Word: nasser
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...eldest of eleven children, Nasser grew up a rebellious...
...impulsively jumped into a street fight between a group of youths and the police. Hauled off to jail, he asked the boy next to him: "Who are you and what were we fighting about?" The youths were members of an independence movement called El Fatat (Young Egypt). Nasser soon became a member...
Accepted into the Royal Military Academy, he was appalled at the corruption and laziness that existed in King Farouk's army. During the 1948 war against the new state of Israel, Major Nasser was wounded in the shoulder by sniper fire during one battle, and his unit was surrounded by the Israelis at Faluja. In his newly published Genesis 1948, former Foreign Correspondent Dan Kurzman records a fascinating encounter?arranged during a temporary truce?between the hard-pressed young major and Yeroham Cohen, aide to an Israeli commander named Yigal Allon, now Israel's Deputy Premier. Nasser seemed more bitter...
Almost immediately, Nasser was at work on his own plan. While still at Faluja he organized the first meeting of a secret group called Dobbat el Ahrar (the Free Officers), who gradually worked out a scheme to gain Egyptian independence. On July 23, 1952, troops under the Free Officers' command surrounded strategic buildings in Cairo and handed the profligate Farouk an ultimatum demanding that he renounce his throne. The King promptly sailed for Italy. Egypt's first President was Major General Mohammed Naguib, a military hero familiar to the public. But the new power in the country...
With his flashing eyes, dazzling smile and throbbing rhetoric, Nasser captivated Arabs everywhere. He cracked down on pasha society. He limited land ownership to a maximum of 208 acres, decreeing that larger plots be redistributed to the peasants. His goal, he said, was for the fellah to command a higher rate for a day's work than did the ga-moosa (water buffalo). They still do not. The fellah costs 580 a day to hire; the gamoosa...