History lesson: the six-day war - film clip

The six-day war with Israel in 1967 was a severe humiliation to the Arabs. The armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq were defeated, 100 Egyptian pilots killed and over 300 Egyptian jetfighters and hundreds of tanks were destroyed on the ground.

Israel seized the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights. Overall, Israel's territory grew three times in size; 300 kilometers in the south, 60 kilometers in the east and 20 kilometers in the north. About one million Arabs came under Israeli control in the captured territories. Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser resigned but the emotional masses wanted him to stay, so he revoked his resignation. Syrian Defence Minister Hafez Al Assad did not resign. He had trained as a fighter pilot and two thirds of the Syrian airforce was destroyed in the 6-day battle. Before the war, on 20 May 1967, he had declared:

"Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united....I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation"

This film clip shows horrific scenes of death and destruction and Egyptian General Mun'em Abdul Husseini signing the surrender documents in the presence of Israeli army generals. the Israeli army is also seen entering East Jerusalem almost unchallenged. Sympathy and admiration for the Israelis can be detected in the American narrator's comments.

Click here to watch (5 minutes).