28.05.2011                      24.Ijar, 5771                      Bamidbar; Tag 39 des Omer

Feature:

This Week in History: Casus Belli in the Red Sea

On June 5, 1967, Israeli warplanes launched a surprise attack on Arab armies, beginning the most astonishing victory the IDF has ever achieved.

In the middle of May 1967, Israel was engulfed by a thick tension as a feeling of impending catastrophe filled the air. Nearly constant skirmishes over water use along the Syrian border had recently escalated with the IAF shooting down six Syrian MiG-21 fighter jets. Egypt was moving multiple armored divisions into the Sinai Peninsula. And just over two decades after the Holocaust, daily Hebrew-language radio broadcasts from Cairo and Jordanian-controlled Ramallah promised to annihilate the young State of Israel. Then, on the 22nd of May, Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser announced that “The Israeli flag shall not go through the Gulf of Aqaba,” and closed the Straits of Tiran to Eilat-bound shipping traffic. It was quickly clear – war was imminent….