Jewish News Roundup

• A look at the very broad impact made by the election of Begin in 1977. (Jerusalem Post)
• Galia Oz, daughter of Amos Oz has produced a documentary film about the 1980s Jewish terrorist underground movement in Israel. (Ynet)

1967 WAR:

• Timeline of the war and buildup to it. Includes hyperlinks to some maps and documents. (Zionism & Israel Information Center)
• David Remnick discusses “Why the Six-Day War is still being foughtâ€? by reviewing books by Tom Segev Michael Oren and Gershom Gorenberg about the 1967 war and its aftermath, noting the wrenching leadup: “Yitzhak Rabin, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, suffered a nervous breakdown, … [Prime Minister Levi] Eshkol … gave a radio address that was a stammering, confused disaster. …rabbis were consecrating parks as cemeteries, and thousands of graves were dug… Ben-Gurion was so worried about the possibility of a military coup that he issued a public warning from Sde Boker… Just four days before the war, Eshkol was forced to give up the defense portfolio to the most unpredictable figure in the country, Moshe Dayan.â€? (New Yorker)
• A look at how the 1967 war provided a catalyst for Soviet Jews to think of leaving the country: “had it not been for the 1967 war, the movement of Soviet Jewry’s immigration to Israel would have emerged ten years later. Because of it, the Jews became an integral element in the disintegration of the Soviet Union.â€? (Haaretz)
• In a new book about the Six Day War, two Israeli authors claim that the conflict was deliberately engineered by the Soviet Union to create the conditions in which Israel’s nuclear program could be destroyed. And Daniel Pipes thinks they’ve made a good case. (The Jerusalem Post)
• Three fairly different first-hand accounts of the seizure of Jerusalem in 1967: Ruthie Blum (Jerusalem Post), Abraham Rabinovich (Jerusalem Post) and Faigie Heiman (The Jewish Press)
• Recalling the 1967 battle of Ammunition Hill. (Israel National News)
• Conal Urquhart interviews nine people, who witnessed the Six-Day War: three Israeli paratroopers, the photographer of its most famous foto, the Palestinian schoolboy of 12, the Jordanian fighter pilot, the Israeli paratrooper and spoon-bender Uri Geller, the Palestinian student Sari Nusseibeh, the Egyptian activist, the Palestinian refugee, and the Egyptian journalist. (The Guardian)
• “Miracles in the Six-Day War: Eyewitness Accountsâ€? (Israel National News)
• Leonard Fein, who in June 1967 ran an informal clearinghouse for Boston-area volunteers seeking to get to Israel, contrasts the sweetness of that time with the “sour legacyâ€? with the occupation which arose from the war. (The Forward)
• Segev’s book “1967â€? looks not so much at the actual fighting, but rather at “how the Israelis went to war to break down the borders limiting them both as a country and a society and how in victory they created for themselves a new set of boundariesâ€?, and whether the results were “a divine blessing or a poisoned chaliceâ€?. (The Jerusalem Post)
• Michael B. Oren looks at the “historiographical battle over the Six Dayâ€?, the struggle to write a comprehensive history of the war, including crucial questions of whether Israel wanted the war, and the legitimacy of its conquest of territories. (The Jerusalem Post)
• A new documentary on the 1967 war is out which has a significant focus on its “increasingly perilous aftermathâ€?. (The Jewish Week)
• Dr. Menachem Klein talks about the euphoria and excitement immediately after the war — and how his own views came to evolve. (Peace Now)
• 8 YouTube links to 1967 war videos. (Israel National News)
• Melanie Phillips reports on a Jerusalem seminar held by the Shalem Centre, on the legacy of the Six-Day War, especially Yossi Klein Halevi’s suggestion “that the Six-Day War had brought to light a continuing ambivalence in the attitude to power of the Jewish people themselves.â€? (Melanie Phillips)
• Gal Beckerman looks at how the Six Day War moved from accounts of individual soldiers and combat operations to a darker view that, for example, “Israel … had total agency — and … the Arab states simply bumbled into their belligerency.â€? (The Forward)
• Michael Freund, saying that “Israel should stop apologizing for defeating the Arab states in 1967â€?, argues that this shows Israel is suffering from “Battered Nation Syndrome.” (The Jerusalem Post)