Fifty-five years ago this month, the Six Day War broke out. Without an understanding of what happened in the past, it’s impossible to grasp where we are today — and where we are has profound relevance for the region and the world.
What went wrong between 1967 and 1973? The answer lies in two false assumptions. Israeli leaders had believed that the next war would look the same as the previous one. But the gravest mistake was the embracement of a concept, promoted by then-defense minister Moshe Dayan, that Egypt would not attack unless it had first matched Israel in airpower.
Why is Israel returning to Africa? For Netanyahu, one reason dominates all others. “The automatic majority against Israel at the UN is composed—first and foremost—of African countries,” he told a gathering of Israel’s ambassadors to Africa in February of last year. “Whether in the end or at the outset, our goal is to change their voting patterns.”
Benjamin Netanyahu's historic visit to Africa this week is the first by an Israeli prime minister in close to 50 years. While the occasion is to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Entebbe raid in which he lost a brother and Israel's military prowess dazzled the world, Israel has considerably more to celebrate in Africa today. Little of this is publicly known, as it is a fraught story of people-to-people affinities ill-served by frequent government-to-government misalliance.
In the early and mid-1980s, I saw up close some of the remarkable Israeli efforts, supported by the United States government and a few American Jewish groups, on behalf of Ethiopian Jews.