the difference between the alleged weakness of diaspora Jews and the power
and vigor of Israelis. In this sense, the Six Day War affirmed what had been
suggested at the Eichmann trial: Israel and Israelis as warrior heroes, latter-day
incarnations of King David and the Maccabees. That the Israeli high com-
mand consisted mainly of men who were archeologists and scholars when not
in battle further recalled David, the great biblical warrior-poet. This heroic
image would reach its apogee during the next decade and a half, first in 1976
during the heroic rescue of Jewish hostages in a raid on the airport in Entebbe,
Uganda; and then in 1981, when the Israeli air force destroyed a nuclear plant
in Iraq (the implications of which have loomed ever larger since that time).
Most important, perhaps, the outcome of the Six Day War fundamentally
altered the relationship between Israel and its Arab neighbors, for better and
for worse. The war demonstrated not only the ability of Israel to survive a
full-scale Arab invasion but also left little doubt that Israel was the military
power in the region. A similar conflict six years later, the Yom Kippur War,
while inflicting many more casualties, left this impression intact. It is not
surprising that less than a decade after 1967, Egypt abandoned its aim of dri-
ving the Jews into the sea, and chose instead to seek peace.
On the other hand, the extension of Israel sovereignty over a large Arab
population in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem introduced the prob-
lem of dealing with a large ethnic minority. Israelis and their leaders
disagreed as to how to resolve this quandary. Some raised anew an older argu-
ment for a binational state; others regarded the best solution as extensive
Jewish settlement so as to Israeli-ize these territories as quickly as possible. In
retrospect, the defeat of the Arab neighbors in 1967 came at the cost of gal-
vanizing the discontent of Arabs in Israel, thus transforming a conflict
between Israelis and Arabs into a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Yet it was not only the events of June 1967 that strained relations between
Israelis and Palestinians. Religious leaders and religious fundamentalists on
both sides of the conflict have exerted increasing influence over their respec-
tive leadership and popular opinion. In addition, Palestinians living abroad,
many of whom had been displaced in 1948, have become more vocal and polit-
ically organized. This means that since 1967, the multifarious support that
world Jewry has provided to the Israeli cause through diplomatic, economic,
and political support is gradually being rivaled and challenged by the support
of Palestinians for the Palestinian cause. The parallels notwithstanding, there
is still a key difference between Israeli and Palestinian tactics. One-time
Zionist military organizations such as Begin’s Irgun, almost immediately upon
becoming part of a conventional political leadership, largely abandoned their
use of violence and militarism in favor of diplomacy and economic develop-
ment. Begin, after all, negotiated the most lasting peace treaty in Israel’s short
history. By contrast, Palestinian military organizations such as Hamas and
Hezbollah have yet to renounce their violent tactics, even though they, too, are
now part of a conventional political structure.
Jews in the postwar world 239