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.
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.
The recent thaw in Israeli-Saudi relations must be understood in the context of the lengthy Saudi Arabia-Iran cold war, and, more generally, the larger conflict between Sunnis and Shi’ites.