Six-Day War Trivia
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49 free Six-Day War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Six-Day War of 5–10 June 1967 began with an Israeli air strike that destroyed most of Egypt's air force on the ground within hours and ended with Israel holding the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. It followed weeks of escalation after Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled UN peacekeepers and closed the Straits of Tiran, and it reshaped the Middle East: Nasser resigned and was reinstated by protests, the Suez Canal shut for eight years, and UN Resolution 242 set out the 'land for peace' formula that still frames negotiations. This quiz covers the build-up and the false Soviet warning, Operation Focus and the four-sorties-a-day ground crews, Tal, Sharon and Yoffe in the Sinai, the 6,000-shell barrage at Um-Katef, King Hussein's 'the die was cast', Ammunition Hill and Mordechai Gur's paratroopers at the Old City, Dayan's unauthorised order to take the Golan, Damascus Radio's premature surrender of Quneitra, the USS Liberty attack, the Khartoum 'three no's' and the peace treaties that followed. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a history quiz night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1973 war did Egypt and Syria launch to reverse the Six-Day War?
Yom Kippur 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.
Q 02Which future Arab leader was a defence minister on the losing side of the Six-Day War?
Hafez al-Assad
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.
Q 03Which song, first sung weeks before the Six-Day War, became Israel's unofficial second anthem after the victory?
Jerusalem of Gold
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.
Q 04Nasser's closure of which waterway to Israeli shipping in May 1967 did Israel treat as a cause for war?
Straits of Tiran
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.
Q 05What was the codename of Israel's opening air strike on 5 June 1967?
Operation Focus
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.
Q 06Which UN Secretary-General agreed to Nasser's demand and pulled UN peacekeepers out of Sinai in May 1967?
U Thant
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.
Q 07Which US president traded messages with Moscow over the hotline during the Six-Day War?
Lyndon B. Johnson
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.
Q 08Which US spy ship did Israeli forces attack off Sinai in June 1967?
USS Liberty
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.
Q 09Which opposition leader and future prime minister joined Israel's national unity government for the Six-Day War?
Menachem Begin
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.
Q 10Which country fed Nasser false reports in May 1967 that Israel was massing on the Syrian border?
The Soviet Union
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.
Q 11Palestinians call the 1948 defeat the Nakba; by what name is the Arab defeat of 1967 known?
The Naksa
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.
Q 12Which king flew to Cairo days before the Six-Day War and signed a defence pact with Nasser?
King Hussein
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.
Q 13Arab leaders falsely claimed in 1967 that which two countries' aircraft had joined Israel's attack?
The US and Britain
Q 21Which Israeli spy, hanged in Damascus in 1965, had toured Syria's Golan fortifications and reported on them to Mossad?
Eli Cohen
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.
Q 22Which future prime minister led an Israeli armoured division in Sinai in 1967?
Ariel Sharon
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.
Q 23Israel has held part of which snow-capped mountain since the Six-Day War, later building a ski resort on it?
Mount Hermon
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.
Q 14Which Israeli foreign minister flew to Paris, London and Washington in May 1967 seeking a way to avoid war?
Abba Eban
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.
Q 15What did Shlomo Goren sound at Jerusalem's newly captured holy site on 7 June 1967?
A shofar
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.
Q 16Pilots loaned by which country's air force are credited with downing Israeli jets for the Arab side in 1967?
Pakistan
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.
Q 17Before the US became Israel's main arms supplier, which country built most of the jets it flew in 1967?
France
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.
Q 18By which pair of biblical names has Israel officially called the West Bank since capturing it in 1967?
Judea and Samaria
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.
Q 19Which Fatah leader rose to head the PLO in 1969 after the Arab armies' defeat in the Six-Day War?
Yasser Arafat
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.
Q 20Which religious community's villages stayed on in the Golan Heights when most Syrians fled or were driven out in 1967?
The Druze
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.
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.
Q 24Through which gate did Israeli paratroopers break into Jerusalem's Old City on 7 June 1967?
Lions' Gate
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.
Q 25Which future prime minister was the Israeli army's chief of staff during the Six-Day War?
Yitzhak Rabin
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.
Q 26Which Egyptian field marshal, Nasser's old friend and army chief, led the forces routed in Sinai in 1967?
Abdel Hakim Amer
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.
Q 27Which Israeli prime minister promised Jordan's king in 1967 not to attack if Jordan stayed out?
Levi Eshkol
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.
Q 28Which country with no border with Israel sent troops and tanks into Jordan to join the 1967 war?
Iraq
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.
Q 29Which future Israeli president had spent eight years building the air force that won the 1967 air war?
Ezer Weizman
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.
Q 30Which paratroop commander radioed 'The Temple Mount is in our hands' from Jerusalem's Old City in 1967?
Mordechai Gur
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.