Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium

This groundbreaking history of the Six-Day War in 1967 radically changes our understanding of that conflict, casting it as a crucial arena of Cold War intrigue that has shaped the Middle East to this day.  The authors, award-winning Israeli journalists and historians, are Research Fellows of the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They have investigated newly available documents and testimonies from the former Soviet Union, cross-checked them against Israeli and Western sources, and arrived at fresh and startling conclusions.

Ginor and Remez’s book shows that the Six-Day War was the result of a joint Soviet-Arab gambit to provoke Israel into a preemptive attack.  The authors reveal how the Soviets received a secret Israeli message indicating that Israel, despite its official ambiguity, was about to acquire nuclear weapons.  Determined to destroy Israel’s nuclear program before it could produce an atomic bomb, the Soviets then began preparing for war, well before Moscow accused Israel of offensive intent, the overt trigger of the crisis.  Ginor and Remez’s account details how the Soviet-Arab onslaught was to be unleashed once Israel had been drawn into action and was branded as the aggressor.

Please join us for a discussion on the findings from this important book and how it informs understanding of Russia’s current role in the Middle East.  In addition, the authors will discuss their upcoming sequel on the massive Soviet intervention in 1967-1973.  This work also has intriguing implications for Russia’s present-day reassertion of its presence in the Middle East.