Anniversaries

June is the anniversary of many significant events, the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings that brought the end of WWII, the 25th anniversary of the first free elections in Poland that brought an end to communism, and perhaps most significantly for Israel, the 47th anniversary of the Six-Day War on June 5, 1967.

If anything can be said to have established Israel as a fait accompli in the Middle East, it was the amazing aerial attack of June 5, 1967, by the IAF on the surrounding Arab countries, particularly Egypt and Syria, that decimated their air forces  before they even took off.  These countries had threatened Israel's existence, and in some cases still do, but they got an extreme shock when Israel not only fought back, but won so easily.  It was all over in 6 Days, little Israel (6 million people then) had defeated the collective armies of the Arab world (120 million people).  Since then the world has never looked the same.

It had a profound psychological impact on all Jews around the world.  No longer were they cowering in a cellar waiting for the forces of darkness to strike and kill them at will.  Now the Jews were defended by our own first class armed forces that used the latest technology to decimate the Arab enemies.  Their arrogance and Jew-hatred had been blunted and their intentions to destroy the only Jewish State in the world had been utterly defeated.  Although they tried again in 1973, nevertheless, 1967 was a turning point, a watershed, that represented the transformation of the destroyed Jews of the Holocaust of 1939-45 into the victorious Jews of the IDF of 1967.  We are still trying to come to terms with that fateful transition.