Opinion and Commentary: On Six-Day War's anniversary, is history repeating itself?
By Seth Mandel
June 8, 2007
Fifty thousand.
Ten years ago, this was how many Americans were involved in American Civil War Reenactments.
According to Wes Mayhle, between 300 and 500 reenactments take place worldwide each year.
Mayhle, the nation's leading Civil War reenactment photographer, is from Florida, where 25 Civil War reenactments took place in 2006. He noted that all those numbers rise every year.
Reenactments and dramatizations are often used to explore, honor, and relive history, none in more prolific numbers and with greater enthusiasm than those of the American Civil War.
But there is a script -- history itself -- that reenactors aren't usually out to rewrite, let alone erase.
Maybe that's why so many people simply don't recognize the type of reenactments that are popular in a place where up is down and right is wrong, a place we call the Middle East. The late Former President Ronald Reagan, in his biography, lamented "the depth of the hatred and the complexity of the problems that made the Middle East such a jungle," and was pushed to the brink of exasperation by "the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics."
Tell me if this sounds familiar: Russia condemns Israel's "excessive use of force"; Egypt invites Arab leaders for discussions aimed at unity and "to support Palestinian rights"; a Palestinian leader publicly states, concerning Americans and Jews, "count them and kill them to the last one"; European powers distance themselves from Israel more and more every day; U.S.-Russian relations "continue to slide"; Israel, under renewed and unprovoked military attack and considered by its enemies to be weaker than it would appear, prepares to "ready [the] public for 'all-out war.'"
Could you tell me if those headlines were from May 2007 or May 1967?
As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War and the resulting reunification of Judaism's holiest city, we look over our shoulders to see what appears to be the casting call for a reenactment of epic proportions.
For me, in this case, it takes one to know one: I am an editor, and one glance at the Middle East is enough to notice the sea of red pens, as Arab leaders -- with presidents and prime ministers the world over looking the other way -- seek to make their revisions to the historical record.
I asked Mayhle why there was such interest in the American Civil War and its reenactment. The answers made me feel like I was talking to preeminent Six-Day War historian Michael Oren.
"The conflict was cataclysmic in the changes it brought to the social and economic landscape of the U.S.A.," Mayhle explained, as I thought of the obvious parallels.
He continued, "The war brought to a head conflicts that existed within the country since its founding."
Mayhle even mentioned things that seemed to have no Middle Eastern reflection at first, but upon further consideration proved otherwise. For example, he pointed out to me that the American Civil War was the first where most of the soldiers involved were literate, and, therefore, left us volumes of written material from the front lines.
I didn't think much of that until I looked into the current Middle Eastern literacy rates, and Israel's related contributions. According to the World Factbook, as of May 2007, the literacy rate in Egypt was 57.7 percent (one could only imagine what it was 40 years ago), Syria's was 76.9 percent, Lebanon's was 87.4 percent, and Jordan's was 91.3 percent.
By contrast, Israel's literacy rate was 95.4 percent.
"The war," Mayhle went on, "was the first major conflict fought over ideals and not land or property."
This last parallel is uncanny, but it is an important reminder of what was behind the Six-Day War. To the Arab leaders, Israel's mere existence was the problem; indeed, that has not changed.
And neither has the rhetoric from European leaders, who are following the aforementioned script to the letter.
In 1967, Israel was desperately avoiding war. In doing so, she assumed she could look to Britain and France, as she did a decade earlier. But alas, the two European powers had left the party, weary from, and wary of, its hosts.
In 2007, British institutions have reveled in their discovery of this thing called a boycott; one by one, journalists and "academics" have convinced their unions to boycott Israel. There would be nothing funny about such degeneration of the human character if not for the hint of humorous irony in the fact that people who call themselves educators are displaying proudly just how uneducated they truly are.
And what of the Superpower? There is clearly strong, bipartisan U.S. support for Israel; President George W. Bush affirmed that in a recent speech in Edison.
But the combination of a Democratic Congress and Republican White House has created a laugh-until-you-cry, "Who's On First" diplomatic farce. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi makes a questionable visit to terrorist-sponsor extraordinaire Syria, after which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert makes a public statement claiming Pelosi misrepresented Israel's position on the discussions, and Pelosi returns home to the pronouncement of the apparent illegality of her adventure.
But then, after Ahmad Bahar made his "count them and kill them to the last one" demand, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to Israel with her own demands in the form of a "benchmark" initiative; namely, that Israel should provide arms and ammunition to the Palestinian Authority security forces, and allow freer movement between Gaza and the West Bank, so that both Palestinian territories can share the long-range rockets that PA officials will then promise not to use on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
But every cake needs icing, and Rice provided it with her recent bafflingly unhelpful and absurdly out-of-line warning that Israel should not explore Syrian peace initiatives until the Palestinians have their state.
Apparently, there are no swimmers here, only lifeguards.
The loudest sound in all this, however, may have come from a mouse. When I was in college, we journalism students were taught to be careful not to use brand names in place of generic terms. In other words, don't write Kleenex when you mean "tissue," and write "copy," not Xerox.
But by far the sternest warning was this: if you're thinking about using any term that could possibly be copyrighted by, or associated with, the Walt Disney Co., think again.
When Farfur, a Mickey Mouse look-alike, squeaked to viewers of a Palestinian children's show, "You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists... We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers," elicited not a word from Disney, the silence was not just telling, it was frightening.
And when poor Farfur, after getting caught cheating in school, was confronted by his teacher, he was in tears explaining how the Jews destroyed his house, and in so doing, destroyed his notebook, too.
Still not a word from Disney. What gives, Disney CEO Robert Iger?
"I just didn't think it would have any effect," Iger said, according to the Associate Press. "I think it should have been obvious how the company felt about the subject."
No need, dear readers, to protest what you may consider to be the company's hypocrisy -- it's obvious how you feel.
What can we do? Well, if Israel's neighbors decide to go through with their own reenactment of the Six-Day War, we can emulate Mayhle. I asked him what draws him to the reenactments, what pulls him to travel from state to state each year, covering so many renditions of the famous, history-changing war, without ever participating in a single one.
"After I attended my first reenactment, I felt a responsibility to document and publicize the events because no-one ever had (in the way I do)," Mayhle told me. "I do it for the reenactors, for myself, and for the public, in that order."
Lest anyone forget what happens each time, there are more than 6,000 photographs on Mayhle's Web site, http://www.CivilWarP.com, to remind them.
So as Israel's enemies memorize their lines, let's remember ours, and let Israel remember hers.
A correspondent for The Economist wrote from Jerusalem at the conclusion of the Six-Day War that the Israeli people and the Arab leaders believed Israel had never been weaker internally.
"The economy was in trouble; immigration was falling off; the political system was in difficulties," the correspondent wrote. "The zest of war and of victory has changed all that for the moment. No doubt there will be some interesting political changes at the top in due course now that the younger men have shown their paces."
"What matters," the writer concluded, "is that Israel can look anyone in the eye anywhere in the world. For Jewry to be envied: that is a change indeed."