The more I read about how the Israeli Government
planned the 1967 Six Days War, the more conflicted I feel. On one hand, I feel sick and embarrassed that the government showed such incompetence and lack of vision and faith. And on the other hand I feel more and more grateful to G-d for His willingness to save us and take over.
Avraham Rabinovitch's second excerpt of his book appeared in this past Friday's Jerusalem Post. It just confirmed my worst
guesses about what had really gone on behind the closed doors of the ministerial meetings in May-June, 1967.
Both Allon and Begin said history would not forgive the government if it did not exploit this opportunity for restoring Jewish sovereignty over ancient Jerusalem, although Allon raised the possibility that Israel might make do with access to the Jewish holy places. Three other ministers pointed out how David Ben-Gurion’s determination to retain Sinai after the 1956 campaign had dissolved overnight, after US president Dwight D. Eisenhower said it was unacceptable and Moscow made dire threats. Jerusalem, they pointed out, meant more to the world than the sands of Sinai. Would the Christian world, particularly the Vatican, accept Jewish sovereignty over Christiandom’s holiest places? Perhaps, suggested one minister, it would be best to leave Jerusalem as an aspiration to be prayed for...
Close to midnight, he met with Eshkol in Tel Aviv and obtained his agreement to three war goals – the destruction of the Egyptian armored formations in Sinai, the capture of Sharm e- Sheikh, and the capture of Jordanian Jerusalem and the West Bank ridge line. He did not propose capturing the entire West Bank. Dayan insisted that there be no attempt to conquer the Old City by direct attack; it would be too costly to battle through its alleys, while damage to the holy places would be blamed on Israel.
And we wonder why today, forty-five years later so many of our politicians, academics and media want to return to a version of the 1949 ceasefire lines.
They're all thinking so small and narrow, as if we could live and thrive on a tightrope.
While some of us are celebrating the great miracle of G-d's interference and the subsequent great, miraculous victory which gave us the Golan, Jordan Valley, Sinai, Judea, Samaria and most of Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day,
other Israelis want to cancel the holiday. They are still fixated on 1949, not willing to accept change and move forward. That's extreme conservative, reactionary aka The Israeli Left.
I have no doubt that not only was our victory due directly to the
Hand of G-d, and I also have no doubt that the
Moshiach, the Messaiah had come to redeem us. G-d's representative was here waiting to celebrate the Holiday of
Shavuot, Weeks/Oaths with us on the Temple Mount.
Shavuot is the culmination of seven weeks of counting the forty-nine days between the second night of Passover and G-d's giving to us of the Torah, Our Holy Laws. We count up, from one to forty-nine, as each day is greater than the one before it. It is no random coincidence that the Six Days War took place less than two weeks before the Shavuot Holiday. As General Mottke Gur had said on that joyous day forty-five years ago:
הר הבית בידינו Har HaBayit Bayadeinu, The Temple Mount is in Our Hands
In the second film you can already see that we were aiming too low, celebrating at the Kotel rather than at Har HaBayit. And then, to make matters worse, Moshe Dayan soon gave Har HaBayit to the Muslims, refusing the gift G-d had given us. No doubt the Moshiach packed His bags and disappeared for now. And then echoing the Biblical "sin of the spies" who returned to Moshe and the newly freed from Egyptian slavery Jews claiming that it would be too difficult to go to the Land:
Dayan, Rabin, and a few other senior officers returning from the Western Wall joined Narkiss in his command post in the basement of the Jerusalem International Convention Center late Wednesday.
They sat on folding cots and a few chairs in the windowless room lit by battery-operated lamps. A radio transmitter occasionally crackled with a report from one of the forces in Jerusalem or the West Bank. The men in the room were largely silent as they attempted to absorb in this first moment of postbattle tranquillity the amazing developments of the past 48 hours. It was Rabin who focused the diffused impressions into a stark bottom line.
“How do we control a million Arabs?” he asked, referring to the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In Biblical times, the former slaves were punished, condemned to death in the wilderness. Only a new generation would enter the HolyLand. They only waited forty years. It's now forty-five years, and it doesn't seem like we're ready to accept G-d's gifts and welcome the Moshiach.
