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Lessons of the Six-Day War
"Today the world will commemorate the 40th anniversary of Israel's victory in the Six-Day War. This was one of the most convincing conventional military accomplishments of the 20th century, one which removed the threat of annihilation from the Jewish States for the following four decades….
On the diplomatic front, things were different from today. Despite blood-curdling threats by the Arab states, Israel had world public opinion largely on its side. The victory allowed Israel and the Jewish people to once again govern Jerusalem, accomplishing the dream expressed in all Jewish daily prayers during almost 2,000 years of exile. The Temple Mount, on which Solomon's Temple was built, and the Second Temple restored after the Babylonian exile, returned to Jewish sovereignty. So did the Western Wall, the most sacred site in Judaism. It is precisely the Israeli victories in the Six-Day War and in the Yom Kippur War (the failed Arab attempt at a rematch in 1973) that allowed the Jewish State to sign peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
Forty years later, however, Israel's very existence is challenged again. Now more than ever, Israel is the proverbial canary in the Middle East coal mine, the litmus test of Arab and Muslim attitudes to the world beyond the Land of Islam.
Today the threat is not only Arab -- it is also Iranian. It is not secular nationalism and pan-Arabism, but Islamist. It is both extremist Shi'a, as expressed by Iran and Hezbollah, and militant Sunni, articulated by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Moslem Brotherhood, and increasingly, al Qaeda-affiliated organizations in Gaza and Lebanon.
Forty years ago, the threat was classically conventional. Today, Israel and the United States lack strategy and doctrine to defeat the whole spectrum of threats, from the suicide bombings and Qassam rockets of Hamas and Fatah, to the improvised explosive devices in Iraq and the short range Iranian-supplied Katyusha rockets of Hezbollah. The threat is also unconventional -- from Syrian chemical weapons-armed rockets, to the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
It is not the "Israeli occupation" but the rise of extremist Islamist forces that constitute a global threat and are central in Middle East destabilization. Israeli, European and U.S. policymakers and generals still think in terms of nation-states and conventional armies. The global jihadi movement, its political leaders, paymasters, recruiters and propagandists recognize no national borders…”
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