If Israel Lost the War asks a haunting question
by Mark R. Whittington
Few people at the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century, particularly the addled campus jihadis who blather “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free”, can imagine how people regarded the Middle East as the summer of 1967 began.
The crisis started in May 1967 when Gamel Abdul Nasser, the president of Egypt, closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping, ejected the United Nations Emergency Force that had been deployed on the border between Egypt and Israel, and deployed his own army there instead. Blood curdling threats arose from Arab capitals that now the Arab nations would invade the Jewish state and eradicate it once and for all.
History records what happened next. On the morning of June 5, 1967, the Israeli Air Force struck and destroyed the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria on the ground, as well as an Iraqi air base. The Israeli Army moved and, in six days, capture the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Sinia, and the Golon Heights. Never since was Israel ever in peril of destruction as it was before the Six Day War.
For a detailed account of what happened, read Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael Oren. Also, read a personal memoir of the war called Israel Journal: June, 1967, by Yael Dayan, the author/politician and daughter of the soldier/statesman Moshe Dayan.
Everything that has happened since, the Camp David Accords, the Abraham Accords, and the horrific events of October 7, 2023, stems from Israel’s victory in the Six Day War.
But what if things had gone differently? If Israel Lost the War by Richard Chesnoff, Edward Klein, and Robert Littel seeks to answer that question.
The alternate history novel depicts a Six Day War in reverse. The Arab air forces strike first, destroying the Israeli Air Force on the ground, The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon roll in and conquer Israel within days. The life of the Jewish state, then just 19 years old, is snuffed out.
The world community’s reaction is fraught with futility. Demonstrations in support of Israel take place across the western world, including a march on Washington that rivals the civil rights march of 1963.
Aside from an attempt by Holland to ship Israel some fighter jets, no one does anything practical. Even the United States, mired as it is in the Vietnam quagmire, failed to intervene. The failure would end the presidency of Lyndon Johnson as thoroughly as the Tet Offensive did in real history.
Just as an aside, the idea that the Arab states could have overcome Israel under any circumstances, is a stretch. The Arab armies, while outnumbering Israel’s, were rife with leadership and discipline problems. But, for the novel to exist, these facts had to be waved away.
One of the interesting aspects of the story, considering current events, is that there is no sentiment anywhere in support of the Arabs. No addled jihadi supporters marching in the streets in support of the death of Israel.
The reason for that contrast between an alternate 1967 and the current age is that the Nazi holocaust is still a recent memory. The idea of casting Jews as Nazis would have been so grotesque that it would be unimaginable.
The Arab states that conquer and carve Israel up like a Christmas turkey are uninterested in justifying their actions. Social media did not exist in 1967 to facilitate such an effort in any case. No deep fake videos. No anonymous bots.
The Arab occupation of the corpse of Israel can best be described as like the Nazi occupation of France and Poland on steroids. Nazi war criminals gleefully assist in what they see as a continuation of Hitler’s war against the Jews. An insurgency erupts and an Israeli government in exile is established. What follows the Arab conquest of Israel is an unimaginable horror.
Interestingly, Sirhan Sirhan, the fanatical Palestinian who assassinated Bobby Kennedy, instead returns to the Middle East. Robert Kennedy, not being assassinated, is elected president of the United States. He has a lot on his hands. In order to compensate for its impotence in the Middle East, the United States doubles down in Vietnam, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.
What about the Palestinians, whose cause seems to be upmost in the minds us too many young people in the West? Do they get a state of their own, from the river to the sea?
Not on your life. The Palestinians get to rot in refugee camps forever. The dirty little secret is that the Arab states in 1967 regarded them as useful pawns at best. Today, with many Arab states having made peace with Israel, the Palestinians are seen as a headache and an inconvenience. This fact may be astonishing for those people chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” But it is an unassailable truth.
In any way, Israel winning the Six Day War to evolve into a modern, high-tech nation, has to be seen as a good thing. A Palestinian state, as the writer Salman Rushdie noted, would be a Taliban-like country, filled with violence, oppression, and misery. It would be best for the world that it never be established,
Mark Whittington is the author of several alternate history stories, including The Children of Apollo trilogy, Patton in Palestine, and A Brother on the Moon.
