In the spring of 1967, the Arab capitals paraded their arms and openly spoke of overrunning the Land of Israel and casting its inhabitants into the sea. The international media was almost unanimous in its belief that the small Jewish state, outflanked and outgunned by its enemies, stood little chance of survival. It seemed that, for the second time in a generation, the world was going to stand by and allow the enemies of the Jewish people to slaughter them in the millions.

On Iyar 26 (June 5, 1967), Israel launched preemptive strikes on its southern and northern frontiers. In just six days, the Jewish army defeated five Arab armies on three fronts and liberated territories of its promised homeland amounting to an area greater than its own size, including the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount (see “Today in Jewish History” for Iyar 28).

The openly miraculous nature of Israel’s victory spawned a global awakening of the Jewish soul, fueling the already present and growing teshuvah movement of return to G‑d and Jewish traditions. The Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, called it a moment of biblical proportions, an “opportunity the likes of which has not been granted for thousands of years.” Many thousands of Jews flocked to put on tefillin and pray at the newly liberated Western Wall of the Temple Mount.

Link: The Rebbe on the Six-Day War (video)