Throughout the 1960s, Jews in Canada kept a watchful eye on events in the Middle East. Wars in 1948 and 1956 had left Israel intact, but still vulnerable, as it was surrounded on the north, south and west by enemies intent on destroying it. And with Arab states such as Egypt and Syria continually denouncing Israel with promises to “wipe” it “off the map,” as Iraqi President Abdur Rahman Aref later put it, another violent conflict was always a possibility.

In 1967, no one wanted another war, least of all the Americans, Israel’s ally. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who, in the midst of the Cold War and mired in a stalemate in Vietnam, feared that another Arab-Israeli war might trigger a terrible confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, which backed the Arabs. Thus, in mid-May, LBJ desperately sought a diplomatic solution after Egyptian President Gamal Nas