In short, by any rational analysis of all the factors in play, Israel is doomed.

Which is why the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War in 1967 has come at a propitious time. If Israel's position is precarious now, it seemed hopeless in the days leading up to that war.

Back then, the enemies that encircled Israel had the full support of a world power: the Soviet Union, which had spent the previous two decades pouring weapons into the Arab world-an estimated $2 billion worth.

On May 22, 1967, under the charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran, having already kicked the UN's peacekeepers out of their posts and moved its armored columns into Sinai, where they were poised to overwhelm Israeli defenses. All was set for Colonel Nasser's "war of annihilation." The Egyptians would be joined in that war by the Syrians, the Jordanians, the Iraqis, and contingents from all across the Arab world - from Morocco to Saudi Arabia.

Their objective? Iraq's president at the time, Abdur Rahman Aref, minced no words: "The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear - to wipe Israel off the map." The final solution to the Israeli problem was at hand.

Israel mobilized its forces and waited for the United States, or the United Nations, to break the blockade and end the threat to her existence. And waited and waited. Israeli forces, which had been mobilized for agonizing weeks, were compressed like a coil within the country's vulnerable borders and, on June 4, 1967, they sprang into action.

The rest was history. Map-changing history. Israel not only survived but triumphed. Six days later, it had created a new Middle East.

Six years later, Israel's existence would hang in the balance again, this time in the Yom Kippur War. Once again it was doomed. Once again it somehow survived. For no rational reason.

If today's threats to Israel's survival sound familiar, maybe that's because they are. Once again, Israel is doomed. Once again, it doesn't seem aware that it is. It's all enough to bring back an old saying I first heard many a crisis ago: "You don't have to be crazy to be a Zionist, but it helps."