Robert McHenry: Israel’s Pyrrhic Victory - The Six-Day War
[Robert McHenry is a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica and author of How to Know.]
Epirus was a region of ancient Greece, spanning what are now the northwestern corner of modern Greece and the southern coastal reaches of Albania. The ruling house in the region during the 5th – 3rd centuries BCE, the Molossians, claimed descent from Achilles and had ties through marriage to the Macedonian rulers Philip and Alexander the Great.
The greatest king in the Molossian line was Pyrrhus, who came to the throne in 307 BCE, at the age of twelve. He lost the kingdom, then was restored to it, and from the 290s launched himself upon a series of wars. He fought the Romans in Italy, conquered most of Sicily, defeated the king of Macedonia, and finally was killed in 272 while attacking Sparta. A turbulent reign, it was. It is hard for us to imagine or understand the constant warring that occupied so many of the little Greek states of old or the seemingly insatiable appetites of their rulers for invading their neighbors.
Pyrrhus is just one of hundreds of such petty kings whose bothersomeness makes up so much of ancient history. He is remembered above most of the rest because so many of what were accounted his military victories came at enormous cost, where “cost” means not the quantity of treasure expended but the number of other men’s lives lost. Indeed, so costly were his adventures that they inspired the phrase “Pyrrhic victory,” meaning a victory that leaves the victor arguably worse off than the vanquished. (A minor lesson for us from history here, perhaps: It may be best not to be remembered in a proverb.)
This little foray into ancient history is occasioned by the 40th anniversary this week of the Six-Day War. Much commentary has been and will be devoted to that event, and in that commentary the phrase “Pyrrhic victory” will inevitably occur over and over.
Here’s the story in brief: In 1967 the little state of Israel, not yet 20 years old, was attacked simultaneously from west and east by Egypt and Jordan, aided by Syrian shelling in the north. The world watched in amazement as the Israeli Defense Forces wiped out the Egyptian air force on the ground, drove Egyptian armor out of Sinai, and chased the Jordanian army out of Jerusalem and across the West Bank. Syrian forces were driven off the Golan Heights, from which they had shelled Israeli settlements for years.
In terms of battle deaths, Israel lost about 700 men to a combined 15,000 or more for its opponents. In part because of those lopsided numbers, few suspected then just how Pyrrhic this stunning victory would nonetheless prove to be. A moment’s reflection on the last forty years – years of renewed warfare, intifada, rocket attacks, suicide bombing, and utterly fruitless diplomacy – ought to teach a deep lesson about unintended consequences.
But for the tragedy of it all, one might almost suspect that some imp is in charge of human history.
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Epirus was a region of ancient Greece, spanning what are now the northwestern corner of modern Greece and the southern coastal reaches of Albania. The ruling house in the region during the 5th – 3rd centuries BCE, the Molossians, claimed descent from Achilles and had ties through marriage to the Macedonian rulers Philip and Alexander the Great.
The greatest king in the Molossian line was Pyrrhus, who came to the throne in 307 BCE, at the age of twelve. He lost the kingdom, then was restored to it, and from the 290s launched himself upon a series of wars. He fought the Romans in Italy, conquered most of Sicily, defeated the king of Macedonia, and finally was killed in 272 while attacking Sparta. A turbulent reign, it was. It is hard for us to imagine or understand the constant warring that occupied so many of the little Greek states of old or the seemingly insatiable appetites of their rulers for invading their neighbors.
Pyrrhus is just one of hundreds of such petty kings whose bothersomeness makes up so much of ancient history. He is remembered above most of the rest because so many of what were accounted his military victories came at enormous cost, where “cost” means not the quantity of treasure expended but the number of other men’s lives lost. Indeed, so costly were his adventures that they inspired the phrase “Pyrrhic victory,” meaning a victory that leaves the victor arguably worse off than the vanquished. (A minor lesson for us from history here, perhaps: It may be best not to be remembered in a proverb.)
This little foray into ancient history is occasioned by the 40th anniversary this week of the Six-Day War. Much commentary has been and will be devoted to that event, and in that commentary the phrase “Pyrrhic victory” will inevitably occur over and over.
Here’s the story in brief: In 1967 the little state of Israel, not yet 20 years old, was attacked simultaneously from west and east by Egypt and Jordan, aided by Syrian shelling in the north. The world watched in amazement as the Israeli Defense Forces wiped out the Egyptian air force on the ground, drove Egyptian armor out of Sinai, and chased the Jordanian army out of Jerusalem and across the West Bank. Syrian forces were driven off the Golan Heights, from which they had shelled Israeli settlements for years.
In terms of battle deaths, Israel lost about 700 men to a combined 15,000 or more for its opponents. In part because of those lopsided numbers, few suspected then just how Pyrrhic this stunning victory would nonetheless prove to be. A moment’s reflection on the last forty years – years of renewed warfare, intifada, rocket attacks, suicide bombing, and utterly fruitless diplomacy – ought to teach a deep lesson about unintended consequences.
But for the tragedy of it all, one might almost suspect that some imp is in charge of human history.