First symbol of June 5: Kotel
Last Friday was June 5. My guess is that June 5, as a date, made no more impact on most people than June 4 or June 6. I am sure that June 5 is someone’s birthday or anniversary, but at one time the entire Jewish people and, for least a year or two, the entire world knew and understood June 5.
It was the day the Six Day War in 1967 began. That’s almost 60 years ago, ample time for most of humanity to be born after June 5, 1967, unmoved by the date, and ample time for much of humanity born before June 5, 1967 to have died.
Up until perhaps 2007 or 2017, newspapers would write editorials about June 5, assessing prospects for peace in the Middle East against the background of its 1967 turning point. Jewish newspapers (including this one) would publish entire special sections on the events and implications of June 5-10, 1967.
What was the big deal?
Two things, both worth remembering by those for whom June 5 is nothing but a date on the calendar.
First, before 1967, stretching back to 1948, it was impossible for Jews to pray at the Western Wall. With all the furor today about a temporary, hour-or-two or day-or-two Israeli restriction on prayer by Muslims on the Temple Mount due to terrorist threats, it is worth recalling that Muslim leaders worldwide either shut Jews off from praying at the Western Wall for 19 straight years, or did not object to the actions of Jordan’s Muslim Wakf, which enforced the anti-Jewish prayer ban.
On June 5 itself, at the beginning of the Six Day War, no Jew imagined that the war would lead to the opening of the Western Wall to Jews, but just a couple of days later this became a possibility, then a reality. June 5 is associated with a radical reversal regarding Jew hatred by much of the Muslim world. This is worth remembering when, for some pressing security reason, Israel must limit access to the Temple Mount for an extremely short time.
Second symbol of June 5: Miracles
Second, for some six weeks prior to June 5, 1967, the threat to Israel by the Arab world in general and by Egypt’s ruler Abdul Nasser in particular — with generous help from the UN — portended the possibility of a second Holocaust. This was not paranoia. The year 1967 was only 22 years since the end of the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors and their children lived in Israel. They remembered, and they trembled when Nasser raged on television about driving Israel into the Mediterranean Sea. It was frightening to everyone. Egypt was 54 times larger than Israel. Google Nasser’s speeches, if you like. Look at the demented fury animating his face. Israel was threatened with destruction.
Not only by Egypt, but by Syria and by other Arab states.
And by U Thant, the secretary general of the United Nations. He withdrew the UN Emergency Force from the Sinai Peninsula on May 18, 1967 without consulting Israel. The UNEF had acted as a buffer between Egypt and southern Israel. U Thant’s withdrawal left Israel’s southern flank wide open to Egyptian invasion. U Thant stoked Nasser’s motivation for war.
Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israel on May 23, 1967. This was an act of war. If it seems remote to regard the closure of shipping lanes to Israel as a casus belli, think: the Strait of Hormuz.
The fear in Israel was real. It was a tiny country, only nine miles wide at its narrowest point. Thousands of body bags were prepared in Tel Aviv for expected mass casualties. It was certainly remembered in Israel that the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem had fallen to Jordanian forces in 1948. The fear in Israel was palpable, not paranoid.
Not just in Israel. Around the world Jews gathered in their synagogues and screamed in prayer. The fear was primal. Remember, this was before Israel had a single air defense system. No Iron Dome then. This was before Israel possessed advanced jet fighters and the sophisticated weaponry of today. It is a tautology to note that Israel had no strategic depth — no control of the Golan Heights, no control of the border with Jordan, and no Jewish neighborhoods surrounding the heart of Jerusalem, which was then very vulnerable. On all sides Israel was exposed. Israel’s existence was in peril. Israel’s strategic depth today (such as it is; Israel is still a tiny country) is a result of the Six Day War.
So yes, June 5 is a date well remembered by those who lived through those agonizing days.
Pinching ourselves
And amazing, inspiring days.
Egypt’s air force was destroyed before a single plane could take off.
Jordan’s King Hussein was begged by Israel to stay out of the war, but he didn’t listen — and lost control over the Old City of Jerusalem, over the Western Wall, over the West Bank and over his own border at the Jordan River.
Syria lost control over the Golan Heights, which, before June 5, Syria had exploited to fire with impunity on Israeli kibbutzim below. (Visit the Golan today — you can still see the Syrian positions, and how Israel was utterly defenseless against them.)
“June 5” came to symbolize both the pre-June 5 fear and the post-June 5 salvation and astonishment of Jews worldwide.
Jews pinched themselves. Was this real? Very much unlike today, gentiles everywhere outside the Arab world supported and admired Israel.
For many Jews the feelings went deeper. The fortunes of Israel in what became the extremely short, six-day war were experienced as a divine miracle, a boost in faith — and a boost in commitment to Israel. Aliyah to Israel from Western countries and from the US in particular was spurred by the Six Day War.
Right after the war, Jews gathered in their thousands in New York and Washington to hear Israel Foreign Minister Abba Eban’s unparalleled eloquence at the UN in delineating the course of events, the intended mass slaughter and the total reversal.
Jews flooded the Western Wall when it opened a few days later.
Theologians such as Abraham J. Heschel wrote from astonishment and gratitude in Israel: An Echo of Eternity — but he did not persuade Jewish readers. His poetic work merely reflected what they already knew and felt intuitively.
Something was lost
My wife Elaine and I went to Israel in the aftermath of the Six Day War, and although we no longer live there we have inspired three of our children to live there and have many grandchildren there, thank G-d.
However, as Ira Indich observed to me many years ago, somehow the Jewish people did not fully capitalize on their dramatic victory beginning on June 5, 1967, either spiritually or politically. True enough, a main reason is that no Arab country wanted to make peace with Israel. For all of those who decry Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, here is another critical piece of history: The West Bank for many years after 1967 was referred to in Israel not as the “captured territories,” not as the “liberated territories,” but as the “administered territories.” Israel saw itself as a temporary administrator of the West Bank until an Arab peace partner stepped forward. By the time Anwar Sadat did step forward in 1973, Israel’s bitterness over the Arab indifference to peace and over Egypt’s and Syria’s attack on Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 had taken its toll. Sentiment in much of Israel had hardened.
That is one reason why the post-June 5 excitement and hope thinned out, but it was not the only reason why, at least in part, the fullness and biblical proportion of the divine moments of June 5-10 were lost. Something spiritual was not pursued well , or pursued enough. I cannot put my hands on it precisely, but something profound and beautiful prompted by the Six Day War victory was lost.
For a small minority of Israelis, June 5 became a bitter symbol. The overwhelming, stunning salvation of Israel beginning June 5 was not without a price. I cannot forget the bereaved father whom I met in 1972 in the small shul in the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood of Jerusalem whose son was killed in the Six Day War. He was broken, utterly broken. He pointed to the memorial tablet he had put up on the shul wall. It was all he had: a stone cold tablet. Israel’s losses in 1967 affected thousands of relatives of the fallen.
My symbol of June 5: Bullets in the benches
I also cannot forget the benches in my yeshiva, the Novorodock yeshiva, which was right on the border of no man’s land between Israel and Jordan. The yeshiva had been shot at by the Jordanians during the war. Several of the yeshiva’s benches had been damaged. They were perfectly usable, but in the double layer of the seats there were gashes; wood was missing from the upper layer, due to Jordanian fire.
I came to the yeshiva in 1972. A few years later the administrator of the yeshiva replaced those benches. They were deemed unsightly. Better to have new and perfect benches, he thought.
Later, he deeply regretted that decision. I regretted it on the spot. To me, these benches were concrete signs of the salvation of Israel during the Six Day War. Somehow, after June 5, the Jewish people, if not each Jew, then the collectivity, forgot those signs.
So here we are today, in a very different context for Israel and the Jewish people.
© IJN 2026
