It’s 40 years next week since the Six Day War. Interesting piece in the Jerusalem Post, which has striking similarities with what’s going on in the Middle East today with Iran.
“One of the great enigmas of the modern Middle East is why, 40 years ago next week, the Six-Day War took place. Neither Israel nor its Arab neighbors wanted or expected a fight in June 1967; the consensus view among historians holds that the unwanted combat resulted from a sequence of accidents.
“Enter Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, a wife-husband team, to challenge the accident theory and offer a plausible explanation for the causes of the war. As suggested by the title of their book, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (Yale University Press), they argue that it originated in a scheme by the Soviet politburo to eliminate Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona, and with it the country’s aspiration to develop nuclear weapons.
While we’re on the subject a story in the Sunday Times today about how Israel stole a Russian MiG 21 jet from the Iraqis prior to the start of the war. They took it to pieces and fought mock dog fights against it ensuring they were good and ready for the Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi air forces when the time came.
