“Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East”, by Michael B. Oren

 

496 pages, Presidio Press, ISBN-13: 978-0345461926

 

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren is an excellent account of the series of events from within the governments of Israel and the Arab states that surround it (but principally Egypt) that led to the disastrous (for the Arabs) Six Day War of 1967. Many histories become bogged down in the details, often putting up so many trees that the forest becomes non-existent, let alone unanswerable. But for Oren this is not the case: he has written a very easy to follow - and yet very detailed - account of conflict (even with the few, crappy maps within). The book also gives several mini-bios of the historical figures of the time, even if said bios do not match the perceived images of the men in question: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol of Israel comes across as an irrelevant figure whose decision making was taken out of his hands; General Moshe Dayan of Israel is shown as the military genius that he was with instincts dangerous to any democracy; President Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein of Egypt comes across much more favorably than most remember him; Hafez al-Assad changes the least and is shown as the despotic thug he was and which he so well passed to his son; and Hussein bin Talal, King of Jordan, is portrayed as an easily duped and manipulatable ruler yet with an uncanny ability to survive.

 

It can be easy to forget that Israel, by any rational measure, should have lost this war: surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned, the fact that this pack of bantam roosters not only drafted their many enemies, but did so convincingly, would be unbelievable if it hadn't actually happened. While many other works of scholarship have been published since Oren’s book first came out in 2003, his is the standard by which all of these other books are to be judged. The author has constructed a gripping account of war that illuminates the (perhaps unanswerable) question as to how politicians get dragged by the nose into conflicts they can neither see nor want. Oren displays the tortured politics of the Middle East, and it is obvious from the writing that it is this, the civilian side of the conflict, that interests him the most, although the military and, even, societal events that form the center of the conflict are not ignored (it must be noted, however, that in this telling the Six Years War was caused principally by Arab blundering and bravado, and fear and apprehension in the Israeli camp).
 

By drawing on archival sources and interviews from all sides - although he Arab side is thinner than the Israeli as fewer records are available - Six Days of War does its best to be dispassionate about a conflict that reverberates throughout the Middle East and, even, the world to this day.