Word: nasser
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This capacity for denial even in the face of manifest evidence may strike Westerners as absurd, but it is deeply rooted in the Arab psyche's mixture of bravado, rhetoric and religious conviction. Arabs denied Israel's existence for decades and believed that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had a trick up his sleeve when his air force was destroyed in the first hours of the 1967 war. Fouad Subhi, a butcher at the Baqa'a refugee camp near Amman, still puts his faith in Saddam: "After he rebuilds Iraq, he will try to liberate Palestine again...
...center of this rival crisis stood Egypt's charismatic President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had seized power in 1952 and had vowed to unite the Arab world under his leadership. The Soviets encouraged him with arms and money. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles retaliated by canceling his promise to help finance the Aswan High Dam, which Nasser hoped would harness the Nile. Nasser struck back in July 1956 by seizing the Suez Canal, still legally owned by the Franco-British Suez Canal...
While Dulles engaged in protracted legal and diplomatic maneuvers to restrain Nasser, the British, French and Israelis -- who all regarded Nasser as a "new Hitler" -- formed a secret alliance to attack him. After the Israelis marched across the Sinai Desert, the supposedly neutral British and French said they had to protect the canal and sent in paratroops...
...attack on the Suez Canal. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Dulles, feeling betrayed by their allies, insisted that the invaders withdraw. So did the Soviets, who threatened to intervene on Egypt's side. The invaders gave in. Within two months, Nasser had his canal back, for which he ultimately paid $81 million...
Saddam also fancies himself as an Arab version of Otto von Bismarck. In ! Europe more than 100 years ago, the Iron Chancellor fused German-speaking principalities into one mighty nation. Saddam remembers as well his patron Gamel Abdel Nasser, who organized Arab pride and resentment against Western hegemony. Saddam's ambition has been to use Iraqi muscle and achievement to unite the Arabs and thereby re-create the vast Abbasid Empire, which lasted 500 years. In that sense, the war in the gulf is transpiring in a time warp. It is a retrospective vision...