The affair of Palestine is a series of painful ordeals, a path of suffering strewn with landscapes of desolation: disaster in 1948, scourge in 1956, catastrophe in 1967, calamity in 1973, and many other reverses of fortune along the way. The Arab defeats at the hands of the tiny state of Israel have laid bare the deadly dislocation of Arabic societies and the ineptness of their governments. They have revealed very sad truths: what kind of nameless treachery was it when those in power armed their soldiers in 1948 with defective ammunition and rifles that did not fire, or when in 1967 there were no Egyptian generals—they were too busy with their debauchery to respond—during the Israeli blitz attack. The lack of response from a depraved general staff was perhaps Egypt’s last chance to fight as equal to equal against the Zionist state, since Uncle Sam would soon settle that score. In 1973, while the penitent Egyptian army took to the field under its rallying cry, “Allahu akbar” (God is great), America, Zion’s unconditional protector, unleashed an airlift worthy of its might to flood the field with warplanes and tanks. MORE |