Welcome to the Tickla podcast on Great Jewish Essays and Ideas.

I'm your host, Eric Cohen.

A couple weeks ago, we were joined in person by Wall Street Journal Foreign Affairs

columnist Brett Stevens to discuss three of his most important

essays and columns dealing with the questions of Israel, America, the challenges of the Middle East,

and the crises facing the modern West. The first essay, which he published back in 2012

in commentary, is called Born on the Fourth of June. It deals with the lessons and legacy of the

1967 war and what it means for current political challenges. The second is a review we published

in Tablet criticizing and critiquing Peter Bynard's book on the Crisis of Zionism. In the final,

a recent column from 2015 called Israel alone,

deals with the new questions facing Israel, given America's changing understanding of its role in the

world and in the Middle East in particular. It was a lively discussion that we went from one

essay to the next, and I hope you'll find it of interest.

So let's turn to these three essays.

The first essay, which you published in commentary in July of 2012, is called Born on the Fourth of June.

So can you start just by setting the scene, What was happening in June 4th, 1967?

What was the world situation?

What was the internal debate in Israel?

What was the moment of decision that the Israelis were confronted?

Well, so how did I arrive on this ingenious topic of born on the 4th of June?

I was asked to give the annual commentary speech, and it just happened that it was on the 4th of June,

and I couldn't think of what to say.

...