongest revelation of the existence of God, this Exodus miracle, the Exodus of Jews from Egypt and the destruction of Egyptian empire, so God gave us another revelation in our time."
The 1967 war also changed Israel's relationship with the West, especially the United States. At the time, the U.S. and Israel were not allies, and in fact the Americans put an embargo on arms to the Jewish state. Then there was a striking victory in June.
A New Ideology in the Middle East
Michael B. Oren is the author of Six Days of War and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center's Adelson Institute. He said, "Israel fought the Six Day War with French weapons, not with American weapons. Only then did American leaders begin to think, maybe these Israelis are worth having on our side in the Cold War. So there really was a sea change, a night and day change, between June 5, 1967 and June 11, 1967.
For the Arab world, the humiliating defeat in the war led to big changes: the rise of the Palestinian cause, the use of oil as a weapon against the West, with cartels and price hikes, and perhaps most importantly, a tighter fusion of religion and politics in the Muslim world.
Oren says the roots go back to the 1967 conflict.
"I think it made the modern Middle East" he said. With the death of secular Arab nationalism, the door was opened for the ascendance of a new ideology in the Middle East, and that is Islamic radicalism. That's where it begins."
With help from Arab, Communist and Third World allies, and eventually from Europe, the plight of the Palestinians took center stage at the United Nations.
Within a few years, terrorists commanded world attention with barbaric killings of innocent civilians around the world.
Author Joel Rosenberg says the bitter memory of 1967 continues to fuel Arab and Muslim hatred and create new deadly partnerships.
"So this is setting into motion the rearming of Israel's enemies, building new alliances among these enemies of Israel, particularly with nuclear powers: Russia, China, North Korea in particular playing a role here in this region in way they really haven't in the last 40 years or so," Rosenberg said.
But while Israel faced new and different dangers after the war, it also attracted money, visitors, and citizens from supporters around the world.
"For the Israelis, again, reuniting with the Biblical homeland, making Israel much more of a Jewish state, creating an alliance between Israel and the United States -- tremendous amount of pride in Israel in terms of Diaspora Jewish communities that began to give a tremendous amount of money here, people immigrating to Israel," Oren said. "There were tens of thousands of people who immigrated after that. It really transformed the society, transformed this country, and made the Middle East a very, very different place."
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