Michael Oren: Should Israel Strike First?

For more than two weeks, Israelis have been waiting for war. Immediately after the July 31 assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran pledged to retaliate massively against Israel. 

So far the main event hasn’t happened. Talks for the release of the remaining 111 Israeli hostages in Hamas’s hands drag on inconclusively and Hezbollah rockets slam into the north, but it’s the fear of Iranian missiles raining down on our homes that most consumes Israelis. We are hoarding essentials and stocking our bomb shelters with canned tuna and bottled water. Nobody dares travel far from home. Nobody wants to get caught in their car, in the middle of a highway, when the sirens wail.

I’m a historian. So over the course of these long days and nights—part of them spent volunteering as an IDF reservist, helping to guard Kibbutz Kfar Blum near the northern border—I’ve found my mind looking back to Israel’s past. Specifically, I’ve wondered if the predicament we are facing now in 2024 is more like 1967 or 1973. 

In other words: Are we living in a Levi Eshkol or a Golda Meir moment? Do we have a prime minister who will preemptively attack our enemies? Or one who won’t take the risk?

Levi Eshkol was Israel’s prime minister in May 1967, when the Egyptians ousted UN peacekeepers from Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, remilitarized them both, and closed the Straits of Tiran to shipping to and from Eilat. Joining Egypt in preparing to destroy Israel and cast its inhabitants to the sea were the armies of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Israel was surrounded and shorn of allies; France, its sole superpower backer, precipitously switched sides. The Arabs, unlike Israel, had oil. 

When asked by Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban on May 26 whether the United States would back a preemptive strike against its assembled enemies, President Lyndon Baines Johnson repeatedly replied, “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone.” 

The decision was up to Eshkol.

A wry, gray, avuncular leader—hardly the warrior type—Eshkol had to weigh the risks of not striking first versus the danger of forfeiting American support. By waiting for the Arab armies to attack, Israel’s very existence might be endangered. Egyptian tanks could be rumbling through Tel Aviv and the Jordanian flag flying over Jerusalem. On the other hand, if Israel struck first and failed, the country would be left utterly defenseless. No nation, not even the United States, would come to Israel’s aid. 

For the three weeks still remembered by Israelis of that generation as Tekufat HaHamtanah—the waiting period of unbearable tension—Eshkol exhausted one diplomatic option after another. Then, finally, he decided.

On the morning of June 6, Israeli warplanes bombed hundreds of Egyptian fighter jets on the ground. The air forces of Jordan and Syria were incinerated next. Israeli ground troops soon charged into Sinai, Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank, conquering all. Syria’s Golan Heights was the last to fall. Six days later, Israel had almost quadrupled the territory under its control—including, for the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Jewish world rejoiced. But what would President Johnson say? Would he punish Israel for its insolence—perhaps even sever ties?

LBJ did nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he admired Israel’s determination to stick up for itself. For the first time, an American president approved the sale of tanks and advanced jets to Israel and stood firmly beside it in the UN Security Council. Out of Eshkol’s gumption, the U.S.-Israeli strategic alliance was born.