Taking historians and Arab politicians completely by surprise, Israel last week released 150,000 "confidential documents" on the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War of 1967. Scholars are still scrolling through the piles and piles of paper, which represent only a fraction of the 400 million documents stored in Tel Aviv. While academics have long desired to see those documents — which ought to have remained classified, under Israeli law, until 2037 — Arab leaders have been glad to keep that dark part of their history under lock and key, fearing that if too much were revealed, it would be shown just how weak — and complicit — they were in one of the worst collective military disasters of modern times.

During the Six Day War, Israel famously crushed the armies of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, led at the time by its charismatic president, Gamal Abdul Nasser. They occupied the Syrian Golan Heights, took the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, expanding the new nation's strategic area by at least 300 kilometers in the south and 60 kilometers in the east – and added 20 kilometers of extremely rugged terrain in the north, a security asset that would prove useful in the next war, of 1973. Approximately 700-900 Israelis were killed, while 4,500 were wounded. Anywhere between 9,800 and 15,000 Egyptians were listed as dead or missing, with 4,338 captured by Israel. Jordanian losses were estimated at 6,000. The Syrian Army suffered 1,000 dead and 367 captured.