Six Days of War, by Michael B. Oren, is a historical nonfiction book account of the war that broke out between the Arabs and Israelis in June 1967 that lasted only six days and resulted in the Egyptian occupation of Gaza and the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank. The culture in Southeast Asia is very different from the culture we’re familiar with in the United States, and in Israel alone there are many different groups of people who feel different ways about who should own what land and how they should go about trying to obtain that land. In the book I read there were three main political powers in the Six Day War: The Israelis, The Jordanians, and The Egyptians, led by Gamal Nasser. Even though the book followed no one person specifically, instead offering a third person view of all the world powers, Michael Oren did a great job at helping the reader experience what all the people involved in this war felt. There are entire encyclopedias of context leading up to the Six Day War, so trying to say one event or one group of people caused it would be a gross oversimplification.
For the Egyptians, Nasser wanted to close off the Straits of Tiran again to all Israeli ships, which have been open since the 1956 War where Israel invaded Egypt to open them back up to Israeli shipping after being closed in 1950. For the Israelis, they took this and the Egyptian forces mobilizing along the border between Egypt and the western side of Israel as a preemptive attack and on June Fifth launched attacks on Egyptian military bases, primarily through airstrikes on their air forces. Finally for the Jordanians, who were brought into the war by Nasser, who in the midst of their military bases being air stroke told Jordan of what Israel had done and deceived them by saying they fended off the Israeli attack and still had all of their military forces in full strength. Jordan, being an ally to Egypt, stepped in and started the offense on Israel’s eastern half under the assumption that they would plow through the Israelis very easily, and with Egypt’s back up they’d be able to close off Israel on the east and west. Over the next six days, until June 11th, war tore Israel, Jordan, and Egypt apart. War for Americans, at least recently, has all been abroad and we haven’t had to fight at home for a long time.
These people were fighting and watching their very houses and neighborhoods being torn apart, and that has become a part of their culture to fight for what they are standing on, while in America we fight for the freedom of a land that is almost always half way across the world. It might not seem like much of a big difference, but this shift in warfare creates a completely different attitude about war and a subsequently different culture. In A Muslim Primer: Beginner’s Guide to Islam, a book by Ira Zepp, after talking about holy wars and warfare it’s stated that “It is crucial to note here that what is condoned is defensive warfare; Islam cannot justify aggressive war.” This shows that the culture in Southwest Asia is very focused during war times on defending their homes and defending what they believe in.
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The Israelis launched attacks on Egypt to defend their trade routes and their land out of fear of the Egyptians invading along the western border, closing off the Straits of Tiran and taking their land through military force. The Jordanians were brought into the war by Nasser, who told them that Israel was going to launch an attack on their territory. It was only a natural response for Jordan to jump in and help Egypt fight for land they were worried their allies would lose. The Six Day War was brought forth by a culture that is focused on preserving a way of life that is based around discipline and loyalty. Thousands of Middle Eastern men died in the line of battle to preserve their culture, and while it was a decisive victory for Israel all sides showed great valor and integrity.
In Six Days of War, Michael Oren refers to oil and petroleum pipelines many times throughout his historical book. On page 292, Michael Oren writes that “David Elazar was planning to do just that. In addition to Tawafiq, he had authorized the capture of a wide swath of Golan territory, from Butmiya to Quneitra, following an oil petroleum pipe and its parallel service road, the so-called TAP Line.” This specific petroleum pipeline is very important in my book because it crosses the entirety of the Arabian Peninsula and if any one side gains control over this massive pipeline means total control over the distribution of most of the oil across the Middle East. It was a goal of the Israeli army to control it, and David Elazar ordering its immediate capture along with other key points was a bold move, considering the limited military resources they had at the time. Now the TAP (Trans-Arabian Pipeline) Line was not the only reference to petroleum and oil in Oren’s book, he also mentioned many others, such as the Oil Embargo which absolutely destroyed gas prices and left many long lasting scars in the global economy.
Oil and petroleum products in Southwest Asia have molded and shaped the culture because it is an extremely large source of revenue for Middle Eastern countries and their peoples. For example, 23% of Egypt’s annual exports are in crude petroleum alone (that being the nation’s largest export), while for the United States it is only 7% (Center for International Development, Harvard University). This huge abundance of oil creates an absolute financial lifeline for the people living in the Middle East, forcing them to be at the very least semi-dependent on oil products. Now, the people of Southeast Asia are very conscious, and know that the oil isn’t going to be able to be drilled forever, so they have had to work hard and get the best minds together to plan for their futures by diversifying their economies. This is why you’ll come to see places like Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on creating a very vibrant, developed, and modern city filled with many breathtaking buildings and tourist attractions, to try and get more tourists to visit their once not so desirable country in order to build up the tourism sector of their economy.
In Six Days of War, Michael Oren doesn’t write about the petroleum as an absolute environmental quagmire or as an amazing financial opportunity ready to dig in to, he writes about it as a resource, a source of gargantuan power, and as something that needs to be conquered in order to maintain or build power in times of war. Michael Oren paints a portrait of the role oil played in the six day war as an incredibly crucial piece in battle, almost as if it was another allied army fighting for Israel itself. If it wasn’t for all of the ludicrous amounts of oil in the Middle East, the Six Day War and the events leading up to it would have been very different, if even happening at all due to Egypt cutting off Israel’s desires to export its oil.
