Jew Oughta Know Jason Harris

The Six Day War did not mean the end of fighting, just a new phrase. At a summit in Khartoum the Arabs rejected peace, negotiation, and recognition of Israel, leaving violence as the only acceptable option. Egypt and Israel began fighting the War of Attrition, while Yasser Arafat’s PLO terrorist group challenged Israel’s patience and strength. These events and the Occupation engendered a developing new Palestinian identity.

Israel's second settlement in the Occupied Territories was Kfar Etzion, established in the West Bank on the ruins of a destroyed Jewish kibbutz. It was the first settlement of the Religious Zionism movement, merging the ideas of Zionist settlement with messianic redemption, and spawned both public support and criticism.

Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territory began just five weeks after the Six Day War, in a small community called Merom Golan on the Syrian border. This was not a right-wing nationalist endeavor but a left-wing socialist one, intended to reinvigorate the Zionist Movement with the spirit of the early pioneering generations. But wait — isn’t this illegal under international law?

Today we’re laying the conceptual foundations of the Occupation and Israel’s decisions immediately after the Six Day War. Having found itself in charge of an empire — territory three times its own size, with 1.2 million Palestinians — Israel flailed about for a coherent strategy to meet the challenges posed by the land, the people in it, and competing political agendas of Israel’s leaders.

In the days and weeks following the Six Day War, Israel made three big decisions regarding Jerusalem: to raze the Mughrabi Quarter to create a central plaza in front of the Western Wall, to bestow exclusive religious rights on the Tempe Mount to the Muslims, and to annex East Jerusalem to create a unified Israeli capital. Each of these decisions had lasting consequences.

For six days Israel fought. On the seventh day it rested. What was the impact on Israelis, and Jews around the world? How did they come to understand the greatest Jewish military victory in two thousand years? It turns out the reaction was very mixed.