From the June War of 1967 to June 2026

After the June War of 1967, General Chaim Bar-Lev boasted upon taking over as Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army on January 1, 1968, that the ceasefire lines after the war were ideal for Israel, and that another war would not add significant field achievements (occupation of Arab lands) nor warrant launching another war, suggesting that such a war might improve the ceasefire lines to extend to the Litani River in Lebanon, the Druze Mountain in Syria, and Tel Irbid in northwest Jordan.

Bar-Lev concluded that these three areas did not require another war and that the army's goal was to reach a state of effective deterrence against the Arabs; "removing from their minds the possibility of attacking us with a comprehensive or limited assault."

An Israeli book on the War of Attrition noted that Bar-Lev repeated his statements months later during a session to present the annual army assessment, claiming they controlled "excellent" areas, stating, "We are there strongly, and our security situation regarding land control has never been as comfortable and good as it is today."

Bar-Lev's term as Chief of Staff ended in 1971, and his name entered history about two years later with the collapse of his famously fortified and notoriously known Bar-Lev Line on the eastern side of the Suez Canal coinciding with the onset of the October War of 1973.

The Israelis were immersed in the ecstasy of power and intoxication after the 1967 war, and they fancied in their wild imaginations that they could change the geography of the Arab East, carving out southern Syria, Lebanon, and northern Jordan to create a security strip that would act as a front line defense on the thresholds of Damascus and Beirut.

After nearly six decades since the June War of 1967, Israel's greed in occupying Arab lands and turning them into a forward defense line in enemy territories has not changed; Bar-Lev's discourse could be the discourse of the current Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir. The rhetoric still includes the occupation of more Arab lands and the eradication of the idea of resistance or fighting from the Arab consciousness by imposing a price on their resistance through land occupation and destruction of buildings, or what has come to be known after the July War of 2006 as the southern suburb doctrine, or what is known in military terminology as scorched earth policy.

Additionally, there is a disdain for the Arabs' ability to plan and prepare for war and combat. However, the Minister of Defense during the June war, Moshe Dayan, had a contrary opinion in this regard, albeit motivated by racist and orientalist inclinations, with an irrational attempt to interpret the Arabs' insistence on fighting to liberate their lands; he said in a meeting with American diplomats in July 1968, George Ball and Joseph Sisco, during their visit to Tel Aviv, that "the self-awareness of Arabs has a significant impact on their assessments of the likelihood of a new war, and the hatred of Israel and the desire to destroy it, along with the hatred of all foreigners, is not a political matter, as the Muslim masses especially, the lower classes, view war as faith and doctrine; they must kill infidels simply because they are not Muslims," excluding Shah Iran from that. Dayan interpreted the joining of young Arabs to the Palestinian armed struggle then as a hatred of foreign infidels and that fighting and martyrdom lead to paradise, ignoring any national, patriotic, or political dimension in that context.

This irrational analysis by Dayan may be an early incitement attempt to the American diplomats that the war with the Arabs is religious and civilizational, a war against the entire west, a war of the entire west; for in his famous speech in 1956 eulogizing a soldier in Kibbutz Nahol Oz on the borders of the Gaza Strip, Dayan himself acknowledged that the cause of hatred and the desire for revenge among the residents of Gaza was displacement and occupation, not religious motives.

We will find such racist views towards Arabs and Muslims in the "theorist of Islamic terrorism" less than two decades later, namely Benjamin Netanyahu, who transformed Dayan's irrational "insights" about Arabs and Muslims, reducing it to hatred of infidels, into a Western trend that does not explain the hostility to Israel and the West in terms of political and historical reasons related to colonialism and exploitation, but in terms of psychological composition and a self-awareness inherently hostile to strangers - infidels.

Just as Netanyahu refuses to withdraw from any inch of the occupied Arab lands, so too did Dayan precede him in that and in the necessity for Israeli society to transform into "Sparta" to bear the economic burdens resulting from the continuation of the occupation. Dayan rejected Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, stating he preferred "an agreement less than peace that keeps Sharm el-Sheikh in our hands, to be signed by the Egyptians that this is the border, even if it is a ceasefire line."

Dayan was asked whether Israel could bear the burdens resulting from the long-term occupation of Arab lands, and he said, "I believe we can bear this burden… in preparation for the upcoming war and victory in it, in managing the (occupied) areas and in fighting (the Fatah movement). But one thing we cannot do is to continue living a peaceful life in a state of abundance… we are forced to adapt a peaceful life… to a state of war. To reduce the standard of living… so we can bear these heavy tasks for a long time, heavy in human and financial resources." This is the same "Sparta" economy that Netanyahu called for.

Bar-Lev's and Dayan's army suffered substantial losses in the War of Attrition with Egypt, and later in the 1973 War, but the June War of 1967 had the most significant impact on both the Arabs and Israel, making the continuous occupation a more religiously and nationally extreme state, increasing its greed for military expansion in southern Syria and Lebanon, and perhaps Tel Irbid as Bar-Lev contemplated once, exacerbating its racial blindness towards the Arabs as expressed by Dayan.

The extremists Dayan referred to during his conversation with American diplomats today resemble Smotrich, Ben Gvir, and settler gangs, who are members of parliament and ministers in the government.

Netanyahu is not a turning point in Israel's history in its conflict with the Arabs, but rather a continuation of the founding fathers' approach of aggressive desire for expansion, racism, and contempt for Arabs, nor is he more authoritarian than them internally, but the Arabs, nations, and regimes, are the ones who have changed, for the worse.