The Six-Day War

The Golan was in Syria until June 1967. At the time, there were almost 6,000 Druses dispersed among four villages situated north of the plateau. Circassians and Moslems lived in the village of Kuneitra as well as in a series of small villages. Canons buried underground, camouflaged with eucalyptus trees and protected by trenches, were a constant threat to the peace and security of the Galilee.

Under the pretext that the Israeli forces were preparing to attack Syria, the Egyptian president, Gamal abd el-Nasser, closes the Tiran Straits to the Red Sea in May 1967 and demands the withdrawal of the U.N. forces stationed in the Sinai. He mobilizes his army, concludes military agreements with Syria and Jordan and threatens to march into Tel Aviv to obliterate “the Zionist entity” off the map. In all the Arab capitals, there is no doubt of the outcome – Israel will be destroyed.

On their part, the Israelis wait anxiously. On May 20th, code words broadcast by radio, mobilize the reserves. The poet, Abba Kovner, who had fought with the Partisans during the Second World War and with the ranks of the Israeli militias during the War of Independence in 1948, recounts that mobilization of the entire nation:

It is not one of the largest or one of the most patriotic towns, but an ordinary, medium sized town in the Sharon Plain with its peddlers and laborers, its merchants and its unemployed. It is a pleasant morning, one of those mornings on which you get up wondering: “How can a war break out on such a beautiful day?” And then the voice of the announcer issues from the radio calling out the code names of the reserve units being mobilized…

This voice is unlike the hysterical voice of the announcer of the land of the Nile [Egypt]. It does not resemble the arrogant voice of the announcer on Radio Warsaw in September 1939. It is not the tragic voice of the man from Prague, nor the pathetic, now famous voice of Yuri Levitan from besieged Moscow. It is a totally different voice…

Like the blows of a chisel striking a stone, he reads the list, pronouncing the code names without a single slogan or a trace of rhetoric, until the end. Then he is silent and the city, yes the entire city, seems to hold its breath.

I am standing in front of a newspaper stand. The newspaper vendor is reaching out toward the requested paper when he suddenly stiffens at the sound of the voice. His eyes open wide and do not look at me, but beyond me. He says with surprise, ”I’m also being called up!” He collects his newspapers and leaves. On the other side of the street, a salesgirl emerges from the doorway of a shop. She hesitates momentarily at the entrance, arranges herself nervously, snaps her handbag shut and leaves. The butcher, in turn, takes off his apron, locks his store and leaves. A group of men stand huddled together on the grass of a city park, listening intently to a transistor radio. The announcer calls out a code name and one of them swiftly turns around and leaves. At the next code name, another man turns and leaves without uttering a word. Then a third and fourth man hurry away. Like a bundles of twigs, they separate without a word and leave. Every one of them leaves. Tripping on high heels, a girl comes towards me. All at once, she hears the announcer’s voice. She stops to listen and turns around on her heels and leaves. A silence, a singular stillness unlike any other, descends upon the city.

A. Kovner, The Seventh Day: The Soldier’s Stories

The battles begin on June 5th, 1967. The war of official statements succeeds in confusing the news correspondents. When the fog dissipates, the extent of the Israeli victory astounds the world. On the southern front, the Israeli airplanes had nailed those of the Egyptians to the ground, which permitted their tanks to reach the Suez Canal in a few days. The old city of Jerusalem, which had been barred to the Israelis for almost twenty years, is seized while Judea and Samaria are invaded. The Golan Plateau is conquered following the heavy battles that took place on the 9th and 10th of June. The Syrian army is routed, followed by the Arab population in the Golan with the exception, nevertheless, of some Druse villages. The entire war will have lasted only six days.

The tongue of the Israelis, contained by the anxiety and the uncertainty during the long wait that had preceded the outbreak of hostilities, is loosed after the war. Everywhere, the question is raised about the meaning of this victory, the prospects that it opens and those that it condemns as well. The fighters in the kibbutzim, who were among the most determined, engage in a sort of collective self-criticism in accordance to the tradition of their mode of communal life, participating in discussion groups in which they discuss the questions related to war and to peace, the relation to the enemy, the fear of death. The minutes of these discussions, compiled in a book, Siah Lohamim or Warriors Talk, reveal the fears and the feelings that moved the Israeli army at the time. In the following passage, a fighter posted in Jerusalem shares his thoughts and his concerns during those crucial days with us:

It was a night during the war when the battles were most intense. We didn’t think that within a few days we would be back home; we didn’t expect to see our families again for weeks. At least we had had a long time to prepare ourselves for this. During those weeks of waiting preceding the war, we spent our time in the orchards somewhere in Judea, repeating to ourselves that we were in for a new War of Independence with arms caches and assaults, retreats and counter attacks – 1948 all over again…

Having been absorbed in the preparations morning, noon and night, we were beginning to understand what we were doing here. In Israel. Our country. Our home. We were beginning to grasp the significance of it all. Of all the things that we heard repeatedly when we were children for years: love for our country, the perpetuation of the existence of the Jews, the return to the land of our fathers. These themes recurred in all of our classes, in history, in the Bible, in geography. They took us on excursions throughout the country to teach us about every aspect of Israel. When we would visit the archeological sites then, I didn’t understand what they expected from me…

Now I realize that I was only half conscious and I don’t know why. All the teachers who tried to drum their lessons into me pass before my eyes in a long, accusing procession:
“How could you ask such a question?” they asked with indignation. I would bow my head, readily recognizing my gaps and deficiencies. Try as I may, I felt no real connection to all this. The facts were not difficult to understand or to learn. I simply didn’t see the thread that tied me to Moses and the desert generation, to Joshua, his successor, to this wonderful people, with its wars, its days of glory, its exile and its prophetic visions. Perhaps I felt too insignificant to feel like I belonged to such a people.

Nevertheless, when the war broke out, I was prepared to defend hearth and home with my own body. A sense of belonging, awakening after a long slumber of twenty years, began to show its first signs. Rather than brush them aside, I encouraged them; I even nourished them… “More, more. Make me a true son of my people! It’s time I stopped feeling like a lost creature, alone in the world! Make me feel like I really exist, like I am made of the same stuff as my ancestors!”

We had set up camp in a small grove near Jerusalem, our hearts overflowing with prayers. I still did not fully understand the combination of circumstances that brought me to this place. I definitely knew that we had to defend Jerusalem even if it meant fighting to the last drop of blood. I now feel ashamed, I admit it, that I did not consider for a moment the full significance of the liberation of Jerusalem, of that daring breakthrough to the Western Wall, of the relation between the fact that I was sitting there at that moment and the two thousand year exile.

We began to advance in the darkness of the shadow of death as the bullets whistled overhead. The city remained strangely silent while the war thundered. A gray dawn was breaking, giving birth to a new day. We found ourselves in a place that until then we could only gaze upon from afar and we still hadn’t realized the meaning of this reunion. We then entered the Old City and it was only then that I began to understand. Jerusalem, the Eternal City, would soon be in our hands, entirely, totally. [...] Even then, I only understood it intellectually, not with my heart. The excitement I felt was the result of the battles, unrelated to the greatness of the hour of and of the event. A new day… that afternoon we entered the gates of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Advancing quickly towards the Temple Mount, we set up our canons at the foot of the mosque. Our eyes were feverously directed toward the Western Wall. It was exactly at that moment that I felt that I was a member of the House of David, a citizen of the Kingdom of Solomon, a congregant at the Temple. This is my heritage and my inheritance! Someone exclaimed:
“Boys, we’ve made history!” I felt as if a curtain had been lifted and the letters of the Eternal Book had sprung to life, familiar and immediate. I am no longer a stranger. Suddenly I feel it and understand that I am a son of this people, stronger than ever and more deeply rooted, much more deeply! My heart filled with pride in my people’s history.

We spent the day wandering through the lanes of the Old City, breathing the air of history itself…

We then moved on. This time towards the North, crossing Judea, leaving behind us the territory of the tribe of Simon and venturing into the territory of Ephraim. We had the marvelous feeling that we were the descendents of the tribes who in the past had fought so courageously, armed with bows and arrows and flaming torches. We went from one place to another, from mountains to plains, from hills to valleys, continually regrouping to launch new assaults and gain new victories in this holy war, fighting to protect our homes. It seemed to me and to my comrades that we were writing a new chapter in the Bible, a chapter of miracles, of wonders and glory, similar to the other chapters that preceded it. Jerusalem, Jericho, Shechem, Hebron, the Nachshon Valley – all of the Promised Land was ours...

Kovner, The Seventh Day: The Soldier’s Stories

In 1967, the first kibbutz is established on the Golan. It will be followed by other kibbutzim as well as by moshavim and by the restoration of the ancient city of Qazrin.