. . . The Jews had little military equipment, especially arms and ammunition - at times two soldiers had to share a single rifle. During the war they used weapons foraged and specially created, such as improvised armoured cars and Molotov cocktails. They also had a mixture of small arms leftover from World War II, light artillery and machine guns, some anti-tank bazookas, and jeeps and half-tracks with mounted machine guns.

The Arab armies, on the other hand, were heavily armed with the latest equipment from Britain. But God hadn't brought His Covenant people, the Jews, this far just to leave them in the lurch. The war lasted over eight months, punctuated by the occasional truce. The Israeli victory was such that only a quick intervention by British delegates in the U.N. saved the Arabs from a more disastrous defeat.

The war that was provoked by the Arabs to annihilate the new State of Israel not only brought a pride-thrashing defeat for them, but rewarded the Israelis with an increase of over 40% of extra land, over and above that promised to them through the U.N. Partition Plan, including West Jerusalem! It was only through the effectiveness of Sir John Glubb and his Arab Legion that the Israelis didn't take the whole of Jerusalem, including the Wailing Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.

Let us forget the politics, though, and think of what it was really all about. Do you really think that God wanted Jerusalem, His city, to be governed by an international committee? Do you really think that it was going to be easy for His people to be resettled in their ancient land? Of course not. We must forget politics and human rights where God is concerned. When the Children of Israel under Moses and Joshua were driving all before them, God instructed them to completely 'ethnically cleanse' the pagan villages, man, woman and child. This is the same God today. We're tempted to say, if we're honest, 'thankfully He's more civilized now' but we must stop and think about the human consequences of divine actions. Yes, Israelis in 1948 were not (and are not now) as pure and spiritual as we'd like them to be. They were just as coarsely secular as the other nations around them, Britain included. They didn't deserve the land by virtue of holiness, but they did inherit the land by virtue of their chosenness. God chose them to inherit the land in Genesis 15:18-21, 'On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates - the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."' Scripture is Scripture, it is everlasting and never lies. We may not always like what it says in our 'politically correct' society, but that's just a measure of how far away from God we have come and how secularism and humanism have replaced faith in a sovereign God. Let's not argue over the small print and the politics. Instead let's get into the 'sacred print' and the spiritual picture. If we don't then, as Christians, we become distracted and bogged down by human issues, rather than divine ones.

Then came the 1950s. Jordan quietly annexed East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, calling it the West Bank. It never belonged to them, it was an illegal act. Only Britain and Pakistan recognized this move. Rather than calling the 'West Bank' the occupied territories, remember Jordan illegally occupied it first! The West Bank is Biblically the Mountains of Israel, spoken of prophetically in Ezekiel 35 and 36.

It was June 1967. God rested on the seventh day and was pleased with his creation; the Israelis, similarly, had much to be pleased about on their seventh day. Seven days earlier they looked south and saw Egyptian tanks at the border with a blockade on Israeli shipping; to the north Syria was bombarding Israeli villages from the Golan Heights; to the east Jordan and Iraq were gnashing their teeth, ready and waiting. War had not been officially declared, but you'd hardly believe it. The airwaves around Israel were full of boasting rhetoric, Arab nations vying with each other to be first to 'liberate' Palestine. Nassar, the Egyptian leader, declared a jihad, a 'holy war' against the infidel Israel. They outnumbered Israel 5 to 1 in troops, 3 to 1 in tanks and nearly 3 to 1 in combat aircraft. Like schoolyard bullies they postured and posed, growling and showing off their claws and teeth.

But the Israelis hadn't read the script, especially as it was written in Arabic, in blood. Orde Wingate, their British military mentor from the 1930s, would have been proud of them as they clinically unleashed one of the most decisive battle plans in military history.

On June 5th, Israel attacked. It destroyed almost all of Egypt's air force, the largest in the Middle East, in three hours. Most hadn't even taken off. For all intents and purposes the war was over. From then on confusion and fear reigned in the Arab forces. By the end of the week Israel had captured Sinai and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and the rest of Jerusalem from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel had increased its size by an incredible 300%! Historian Cecil Roth later described the Six Day War as "perhaps the most brilliant campaign in military history ... the Israeli army had shown itself the best fighting force in the world."

The truly interesting fact concerns Jerusalem, the holiest city in the Jewish Bible and the site of the magnificent Temple. Jerusalem wasn't included in the original U.N. Partition Plan agreed by the Jews, yet they took the Western part of it as spoils of war in the War of Independence. Similarly, knowing that any battle for Jerusalem would be costly, the Israeli leadership tried to come to a compromise with Jordan over it, during the Six Day War. But Jordan refused, having being confused by a false report that Egypt had destroyed the Israeli air force! So the Israelis took the whole of Jerusalem after the heaviest fighting of the war. It seems that Jerusalem was being coaxed into Jewish hands, by fate, providence ... or do we dare to say, through a miracle?