Six days in June

Today marks another important anniversary. Forty years ago, Israel attacked its Arab neighbors, and occupied the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the Six Day War. (The Guardian: Six days of war, 40 years of failure)

On the first day of this unprovoked, preemptive war, Israel almost totally destroyed the air forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In the next five days, its ground forces would significantly expand the territory of the Zionist state and bring a million Palestinians under its occupation. Its swift triumph proved to be a cursed blessing. In a peace deal with Egypt, Israel gave back the Sinai, but 40 years later it is still occupying the other conquered territories and that includes Gaza, as the Israeli army is still launching attacks and incursions to murder the Palestinian people. As philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz pointed out “justice and occupation are not compatible”. Today, injustice and occupation continue.

Forty years after a blatant and illegal land grab by the Zionists, after innumerable U.N. Security Council resolutions, the Zionists still occupy the land and Western governments, Russia and China are doing nothing to drive them back. But the peoples of the world are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Palestinian people. Their resistance will triumph and the state of Israel will disappear from the map, to be replaced by the democratic state of Palestine, a Muslim state where a minority of Jews will be protected and will be able to profess their religion.