Episode 52: 1967 - The Arab-Israeli Six Day War

On May 15, 1967 Egyptian President Nasser ordered his army to march into Sinai Peninsula and then demanded that the United Nations pull its peacekeepers from the peninsula. Then he declared the Straits of Tiran, closed to Israeli shipping.  Subsequently, on June 5, 1967, the Israel Defense Forces initiated Operation Focus, a coordinated aerial attack on Egypt. After catching the Egyptians by surprise, they assaulted 18 different airfields and eliminated roughly 90 percent of the Egyptian air force as it sat on the ground. Israel then expanded the range of its attack and decimated the air forces of Jordan, Syria and Iraq. In the five days that followed Israel routed the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. It captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai desert from Egypt; the Golan Heights from Syria; and the West Bank and East Jerusalem, from Jordan. And for the first time in almost two millennia the Jewish holy places in Jerusalem were under the control of Jews.