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, 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 the 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 on the lessons from these wars.

1.     Preparation and execution: The first attack were made Israel Airforce at 7:10 am on 5^th June, the attack was so furious that by 8 am 4 airbases of Sinai were left to fire and more than 200 planes of Egypt were 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 was knowing.

·       The mock was so efficient and the pilots were so trained that pilots were completely on Radio silence and nearby pilots information 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 the condition even worse for Egypt was their lack of preparedness as all of the planes was 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 the morning was the main reason that there was no competition to Israel.

These were the four main reason for Israel’s tremendous victory over Egypt, Jordan, Syria. But this was not only about how this war was shaped and how Israel got the victory but it is more about the lessons and outcome of the war which is having and will have an effect on international politics for a long time. Some of the major outcomes of the included rise of International Terrorism and terror attack over the Israeli team in the 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 the victory this tells us despite looking about who and how much is our task we should only focus on what resources we have and what we can do with those resources.

b.     Never we should be too sure about any plan, and we should always be ready with some plan B.

c.     Practice and executing it is the key to 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 its own war and if we have to come out winning it the only thing needed is the sixth last word of the quote above.

Images Source: Google

Divyansh Anand
(Dayatva Team member)