Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Two Jokes About Six Days
Tuesday, June 19, 2007

From Ethan Bonner's thoughtful review of Tom Segev's book on the Six Day War. I loved his book One Palestine, Complete.

Tom Segev, an Israeli columnist and historian, sums up the meaning for Israel of the 1967 war with two jokes. The first, heard in the months before the war, when Israelis feared a second Holocaust at the hands of their Arab neighbors, is of a sign hanging near the boarding gate at the national airport, asking the last one out of the country to turn off the lights. The second, told after the six days in which Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan and quadrupled the territory under its control, involves two officers talking about how to spend their day. “ ‘Let’s conquer Cairo,’ one proposes. The other replies, ‘But what will we do after lunch?’ ”

The Israelis quickly named the June 1967 event the Six-Day War to echo biblical creation. Like many historical watersheds, its origins and consequences have been intensely analyzed and debated, especially in recent weeks as its 40th anniversary was marked. Mr. Segev illuminates his two jokes with more than 600 pages of social history. His argument, in the end, is this: Anxiety, much of it Holocaust related, was so overpowering that Israel went to war against saber-rattling Egypt and Syria when diplomacy might have sufficed, and the rout of its neighbors caused such irrational exultation in Israel that it foolishly became an occupier, a role that continues to drag it and the region down.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 9:02 AM
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