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"...but the Arabs still couldn't, and didn't, come to grips with the fact that Israel was not going to accommodate them by disappearing from the map."
Golda Meirautobiography.
Aftermath & Analysis
"The greatest success of the Diaspora in the post-Holocaust era: the saving of Soviet Jewry. That would not have happened without the Six Day War. The Six Day War empowered Soviet Jews to begin resisting the Soviet policy of forced assimilation. Until the Six Day War, you had sporadic incidents of Soviet Jewish resistance. Every Simhat Torah [1] they would gather at the last remaining synagogue in Moscow. Tens of thousands of young people. And then they would melt away back into the Soviet nothingness.
Beginning with the Six Day War, you had the unprecedented phenomenon of
an ethnic group in the Soviet Union openly challenging Soviet policy and
linking with forces abroad. It happened precisely because Soviet Jews drew
strength and courage from Israel and the example of the Six Day War. Had
there not been that model of Jewish heroism that the Six Day War presented,
Soviet Jews would have eventually disappeared..." [full
article from Jerusalem Post...]
- Yossi Klein-Halevi, senior fellow at the Shalem Center and the New Republic correspondent in Israel.
[1]Jewish festival celebrating the completion of the annual cycle of the reading of the Torah in the synagogue and its first book is begun again.