49 Fun Facts About Six-Day War

Which 1973 war did Egypt and Syria launch to reverse the Six-Day War?

Yom Kippur War. Egypt and Syria struck in October 1973 on the Jewish holy day itself, and the surprise carried their armies forward on both fronts for the first days.

Which future Arab leader was a defence minister on the losing side of the Six-Day War?

Hafez al-Assad. He was Syria's defence minister when it lost the Golan Heights, and the quarrel over who was to blame fed the power struggle that ended with him seizing power in 1970.

Which song, first sung weeks before the Six-Day War, became Israel's unofficial second anthem after the victory?

Jerusalem of Gold. Naomi Shemer wrote it for a song festival in May 1967 and added a triumphant new verse once Israeli troops reached the Old City; she later admitted the tune drew on a Basque lullaby.

Nasser's closure of which waterway to Israeli shipping in May 1967 did Israel treat as a cause for war?

The Straits of Tiran. Closing them blockaded Eilat, Israel's Red Sea port, cutting its sea route to Asia and the oil it shipped in from Iran.

What was the codename of Israel's opening air strike on 5 June 1967?

Operation Focus. Israel held back just 12 fighters to guard its own skies and sent the rest against Egyptian airfields, wrecking most of Egypt's air force on the ground within hours.

Which UN Secretary-General agreed to Nasser's demand and pulled UN peacekeepers out of Sinai in May 1967?

U Thant. He ordered the peacekeepers out without taking Egypt's demand to the General Assembly, removing the buffer force that had stood between the two armies since 1957.

Which US president traded messages with Moscow over the hotline during the Six-Day War?

Lyndon B. Johnson. He used the hotline to tell the Soviet premier why American forces were moving in the Mediterranean, so that Moscow would not read the moves as hostile.

Which US spy ship did Israeli forces attack off Sinai in June 1967?

USS Liberty. Israel apologised and paid compensation, saying it had mistaken the ship for an Egyptian vessel, but survivors of the attack maintain that it was deliberate.

Which opposition leader and future prime minister joined Israel's national unity government for the Six-Day War?

Menachem Begin. After almost two decades in opposition he sat in the cabinet for the first time, as a minister without portfolio, and stayed until he walked out in 1970.

Which country fed Nasser false reports in May 1967 that Israel was massing on the Syrian border?

The Soviet Union. Its warning of an Israeli build-up was false, yet Nasser answered it by pouring troops into Sinai, the first move in the three-week slide to war.

Palestinians call the 1948 defeat the Nakba; by what name is the Arab defeat of 1967 known?

The Naksa, or 'setback'. Roughly 300,000 Palestinians were displaced from the West Bank and Gaza, many of them refugees of 1948 who were uprooted a second time.

Which king flew to Cairo days before the Six-Day War and signed a defence pact with Nasser?

King Hussein. The pact put Jordan's army under Egyptian command, and within two weeks the war it drew him into had cost him East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Arab leaders falsely claimed in 1967 that which two countries' aircraft had joined Israel's attack?

The US and Britain. Israel intercepted the phone call in which Nasser and Jordan's king agreed on the story, and released the recording to the press two days later.

Which Israeli foreign minister flew to Paris, London and Washington in May 1967 seeking a way to avoid war?

Abba Eban. When the diplomacy failed he backed the decision to fight, then defended it before the UN General Assembly as a response to an imminent threat.

What did Shlomo Goren sound at Jerusalem's newly captured holy site on 7 June 1967?

A shofar. Goren, the army's chief rabbi, carried a Torah scroll and blew the ram's horn as he led the first Jewish prayers there since 1948, and the moment went out live on Israeli radio.

Pilots loaned by which country's air force are credited with downing Israeli jets for the Arab side in 1967?

Pakistan. Flight Lieutenant Saiful Azam, an adviser to Jordan's air force, is credited with downing an Israeli jet over his base at Mafraq and two more two days later for a second Arab air force.

Before the US became Israel's main arms supplier, which country built most of the jets it flew in 1967?

France. French-built Mirages and Mystères flew the strikes of 1967, yet President de Gaulle answered the crisis with an arms embargo, and Israel turned to the United States instead.

By which pair of biblical names has Israel officially called the West Bank since capturing it in 1967?

Judea and Samaria. Israel's government adopted the biblical names in December 1967; 'West Bank' was Jordan's term, coined to tell the land apart from its own East Bank across the river.

Which Fatah leader rose to head the PLO in 1969 after the Arab armies' defeat in the Six-Day War?

Yasser Arafat. The rout of the regular Arab armies turned Palestinians toward his guerrillas instead, and within two years he was chairman of the PLO, a post he held until his death.

Which religious community's villages stayed on in the Golan Heights when most Syrians fled or were driven out in 1967?

The Druze. Most of the Golan's people fled or were driven out, but a handful of Druze villages stayed, and for decades most of their residents turned down Israeli citizenship and kept their Syrian nationality.

Which Israeli spy, hanged in Damascus in 1965, had toured Syria's Golan fortifications and reported on them to Mossad?

Eli Cohen. Posing as a Syrian businessman, he rose so far in Damascus society that he was reportedly considered for deputy defence minister before his radio signals gave him away.

Which future prime minister led an Israeli armoured division in Sinai in 1967?

Ariel Sharon. He broke the Egyptian stronghold at Abu-Ageila with a plan of his own that struck with tanks, infantry and helicopter-borne paratroopers at once.

Israel has held part of which snow-capped mountain since the Six-Day War, later building a ski resort on it?

Mount Hermon. Israeli forces took its Syrian-held southern slopes as the war ended, and a corner of the frontier that Syria had laced with fortifications was turned over to roads and ski runs.

Through which gate did Israeli paratroopers break into Jerusalem's Old City on 7 June 1967?

Lions' Gate. The paratroopers stormed in from the east, straight onto the Via Dolorosa, and pushed on up to the Temple Mount that same morning.

Which future prime minister was the Israeli army's chief of staff during the Six-Day War?

Yitzhak Rabin. Under the strain of the weeks of waiting he suffered a nervous collapse and slept for almost a day, then went back to work and led the army through the war.

Which Egyptian field marshal, Nasser's old friend and army chief, led the forces routed in Sinai in 1967?

Abdel Hakim Amer. Sacked after the defeat, he was arrested within months, accused of plotting to overthrow Nasser, and died of poison in what Egypt called a suicide.

Which Israeli prime minister promised Jordan's king in 1967 not to attack if Jordan stayed out?

Levi Eshkol. Jordan's guns opened fire on West Jerusalem regardless, and the counterattack that followed drove its army out of East Jerusalem within two days.

Which country with no border with Israel sent troops and tanks into Jordan to join the 1967 war?

Iraq. It joined the Egyptian-Jordanian defence pact days before the fighting, and Israeli jets answered by flying deep into its western desert to bomb the H-3 airbase.

Which future Israeli president had spent eight years building the air force that won the 1967 air war?

Ezer Weizman. He had handed over the air force a year earlier to become the army's operations chief, so the strike his training made possible was flown under another commander.

Which paratroop commander radioed 'The Temple Mount is in our hands' from Jerusalem's Old City in 1967?

Mordechai Gur. His paratroop brigade had been bound for Sinai when it was sent to Jerusalem instead and given only hours to prepare its assault on the city.

Israeli paratroopers fought through trenches for hours on 6 June 1967 to take which Jerusalem position?

Ammunition Hill. The paratroopers attacked with poor intelligence on the Jordanian bunkers and trenches they faced, and by dawn 36 Israelis and 71 Jordanians were dead.

Israel's defence minister ordered the capture of Jerusalem's Old City on 7 June 1967 on hearing that what was imminent?

A UN ceasefire. He had at first kept the army out of the walled city, then reversed himself that morning so that Israel would hold it before a truce froze the lines.

David Rubinger's famous photo shows three Israeli paratroopers gazing at what?

The Western Wall. Rubinger lay on the ground because the space in front of the wall was so narrow, thought little of the frame, and gave it to the army; the government then handed out copies for next to nothing.

Which hilltop, home to the Hebrew University, was an Israeli enclave inside Jordanian Jerusalem from 1948 until the Six-Day War?

Mount Scopus. Its small Israeli garrison had been cut off behind Jordanian lines for nineteen years, and reaching it was the paratroopers' first mission when the battle for Jerusalem began.

Which economic weapon did Arab states turn on Israel's Western backers during the Six-Day War?

An oil embargo. Arab oil ministers meeting in Baghdad agreed to cut off any country that aided Israel, but each state applied it differently, and neither America nor Europe ran short.

Why, in historian David Lesch's judgment, was Syria's army so badly prepared for war in 1967?

Coups and purges. Every coup and failed coup since 1963 had been followed by a clear-out of officers, leaving a politicised army short of experienced commanders.

Who gave the order on the morning of 9 June 1967 for Israel's assault on the Golan Heights?

Moshe Dayan. The defence minister had held back from attacking Syria in the war's first days, then gave the order once intelligence showed its defences collapsing.

The Golan Heights, from which Syrian guns shelled Israel before 1967, rise steeply from which lake?

Sea of Galilee. Syrian guns on the heights had shelled the farms and villages of northern Israel below for years, and taking the plateau in the war's last two days put them out of range.

Which Israeli infantry brigade stormed the Syrian fort of Tel Faher on 9 June 1967?

Golani Brigade. Its carriers were stopped short of the wire, so the men charged the trenches on foot and fought on with most of their commanders hit; the site is now called the Golani Lookout.

Damascus Radio undercut its own army in 1967 by announcing the fall of which Golan city before it had been taken?

Quneitra. Hearing that the city was lost, Syrian troops left the front and Israel took it without a fight; handed back in ruins in 1974, it was never resettled.

Which close-combat weapon gave Israelis the upper hand inside Syrian bunkers on the Golan?

The Uzi. Army officer Uziel Gal designed it after the 1948 war and it took his name; with its magazine inside the pistol grip, it was short enough to swing around in a cramped bunker.

Which machines led Israel's armoured assault up the Golan Heights on 9 June 1967, clearing wire and mines under fire?

Bulldozers. Eight of them went ahead of the tanks to cut a path up the escarpment, and Syrian fire knocked out five before the column reached the top.

What did Israel's defence minister order removed from the Dome of the Rock hours after the Old City fell in 1967?

The Star of David flag. Paratroopers had hoisted Israel's flag over the Muslim shrine, and the minister had it lowered at once, afraid that leaving it there would inflame the whole region.

The 1967 Arab League summit that declared 'no peace, no recognition, no negotiations' with Israel met in which capital?

Khartoum. The Three Noes came with money behind them: at the same summit the wealthier Arab states agreed to pay yearly aid to Egypt and Jordan to make good their losses.

Which UN Security Council text of November 1967 set out the 'land for peace' formula?

Resolution 242. It asks Israel to withdraw from 'territories occupied in the recent conflict', and the absence of a 'the' has fuelled decades of argument over whether that means all the land or only part.

Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt after which 1978 agreement?

The Camp David Accords. US President Jimmy Carter brought the Egyptian and Israeli leaders together at his presidential retreat, and the treaty that followed returned all of Sinai in exchange for peace.

By what name is the artillery and air war Egypt waged along the Sinai front after 1967 known?

The War of Attrition. Nasser hoped that steady shelling and raids would wear Israel down and force it out of Sinai, but the fighting ended in a 1970 truce with both armies where they had started.

Which movement launched a large settlement drive in the occupied territories after 1967?

Gush Emunim. Formed in 1974 by followers of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, it planted small communities beside large Arab towns in the West Bank, often against the wishes of Israel's own government.

What did Nasser announce to Egyptians on 9 June 1967, only to take it back after mass street protests?

His resignation. Millions poured into the streets to mourn the defeat and beg him to stay, and Nasser changed his mind and remained president until his death in 1970.