Wednesday War Stories ~ The 1967 Arab-Israeli War – 5-10 June 1967

Aaron Danis, 11 June 2025

The 1967 Arab-Israeli War, aka The Six-Day War, was the 3^rd and most pivotal Arab-Israeli war in the modern era (1948 and 1956 being the first two). It completely redrew the map of the Levant by doubling the size of Israel, created Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, galvanized Palestinian militant groups to conduct international terrorism, and set the stage for the 4^th Arab-Israeli war 6 years later (aka the 1973 Yom Kippur or October War) which more heavily involved the United States and the Soviet Union¹. It also was the first conflict with its neighbors where Israel could possibly improvise a nuclear weapon if needed.²

most images can click to enlarge

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF, aka Zahal in Hebrew) was outnumbered. The IDF fielded 250,000 men when fully mobilized (nearly three-quarters were reservists). Of 25 brigades, nine were armored, two were mechanized, and ten were infantry, some partly mechanized, as well as four paratroop brigades³. The Six-Day was interesting from the fact that the Israelis still employed several battalions of American World War 2 Sherman tanks (many up-gunned to a 105mm main gun), alongside newer tanks such as the workhorse British Centurions and American M-48 Pattons, and French AMX-13 (used by Israel in a recon role since they were outgunned).⁴

On the Arab side, the Soviets had sent billions of dollars in military aid to the Arab states, and the Arabs fielded a combined 328,000 troops (not all deployed in the direct fighting)⁵, 1,700 tanks, 2,400 pieces of artillery, and 500 jet aircraft. Nearly half of the armaments went to Egypt, which Israel assessed as its most dangerous opponent. The Egyptian’s stubborn defense of the key Abu Ageila position in the Sinai in the 1956 war won the admiration of the IDF⁶. Soviet T-54/55 were the primary main battle tanks for the Egyptians and Syrians, the Jordanians used the American M-47 and M-48 Patton tanks⁷. The Arabs also used some Shermans and former German Panzerkampfwagen Mark IVs, as well as a mix of Soviet T-34/85s, SU-100 SP guns, and Joseph Stalin IS-3M heavy tanks⁸.

In strictly military terms it wasn’t much of a war as the Israeli military launched a surprise attack once they believed that a combined two-front war was imminent (against Egypt in the West and Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon in the East; Iraq joined Jordan at the very end, but it was not substantial). Arab air forces were mostly destroyed on the ground on the first day of the war, leaving Arab troops without air cover⁹. The Israelis drove into the Sinai and Golan Heights with strong armored forces supported by paratroopers and infantry. Israel also quickly seized the West Bank from Jordan¹⁰. In the Sinai the Israelis lost 122 tanks; the Egyptians lost 820 out of 935, a catastrophic defeat. Against Jordan, the Israelis lost 112 in exchange for 179 Jordanian tanks, a more even exchange. In the Golan, the Israelis had their highest armor losses, 160 tanks (about a third of what they committed), in exchange for 80-90 Syrian tanks. The terrain there favored the defender and canalized Israeli columns, but didn’t prevent their ultimate success.

This war, as many do, had a messy ending involving U.S. and Soviet Union saber-rattling, a harbinger of their deeper involvement in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The U.S. and United Nations pressured Israel to stop their offensive as the Israelis sped to grab the best terrain possible in the Golan, to include strategically valuable Mount Hermon¹¹ . The humiliating loss for the Arab armies set the stage for the 1973 war, however, which was fought in part so they could regain their martial reputation.

Want to game it out?

Because of the war’s reputation as a blowout, there are not a lot of games on the topic, unlike the much evenly fought (at least initially) 1973 war. The main options to game out the entire Six-Day War are Modern War (MW) magazine #4 from 2012, the much smaller and simpler 6 Days of War from High-Flying Dice (HFD) games, or the SPI classic Sinai from 1973 (the Orders of Battle may be less accurate in that one, but you can probably correct them). The Modern War game features each player playing the Israelis on either the Golan or Sinai front, as well as the Arab force facing their opponent on the opposite front, à la SPI’s Battle for Germany. Players bid for Israeli reinforcements at the cost of victory points.

There are a few other Six-Day War games listed on the Board Game Geek (BGG) website, however I have only listed 3 others below. I have played (but do not own) Mark Herman’s SPI Modern Battles II folio game on the Battle for Jerusalem, notable because it is largely fought between Israel and Jordan, with two Egyptian and four Iraqi units thrown in. There is a great review of it here, and Mark Herman provides an interesting insight on the games’ design.

If you want to fight at the tactical level, the bad news is that SPI’s Mech War 2 Suez to Golan is only about the 1973 October War, and GDW’s Sands of War (with the expansion module) has only four 1967 scenarios, one of which is the Abu Ageila fight. SPI’s Mech War 77 mainly is about a hypothetical U.S.-Soviet conflict.

	Six Day War: 1967 (2012)
	6 Days of War: The Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967 (2011) This game depicts the conflict between Israel and the United Arab Republic.
	Hot Sand, Cold Steel: The Battle of Abu Ageila June 5-6, 1967 (2021) An entry-level simulation of this battle fought in the Sinai between the Egyptian 2nd Infantry Division and elements of General Ariel Sharon’s armored Ugdah (division).
	Sinai: The Arab-Israeli Wars – ’56, ’67 and ’73 (1973)
	The Battle for Jerusalem 1967 (1977) An operational level game simulating combat between the Israeli and Jordanian forces on the West Bank.
	Elusive Victory: The Air War over the Suez Canal, 1967-1973 (2009) The operational art of Arab-Israeli air warfare, 1967-1973.

For More Information

There are LOTS of videos about the war available on YouTube. Here is a sampling:

• The History Channel: Here’s How the Six-Day War Changed the Map of the Middle East (2018) (4:21) Note: This is a great 4-minute summary of the war.
• Real Time History: Arab-Israeli War 1967 (Six-Day War Documentary) (2024) (22:55)
• The History Channel: Line of Fire – The Six Day War (2002) (48:51) Lots of archival footage.
• SLICE History: The Six-Day War: A Conflict That Shaped the Middle East, (2007) (51:08) A different point of view.

Online Resources

• U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967 Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19 (Note: Commonly called the FRUS, this is a collection of primary documents and supporting context on the overall war. It was released in conjunction with a conference on the 1967 war that is summarized here).
• Avner Cohen, The 1967 Six-Day War: New Israeli Perspective, 50 Years Later, The Wilson Center Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, June 3, 2017. (Note: if you want to know more about the possible nuclear angle to this conflict, read this.)

Books/Articles

• Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War, (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003). Note: this is probably the best single overall study of the war.
• Dr. George W. Gawrych, Key to the Sinai: The Battles for Abu Ageila in the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli Wars, Research Survey no. 7, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Combat Studies Institute, 1990. Great study that should pair well with the HFD game on the battle mentioned above.
• Lt Col Jarrett D. Jordan, USAF, The Trinity in Balance: Israel’s Strategy for Victory in the Six Day War, Master’s Thesis, National Defense University, National War College, 2000.
• Simon Dunstan, The Six Day War 1967: Sinai, Osprey Publishing, October 27, 2009.
• Simon Dunstan, The Six Day War 1967: Jordan and Syria, Osprey Publishing, November 24, 2009.
• Steven J. Zaloga, Armour of the Middle East Wars 1948-78, Vanguard 19, Osprey Publishing 1985.

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1. Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War, (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003). Also, see remarks by David Makovsky, Consequences of the 1967 War, The Washington Institute, from a presentation delivered at the conference “The United States, the Middle East, and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War,” held January 12, 2004 at the Department of State
2. Avner Cohen, The 1967 Six-Day War: New Israeli Perspective, 50 Years Later, The Wilson Center Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, June 3, 2017. Note: This short study by Israeli nuclear archivist Avner Cohen provides a great narrative on the role that nuclear threat perception by all parties played in the conflict.
3. Simon Dunstan, The Six Day War 1967: Sinai, Osprey Publishing (October 27, 2009) as rendered on the Six-Day War order of battle Wikipedia page, accessed 6/1/2025.
4. Steven J. Zaloga, Armour of the Middle East Wars 1948-78, Vanguard 19, Osprey Publishing, 1985, pp 16-25.
5. Simon Dunstan, The Six Day War 1967: Jordan and Syria, Osprey Publishing (November 24, 2009) as rendered on the Six-Day War order of battle Wikipedia page, accessed 6/1/2025.
6. Joshua Shepherd, “Outfoxed in the Sinai,” Military Heritage, Volume 22, No. 2, Summer 2020.
7. O’Brien Browne, “How the Six-Day War Sparked Forty Years of Strife,” HistoryNet.com, 16 August 2009.
8. Steven J. Zaloga, Armour of the Middle East Wars 1948-78, pp 16-25.
9. Eric Hammel, The Sinai Air Strike: June 5, 1967, Military Heritage, Volume 4, No. 2, October 2002 and Eric Hammel, The Rumble and Roar of Tanks, Military Heritage, Volume 6, No. 1, August 2004.
10. William Welsh, “The Arab-Israeli Six Day War Timeline,” Military Heritage, Volume 22, No. 2, Summer 2020.
11. Oliver Hegglin, “The Strategic Importance of Mount Hermon,” The Human Security Centre, 7 February, 2025