Zionists And Warplanes And Nukes, Oh My!

In honor of today's 40th anniversary of the start of the 6-Days War, today is going to be all-Israel, all the time. Just consider me part of the vast Zionist conspiracy.

First up, the must-watch (or must-listen) event is Bob Wright's interview with Gershom Gorenberg on bloggingheads.tv. Another fine piece of telejournalism by Bob, who has done a wonderful job of bringing some extremely fine minds into bh.tv for some interesting and insightful pieces.

Gershom does a wonderful job of outlining the early history of Israel, and the military buildup that led to the 6-Days War. It's worth remembering that, when we were attacked on 9/11, 3000 people died, about 0.0001% of the country's population. From that, we have been sold into the fact that we are facing an existential threat, which is to say that there is a reason to believe that Muslim radicals could possibly manage to kill 1,000,000% more people than they did on 9/11.

Israel, on the other hand, was surrounded on 3 sides by hostile armies, and the only reason it wasn't 4 is because the Arabs didn't have an army of water-walking messiahs with which to attack from the south. It wasn't just the proverbial rock and the hard place, it was more like being stuck between a rock, a hard place, Donald Trump's hair and Roseanne Barr singing 'The Star Spangled Banner.'

The point is, Israel's mere survival of this period is pretty amazing. This is not to excuse all the things that Israel has done wrong since then, or that they continue to do, of which there are legion. But it is to say that America may have overreacted an eensy-weensy bit after one very bad day, so surely we can have a little sympathy to the plight of a small country, living in a pretty hostile land, surrounded on all sides by people sworn to their destruction, and understand why the Israelis can seem a bit cantankerous at times.