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Incompetence That Shaped History

Khalid Elhassan March 9, 2020 33 min

Nineteenth century Washington Metropolitan Police Force officers. Washington Metropolitan Police

30. When Bluster and Bluff Backfire

Egyptian prisoners of war are shown during the Arab-Israeli Six Day War in June 1967. Associated Press

On June 5^th, 1967, Israel launched preemptive air strikes that destroyed 90 percent of the Egyptian air force on the ground, and put paid to Syria’s warplanes as well. Then, having secured aerial supremacy, the Israelis launched ground attacks that routed the Egyptians and seized Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula within three days, and routed the Jordanians and seized Jerusalem and the West Bank within two. Egypt and Jordan accepted a UN ceasefire, but the Syrians unwisely did not. So the Israelis attacked Syria on June 9^th, and captured the Golan Heights within a day. Syria accepted a cease fire the following day.

Israeli soldiers guarding Egyptian POWs captured during the Six Day War. Greanville Post

The defeat was humiliatingly lopsided: about 24,000 Arabs were killed vs 800 Israelis, with similarly disproportionate rates for wounded and equipment losses. Nasser’s prestige in the Arab world, which he had sought to burnish with warlike rhetoric and demonstrations short of war, took a severe hit from which it never recovered.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.