GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War

God Is On Israel’s Side

Not Worth Studying

Normally the cadets at West Point academy study wars of the past to learn from the strategies employed. It is helpful for them, especially if they are part of leading an army into war. And to be sure, learning from the past is a valuable thing, not just in conflicts. However, there is a war that was waged in the Middle East in 1967 that those cadets aren’t taught. And the reason is found in an article from jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com:

A West Point general reportedly once noted that, although the wars Israel fought in 1956 and 1973 are part of the cadets’ military academy curriculum, Israel’s victory in the Six Day War is not studied.

The reason, explained Shimon Mercer-Wood, one of three speakers at a commemorative program sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh on June 5, is because West Point is interested in understanding strategy and tactics, and the Six Day War “doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Mercer-Wood added other reasons as well:

The reason West Point does not teach the Six Day War, Mercer-Wood postulated, is because “it sounds like one of those biblical stories where we say, ‘Oh, yes. That’s very nice, but it didn’t happen.’”

The circumstances which occurred during that week in 1967 sound more like “Jewish mythology” or “fake news,” he said.

While there was a lot of strategic actions taken that didn’t fall into the Biblical story category, many things happened that simply can’t be explained away in human terms.

A Planned Act

Israel did know that something was going to happen and they decided to strike first:

In the days just prior to the war, so certain was the world that Israel would be vanquished that the foreign dignitaries in the Ghana Embassy received a cable telling them to leave. Mercer-Wood’s father, however, stayed.

Israel decided to attack the Egyptian air force before it could ever get off the ground to attack them:

Mercer-Wood described Israel’s offensive airstrike against the Egyptians, Operation Moked, which destroyed most of the Egyptian Air Force on the ground and which started the Six Day War.

“When you see an enemy with the means to destroy you and the intent to destroy you, you don’t wait for them to come to you,” Mercer-Wood said. “It was true then and it is true now.”

The war commenced on one front, but quickly spread to others:

While Israel was fighting Egypt on that first day, the Jordanian army began bombarding Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. By day two, “there was peril for Israel wherever it looked,” said Mercer-Wood.

Israel was in for yet another fight or die situation and they knew only they could do it:

“There was an apocalyptic air of approaching peril and Israel faced this danger alone,” with no help from the United States or other allies, he said.

Syria joined the fighting but failed:

Mercer-Wood described the Syrian army’s attempt to conquer Kibbutz Dan in the north — an effort thwarted by Israel — and the reunification of Jerusalem.

Somehow Israel cutoff Egyptian troops as well:

“By day five, Israeli troops had reached the Suez Canal,” he said. “Tens of thousands of Egyptian soldiers were stranded in the Sinai, a number of biblical proportions.”

And it all ended in six days:

With days five and six concentrated on the northern front, the parties finally came to a ceasefire, effectively ending the war.

This short recap is just for starters. To see just how much divine help was seen we turn to another article on the war.

The First Miracle

Turning our attention to that preemptive strike on the Egyptian Air Force we read from another article, this one from cbnisrael.org that it shouldn’t have worked:

Although outmanned and outnumbered, the Israeli fighter pilots realized that God’s supernatural intervention secured their victory. Pilot and IDF Major General Ezer Weizmann was asked to explain how for three hours, Israel Air Force planes destroyed aircraft at one Egyptian airstrip after another—yet the Egyptians did not radio ahead to let their forces know about the imminent air attacks. Weizmann, who later served as President of Israel, said simply: “The finger of God.”

Some could call it an oversight, but this would be just the first of many such “coincidences” to follow. Here are more of these miracles:

Many eyewitness accounts, which have been well documented, emerged in the following months. Older airplanes that had been plagued with problems behaved surprisingly well that day. Squadron members who flew the aging Vautor bombers said that on June 5th, the aging aircraft operated without a single malfunction. An enemy shell that made a direct hit on a munitions pile miraculously failed to explode.

Angels may have intervened in this next one:

One Israeli infantry recruit, on patrol with one other soldier, reported an encounter with a truck loaded with 18 well-armed Egyptian soldiers. The two Israelis, equipped with inadequate weapons, believed they faced certain death. However, the Arabs, looking panic-stricken, did not fire on them, and complied immediately when the Israeli soldier then shouted, “Hands up!” Later, he asked an Egyptian sergeant why they hadn’t shot at the Israeli soldiers. The reply: “My arms froze—they became paralyzed. My whole body was paralyzed, and I don’t know why.”

And this next story is famous even among people who aren’t believers:

Arabs not only gave in to their fears and waved white flags of surrender; one tank commander later explained that he gave up to a far smaller number of Jewish tanks because he saw a desert mirage that made him “see hundreds of Israeli tanks.”

To this day there are Egyptian tanks just sitting there because they ran in fear of just one Israeli tank that they saw as hundreds.

Israel Was Not In Good Shape

In the short six days the condition of Israel radically changed. Before the war, Israel was divided, Jerusalem was divided and they had indefensible borders:

When the war began, however, Jerusalem was a divided city. Under the control of Jordan following the 1948 War of Independence, Israel’s holiest sites—the Western Wall and Temple Mount—were off limits to Jews. Israel had won its War of Independence but lost the eastern half of Jerusalem to the Arab League.

Jordan was not a friend then:

The Jordanians annexed east Jerusalem, which deteriorated under their rule. They destroyed all but one synagogue in the Jewish Quarter, along with Torah scrolls and books. Religious freedom was nonexistent. Palestinian Arabs called themselves Arabs, not Palestinians, since Arafat had not changed their names to “Palestinians” for his political purposes. Jordan never considered Jerusalem as its—or the “Palestinian”—capital.

Israel suffered thru encroachment after encroachment with its immediate “neighbors” plotting to destroy them at every turn:

However, the prologue for the Six-Day War reached back to Jordan’s annexation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1950. Over the next 20 years, frequent confrontations contributed to the buildup of war. Among them Egypt, armed with Soviet weapons, closed the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping. In 1959, Yassar Arafat founded the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) with the goal of “destroying Israel.” Three Arab summits were held to plan Israel’s annihilation. From the Golan Heights, Syria shelled Israeli civilians in the Galilee below. Clashes escalated during 1966–’67.

And when they felt the time was right, Israels enemies got ready to accomplish what they hadn’t been able to do before. And then the miraculous happened.

Very Successful

Against long odds, Israel pulled off something that literally no one inside or outside of Israel thought they could. And they got back defensible borders to boot:

Operation Focus remains one of the most successful air campaigns in military history. During the Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force destroyed 452 enemy planes, while losing just 46 of their own. After their stunning performance in Egypt, the Israeli Air Force finished the day in Jerusalem bombing the Jordanian tanks that raced toward the city and providing air cover for Israeli ground forces.

They even got back all of Jerusalem, the Holy City:

It was an epic example of cunning, daring and stealth—a brilliant strategy that was flawlessly executed. During the brief war, Israel won the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai from Egypt, and Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Jerusalem’s Old City and holy sites from Jordan’s occupation. Israel quadrupled its size.

The IDF established itself as a force to be reckoned with and it happened in no small part to God’s intervention:

But those who fought in that war agree that it was more than military genius and bravery that led to victory. There were numerous miracles, as well… Thus, it should be no surprise that the secular newspaper Haaretz carried this comment by one of its military correspondents: “Even a non-religious person must admit this war was fought with help from heaven.”