NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first comprehensive account of the epoch-making Six-Day War, from the author of Ally—now featuring a fiftieth-anniversary retrospective Though it lasted for only six tense days in June, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war never really ended. Every crisis that has ripped through this region in the ensuing decades, from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to the ongoing intifada, is a direct consequence of those six days of fighting. Writing with a novelist’s command of narrative and a historian’s grasp of fact and motive, Michael B. Oren reconstructs both the lightning-fast action on the battlefields and the political shocks that electrified the world. Extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin—rose and toppled from power as a result of this war; borders were redrawn; daring strategies brilliantly succeeded or disastrously failed in a matter of hours. And the balance of power changed—in the Middle East and in the world. A towering work of history and an enthralling human narrative, Six Days of War is the most important book on the Middle East conflict to appear in a generation. Praise for Six Days of War “Powerful . . . A highly readable, even gripping account of the 1967 conflict . . . [Oren] has woven a seamless narrative out of a staggering variety of diplomatic and military strands.”—The New York Times “With a remarkably assured style, Oren elucidates nearly every aspect of the conflict. . . . Oren’s [book] will remain the authoritative chronicle of the war. His achievement as a writer and a historian is awesome.”—The Atlantic Monthly “This is not only the best book so far written on the six-day war, it is likely to remain the best.”—The Washington Post Book World “Phenomenal . . . breathtaking history . . . a profoundly talented writer. . . . This book is not only one of the best books on this critical episode in Middle East history; it’s one of the best-written books I’ve read this year, in any genre.”—The Jerusalem Post “[In] Michael Oren’s richly detailed and lucid account, the familiar story is thrilling once again. . . . What makes this book important is the breadth and depth of the research.”—The New York Times Book Review “A first-rate new account of the conflict.”—The Washington Post “The definitive history of the Six-Day War . . . [Oren’s] narrative is precise but written with great literary flair. In no one else’s study is there more understanding or more surprise.”—Martin Peretz, Publisher, The New Republic “Compelling, perhaps even vital, reading.”—San Jose Mercury News

In 1967 the future of the state of Israel was far from certain. But with its swift and stunning military victory against an Arab coalition led by Egypt in the Six Day War, Israel not only preserved its existence but redrew the map of the region, with fateful consequences. The Camp DavidAccords, the assassinations of Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, the intifada, and the current troubled peace negotiations--all of these trace their origins to the Six Day War.Michael Oren's Six Days of War is a gripping account of one of the most dramatic and important episodes in the history of the Middle East. With exhaustive research in primary sources--including Soviet, Jordanian, and Syrian files not previously available--he has reconstructed the tension-filledbackground and the dramatic military events of the conflict, drawing the threads together in a riveting narrative, enlivened by crisp characters sketches of major characters (many of whom, from Ariel Sharon to Yasser Arafat, are still leading figures today). Most important, Oren has unearthed somedramatic new findings. He has discovered that a top-secret Egyptian plan to invade Israel and wipe out its army and nuclear reactor came within hours of implementation. He also reveals how the superpowers narrowly avoided a nuclear showdown over the Eastern Mediterranean and how a military coup inIsrael almost occurred on the eve of the war.

The author of Origins of the Suez Crisis “mak[es] us look afresh at the events that led to conflict between Israel and its neighbors” (Financial Times). One fateful week in June 1967 redrew the map of the Middle East. Many scholars have documented how the Six-Day War unfolded, but little has been done to explain why the conflict happened at all. Now, historian Guy Laron refutes the widely accepted belief that the war was merely the result of regional friction, revealing the crucial roles played by American and Soviet policies in the face of an encroaching global economic crisis, and restoring Syria’s often overlooked centrality to events leading up to the hostilities. The Six-Day War effectively sowed the seeds for the downfall of Arab nationalism, the growth of Islamic extremism, and the animosity between Jews and Palestinians. In this important new work, Laron’s fresh interdisciplinary perspective and extensive archival research offer a significant reassessment of a conflict—and the trigger-happy generals behind it—that continues to shape the modern world. “Challenging . . . well worth reading.”—Moment “A penetrating study of a conflict that, although brief, helped establish a Middle Eastern template that is operational today . . . The author looks beyond Cold War maneuvering to examine the conflict in other lights . . . Readers with an interest in Middle Eastern geopolitics will find much of value.”—Kirkus Reviews

On one day in June, the balance of air power in the Middle East was turned upside down by perhaps the most ruthlessly effective air superiority campaign in history – Operation Moked, or Focus. In 1967, the Israeli Air Force was outnumbered more than two to one by the jets of hostile Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Operation Focus was Israel's ingenious strike plan to overturn the balance. At 0745hrs on June 6, Israeli jets hit Egypt's airfields simultaneously, first bombing runways and then strafing aircraft. Another 20 follow-up missions were already in the air, initially scheduled to hit every five minutes. This new history of Operation Focus explains how the concept for Focus was devised and meticulously planned, the astonishing rate of serviceability and turnaround speed it required from ground crews, and how the relentless tempo of strikes shattered one air force after another. It is the story of how Israel's victory in the Six-Day War began with a single, shocking day.

The war of June 1967 between Israel and Arab states was widely perceived as being forced on Israel to prevent the annihilation of its people by Arab armies hovering on its borders. Documents now declassified by key governments question this view. The UK, USSR, France and the USA all knew that the Arab states were not in attack mode and tried to dissuade Israel from attacking. In later years, this war was held up as a precedent allowing an attack on a state that is expected to attack. It has even been used to justify a pre-emptive assault on a state expected to attack well in the future. Given the lack of evidence that it was waged by Israel in anticipation of an attack by Arab states, the 1967 war can no longer serve as such a precedent. This book seeks to provide a corrective on the June 1967 war.

SIX DAYS IN JUNE How Israel Won the 1967 Arab-Israeli War Eric Hammel Distinguished military historian Eric Hammel becomes the first chronicler of the 1967 Six Day War to unite the story of development of Israel’s bold brand of military training and planning with a detailed narrative account of her breathtaking victories in Sinai, Jerusalem, The West Bank, and the Golan Heights. Unlike all earlier accounts of the 1967 war, Hammel’s sweeping narrative describes how, from the early 1950s, the Israel Defense Force—Zahal—undertook a relentless and often visionary campaign to prepare for the inevitable war of national survival that, when it came, radically altered the Middle East and has profoundly influenced international politics ever since. Israel’s brilliant, innovative military thinkers developed extremely flexible strategies, operational plans, and battlefield tactics aimed at overcoming several large Arab forces with Zahal’s much smaller army and air force. Zahal’s innovations proved to be so effective and fundamentally sound that they established the norms of modem military planning and performance that saw the United States and her coalition allies through the lightning Desert Storm campaign of 1991. Hammel decisively disproves the enduring myth that Israel’s stunning 1967 victory was a “miracle” or a “fluke.” He explains how, by necessity and in secret, a tiny Third-World nation developed a First‑World military force that has become the envy of all the nations of the world. Hammel is at his proven best when describing the actions of men at war. Six Days in June seamlessly meshes classic military history with the human drama of Israel’s finest hour. Eric Hammel is the author of more than thirty-five highly acclaimed books on military affairs, including Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean War; Ace: A Marine Night Fighter Pilot in World War II; The Root: The Marines in Beirut; and Duel for the Golan: The 100-Hour Battle that Saved Israel.

"A marvelous achievement . . . Anyone curious about the extraordinary six days of Arab-Israeli war will learn much from it."—The Economist Tom Segev's acclaimed works One Palestine, Complete and The Seventh Million overturned accepted views of the history of Israel. Now, in 1967—a number-one bestseller in Hebrew—he brings his masterful skills to the watershed year when six days of war reshaped the country and the entire region. Going far beyond a military account, Segev re-creates the crisis in Israel before 1967, showing how economic recession, a full grasp of the Holocaust's horrors, and the dire threats made by neighbor states combined to produce a climate of apocalypse. He depicts the country's bravado after its victory, the mood revealed in a popular joke in which one soldier says to his friend, "Let's take over Cairo"; the friend replies, "Then what shall we do in the afternoon?" Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries, as well as government memos and military records, Segev reconstructs an era of new possibilities and tragic missteps. He introduces the legendary figures—Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Gamal Abdul Nasser, and Lyndon Johnson—and an epic cast of soldiers, lobbyists, refugees, and settlers. He reveals as never before Israel's intimacy with the White House as well as the political rivalries that sabotaged any chance of peace. Above all, he challenges the view that the war was inevitable, showing that a series of disastrous miscalculations lie behind the bloodshed. A vibrant and original history, 1967 is sure to stand as the definitive account of that pivotal year.

"A brilliant look into the psyche of combat. Where he once took us into the Spartan line of battle at Thermopylae, Steven Pressfield now takes us into the sands of the Sinai, the alleys of Old Jerusalem, and into the hearts and souls of soldiers winning a spectacularly improbable victory against daunting odds.” —General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Army, ret.; author of My Share of the Task June 5, 1967. The nineteen-year-old state of Israel is surrounded by enemies who want nothing less than her utter extinction. The Soviet-equipped Egyptian Army has massed a thousand tanks on the nation’s southern border. Syrian heavy guns are shelling her from the north. To the east, Jordan and Iraq are moving mechanized brigades and fighter squadrons into position to attack. Egypt’s President Nasser has declared that the Arab force’s objective is “the destruction of Israel.” The rest of the world turns a blind eye to the new nation’s desperate peril. June 10, 1967. The Arab armies have been routed, ground divisions wiped out, air forces totally destroyed. Israel’s citizen-soldiers have seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan. The land under Israeli control has tripled. Her charismatic defense minister, Moshe Dayan, has entered the Lion’s Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem to stand with the paratroopers who have liberated Judaism’s holiest site—the Western Wall, part of the ruins of Solomon’s temple, which has not been in Jewish hands for nineteen hundred years. It is one of the most unlikely and astonishing military victories in history. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with veterans of the war—fighter and helicopter pilots, tank commanders and Recon soldiers, paratroopers, as well as women soldiers, wives, and others—bestselling author Steven Pressfield tells the story of the Six Day War as you’ve never experienced it before: in the voices of the young men and women who battled not only for their lives but for the survival of a Jewish state, and for the dreams of their ancestors. By turns inspiring, thrilling, and heartbreaking, The Lion’s Gate is both a true tale of military courage under fire and a journey into the heart of what it means to fight for one’s people.

En bog, skrevet af Sir Winston Churchills søn og sønnesøn, om 6-dages krigen i Israel 5-12 juni 1967. Tidspunktet taget i betragtning en god taktisk og strategisk vurdering af denne lynkrig.

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez’s groundbreaking history of the Six-Day War in 1967 radically changes our understanding of that conflict, casting it as a crucial arena of Cold War intrigue that has shaped the Middle East to this day. The authors, award-winning Israeli journalists and historians, have investigated newly available documents and testimonies from the former Soviet Union, cross-checked them against Israeli and Western sources, and arrived at fresh and startling conclusions. Contrary to previous interpretations, Ginor and Remez’s book shows that the Six-Day War was the result of a joint Soviet-Arab gambit to provoke Israel into a preemptive attack. The authors reveal how the Soviets received a secret Israeli message indicating that Israel, despite its official ambiguity, was about to acquire nuclear weapons. Determined to destroy Israel’s nuclear program before it could produce an atomic bomb, the Soviets then began preparing for war--well before Moscow accused Israel of offensive intent, the overt trigger of the crisis. Ginor and Remez’s startling account details how the Soviet-Arab onslaught was to be unleashed once Israel had been drawn into action and was branded as the aggressor. The Soviets had submarine-based nuclear missiles poised for use against Israel in case it already possessed and tried to use an atomic device, and the USSR prepared and actually began a marine landing on Israel’s shores backed by strategic bombers and fighter squadrons. They sent their most advanced, still-secret aircraft, the MiG-25 Foxbat, on provocative sorties over Israel’s Dimona nuclear complex to prepare the planned attack on it, and to scare Israel into making the first strike. It was only the unpredicted devastation of Israel’s response that narrowly thwarted the Soviet design.