On Sunday, June 11, 1967, in mid-afternoon, a small parade of cars drove north on Oak Street in Stoneham, Massachusetts, past my house. I happened to be in the yard. I went to the street to see what was going on. The first car of the six or seven in line was a white 1962 Ford Falcon convertible with a tattered Israeli flag tied to its antenna. It seemed like a dozen men and women in their 20s or so were sitting on the doors and the trunk and standing on the seats, waving and yelling.
"Israel won! Israel beat the Arabs! Israel!" They also yelled in Hebrew. Most of them were wearing something blue or white or both. The lead car was the only convertible. The rest of the cars were sedans with people sitting on the doors or hanging out the windows also waving and yelling.
Israel won!
Stoneham is a suburb nine miles north of Boston. When I was 14 years old in 1967, the population was 12,000 and growing. But the Jewish population was in the hundreds. Most of the town was divided between old families that went back to the Revolution or further. Stoneham was incorporated in 1636. The other half was Irish and Italian Catholic families. It seemed like the entire Jewish population of Stoneham was in those cars, at least those between 18 and 25 years old. I am technically not Jewish, my father is Jewish, not my mother so I am not Jewish by Israel's official definition.
But on this day, for the first time I can remember, I was really proud to be Jewish. Israel beat Egypt, Jordan and Syria in just six days. The victory was crushing. Israel was outnumbered 100 to 1 and sent all three armies fleeing. Until that day, when I thought about being Jewish, I thought about being a victim. I did not know much about my heritage or the Holocaust, but I know that millions were killed by the Nazis.
The Six-Day War changed that for me. Israel could fight and win against impossible odds. Israelis were not victims, they were warriors. I just finished reading Six Days of War by Michael Oren. This book brought together all of the details of a war I knew from news reports at the time. Oren makes clear the cascade of errors and arrogance by the Arab leaders that led to such a quick and crushing defeat. He also details how many of the victories were last-minute decisions in the moment that could have gone another way. Taking Jerusalem, for example, was not a plan. There was an opportunity. Israel took it.
Reading this book was also a counterbalance for me to my visits to Holocaust sites and memorials this summer. I spent the summer being reminded of how dangerous Nazi and white supremacist ideology really is. Oren's book reminded me that Israel is ready to fight any enemy of the Jewish people.
