Arab-Israeli Blitzkrieg
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No time to banter today, Eamon. We've got so much to cover in this episode. So much to condense, for sure. The Six-Day War of 67 and its bold sequel, the Yom Kippur War of 73. But you are still alive, right? Alive and thriving. Good to hear. Now let's get straight into it. ♪

Yes, we've finally reached the climax of the Cold War in the Middle East. Well, a climax, at least. The outcomes of both the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War are relatively well known, less so the political machinations leading up to them. We'll do our best, dear listener, to take you behind the scenes of the corridors of power and into the minds of Arab and Israeli leaders. No one wanted war, yet war arrived. Why? That's our question.

These two wars were transformative. Nasserism was out and radicalism was in. And in the ongoing clash of civilizations in the Middle East, a new and improved player emerged from the wreckage of war, radical Islamism. Are you excited, Eamon? Of course, of course. I can trace the roots of my ideological youth to the 1960s and 1970s.

The Six-Day War was a turning point in the history of the modern Arab world. Arabs were left traumatized by their spectacular defeat. The Nasserist project was thoroughly discredited, and so a huge Egyptian transition began, away from the Soviet Union and toward the United States, away from a centralized command economy and toward crony capitalism, away from Arab nationalism and toward Egyptian nationalism. And all of these changes had huge reverberations across the region. But

In the years running up to the 1967 war, things had changed since the first clash between Israelis and Arabs in 1948. Israel's victory in '48 is largely down to the corruption of its Arab enemies. They were weak regimes, still dependent upon colonial powers and internally disunited. But by 1967, this had all changed. Arab states were now independent. They were centralized.

They were heavily armed and radically nationalistic. Syria and Egypt had Soviet military advisors as well as armaments. So even though with hindsight we know that Israel soundly defeated the Arabs before the war began, an Israeli victory was far from certain.

Okay, Eamon, give me the global Cold War context in the run-up to the '67 war. We're in '63, '64. What's the world like at the time? Many listeners will be thinking right now that, "Oh, we have a war in Ukraine. We have a war where the Taliban took over Afghanistan. We have crisis here, crisis there."

You know, if they were living, you know, in the 1960s, I don't know what they will do. They will go into significant panic. Because 1962, you know, in October, November, the world came crashing.

really pretty close to nuclear annihilation. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Absolutely. So, can you imagine? And then a year later, almost a year later, in 1963, in November, President Kennedy was assassinated. Wow, yep, that's true. Imagine if... I mean, we can't really imagine it now. It was so huge. The channels of information were really scarce. People were depending primarily on radio, newspapers, and a few TV stations. That's it. So,

It was a really panic-stricken world at the time. 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated, 1964, Vietnam War. - '64, Vietnam starts, yeah. The world was crazy. - Absolutely. In 1962, China invaded India, or at least in parts of India, and there was a war between India and China. I mean, the specter of war between India and Pakistan was always ever-present.

You know, the world was not exactly a very happy place at that time, or it didn't seem so. So that is why we understand that the Middle East was not

The Cold War dynamics in the Middle East did not happen in a vacuum. You know, the entire world was in turmoil. Zooming down into the regional level, I mean, we're talking about the Middle Eastern heartland here, Israel and Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and of course, Egypt. What's the status quo at the time there in terms of the borders? I mean, tell us about the Green Line. If you go to 1960s,

two, three, four, five, and six. You know, these years, the Israeli borders were pretty much, you know, you take away the West Bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights and that's what Israel looked like at the time. So,

So it is from, you know, from the Lebanese-Israeli border, there was a demilitarized zone. The Golan Heights, all of it basically was a demilitarized zone. And then you have the Green Line, which separated the West Bank, you know, from Israel proper, including even a Green Line barricaded, you know, and kind of scary in the middle of Jerusalem. So Jerusalem was divided into East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem. West Jerusalem, Israeli. East Jerusalem, Jordanian.

It's important to say, I think, that the Green Line wasn't really a border because there had only been an armistice after the 1948 war, not a peace treaty. So in effect, that war, the War of Israeli Independence, never ended.

Yeah. So actually, East and West Jerusalem resembled, you know, East and West Berlin to an extent, except basically there was far greater movement, you know, between the two sides for religious reasons. It's more like, you know, if people in Northern Ireland will, you know, who are listening to this, they will remember the Green Line in Belfast.

I mean, there's something similar to that between the two communities. Exactly. So as you say, there were DMZs with Jordan and Syria mainly. I mean, with Lebanon too. Lebanon doesn't really come into it. And across the Jordan and Syria DMZs, there had been fighting back and forth, especially with Syria. Now, as for Egypt, right, remember, dear listener, Israel had taken Gaza and much of the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Right.

But after the crisis, under international pressure, they had withdrawn and Suez and Gaza were being patrolled by the United Nations Emergency Force, the UNEF. Which of course leaves Jordan, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which had occupied and annexed the West Bank in the 1948 war. So they were controlling Jerusalem, they were controlling all of the holy places in the region, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim.

It might surprise the listener to know that at that time Israel actually had quite a good working relationship with King Hussein. - Well, King Hussein was always pragmatic, to be honest. I mean, at the end of the day, he realized that, okay, these are the people on my border

I need to keep Jerusalem as part of my fiefdom, part of my kingdom, part of my legacy, part of my inheritance, because King Hussein realized that his grandfather and his great-grandfather lost Mecca, Medina, and the Hejaz to the House of Saud, and so- - We talked all about this in the last episode on the Hashemites. - Exactly. So he needs to keep Jerusalem, and he realized

And if you read many of the interviews, basically, that he gave throughout the years, of course, in hindsight, he was always...

sounding regretful, you know, about, you know, participating in any of the Arab foolishness regarding like, you know, annihilating Israel and all of that, because he realized he lost the West Bank and Jerusalem because of that. He had some other difficulties too, internal difficulties. I mean, his regime was Western leaning on the whole, but it was always being opposed by the Palestinian majority inside the country. Remember, he was ruling not just the

present-day Jordan, but also present-day West Bank. So the majority of his country were Palestinians. They were fervently pro-Nasser. They were fervently pro-Arab nationalism. And so the revolutionary Arab regimes, like Syria, like Egypt, were always interfering internally in Jordanian affairs, putting King Hussein in a tight spot. Absolutely. And this is the problem, is that the Palestinians at the time started to fashion themselves as

the new cool kids of the revolutionary scene globally. I mean, you remember, these are the 1960s, these are the days of Castro, Che Guevara, all of these revolutionaries parading around with their berets and all of that and the military uniforms, and they are the cool kids, the socialists, the leftists. So the Palestinians started to fashion themselves around that image of global, socialist, internationalist, revolutionary solidarity.

And this is where it clashed completely with the image of the calm, stoic monarchy of Jordan. Okay, so that's the regional political status quo. Now, let's drill into the Israeli government's mind at the time. After the Suez Crisis of 56, right, the Israeli government changed policy. It did not want violence.

war and the government had specifically told the Israeli Defense Force, the IDF, to avoid any escalation with the Arab countries. To this end, the Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, was obsessed with obtaining nuclear weapons for Israel. He said this, quote, "What Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller, the three of them are Jews, made for the United States could also be done by scientists in Israel for their own people."

The Israeli acquisition of nuclear technology is a fascinating Cold War story in its own right, isn't it, Eamon? Oh, indeed. There's no question. I mean, the secrecy, the piracy, you know, the stealing of information, the espionage, the intrigue. But in the end, they got what they wanted. They did. They did this by working closely with perhaps a country that people wouldn't expect.

Funny enough, it's France. That's right, the French. Now, the French, they'd been developing their own nuclear deterrence. This was actually one of the consequences of the Suez Crisis. Remember, the Americans refused to support Britain and France in that war. And at the end of the war, the French were like, well, we can't trust the Americans. We don't want to be under their nuclear umbrella. We need our own deterrence.

So they were developing nuclear bombs. And already, as we saw in episode six, France and Israel were really close allies. In fact, it was not the U.S. back then. It was France that was by far Israel's closest ally. France was the main supplier of weapons to Israel. And Israel had been helping France combat Algerian freedom fighters by passing on intelligence gathered from North African Jews during the Algerian War for Independence.

And remember, it was France that had arranged for Israel to contribute to the Suez campaign.

And in fact, to get Israeli support for the Suez campaign, France had agreed to supply Israel with vital nuclear technology, which became part of Israel's Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert. This reactor would play an important role in the '67 war. In fact, Thomas, the French alliance with Israel goes further than just the nuclear cooperation.

the entire Israeli Air Force at the time was made up actually of French fighter jets, you know, the Mystere and the Mirage. The Mirage fighter jets were really, you know, league ahead of their Soviet counterparts. And so, you know, the French aircraft

Military cooperation with the Israelis played a decisive role in the wars to come. In Israel's mind, they were developing nuclear weapons in order to prevent war. Israel hoped that a nuclear deterrent would convince their Arab enemies never to invade. Of course, that's not how the Arabs saw it.

And they saw the development of an Israeli nuclear weapon program as a reason possibly to go to war to prevent Israel from getting a nuclear bomb. Sounds familiar. Throughout this story, we will see interpretations of one side's actions by the other, which run exactly counter to the intentions of...

of the enemy. This is, of course, something that we have to always bear in mind when we're talking about war. We have this objective, God's eye view of the situation now with hindsight, but at the time, what Israel's thinking, Egypt doesn't know. What Egypt is thinking, Israel doesn't know. They have to guess based on the moves that they can see. - And this is the problem with conflicts. You always sleepwalk into conflict when you start second guessing

what your neighbors and adversaries and your enemies might be thinking.

When you start second-guessing and you start underestimating what they are thinking, what they are trying to do, and you try to delve deeper into their mindset and you go into the wrong path rather than the right path, the path will lead to war. That was definitely true of the Six-Day War. It was true of the First World War, actually. It was true of a lot of wars, maybe even the recent war with Ukraine and Russia. And of course, I mean, if anyone wants to understand how second-guessing

and underestimating your enemies could lead to war, please read the book The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. It was published in the 1960s. And this book basically will give you an idea about how really, like I mean, second guessing your enemies could lead to dire consequences.

Okay, right now that's Israel's perspective at the moment. They don't want war. They're developing a nuclear deterrent in order to prevent war. They've told the IDF not to foment war with the Arab states. Let's move now to Egypt and its president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

put us inside Nasser's head in the mid-1960s, Ayman. I mean, after the Syrian coup in '61 took Syria out of the UAR, the United Arab Republic, Nasser's prestige was damaged. And he began remorselessly attacking the Syrian regime. He began doing all sorts of slightly more aggressive things. What was going on inside Nasser's mind at the time? Nasser's mind was really like a scrambled egg at the time, and for a very good reason.

because he was having one setback after another all across the Arab world. Nothing was going his way. Not just across the Arab world. In fact, the social and economic policies of Nasserism, which were becoming more and more extreme, nationalizing industry, nationalizing finance, these were beginning to bear quite rotten fruit at home. And there was a growing unrest within Egypt. The economy wasn't doing great.

Indeed, because of course, like, I mean, since when collectivization and, you know, nationalization of industries, like, you know, I mean, and crony socialism ever work. And so that's exactly what happened to him. I mean, you know, and at the same time, there was a resurgent Muslim brotherhood movement.

There was a second wave of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1960s. He really wasn't having a good time, and the pressure on him was just so great. Absolutely. And Nasser was still animated by kind of anti-Israeli feelings. He had suffered two embarrassing defeats at the hands of Israel, or Egypt had at least, the '48 war and the '56 Suez Crisis to some extent. He had not forgotten these defeats,

But Nasser had disengaged from active hostility to Israel by the early 60s. He'd stopped supporting guerrilla attacks against Israeli territory, for example, because he believed that the Arab world needed to unite first and undergo a proper social and technological revolution before it took on Israel. So instead, Nasser was focused on shoring up his project of creating a pan-Arab union with Egypt

at its center. And this was leading him to do more and more desperate things. I mean, in 1962, he invaded Yemen. Most people don't know this. Egypt invaded Yemen, trying to force Yemen to join with Egypt. I mean, there were sort of tens of thousands of Egyptian troops, tens of thousands dead. This was very much weighing down Nasser's ability to act.

Indeed. In fact, basically that war soured relationship with Saudi Arabia and with other Arab countries. And some Arab people started to view Nasser as an imperialist himself rather than anti-imperialist. Soured relations with Saudi Arabia. My goodness, way more than that. I mean, Nasser was bombing Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was working with the United States to repel the Egyptian attack in Yemen. Very much similar to the situation going on in Yemen today. Indeed. Absolutely. Yeah.

So there was this alliance of conservative Arab states against Nasser. He was feeling blue. What he really wanted was a Syrian regime that recognized his leadership of the pan-Arab cause, or at least pretended to do so. And he got it in early 1963, when, as we said in the last episode, both Syria and Iraq experienced successful Ba'athist coups.

And in order to strengthen their new regimes, the Ba'ath movement immediately initiated talks with Nasser on a new union, a new UAR between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Indeed, to the point where, you know, a new flag was created with three stars, which is, you know, today's Iraq flag, funny enough. But to that, they're all over on it.

This new union was greeted with huge jubilation, especially by the Palestinians. The signatories had made it a signature aim of the new union to liberate Palestine. This was an explicit aim of their agreement. And so the Arab street erupted in glee. So there were huge riots inside the West Bank of Palestinians waving a flag with four stars on it because they were really hoping that that

Jordan would also join this union. Indeed, because the listener must remember that the West Bank at the time was part of Jordan. That's right. Now, Nasser's regional enemies greeted this new revived UAR with great dismay. Ben-Gurion, the Israeli prime minister, said that the new union meant the specter of a new holocaust.

but perhaps more than anyone, it was King Hussein of Jordan who freaked out. Just like in 1958, when the first UAR was announced, in 1963, King Hussein was like, oh God, this is not what I want. Indeed, I mean, don't forget for King Hussein, this is 1963, in 1958, you know, his cousin, his dear cousin, King Faisal of Iraq was killed, you know, so he still feels five years later that at any moment it could be him.

He said, quote, the ring is closing around us once again. Poor King Hussein. He must have felt so insecure. And that wasn't helped when U.S. intelligence learned that Egypt was in league with pro-Nasser officers in Jordan about launching a military coup there, a bit like what happened to his cousin in 58.

A military coup that they hoped would incorporate Jordan into the UAR. And that's why the Israelis really freaked out when they felt that Jordan could be the next to fall. Because if Jordan falls, then Israel will become extremely vulnerable. And that's why they threatened to invade and annex the West Bank. This is 1963, dear listener. We're still leading up to the 67 War, but this is all really important context. Indeed. Indeed.

you know, in 2018 when I was in Israel, I've driven from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and it took literally 20 minutes, 20 minutes drive exactly, to go from Tel Aviv to the border of the West Bank. That's it. So in reality, for Israel, the West Bank was its Achilles heel. If the West Bank is controlled by a hostile power, then what's going to happen is that they can cut Israel in half

in 20-30 minutes, that's it. There is no strategic depth. And so for the Israelis, they threatened Nasser and they threatened the Arabs that, you know, if Jordan falls to a hostile power, if there is a military coup, we will invade the West Bank to shore up our strategic depth and strategic defense. This threat by Israel to invade, in fact, made Nasser back off. So any machinations inside Jordan to launch a coup there stopped.

And in fact, by mid-63s, only three or four months after the new UAR was announced, the scheme had already basically failed. As we said in the last episode, Baathists and Nasserists, they didn't really like each other. There was a lot of infighting between the two groups. And in Syria, there was a massive massacre of Nasserists in Damascus, so much so that Nasser broke off relations with Syria entirely. He called the Syrian regime fascist.

So Israel must have heaved a sigh of relief thinking, well at least the Arabs once again are more divided than they are united. Indeed. Yet it was at this point that David Ben-Gurion suddenly resigned the premiership of Israel for mysterious reasons. You know, in fact, this is one of the great debates of history. Maybe he couldn't take the pressure, who knows? But what's important for the '67 war is his replacement. He was replaced as prime minister by Levi Eshkol, a Ukrainian Jew as it happens.

Livy Ashkul was of the pragmatist school within the long list of Israeli prime ministers. And he came to power hoping to de-escalate rather than escalate. His dream always basically was of having a

a more cordial relationship with his Arab neighbors. I mean, they were looking for acceptance rather than for confrontation. He had been a lifelong Zionist, an early player in the Israeli Zionist movement, a major player in the founding of the State of Israel. But yes, as you say, he was hoping, as really was the whole government establishment in Israel, for something like peace, or at least a modus vivendi with its neighbors.

Now, Eshkul also, and this is really interesting, he had a long experience in water development, which is important because water became a massive causus belli in the 67 War. You'll like this, Eamon. You're always talking about

how water in the Middle East explains so much. Indeed. There had long been tensions between Syria and Israel, especially over Israel's water development plans, which were diverting source waters of the Jordan River into Israel. Well, as you know, basically Mount Hermon is, you know, one of the most important sources for the

Yes, a very tall mountain to the north of the Golan Heights at the very tip of Israel in that port of area. A very tall mountain. The Whitecap Mountain actually sits on the meeting point of three borders, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel.

And, you know, from the Lebanese side, it's my mother's village. You know, so the village of Shib'a, which in Aramaic means Sab'a, which means seven in Arabic. Yeah, because it's shaped like the number seven in Aramaic. So from there, you know, the ice cap...

basically, like, and provide a lot of the water that flows into the Jordan River. Actually, that mountain, Mount Hermon, is called in Arabic Jabal al-Sheikh, you know, for those who, you know, who speak Arabic among our listeners. In 1957, you know, that mountain was important for me personally because basically on the Lebanese side of that mountain, in one of the springs and a waterfall there in a very beautiful setting, that was the wedding of my mom and dad.

Oh, Eamon, that's sweet. Thank you. Thank you so much. So basically, you know, the waters were flowing, you know, from north to south, going from Mount Hermon, going into, you know, the Sea of Galilee and from there into the River Jordan. And, you know, of course, that was divided. That water was divided, you know, between the Arabs and the Israelis, you know, according to UN agreements. That's right. The UN had been invited in to mediate the dispute.

And their plan allocated 38% of the Jordan's water to Israel. Okay, Israel was in fact developing the area, developing the water resources of the area, and they were sticking more or less to within that 38% allocation. However,

when the Baathist coup happened in Syria in '63, all diplomatic dialogue with Israel was suspended and the new Baathist Syrian regime threatened what it called a suicide war with Israel over water. And this resulted in 1964 to a rather remarkable Arab League summit. And the 1964 Arab League summit, it's when they decided

to divert, you know, the water away from Israel, which actually amounted to an act of war. I mean, it's the Middle East after all, water is so scarce. Israel certainly considered the plan to divert its water to be an existential threat, and they did prepare for war. This caused fighting again to break out across the DMZ with the Syrians, and on the 16th of March 1965,

the Syrians fired on Israeli farmers in the DMZ. They were settlers, technically they shouldn't have been there. They were fired upon and a tractor driver, an Israeli tractor driver was killed.

Now this was a pretext for the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, to open fire. Although they didn't actually target the place where the attack on the tractor had come from, they targeted the Syrian water diversion project. They'd had it in their sights and they were waiting for an excuse to attack it. And the question was that since the Israelis were attacking Syria right now, would the Egyptians join the fight?

Because, you see, in that summit of 1964, they created something called the United Joint Arab Command, which actually was anything but united and joined. It was a military command that united all 13 Arab states' militaries. That's something. On paper only. Come on, Thomas. It was only on paper. What coordination was there? There was nothing. Right.

Well, that is true. Nonetheless, people did wonder, is Nasser going to send in his troops since Israel had attacked Syria? But, you know, he was bogged down in Yemen. He did not want to be lured into any war with Israel. And so he didn't do anything. That means that the United Arab Command, which was announced with great fanfare the year before, was just another example of Nasser sort of scrambling to

to make symbolic displays of Arab unity. But in fact, behind the scenes, he always favored a cautious, incremental approach. He hoped primarily to ensure Egypt's domination of the Arab world. And this is why, Thomas, I think, you know, the path to war, unfortunately, was paved, you know, with such, you know, jingoistic, nationalistic rhetoric.

For Nasser and for all the Arab leaders who actually inflamed the passions of the street about the glories of the Arabs, the restoration of such union and the crushing of Israel and its colonial backers. I mean, when you raise such expectations so high, then with high expectations, you know,

These expectations, unless they are satisfied, they will turn into dissatisfaction. And this is where Nasser put himself and trapped himself between a rock and a hard place, between his populace who were expecting too much because of his rhetoric and the realities of, I can't win a war against Israel.

Well, radical Arabist pan-Arab expectations went up again in February 1966 when there was another coup inside Syria in which radical Ba'athists overthrew moderate Ba'athists

And this is the coup that resulted in a certain military officer being made Minister of Defense. Do you know whom I'm talking about? Oh, indeed. Assad the father, Assad the senior, Hafez al-Assad. Hafez al-Assad. He became Minister of Defense in 1966. Of course, you know, in 1970, he would take full control of the country.

But during the '67 war, he was Minister of Defense, Hafez al-Assad. Now, this coup inside Syria that brought the radical Baathists to power in Damascus was provocative to Israel. The regime in Damascus supported "direct popular struggle" against Israel, by which they meant

guerrilla warfare, or perhaps to speak more plainly, terrorism, however you want to describe it. Damascus was calling for revolution now against imperialism and Israel, and this was important because in the meantime, two new players had emerged on the regional chessboard.

First, let's talk about the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, because it was another consequence of that '64 Arab League summit. So the Palestinian Liberation Organization was established as a political organization initially, not a military one.

And it was Nasser's tool in order to control the internal Palestinian narrative, which angered so many other Arab leaders, including King Hussein, because he

He was the king of the Palestinians as well as the Jordanians, you know, and this was seen as Nasser stepping on Hussein's territory. Beyond the refugee problem, the Palestinians, you know, they hadn't really been a political player. They'd been absorbed into Jordan and the Arab powers were making decisions on their behalf.

including by creating the PLO, Nasser, the Arab League, were still managing Palestinian affairs. - And this actually proves more or less that the Palestinians, even by the 1960s, they did not yet develop what they call basically aspirations for statehood for a separate Palestinian state. I mean, at the time they were just hoping for a larger Arab entity to incorporate them as part of the pan-Arab nationalism. - So as you rightly said, Ayman,

The PLO was connected to Egypt and therefore it followed Nasser's orders. And for that reason, they did not launch attacks inside Israel because Nasser did not want a war. However, that was not the case with the other Palestinian player that emerged in the mid-60s, FETA, or the Palestinian National Liberation Movement. Many people think that the PLO and FETA are the same thing. They ended up merging, and we'll get to that,

But in the beginning, they were very different. Well, Fatah was actually modeled around the contemporary at the time, the contemporary socialist revolutionary movements such as Castro and Che Guevara. And of course, among the Fatah founders of

the very famous Yasser Arafat. Yasser Arafat. He, I mean, in the 80s and 90s when I was coming of age, my God, there was perhaps no more iconic Arab. He was everywhere. Indeed, with his, you know, wearing the kufiya and the way like he was wearing his military uniform. He was trying to be like, I mean, a mix of a Che Guevara and Qassam or whatever. But anyway,

He and Fattah were far more violent and far more revolutionary because they were, at the end of the day, a bunch of students coming from Cairo and Amman and other places in order to advocate for the overthrow of Israel as a whole. I mean, completely, like the annihilation of the state of Israel as it was known at the time.

Yasser Arafat and Fatah favored quote-unquote popular struggle. They'd been inspired by the success of the Algerian War for Independence. They identified the U.S. as part of the enemy camp. They saluted the USSR, China especially, they loved Mao, and all the non-aligned countries. So in the Cold War kind of binary, they were definitely setting themselves against the United States.

They were obsessed with the idea, rightly as it turned out, that Israel was on the brink of acquiring a nuclear bomb. This was part of their motivation for fomenting all-out war. They wanted war as soon as possible to prevent that from happening. And starting in early '65, Fatah began guerrilla attacks against Israeli forces. And so the IDF in turn began commando attacks on Fatah positions inside the Jordanian-held West Bank.

Eventually, the Fatah attacks would grow more and more sophisticated because they received aid by the new radical Baathist regime in Damascus. This kind of climaxed in November 1966 when Fatah guerrillas who were attacking Israel from the West Bank, which Jordanian held, but they were being supported by Syria. Jordan didn't support Fatah. The Jordanians hated Fatah.

Fatah, but the Syrians were supporting Fatah from within Jordan to attack Israel. So these attacks were getting worse and worse, and eventually the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, decided to launch a massive raid inside the West Bank. This raid on the village of Samu is notorious. Indeed. I mean, it led to significant loss of life.

among militants and civilians, and it was widely condemned, widely condemned across the Arab world, and it galvanized the public opinion. It was called Operation Shredder, and eight tanks, 400 paratroopers were sent in. They captured the village. They blew up. They dynamited 50 houses, the police station, a medical clinic, a school, and a mosque. It was a pretty harsh reprisal.

This actually forced the Jordanian troops to intervene. So fighting broke out between the IDF and the Jordanian troops. Even jets were scrambled. The Jordanian Air Force got involved. Two Jordanian jets were shot down by the Israelis. It was pretty tense, especially since following this attack,

Huge riots again broke out across the West Bank. There were demands for the entire Jordanian government to resign. King Hussein's rule was on a knife's edge. He felt extremely threatened. He was so politically weakened by all of this that he felt himself being compelled closer to Nasser and the other revolutionary Arab regimes to bolster his credential with his people. Yeah.

Practically, he was buried into it. And those Arab revolutionary governments were getting stronger because in November 66, by some miracle, Egypt and Syria set aside their rivalry. And to the great surprise of the Israelis, they signed a renewed mutual defense agreement. Now...

It's important to point out that Nasser actually hoped that the military pact with Syria would restrain Syria. He was worried that Syrian aggression was provoking Israel into war. He didn't want a war.

But the Israelis saw Arabs uniting against us. It's another example of how both sides misunderstood the other's motivation, which climaxed in a massive way, in a way, the first shot of the 1967 war, in a way, on the 7th of April, 1967. I mean, it's all again coming back to a tractor, yet a second tractor. Ha ha ha!

What is the problem with tractors? They always cause trouble. So Syrian regular troops fired upon an agricultural tractor on the Israeli side. The driver was killed. However, this time the Israeli Air Force

immediately scrambled and immediately went into a frenzied action. And they went after every Syrian military target they can find, from Al-Quneitra and the Golan Heights all the way to Damascus. They dropped 65 tons of bombs on these positions to the point where even when the Syrian Air Force started to scramble to resist them, they shot down two Syrian MEGs, fighter jets, over Damascus itself. What's interesting about that event is that the Israeli government

had not been consulted. The commander of the air force acted alone. This is an example of how the tensions, the military tensions that had been ratcheting up over the previous years were creating a dynamic within the military, not just in Israel, as we'll see, but in Egypt and elsewhere, a dynamic where the military felt it needed to respond so quickly that civilian governments were being slightly sidelined

But again, in this case, the Arabs and the Soviets who were backing them did not know this. They did not know that the air force had acted without government approval. They assumed it was the first move in an Israeli attempt to bring down the Syrian regime. And that left Nasser totally humiliated. Humiliated again. Yeah. Why? Because, you see, Jordan was attacked. That village of Samar was attacked and nothing happened. Nasser did not do anything.

Then Syria was attacked. You know, the Israeli Air Force made a mincemeat out of Syrian forces and the Syrian Air Force. And Nasser, yet again, did not do anything. So really, you know, since you are not good in terms of

economy, you are no good in terms of diplomacy. What are you good for if you are not going to deter the Israelis? The Soviets were also really worried at this point. So just to kind of remind the listener, Soviet military advisors had been training the Egyptian army now for over a decade. And in fact, in September 65, so just 18 months before, a huge new arms deal had been brokered between the Soviets and Egypt.

And Nasser, in fact, had been made a hero of the Soviet Union during a visit to Cairo by Khrushchev in 1964. That shows you how close the countries had become. So much for non-alignment, huh? At around this time, the head of the commander of all the Warsaw Pact countries, so this is like the Soviet NATO, the commander of the Warsaw Pact countries paid Nasser a visit. He told Nasser that the Egyptian army was battle-ready.

offering encouragement to Nasser but in fact knowing full well that this was mere flattery. The thing is the Soviets had decided they wanted Nasser to do something. The USSR had immediately become a very close ally of the new radical Baathist regime in Damascus

And following that April attack on Syria by Israel, Syria had been rocked by protests organized by the Muslim Brotherhood. And there was an increase in terrorist attacks across the border into Israel, which led the Israelis to say that they would have no choice but to launch even more decisive reprisals. The Soviets began to fear that the Baathist regime was on the verge of collapse and/or conquest

So the Soviets, unfortunately, you know, and in their infinite lack of wisdom, they decided that to manipulate Nasser into believing that the Israelis are about to, uh,

attack Syria and depose the Baathist regime in Damascus. They told Nasser that they have solid intelligence that Israeli armored brigades are massing on the Syrian-Israeli border. And therefore, because he already told the Soviets before that any attack by Israel against Syria will lead to an Egyptian intervention, so the Soviets thought, uh-huh.

You know, this is how we can manipulate, you know, this guy into actually doing something in order to prevent our allies in Damascus, you know, falling. And so that is basically how the intelligence was passed. It was false intelligence to Nasser. Nasser immediately ordered mobilization.

And this is when you can see that once you give the military more power, they do foolish things. That's absolutely right. So you have, you know, Israel's now panicked. Israel thinks that Syria and Egypt are planning an attack. Syria is panicked. Syria thinks Israel is going to invade. Egypt is panicked. It thinks that Israel is going to attack Syria and lure Egypt into a war that it does not want. So it's in this context that on the 16th of May 1967...

the Egyptian army chief of staff orders the United Nations Emergency Force, the UNEF, which was in the Sinai, to withdraw from its positions along the Israel-Sinai border. Now, it's important, just like before when the Israeli Air Force attacked Syria,

In fact, Field Marshal Abdul Hakim Amr

the head of the Egyptian military, he actually requested that the UN forces withdraw from the border only. He just wanted them to go south. He did not want them to leave the entire Sinai. That's right. The UNEF first asked Israel if it could perhaps take up positions on its side of the line, of the border, to be a buffer, but Israel refused. Israel never wanted UN troops inside its territory.

This put the UN in a bind. I mean, it couldn't just withdraw its forces south away from the border with Israel, deeper into Sinai, and watch as Egypt amassed troops along the border and the two sides start fighting. You know, they're peacekeeping troops. What would be the point of doing that? So they were in a bind, and they were left thinking, what do we do? Now, the following day, tensions ratchet up again when two Egyptian fighter jets are spotted flying over Egypt.

The Dimona reactor. Remember that, dear listener? The reactor that was the center of Israel's nuclear development plan. I mean, of course, for the Israelis, they thought, oh, this must be like an Egyptian reconnaissance mission preparing for a strike on our nuclear reactor. So the Israelis really freaked out now. And it was certainly widely believed that already at that time, Israel had a couple of crude nuclear bombs.

that they could draw on and that they would be able to produce a proper one in six to eight weeks should it be required. So Israel knew that was the case. Israel had reason to think its enemies knew that was the case. So, you know, it thought, oh my God, they're going to attack our nuclear program as a way of luring us into war. But it's important to note that Nasser still did not want war.

Even the flyover at the Dimona reactor was just a show of force. All he wanted to do was deter an Israeli attack on Syria. Again, we come back to the fact that everyone was engaging in second-guessing the other. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot.

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Meanwhile, the UNEF had reached its decision. So as I said, on the grounds that it couldn't just withdraw to the south and watch Egypt and Israel fight each other, it ordered a full withdrawal. All UN troops evacuated, and the Sinai was free for Egypt to move its troops into. So Nasser was really praying to God, you know, please, you know, let the UN stay, but the UN did not.

And the UN decided to evacuate Sinai. And by evacuating Sinai, they created this void, this vacuum that you need to fill immediately. Now,

He really didn't want to put the Egyptian military into Sinai, but now he has to. You know, his hand was forced, so he sent the Egyptian military into Sinai. And now that they are in Sinai, you know, okay, the Arab world is waiting. The Arab world is waiting with a bated breath, like, you know, hey, do something. So what he ends up doing, he closes the Strait of Tehran, you know, at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba against Israeli shipping.

military and civilian alike. And you know, in international law, this is an act of war. Not only Israeli shipping, actually. He closed it to all ships carrying strategic materials to Israel, i.e. oil, most of which, interestingly enough, was coming from Iran at the time, which back in those days was an Israeli ally.

Indeed, the Shah was an ally of Israel at that time. So that was, you know, as far as the Israelis were concerned, you know, the last straw. Yes, so this was an act of war. Israel made it clear this is an act of war. But the funny thing is, Nasser still didn't want a war. And

One week later, at the end of May 1967, he said so. He said Egypt would not be the one to fire the first shot. What he really hoped for was that by closing the Straits of Tehran, he could claim to have had some kind of victory over Israel, placate the Arab masses and go back to business as usual. But it got out of control. By this point, it was going to happen anyway. Maybe.

you know, Nasser didn't want war. But that was not the case with the Egyptian military. The Egyptian military were, you know, really eager to wash away the humiliation of 48 and 56. And Abdul Hakim Amr, the Minister of Defense, he put together a plan called Operation Dawn or Amaliyat al-Fajr in which, uh,

An invasion of Israel actually was meticulously planned and put forward. And it was supposed to be launched on 27th of May. Of course, the Israeli intelligence got hold of that. They won the Americans. The Americans won the Soviets. And of course, the Soviets came back to Nasser and said, hey, hey, hey, we wanted you just to be on the border to scare the Israelis, not to invade Syria, but not to start a real war, please. Yeah.

Nasser had actually not greenlit the plan. He was on the fence about it. He also didn't really know what was going on at this stage. He was slightly afraid. Is Israel going to attack? You know, he didn't know. But this whole thing left Israel on even higher alert. In their mind, Egypt had been on the verge of invading their country. All the while...

Other Arab states had begun mobilizing, Sudan, Iraq, others, even Saudi Arabia. They all began saying openly with this, you know, pan-Arab rhetoric that they would contribute to any war with Israel. The tensions were at, you know, really, you could cut it with a knife. Indeed. And of course, then came the thing that pushed the Israelis over the edge.

King Hussein signing a mutual defense agreement with Nasser. Yeah, this was really surprising on the 30th of May. I mean, King Hussein and Nasser had been enemies basically quite openly for well over a decade. And yet there they are signing a mutual defense agreement in the midst of all this tension. Nasser states, quote, Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight. This coming from a man who didn't want a war.

This is another sign that Nasser's rhetoric was overwhelming his own cautiousness, you know. But this whole situation was being goaded on by other Arab nationalist leaders, real radicals, such as Hafez al-Assad, who said, quote, Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself and to expel the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. So this is a real threat to Israel. So in the early hours of 4th of June 1967,

Even though the Israelis were outnumbered 3 to 1 on almost every metric, 3 to 1 when it comes to aircrafts, 3 to 1 when it comes to tanks, 3 to 1 when it comes to deployed troops, the Israelis nonetheless decided to test the odds. And they launched a...

You know, one of the most audacious and successful air raids in modern history. So yes, the war started on the 5th of June at 7.45 in the morning with Operation Focus. And indeed, it was a focused operation. The goal was to destroy the Egyptian Air Force.

Indeed, the Israelis ironically learned this lesson from the Germans during World War II, the blitzkrieg. The idea that in order to achieve quick, decisive victory, you need to really annihilate your enemy's air force and you achieve immediate air superiority within the first 24 to 48 hours.

And that was the Israeli objective. They certainly achieved this. Egypt was caught off guard, in fact, because Israeli intelligence had cleverly planted false news reports in newspapers saying that the IDF was on vacation.

and that the Air Force would be carrying out routine training missions. So the Egyptian Air Force was in a way cooling its heels. And in fact, the advance warning systems that the Egyptian Air Force relied on was not even online. It wasn't on. So 183 Israeli jets, they flew so low over the Mediterranean and they surprised the Egyptian Air Force when they attacked 14 airfields with such precision that...

that they destroyed 83% of the Egyptian air force on the ground. 338 Egyptian jets were destroyed. You know, and at the time, Field Marshal Abdul Hakim Amr and the head of the military intelligence, Salah Nasser,

And many other generals were actually having a hangover from the previous night party. And they were in one of the military headquarters somewhere outside of Cairo when they saw what was happening. And so they actually were trying to rush back to the Ministry of Defense. So they went to one of the airports, but they found it was bombed. And the military car that dropped them there already left. So they called for a taxi. I'm not kidding. They called for a taxi. Yeah.

to come and pick them up while the country is being bombed and the air force is being shredded by the Israelis. And they all crammed into one taxi trying to get to the Ministry of Defence to find out what really was happening. Talk about total surprise and total incompetence.

They didn't know it was happening because Radio Cairo was pumping out the usual propaganda which was masking the scale of the Israeli attack. It was saying that Egypt was on the verge of victory. It was being believed by its own military leaders. Not just in Egypt, but actually all around the Arab world they were thinking, "Oh, Egypt is winning." But in fact it was the exact opposite. That very morning Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula in force and within a day had captured the entire thing.

In response to all of this, Jordan begins shelling Israel from the West Bank. And so on the 6th of June, Israel invades the West Bank and within a single day had taken the whole thing. The Syrians begin shelling Israel and on the 9th of June, the IDF invades the Golan Heights and again captures it the very next day. It had been a total rout.

It was a total rout. One, because the Israelis had superior weapons from France. But two, which is extremely important, training, training, training, and training. You cannot underestimate...

how many times the Israelis were drilling and drilling and drilling and training and training and preparing for this. The average Israeli soldier, the average Israeli pilot had almost nine times the amount of training and the amount of drilling that their Arab counterparts had. And finally, number three,

intelligence. Intelligence was really important. Well, on the Arab side, it was a total disaster. Abdel Latif al-Baghdadi, a former Egyptian vice president, later said, quote, We felt as though we were dreaming. It was mayhem, like a nightmare. How could our air force have been wiped out in the space of one day and our ground troops decimated the next? How could they be so strong that we couldn't hold out for more than 36 hours? That's what happened when you have a very well-

motivated, very well trained, and advanced, you know, and coordinated in a military. No matter how small it is, it can take on any larger military that is not coordinated, not well trained, not well motivated. The aftermath of the Six-Day War was sort of inconceivable. The Suez Canal became a war zone and the canal was closed for eight years, disrupting global shipping to a degree that we can hardly imagine.

The Palestinians, once again, they were pretty much screwed. At the time, there were about 1 million inhabitants of the West Bank. About 25% of them became refugees. Again, another wave of Palestinian refugees, mostly to Jordan. And in addition, 130,000 Syrian refugees from the Golan Heights were created by the war.

Fatah and the PLO, as we said before, merged in the wake of the '67 disaster. Now Yasser Arafat was in charge of the whole organization, the new merged organization, and they began escalating their tactics. Not only would they attack rural sites as they had been, they were now going to target urban areas as their strategy became more explicitly terroristic.

In addition, Palestinian nationalism, which as we've said again and again, was not really a thing. It now becomes a real thing. More and more Palestinians are saying, we need to push Israelis out of the way and take over historic Palestine for ourselves with our own state. I think possibly the greatest personal tragedy of the 67 war is with Gamal Abdel Nasser himself. On the 9th of June, in the midst of the war, it's still going on,

He announces his resignation. I mean, he was heartbroken. No, no, shut Sherlock. Like, you know, basically, he was responsible for the whole mess. Like, you know, I mean, he did not understand the law of unintended consequences. But nonetheless, you know, the Egyptian people, you know, being, you know, at the time, the naive people they were at the time, I mean, they just swarmed the streets in their millions asking for him to

remain in power and shouting his name and slogans of no Mr. President

And the Soviets also urged him to stay. In fact, he received a telegram personally from the Soviet premier promising that all the military hardware that Egypt lost in this war, the aircrafts, the tanks, the artillery, all of this will be completely replaced and replenished by the USSR free of charge. That was a very sweet deal.

It sure was. That was an incentive. So Nasser changed his mind. He did not resign. And to some extent, I suppose, revived. He led an Arab summit in Khartoum later that year. This is the famous Arab summit of the three no's. No peace, no recognition, no negotiation with Israel. And this led to what's called the War of Attrition, a kind of constant bombardment by the Arab allies of new Israeli positions that lasted three years.

Not only the bombardment of the Israeli positions east of the canal, but also commando raids, you know. And it was actually a tit-for-tat commando raids between the two sides, and it was... As it had been since 1948. It never ended. There wasn't peace. Definitely no peace. However, just around the corner, a prospect of peace arrived.

when in September of 1970, unexpectedly, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the great man of Arab unity, the great Arab of the mid-20th century, died. He had a heart attack and he died.

His funeral is something to be seen. Look it up on YouTube. It's amazing. You would have thought maybe Jesus Christ himself had died. But he is followed by a long-term colleague of his, to some extent the brains behind the whole Nasserist project from the beginning, Anwar Sadat.

Anwar Sadat becomes president of Egypt and immediately signals his intention to reach some sort of agreement with Israel. Well, first of all, I must state to the dear listeners that Anwar Sadat is my favorite president of Egypt. You know, hands down, he's my favorite. And, you know, later I'll explain why. The first thing he did, actually, in 1971, and he insisted again on that in 1972, was

you know, is to ask the Israelis, please, you know, can you withdraw 32 kilometers east of the canal and that area will become Egyptian zone of control so shipping can resume and so we can make money out of the canal. I mean, and, you know, we can give you whatever guarantees. It will be demilitarized, you know, but still 32 kilometers east of the canal, that will be ours.

And the Israelis were saying, no, no, no, no, no, because the Israelis already built an impregnable line of defense from the mouth of the canal in the north to the mouth of the canal in the south. And that was called the Bar Lev line of defense, one of the most impregnable lines of defense in Israel.

modern history. Or so they thought. In fact, in 1973, on the 6th of October, 1973, which was Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Anwar Sadat, having been convinced that Israel would never agree to any sort of peace unless the Arabs could have something like a military victory, launched the Yom Kippur War, as it's known.

It lasted from the 6th to the 25th of October, 1973. And this podcast episode, God knows, has gone on long enough. So we cannot talk about it in any detail. The main point is this line. What's it called, Ayman? The Bar Lev line. That's right. The Bar Lev line was fantastically, heroically, and miraculously breached by the Egyptian troops. Yeah. The crossing was something of a legend. Yeah.

While the war itself wasn't exactly a victory for the Arabs. Not at all. In the end, Israel beat them all back. But at the beginning, there was something fantastic that happened. Indeed. And you see, like, you know, the crossing. You see, this is why the Egyptians to this day, they always celebrate every day, every year on the 6th of October, the crossing. The crossing, that crossing, basically, which is the miraculous crossing of the canal. In fact, one of my teachers when I was in middle school in Saudi Arabia, he was Egyptian.

And he was a conscript in the Egyptian military in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War. And just to show you basically about like, you know, the heroic, you know, Egyptians and their little dinghy, you know, rubber boats, like in a crossing, you know, and using their high pressure hoses in order to bring down the sand fortifications of the Israelis, you know, but, you know, he was talking about it so animated to the point where he reached the point where he said, even the dolphins came out of the water fighting

with us. It conjured in my image like, you know, basically, you know, dolphins with their fins, you know, basically holding AK-47s and shooting. You know, we always grew up with so many movies produced by the Egyptian drama companies about the crossing. They never talk about what happened after the crossing because it was embarrassing. But

It's just we crossed. That's it. That's the most important thing. We did cross. We did breach the Bar Lev and I give them that. It was really a piece of military genius. It's just a question of what to do next. And they failed at that. Well, the Yom Kippur War did create the conditions for something like peace, which was finally achieved several years later when Anwar Sadat went to the Knesset in Jerusalem and said that Egypt would like to make peace with Israel.

We'll probably get to that story sometime in Conflicted. We don't have time now.

Because another great story from the Yom Kippur War is the Arab oil embargo that it created, which changed everything. And we're going to talk about that next time. As far as this episode is concerned, to sort of close it out, I find in terms of its historical impact, one of the most interesting things about the 67 and 73 wars is how it marked the end of mid-century Arab nationalism as the Arabs glorified

grew very disillusioned with the promises of secular Arab republicanism, very disillusioned with the kind of modernization programs that the socialist leadership were constantly offering them without getting anything back in return or not getting nearly as much as they were promised.

And instead, they began to retreat away from this form of sort of modern development, modern nationalism, modern patriotism, etc., and instead moved in the direction of a renewed political Islamism. Indeed.

As for now, because we should raise the question of a clash of civilizations that we're supposed to at any rate, I mean, I think you can see the 67 war, the humiliations that the Arabs suffered at the end of that war, the 73 war, you can see this period as the time when mid-century Arab nationalism and all the promise that it held out to the Arab public was lost. And the

And the Arabs began a move towards a greater cynicism, towards that vision of modernity, and instead retreated back to what they thought was their own civilization, something more native to the Middle East, native to Arab culture.

And that's the resurgence of Islam, especially in its political, its Islamist form. In fact, Thomas, just nine months, like literally nine months before the 1967 Six Days War and the humiliation of it,

There was a little event that was happening in a jail cell somewhere in Egypt that will have a grave impact. It will be the beginning of the rise of Islamism and the beginning of the decline of Arab nationalism. It is the execution of a relatively unknown Egyptian thinker by the name of Sayyid Qutb. Nasser had him executed just nine months before the humiliation of 1967-1989.

Little did he know that by doing so, he sealed the fate of Egypt and the fate of the Middle East for many decades to come.

Arab nationalism wasn't dead, but it was now the radicals who were in the driver's seat. A new generation of Arab strongmen came to the fore. Assad, eventually Saddam and others, but perhaps most dramatically, Gaddafi. These characters, and especially Gaddafi, are what we'll be discussing next time. Join us in two weeks, dear listener, for the next episode of Conflicted.

If you don't already, you can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at MHConflicted. And if you would like to carry on the conversation and learn more about the topics discussed here on Conflicted, you can search for Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group on Facebook, where you'll find fascinating conversations and debate between other fans of the show.

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Join us again in two weeks' time for another great episode of Conflicted. Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Rowan Bishop. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Production support and fact-checking by Molly Freeman. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley. ♪