Wars and Lessons part 1

“The greatest battle is not physical but psychological. The

demons telling us to give up when we push ourselves to the limit
can never be silenced for good. They must always be answered by
the quiet the steady dignity that simply refuses to give
in, Courage. We all suffer. Keep going.”

These words of Graeme Fife describing battle is worth a million lessons to life. Though war
is not good to anyone in this world, but if it’s need of the time then one has to fight. In my
view war is something which is fought for many reasons, be it for country, or some ideology
or something else. And as quoted above war is all about psychology rather than power. Many
wars in the past had proved this right. Whether it is 1978 war of China, Vietnam which
though Vietnam lost but it immersed as a major setback to Chinese PLA, or whether it be
United States NATO mission in Afghanistan.

In the first part of the series of Wars and Lessons we are going to talk about Israel’s victory
over Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967. The war in which Israel almost decimated Egypt’s air
force and captured new territory of capturing the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, the Golan
Heights and the old city of Jerusalem. Since the war only lasted for six days i.e. between 5
June, 1967- 10 June, 1967, it is popularly known as Six days of War. Michael Oren,
former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and writer of the book “Six Days of War”
considers the Six-Day War, “as the single most transformative event in the making of the
modern Middle East”.

Though there were many reasons which scripted the war which, we are not going to look for
but we are mainly focused towards the lessons from these wars.

1. Preparation and execution: The first attack were made Israel Airforce at 7:10 am on
5th June, attack was so furious that by 8 am 4 airbases of Sinai were left to fire and
more than 200 planes of Egypt was destroyed on the ground itself. More than this
there were following more points to note of this mission:
 The Israeli Airforce have mocked attack over Egypt’s Airbase many times
before the attack and moreover the mock was kept so secret that barely 4-5
minister of Israel were knowing.
 The mock was so efficient and the pilots were so trained that pilots were
completely on Radio silence and nearby pilots in formation was contacting
each other through hand signs.
 The execution was so perfect that each plane was getting ready within an hour
for its next mission.
 2. Overconfidence of Egypt: Despite intelligence input of attack of Israel’s Airforce no
action was taken because of some internal dispute as well as Egypt’s Airforce was having
confidence that Israel’s Airforce didn’t have that capability to attack their Airfield. But this
believe didn’t take much time to shatter.
 One more thing that made condition even more bad for Egypt was their lack of
preparedness as all of the planes were under the open sky and no protection
was given to them.
3. Training: The pilots and troops of Israel were highly trained as compared to Egypt or
any other Arab nation.
4. The misconception of Egypt army that if there is any attack by Israel, it would be in
morning was the main reason that there was no competition to Israel.

These were the four main reason of Israel’s tremendous victory over Egypt, Jordan, Syria.
But this was not only about how this war was shaped and how Israel got victory but it is more
about the lessons and outcome of the war which is having and will have effect on
international politics for a long time. Some of the major outcomes of the included rise of
International Terrorism and terror attack over Israeli team in 1972 Munich Olympics. The
following points can be concluded as the first part of this series is coming to an end are: -

a. Israel fought alone in the war and got victory this tells us despite of looking about
who and how much is our task we should only focus what resource we have and what
we can do with those resources.
b. Never we should be too sure about any plan, and we should be always be ready with
some plan B.
c. Practice and executing it is the key of success in every reign of life.

At the end I would only say that war is the ultimate truth of humanity and by war I am not
only mentioning war fought by two armies or the fought by guns and bullets. Everybody here
on earth is fighting it’s own war and if we have to come out winning it the only thing needed
is the sixth last word of the quote above.