From +972 Magazine
“Can we say this is the greatest victory in the history of the State of Israel?” This is what a host on Israel’s Channel 12 asked retired Israeli army General Giora Eiland — father of the so-called “Generals’ Plan” to starve and ethnically cleanse Gaza’s northernmost cities — some two hours after the ceasefire between Israel and Iran took effect on June 24. Eiland was modest. The victory in the 1967 war was bigger, he reassured the anchor, but this was certainly a tremendous achievement.
As someone old enough to remember the euphoria following the 1967 war, I can’t deny the echoes between the Six-Day War and this “12-Day War” with Iran: the same collective relief that a perceived existential threat was supposedly eliminated, the same disdain and mockery directed at the enemy’s performance, the same overwhelming pride in Israel’s military prowess — paired with the belief that such a victory secures the country’s future for decades to come.
But as history reminds us, the war of June 1967 wasn’t Israel’s last. Far from it. In many ways, it marked the beginning of a new era of bloodshed. The current war in Gaza, and perhaps the war with Iran as well, can be seen as a direct continuation of that “glorious triumph.”
It took years after 1967 for Israelis to grasp that the war hadn’t ushered in the transformation they had hoped for. This time, the disillusionment set in almost immediately. Mere hours after U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the ceasefire, it was already apparent that victory over Iran was unlikely to end Israel’s conflict with the Islamic Republic, let alone all of its future wars.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, right after the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “I promised you that Iran’s nuclear facilities would be destroyed, one way or another. That promise has been fulfilled.” In a televised address, Trump echoed that sentiment, claiming the sites were “totally obliterated” in the Saturday night airstrike.
The Iranians, meanwhile, countered that they had removed most of the enriched uranium from Fordow before the attack, while a CNN report citing U.S. intelligence sources revealed that the strike had likely delayed Iran’s nuclear program by “a few months” at best. Given that the war’s stated goal was to eliminate the immediate threat of an Iranian bomb — and that U.S. intelligence never believed Iran was close to producing one — it’s hard to argue this goal was achieved.
Meron Rapoport is an editor at Local Call.
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