Reviewed by Jonathan Freeman

Michael Oren’s Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East is a brilliant historical narration of the Six Day War that Israel fought in June of 1967. In the all-encompassing recount Oren paints a colorful landscape of the military and political realities that both Israel and their Arab neighbors faced. Although he displays a masterful presentation and analysis, Oren, while establishing the premise for the argument, falls short of making the case that the Six Day War led to the "making of the modern Middle East."

Oren begins his narrative with his main premise that the conflict and settlements between the Israelis and Arabs "were the result of six intense days in the Middle East in June 1967." The statement is characteristic of good, solid, organized academic writing…telling the reader exactly what can be expected of the book. Oren also explains what few other academic writers do, he tells the reader why they should be buying and reading Six Days of War as opposed to other books on the same topic. Describing other previous works on the Six Day War as mainly military based, Oren does acknowledge a few recent books as nearing an academic non-partisanship. He continues however, to describe that what was still missing from previous works was research that encompassed the entire breadth of the conflict not only militarily but strategically and politically.

In his first chapter entitled, "The Context," Oren develops in painstaking detail the frame of reference of the Six Day War. Covering the time period between 1948 and 1966, he describes the scenario in which the State of Israel came into being, the wars fought and won insuring that the State of Israel existed. One such war was the 1956 War which was militarily a success but had very serious political implications in that Israel found itself on the opposite side of who was regarded as Israel’s most important ally, the United States. Additionally, the other fallout of the 1956 War was the establishment of the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) which would not only the withdrawal of French and British forces from Egypt but would guard the Egypt-Israeli border along the Sinai and Gaza Strip. "The Context" describes for the reader, the dynamics at work in the Middle East until 1967 and how many agreements like the 1949 Armistance and the settlement after the 1956 War did little solve the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict but simply created a situation where a small spark would light the region aflame. The only fault that one could argue, is Oren does think it necessary to delve into the manner in which Israel came to statehood and what effect that origin could have had on the Arab-Israeli conflict of the future.

The spark or sparks, as the situation would soon show, that came were in two forms as Oren show in the next chapters, "The Catalysts" and "The Crisis". Al-Fatah, a Palestinian guerilla group led by a young engineer named Yasser Arafat, had been trying to commit an act of terrorism that would inspire a swift and brutal retaliation from the Israelis. Once the Israelis retaliated, al-Fatah theorized, Arabs across the Middle East would riot and pressure their leaders into war. The plan worked. After and al-Fatah attack, Israel sent a brigade of paratroopers into Jordan to exact a reprisal. Unfortunately for the Israelis, a Jordanian brigade on patrol approached the Israeli position and during the brief encounter a number of soldiers were killed on both sides. After a number of different Arab alliances and resolutions, which the Israelis looked on with varying degrees of concern, Egypt asked the UNEF to leave and closed the Straights of Tiran. Once the blockade, known to be an act of war, of the Straights happened, Israel knew a war was only a matter of time.

At this critical juncture in his historical narration, Oren delves into the part of the ordeal where he explains the enormous pressure on Israeli leaders: Abba Eban as Foreign Minister in pleading with a fearful public and Cabinet for patience that the United States must be on the side of Israel in the coming conflict, Yitzhak Rabin as Chief of Staff in dreading that Israel waited too long in responding to the obvious threats posed by the Arabs (Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Palestinian irregulars), and Levi Eshkol as Prime Minister and previous (until a few days prior to the war) Defense Minister in worrying about everything…politics at home, politics abroad, relations with the Soviets and the Americans, and a coming war that he felt he done everything humanly possible to prevent. One can scarcely imagine the anxiety these men must have faced. Rabin, Oren details, did wind up having a breakdown of sorts which had been discount during Rabin’s political career as simply being sick for a few hours when in fact it was days and prevented Rabin from standing up to Moshe Dayan, Israel’s new Defense Minister. Oren does all of these men justice not only in appreciating the situation in its context but also explaining to the Monday morning quarterbacks how Israeli Government and Military were balancing everything on a knife’s edge and had anything changed the entire outcome of the war might have been drastically different.

On June 5^th, 1967 the attack began at 7:10 am Israeli time with the launch of Operation Focus. Essentially a "Hail Mary" type of attack developed by Ezer Weizman, IDF’s chief of operations, called for the entire Israeli Air Force to attack every Arab airbase that might have the ability to threaten Israel. The Hail Mary worked, the Arab air forces were utterly decimated being crushed to about 15% of their initial strength within thirty-six hours of the first attack. At first the Israeli leaders could not even conceive of such success, but after subsequent waves reported back that there was little left of their targets, Israeli leaders breathed a sigh of relief. Oren then continues describing the play-by-play circumstances of the war showing a systematic situation where for every failure of the Arabs, and it seems there were many, the Israelis took the advantage. In doing so, Oren helps defeat some of the mystery and mysticism surrounding the Six Day War that Israel was able to take advantage of each of the many mistakes made by the Arabs. To paraphrase one Arab general the Arabs prepared their military forces for parades while Israel prepared its military for war.

Concluding the book, Oren gives an overall accounting of the absolute losses and gains by all sides. Continuing the narrative, the reader goes on to discover what eventually happened to all the individuals playing a major part in the conflict followed by the geo-political realities Israel now needed to face with the three no’s of Khartoun (No Peace, No Negotiation, No Israel) and UN Security Council Resolution 242 that outlined the principle of land for peace. Oren also finished by describing the fate of each nation with regards to future: the changing of the guard in the Kremlin, President Johnson allowing the Vietnam conflict to overshadow his remaining years in office, how Palestinian leaders while appreciating Israel’s offer for a state of their own declined due the threat of personal violence, possibly by Arafat and al-Fatah.

Oren does a few things in Six Days of War that are fantastic bordering on brilliant. His research, after looking through the bibliography and endnotes, seems exhaustive. Upon examining the sources any scholar would be hard pressed to see that a piece of research might be missing barring the opening of the archives in Arab countries that are now closed. One of Oren’s goals is accomplished in that he does create a very broad understanding of the Six Day War. He explains the while Arab leaders were caught in circumstances beyond their control, that the conflict had an element of the Great Powers (US and USSR) playing out the Cold War. Additionally, though he has many opportunities, the naïve reader can appreciate Oren’s efforts to give equal weight to the perspectives, narrations, and descriptions of both Arab and Israeli.

Oren avoids the trap that would be easy for him, as an Israeli, to fall into by avoiding creating too many villains in his story or generalizing those villains as all Arabs. Rather than trying to prove that every Arab leader was out to crush Israel on principle or due to ideology, Oren explains how many leaders essentially painted themselves into a corner regarding the entire matter. Nevertheless, Oren ends up vilifying only two people: U Thant, the UN Secretary General, and ‘Abd al-Hakim ‘Amer, the field marshal of Egypt’s armed forces and close friend of Nasser, President of Egypt. Though Oren vilifies U Thant and ‘Amer, he portrays a vilification due to incompetence rather than any other motivating factor though he implies there were other motivating factors. While both are known to dislike Israel intensely, Oren simply paints a portrait that U Thant was too weak to prevent Nasser from insisting on the removal of UN peacekeepers, the UNEF, on the Egypt-Israeli border, and ‘Amer who was such an incompetent general his forces were utterly annihilated calling for retreats in the Sinai when Egyptian forces were holding their own. Had U Thant been stronger the war might have prevented and if ‘Amer had been a better general, Israel might have been defeated or at very least, not been as successful in it’s victory.

The severest problem with Six Days of War is that Oren fails to deliver on his promise that the Six Day War was the cause of the present day situation between Israelis and Arabs. Although upon reading the book, a reader can certainly extrapolate for themselves why certain dynamics created in the aftermath of the war are still being played out, that extrapolation assumes the reader has a working knowledge of current Middle East affairs whereas Oren should have completed the intellectual circle for his readers by going into greater detail as to why the war has led to the current state of the conflict. Since this promise to the reader is Oren’s thesis, no reader should be confused in the least as to whether Oren gives a proper and definitive answer.

In a similar vein of thought, Oren does not truly address the issue of Arabs fleeing the coming Israeli Defense Forces. As many who are aware of the current problems plaguing the Middle East and more specifically, surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict would agree, land and the right of sovereignty over that land is a major issue. Given that fact and the promise that Oren gives to explain why the current issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict are based in the victories and losses of the Six Day War, then Oren does not explain why civilians felt it necessary to leave the territories being occupied by Israel. Were civilians threatened by their county’s military forces? Did civilians fear reprisals by the Israelis? Were civilians simply afraid of getting caught in the crossfire of a war and forced to evacuate? A reader of Six Days of War would not know because Oren, as the narrator of the history does not explain these details. This lack of detail is specifically disappointing because Oren does such a masterful job at painting a complete picture on the battle field, giving equal weight to both Arab and Israel perspectives from the front lines but as noted, the background other than politics receives little attention.

The greatest success of Six Days of War is that Oren does succeed in creating a seminal work. By going into the newly accessible Soviet archives, in addition to getting personal accounts from all sides of the conflict, Oren is able to display a truly complete picture of the war. He shows the pressure, fears and motivating factors around each side of the conflict while at the same showing the reader how the situation was playing out in the broader sense of the Middle East region and the Cold War. Though he does fail to follow through with his original thesis and promise for the book, Six Days of War remains a thoroughly researched history covering a critical period of time in the modern Middle East conflict.

Jonathan Freeman is a graduate student at Harvard and was worried about not being smart enough but he met the other students.  He feels fine now and can be reached at jfreeman@fas.harvard.edu.