Captain Allen@CptAllenHistory
On This Day — May 18, 1967
18 days before the Six Day War, Arab leaders openly broadcast their planned extermination of Israel.
Egypt’s official Voice of the Arabs declared:
“The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence."
Two days later, with Syrian troops already massed on Israel’s border, Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad declared:
“I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.”
Cairo Radio the next day:
“This is our chance, Arabs, to deal Israel a mortal blow of annihilation, to blot out its entire presence in our holy land.”
Extermination. Annihilation. Annihilation again.
They said it loudly, proudly, and repeatedly on state radio — a little more than two weeks before the war. Not hidden plans. Not vague threats. Explicit genocidal intent, 22 years after the Holocaust.
Yet to this day, people still blame Israel for starting the war.
The truth: Israel faced imminent annihilation from a Soviet-backed Arab alliance that had mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops, closed the Straits of Tiran, and expelled UN peacekeepers. Under customary international law, a preemptive strike against an imminent existential threat is not only justified — it is legal.
Israel struck first only against Egypt, the ringleader. It begged Jordan’s King Hussein to stay out of the fighting. Hussein ignored the plea, joined the war, and lost the "West Bank" and Old City of Jerusalem in the process.
Israel didn’t want that war.
It simply refused to die in it.
While the world did nothing, Israel acted alone — and in six days destroyed the genocidal threat to its existence.
