Memories from Tuesday morning June 7th,1967

As an American Jew I grew up knowing my Jewishness in the grand tradition of Southern Laid-Back Reform Judaism like that reflected in the famous movie "Driving Miss Daisy".

Zionism wasn't a "thing" taught to us; we were not given any notion to "make the move". Oh, but yes, we were told to back our fellow Jews in Israel with money and political support especially in time of crisis, but "Gott Im Himmel!" make dare I say it "Aliyah"!!!

One of my first most vivid memories of the awareness of my connection to "those Jews in Israel" was on that morning of June 6th 1967 as a "privileged American born diaspora Jew". I can remember my Momma, of blessed memory, waking me up and telling me to come quick and to watch the news. She knew better then to wake up my older brother who couldn't care. As she stood there in our living room in front of our large brand new Zenith Console Color TV she held a kitchen towel and wringed it and as she stood frozen watching the screen with a look of concern, dread and fear I had never seen before she spoke to me in a fearful (Southern Jewish) voice; "On dear lord what is happening."

I took my place on the floor in front and watched the reports of an amazing day of fighting. The story was just then breaking, that Tuesday June 6^th 1967, of how the Israeli Air Force had carried out a fantastic feat by launching a preemptive strike against the combined Arab air forces of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan destroying hundreds of their aircraft on the ground on their air fields. They pockmarked the landing strips with craters.

As millions other saw on the news reports of just how in a lighting war move Israel had entered Sinai and had decimated the waiting Egyptian Armies by smashing and destroying hundreds of brand-new Soviet made tanks with outdated but Israeli upgraded and modified World War II “Super”Sherman tanks and British Centurions.

Up until that eventful morning I had been a relatively naive Jew living in Alabama in the United States. I was an American living in peace and tranquility far from the terror and fear of immediate death faced by my fellow Jews in Israel.

Prior to the outbreak of the conflict we had all witnessed on the evening news of those days, presented by real respected journalists and TV news anchormen. Men with integrity; Walter Cronkite of CBS and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley of NBC. We watched in trepidation, the massive hate filled demonstrations and the sections taken or cited from Arab broadcasts of the "impending" extermination of the tiny Jewish State. The foreboding of mass extermination that would murder the Jewish remnants of the Holocaust and those ethnically cleansed form Arab lands hung heavily in the air.

We saw- witnessed - on the nightly news broadcasts how U Thant and the UN capitulated and with their tail between their legs as they readily abandoned- "withdrew" from their posts in Gaza at the demand of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser.

We witnessed the closure of the sea lanes to Israel in the Straits of Tiran.

We saw the intermittent deadly and highly destructive shelling of the Kibbutzim and Moshavim along the border of the Golan Heights.

The parades and marches to bombastic martial music with thousands of "Goose stepping" formations of soldiers along with their new Soviet Made tanks and anti-aircraft missiles.

And last but not least, who cannot forget the famous singing in pride by the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum screaming out "Balady ya Balady" (the song for Falestine) during the procession of hate.

It truly amazes me just how the "Dyzinformation" and "Revisionist Historians" have erased the facts of the fear of immediate genocide that were loudly proclaimed and broadcast on the world news nightly in those months prior to the magnificent and astonishing Israeli military victory.

I ask how far have we been distanced from this previous picture of innocence and admiration of the brave little David merely because we Jews survived and won?

How little Israel, symbolized as the young shepherd boy David, surrounded as in 1947 by powerful superior numbers in weapons- tanks and aircraft, strategic supplies and men - the "modern day version" of Goliath.

The world's utter astonishment and amazement of just "HOW?" tiny Israel was able to carry out a military victory akin to the biblical recounting of the encounter between the young David with his smooth pebble and slingshot against the mighty heavily armored Goliath.

Fewer still do not remember the astonishing move by Moshe Dayan to run to the Allenby Bridge -which had been destroyed by the Jordanians in their hastily retreat across the Jordan. to call out by microphone to the fleeing Arabs to return home as reported in the "once pro-Israel" New York Times?

Or the infamous return of the responsibility of the Temple Mound to the Wakif and the Mufti of Jerusalem by Moshe Dayan at the urging of Rabbi Goren and other Rabbis of note who said that no Jew was allowed to step there?

How Abba Eban spoke to the world begging to "sit and negotiate" but to nil.

I ask; “Just how fickle are the memories of those who aspire to hatred?"