“The greatest success of the Diaspora in the post-Holocaust era: the saving of Soviet Jewry. That would not have happened without the Six Day War. The Six Day War empowered Soviet Jews to begin resisting the Soviet policy of forced assimilation. Until the Six Day War, you had sporadic incidents of Soviet Jewish resistance. Every Simhat Torah [1] they would gather at the last remaining synagogue in Moscow. Tens of thousands of young people. And then they would melt away back into the Soviet nothingness.
Beginning with the Six Day War, you had the unprecedented phenomenon of an ethnic group in the Soviet Union openly challenging Soviet policy and linking with forces abroad. It happened precisely because Soviet Jews drew strength and courage from Israel and the example of the Six Day War. Had there not been that model of Jewish heroism that the Six Day War presented, Soviet Jews would have eventually disappeared…” [full article from Jerusalem Post…]
– Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he is co-director, together Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, of the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), and a member of the Institute’s iEngage Project.
[1] Jewish festival celebrating the completion of the annual cycle of the reading of the Torah in the synagogue and its first book is begun again.
