Gratitude Monday: Six days in June

I’m turning away today from the current chest-thumping alpha-male diarrhea flowing out of the White House for Gratitude Monday. Because today is the 50^th anniversary of the outbreak of what came to be known as the Six Day War, in which the armed forces of Israel completely whupped the asses (a technical military term) of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, with lesser involvement by Iraq and Lebanon (supported by a bunch of other Arab nations and supplied by the Soviet Union).

The war, provoked by Egypt closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and then mobilizing forces along the border, is also known as the Third Arab-Israeli war, since Arab nations had tried in 1948 and 1956 to destroy the Jewish state. It was during this one that Israel captured Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Sinai has since been returned, but the other territories remain under Israeli control, not without controversy.

I’m not going to go into detail about the war or its immediate causes—you can get the drift by understanding that the first strikes by the Israeli air force almost completely obliterated Egyptian air capabilities, but Nasser got the other Arab states to join in the attack on Israel by spinning some seriously fake news that the IAF had actually been defeated. (Also, Nasser was evidently acting on misinformation supplied by the USSR that Israel was massing forces on the Syrian border.)

Man—some countries do not ever learn, huh?

I have a few memories from this time:

Dave van den Eikhof walking into history class and whacking the paper airplanes the Levy twins had made, declaring: “This is how you destroy an air force: on the ground.”

Air superiority, baby—don’t start a war without it.

Also: a political cartoon I cut out of the Los Angeles Times, which I cannot now find. Several keffiyeh-wearing men labeled as the leaders of the Arab states are arrayed around a circle on the ground with an eye-patched Moishe Dayan walking away holding a full bag of marbles. The Arabs are crying, “But we didn’t know we were playing for keeps!”

Baby—you’re always playing for keeps when you break out the war matériel.

Losing three wars against Israel in less than 20 years did not deter the Arab states from trying again. The one Arab leader, Anwar Sadat, who made a substantive effort to broker long-term peace with Israel was assassinated after a fatwa was issued against him by Islamists.

But today I’m grateful for the example of Israel as a state that—despite enormous calls on its national resources just to survive in an environment surrounded by nations that deflect all domestic issues by focusing on driving the Jews into the sea—has done more than survive. It has flourished, and it remains a beacon of democracy and progress in an area that otherwise represents nothing so much as chaos, poverty (economic and moral), theocratic authoritarianism, ignorance and animus.

If by some stroke of I-don’t-know-what Israel disappeared, every Arab state in the Middle East would collapse into the void of having lost its focus of hatred. Yeah—they could still carry jihad to the non-Muslim world (and they would). But their people would still be hungry, ill-housed, uneducated, in poor health and without the basic infrastructure of modern states.

Israel’s citizens have borne the costs of defense (in both blood and treasure) for decades, and yet they’ve also given the entire world amazing scientific and technological advances. (Those who call for boycott of Israeli products need to eschew PCs with Pentium and Celeron chips, anything with Microsoft OS, anti-virus protection software and firewalls, emails depending on the algorithm developed there (so: all emails), mobile phones—all of them, SMS texting, video games, e-readers, water irrigation and other technologies that support agriculture in much of Africa and Asia, generic medications, AZT and other AIDs/HIV meds—oh, hell: forget about treating most diseases or traumatic injuries without technological advances out of Israel—and unstinting contributions to disaster relief around the world.) They also welcome refugees, including those from the Arab world. Yes—they’re tough and they’ve taken unpopular and mistaken stances over the years. I believe they’ve earned the right to be boneheaded on occasion.

(An iconic photo of Israeli paratroopers is juxtapositioned with the three men today.)

One of the great moments in U.S. history was Harry S Truman’s recognition of the state of Israel at its inception in 1948. On this anniversary of one of its many wars for survival, I’m grateful that the nation has prevailed, and hope that it will continue to do so forever.