Netanyahu's Levi Eshkol moment: Why Israel defied Trump - analysis

Had Netanyahu bowed to Trump's request on Sunday and refrained from responding after Iran fired 11 ballistic missiles, Israel would have signalled weakness and constraint.
On Monday morning, 59 years after the Six-Day War, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had his Levi Eshkol moment.

On June 3, 1967, as tensions in the Middle East reached a fever pitch following Egyptian then-president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s closure of the Straits of Tiran, the expulsion of UN observers from Sinai, and repeated promises to drive Israel into the sea, then-prime minister Levi Eshkol received a letter from former US president Lyndon Johnson that essentially said: Don’t preempt.

“I must emphasize the necessity for Israel not to make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities,” Johnson, a pro-Israel president, wrote. “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone. We cannot imagine that it will make this decision.”

In other words, as the letter has been paraphrased over the years, Johnson told Eshkol, “If you go alone, you will stand alone.”

Eshkol read the letter and then, two days later, decided to go alone. Israel preempted.