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June 06, 2007
From War to Sexual Impotence, Israel Is to Blame
In AP's "Arabs blame problems on 1967 war defeat," Nadia Abou El-Magd does not even make a shorthand attempt to acknowledge Arab responsibility for the Six Day War. It's as if Egypt hadn't illegally closed the Straits of Tiran, had not called for Israel's destruction, hadn't ejected UN monitoring forces, and hadn't amassed troops at the Israeli border. Playing along with the "blame Israel" mentality, Israel's attack comes, apparently, out of the blue. El-Magd reports:
Forty years after Israel's stunning victory over three Arab armies, the defeat still lingers in the Arab world — so much so, some blame it for everything from a lack of democracy in the region to the rise of religious extremism. On June 5, 1967, Israeli warplanes destroyed 400 aircraft belonging to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq — most of them sitting on airport tarmacs. Egypt lost the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, Syria gave up the Golan Heights, and Jordan relinquished the West Bank and east Jerusalem. . . .
Egyptian columnist Wael Abdel Fattah wrote in the independent weekly Al-Fagr newspaper that Arabs blame the defeat for "everything" — from "price hikes, dictatorship, religious extremism, sectarian strife, even sexual impotence."
If you buy that Israel for no reason whatsoever destroyed the Egyptian air fleet, it's not such a stretch to blame Israel for sexual impotence, too.
Posted by TS at June 6, 2007 07:35 AM
Comments
I think the article was fair, it even broaches the futility of Arab partiess historically embracing war instead of co-inexistence and demonization instead of introspection. Perhaps when the last quote used the phrase "occupation state" to describe Israel, the reporter could have investigated the boundaries of that phase that the person intended.
Posted by: Adam at June 6, 2007 06:37 PM
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