Last week, Israel commemorated 40 years since the Six Day War. The Leftist media did all that it could to memorialize the momentous war as a national tragedy. But in between the breast-beating and lamentations, a few pearls were unearthed. One of them is an interview with retired General Avihu Ben Nun. Ben Nun related that on his mission to bomb the Egyptian airport, he and the other fighter jets with him flew low, so as not to be detected by the Jordanian radar. Suddenly an Egyptian bomber appeared and attempted to land in the airport. Ben Nun was forced to choose between downing the bomber or his original mission. In a split second, he opted for the original plan. Other Israeli jets took off after the Egyptian bomber. But the Egyptian pilot seemed to have been very experienced, and with an amazing array of aeronautical acrobatics, he managed to shake off the Israeli jets. 

Years later, after Ben Nun had retired from the army, he met with a Jordanian businessman. The Jordanian told him that he was the flight controller in charge of monitoring take-offs and landings at Israel’s airports during the war. In the days preceding the war, Israel’s leadership begged Jordan’s King Hussein not to join in the fray. The young Hussein was practically convinced. But when Ben Nun bombed the Egyptian airport, Egypt’s President Naaser called Hussein and said to him, “Our jets are bombing Tel Aviv and Haifa is being shelled from the sea. Do you want to lose Jerusalem?” Hussein became suspicious, and he called the Jordanian flight controller.  

“Hussein asked me if I see Egyptian fighters over Tel Aviv,” the Jordanian told Ben Nun. “I told him that I don’t seen anything, when suddenly, while we were still talking, hundreds of Egyptian jets on their way to Tel Aviv appeared on my screen. I excitedly reported the development to the king.” The controller, who had not seen the Israeli jets on their way into Egypt, mistakenly identified Ben Nun and the other Israeli pilots on their way out of Egypt as Egyptian jets. It was that fateful phone conversation that convinced Hussein to enter the war, bringing about the liberation of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. “My only mistake on that day,” Ben Nun concluded the interview, “was not downing the Egyptian bomber. Afterwards, we found out that the Egyptian Chief of Staff and Egypt’s entire General Staff were in that plane.” 

In the most recent issue of Nekudah, historian Dr. Uri Milstein depicts the same event from a different angle. He does not mention Ben Nun in his article, but writes that because of the “mistake” of the Israeli pilot who did not down the Egyptian bomber, Egypt’s Chief of Staff was saved. His mistake, though, turned out to be a most favorable turn of events for Israel. The Egyptian pilot’s acrobatics seemed to have pushed the hapless Chief of Staff over the edge. Immediately upon landing, he ordered his army to retreat from the entire Sinai Peninsula. The Egyptian army turned into no more than a frightened rabble fleeing the advancing Israeli forces.  

One has to be a devout atheist not to see G-d’s hands in the wondrously-precise events of the Six Day War. Most of the Jews were overjoyed to reunite with the land of their forefathers. But Israel’s leaders rejected the Biblical landscapes that had been thrust upon them, relentlessly reminding them of their Jewish identity. “We must be rid of these cursed territories,” said Yossi Sarid. “Oslo means forgetting that you are a Jew,” authoress Dorit Rabinian said with unconcealed candor. It’s true. How can you forget who you are next to your Forefathers’ burial place in Hebron, or at Rachel’s Tomb, the Temple Mount, Jerusalem and Shechem? 

Thus, in the seam between Jewish identity and the Israeli identity that strives to replace it, the “territories” have been dangling on a forty-year thread. This week, Minister Rafi Eitan called the Golan Heights “real-estate.” He isn’t the first one. Rabin had said the very same thing. 

In 1948, Israel’s leadership wanted to retain the territories that it had conquered. It found the way to do so. In 1967, Israel’s leadership wanted to quickly rid itself of the parts of Jewish homeland that had fallen into its hands. Even today, it would not be difficult to encourage Arab emigration out of Israel’s Biblical heartland and to declare Israeli sovereignty there. But the problem is not the Arabs. It’s the Jews. They prefer to live by the sword their entire lives, and even to become refugees, as long as they can “disengage” from the cursed territories.  

The refugees of Sderot have already gotten the picture.