Yoel Marcus-08/06/2007

Yoel Marcus, (Haaretz)

"The most justified war. As Haaretz's correspondent in Paris, I was at the Israeli Embassy when half a million people rallied in the streets to show their solidarity with Israel. There was a sense that the Arabs were about to wipe out the Jewish state. On television, people saw Egyptian troops marching into Sinai; they heard Nasser's warmongering speeches. Ahmed Shukeiry, the secretary of the Arab League, declared that the Jews of Israel would be sent back to the countries they came from and native Israelis would be slaughtered. Among the celebrities who showed up at the embassy to express their solidarity, the one who most touched our hearts was pianist Arthur Rubinstein, who wept aloud and infected everyone with his morbid prediction that Holocaust II was on the way. What those now denouncing the 40th anniversary of the occupation do not understand is that the Six- Day War was the most justified war Israel ever fought - because it knocked out of the Arabs' heads the idea that Israel could be destroyed by force.

Altitude sickness. After its victory, Israel came down with altitude sickness. By the eighth day of the war, this country of 21,350 square kilometers had become a country of 89,000 square kilometers - the same size as Austria. While the citizens of Israel were cheering and the victory albums were leaping hot off the press, only David Ben-Gurion and Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz advised giving the territories back right away. And that was even before the word "occupation" had rolled off anyone's lips. Not only that, but the government, and that includes Menachem Begin, voted on June 19 to return the territories captured from Egypt and Syria in exchange for recognition of Israel.

The Arab response came in September, in the form of the Khartoum summit's three big nos: no recognition, no peace, no negotiations with Israel."

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