been equal to the crisis, regardless of hostile distortion of our words, motives and
actions.
Indeed, the sacrifices of the American people in the cause of freedom have, even
since the close of World War II, been measured in many billions of dollars and in
thousands of the precious lives of our youth. These sacrifices, by which great areas of
the world have been preserved to freedom, must not be thrown away.
In those momentous periods of the past, the President and the Congress have
united, without partisanship, to serve the vital interests of the United States and of
the free world.
The occasion has come for us to manifest again our national unity in support of
freedom and to show our deep respect for the rights and independence of every
nation—however great, however small. We seek not violence, but peace. To this pur-
pose we must now devote our energies, our determination, ourselves.
SOURCE:John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa
Barbara, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=11007.June 1967 Arab-Israeli War
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
The Suez crisis of 1956 marked the start of more than a decade of chronic tension
and occasional cross-border raids between Israel and the Arabs, though not outright
war. Israel spent the next decade building and developing its economy, political and
social institutions, and military forces. Arab nations nursed their grievances against
Israel and rebuilt their armies as well.
Tensions escalated in the early 1960s within the Arab world—where Egyptian
leader Gamal Abdel Nasser attempted to assert his leadership, often to the annoyance
of other Arab leaders—and between the Arabs and Israelis—as each side violated the
1949 armistice agreements, sometimes in deliberate provocations and at other times
in response to real or perceived threats. Efforts by the Arab League—and in particu-
lar Nasser—to channel popular anger against Israel led in 1964 to the establishment
of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a landmark event of the period.
Another significant event that year was the Arab League’s decision to divert the head-
waters of the Jordan River to deprive Israel of freshwater, a step that Israel blocked by
destroying Syrian excavating equipment (Palestinian National Movement, p. 169).
The early months of 1967 produced a sequence of events leading to a war that
most leaders in the region apparently neither wanted nor expected. Israel and Syria
were the primary actors prior to the outbreak of war, but Israel and Egypt emerged
as the initial combatants. Tensions between Israel and Syria had been the greatest
because of the latter’s sponsorship of more than two years of raids into Israel by Pales-
94 ARABS AND ISRAELIS