Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
Today, Israel is internationally criticised for its ‘occupation’ of Arab land. But its critics wilfully ignore two circumstances which brought about this situation: that Israel fought a defensive war to avert annihilation, and that the Arabs have persistently refused Israel’s offers to exchange occupied land for peace. Assessing both the biblical and contemporary significance of the Six Day War, Rob Yule gave this message at Greyfriars Classical Service on 10 June 2007, forty years after Israel’s spectacular victory.
It was one of the most stunning military victories of all time — reminiscent of David and Goliath. In six days of intense fighting, beginning on June 5, 1967, Israeli forces saved their country from threat of annihilation, defeated three major Arab armies, and confounded the world’s superpowers.
The Israel air force, outnumbered 3-1, destroyed the Egyptian air force in the first 45 minutes of the war, ensuring complete air superiority and victory over the Egyptian army in Sinai. Jordan entered the war despite Israel’s repeated calls for it to stay out. As a result Jordan lost the West Bank and — after heavy fighting between Israeli paratroopers and the Jordanian Arab Legion — the old city of Jerusalem.
Israeli flags flew on the banks of the Suez Canal, over the Golan Heights and above the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Judaism and the world’s most contested piece of real estate — accomplishing the dream expressed in Jewish daily prayers throughout nearly 2,000 years of exile.
It was such a great victory that many Israelis thought it would be their last war and that they could trade their gains for recognition of their state and permanent peace.
It wasn’t to be. Today, apart from peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, the prospects for peace in the region seem more distant than ever. The euphoria that followed Israel’s unexpected victory in 1967 has given way to despair. Many Israelis now wonder whether it was a Pyrrhic victory that has led only to international criticism, more wars with the Arab world, prolonged occupation of Palestinian land, and a campaign of terror from hate-filled Arab nationalists and radical Islamists.
To understand how miraculous Israel’s victory was, we need to go back to the situation at the beginning of June 1967. Israel was surrounded by hostile Arab states bent on its destruction, completely isolated and outgunned. Egypt alone had five times as many soldiers as Israel, and ten times the number of tanks.
The Soviet Union was encouraging and arming the military forces of Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Other major powers, like China and India, were hostile to Israel. The United States, though friendly, refused to sell weapons to Israel. France, till then Israel’s only major weapons supplier, had suddenly switched sides to curry favour with the Arab oil-producing states, imposing a total arms embargo on Israel.
Egypt menacingly deployed its army in the Sinai Peninsula, and forced the United Nations peace-keeping forces to precipitately withdraw, leaving Israel’s southern frontier in critical danger. Egypt’s President Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran, at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, blocking Israel’s only southern access, and on 26 May declared that Egypt’s objective was ‘to destroy Israel.’ Massive Syrian troop manoeuvres were taking place on the Golan Heights to Israel’s northeast.
On 4 June 1967, Israel looked destined for annihilation: Holocaust 2.
All that changed within a week. Israel began the conflict with Arab guns pointed at all of its cities. It finished the war with its troops in artillery range of every neighboring Arab capital. This turnaround convinced the leaders of these states that Israel could not be destroyed by military means — which lead ultimately to peace treaties with Egypt (in 1979) and Jordan (in 1994).
With hindsight, we can see that the Six Day War marked the beginning of the collapse of Communism. The victory over Soviet arms severely dented the Kremlin’s influence in the Middle East and impressed the Indians and the Chinese, who later established diplomatic relations with Israel. Israel’s stunning victory inspired the Prague Spring popular uprising in Czechoslovakia, and the beginning of the campaign for human rights and Jewish emigration in the Soviet Union.
Above all, Israel’s victory in the Six Day War brought a worldwide surge in Jewish self-confidence. It hugely lifted Israel’s standing with Jewish communities abroad. Many more Jews began to make aliya to Israel. The Messianic Jewish movement — the movement of Jews who believe in Jesus as Messiah but wish to retain their Jewish identity rather than join Gentile churches — began its amazing emergence after the Six Day War. There are now more Messianic believers and communities in Israel than at any time since the days of the New Testament.
In the United States, the youth revival known as the Jesus People Movement began as a direct result of the euphoria that followed the Six Day War. The greatest revival of Christianity in Western culture in our generation, involving many Jewish young people, it led to an explosion of Jewish music and Jewish songs, and widespread interest in community living among Christians inspired by the Israeli kibbutz movement. All this has transformed the face of contemporary Christianity.
Jews and Christians were inspired by the reunification of the state of Israel with the biblical Land of Israel — especially with the old city of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, site of the temple in the days of Solomon and Jesus. There has been a surge in biblical archaeology — hardly a week goes past without some exciting find confirming the historical veracity of the Bible. Tourism brings Christians from all over the world to Israel, to learn about the historical and geographical sources of their faith. Since 1967 Christian evangelicals in their millions have become Israel’s firm friends — a remarkable change from the shameful anti-Semitism that so often marred Jewish-Christian relations down the centuries.
Today, Israel gets a bad press for its ‘occupation’ of Palestinian land and firm response to Palestinian terrorism. What people don’t understand is that most of the negative consequences of the Six Day War are the result of persistent Arab rejection of peace. As Golda Meir once observed, ‘The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.’
Following the Six Day War the United Nations passed Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from ‘occupied territories’. But when the Israeli cabinet offered (on 19 June 1967) to return Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for peace, the Arab League, meeting in Khartoum, Sudan later that year, responded with its infamous ‘Three Noes’: ‘no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.’
As recently as 2001 Israel offered to return more than 95% of the West Bank for a Palestinian state, to dismantle all 163 Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and to make Jerusalem the joint-capital of a Palestinian state as well as Israel. Palestinian Authority chairman Yasir Arafat’s answer to this magnanimous offer was to renew the armed intifada — the bloody terror campaign against ordinary Israeli citizens. As the psalmist lamented long ago (Psalm 120:6-7):
‘Too long have I lived
among those who hate peace.
I am for peace;
But when I speak, they are for war.’
From a biblical point of view the most important aspect of the Six Day War is its prophetic significance. In his famous prophecy about the signs of the end of the age, Jesus prophesied the destruction of the Jerusalem of his day, and the scattering of the Jewish people among the nations. This happened in AD 70-73, when the Roman legions under Titus suppressed the Jewish Revolt, destroyed the Temple, killed 600,000 Jews in Judea, and took 90,000 Jews captive to Rome as slaves — as commemorated on the Arch of Titus in Rome. Believers remembered Jesus’ prophecy and fled across the Jordan to Pella — escaping with their lives.
In this prophecy Jesus not only foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and the resultant diaspora (scattering) of the Jews. He indicated that their diaspora would be for a defined period, which he called ‘the times of the Gentiles’. ‘They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.’ (Luke 21:24).
Jerusalem’s remarkable capture in the Six Day War marks the fulfilment of this prophecy. Israeli soldiers wept as they touched the great stones of the Western Wall — the foundation of the temple in Jesus’ day. Rabbi Shlomo Goren — chaplain to the Israel Defence Forces — blew the shofar and said, ‘Today we hear the footsteps of the coming of Messiah.’
The coming of the old city of Jerusalem into Jewish control for the first time in nearly 2,000 years signifies that the times of the Gentiles are coming to an end, and that the venue is being prepared for the return of Jesus.
When Jesus ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives, the angels said that he ‘will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’ (Acts 1:11). This echoes the words of the prophet Zechariah, that ‘his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem’ (Zechariah 12:4).
Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is in east Jerusalem — part of the territory captured by the Jews in the Six Day War. In our time God is preparing the place where Jesus will return to, to reign in justice and peace over all the earth.
A century ago Jerusalem was a squalid village that nobody cared about. Now that the Jews have it back, everyone seems to want a piece of it, and the United Nations seeks to internationalise it. Why is there such hostility to the Jewish presence in Jerusalem? Psalm 2 explains:
‘Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand
And the rulers gather together
Against the LORD
And against his Anointed One [his mashiach or Messiah].
‘The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
The Lord scoffs at them.
Then he rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
“I have installed my King
on Zion, my holy hill.” ’
Zion, Jerusalem, is where the Messiah will return to. We live in momentous days. Jesus chided his contemporaries for not reading the signs of the times. Like them, we could miss the time of God’s visitation. ‘Keep watch,’ Jesus warned, ‘because you do not know on what day the Lord will come.’ (Matthew 24:42).
Rob Yule, 10 June 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
