The Six Day War

Israel was in war with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. There's been lots of press about the political legacy of the war. Everyone agrees it was a stunning victory for Israel and humiliating defeat for the Arab regimes; and there's an emerging concensus that Israel's territorial gains were a mixed blessing.
The historical significance of the Six-Day War is a bit more involved. Here are some points:

• It put an end to Arab certainty that Israel could be wiped off the map if only the Arab states put their will and armies together. The Yom Kippur War put an end to such a near-term scenario. But we'd be fools to think that pan-Arabists have given up this idea as a long-term solution to their humiliation.
• It isolated the Palestinians' cause from the rest of the Arab world's, all talk of solidarity aside. Sadat started the Yom Kippur war to regain some Arab pride and solidify his own political future, but less was done from 1967 to 1973 to strengthen the Palestinian cause than had been done from 1949 to 1967. As a result, Arafat rose as an independent, renegade Palestinian leader.
• This led to a further evolution of terrorism as a means of fighting an assymetric war. And it led to this strange collective psychosis that there's something heroic about sending naifs to blow themselves up with civilians, if the cause seems noble enough.
• Because the US sided with Israel in the standoff that followed, Israel became the most durable of all left-wing targets, especially in Europe. Someone, probably the USSR, found in Israel's territorial gains the means to launch a neo-colonialist narrative that got incredible play in the radical foreign policy set with a rather romanticized view of liberation struggles.
• In gaining military legitimacy, Israel lost sight of the need for political legitimacy. The strange thing about Israel is that while Israelis (speaking broadly) are deeply cynical in some ways, they are often incredibly naive in others. In particular, since it seems self-evident to them that the Six-Day War was a war for survival, taking over the West Bank, Gaza, Golan and Sinai constituted an absolutely justifiable way of assuring that survival, strategically, militarily and most importantly, morally.