40 year anniversary of the "six-day war"

in hindsight, one can argue that this was the conflict which probably began the era of middle-eastern terrorism. the arab nations surrounding tiny israel (egypt, syria, jordan, lebanon to a lesser extent...) all decided it was time to wipe israel off the map, once and for all. how TIME magazine covered it in their June 16, 1967 issue here. their asses were all kicked. israel found themselves in control of so much land that they decided to give a lot of it back.

as time has passed, we've learned how much this humiliated all of the arab nations, who had been asking for this fight, sure that Allah was on their side...but, ultimately got caught with their pants down. rumor has it that egyptian generals were getting drunk and not exactly up to the task when israel had mobilized and decided to go on offense. this did not make the early jihadists happy at all with their rulers, and also showed them that to confront the West militarily was not at all a smart choice.