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→Soviet ally & Genocidal: before/after Six-Day war
In 1956, Nasser seized the [[Suez Canal]] from the French and British companies that controlled it. His plan was to nationalize the canal to raise money to build the [[Aswan Dam]], and needed cash after the Americans and British withdrew a pledge to help fund it. But Nasser's seizure of the Suez Canal created the “[[Suez Crisis]]” for a week because many nations, including [[Israel]], relied on the Canal for shipping. The British and French provided air support for an invasion by Israeli troops into the Sinai peninsula, which easily overcame Egyptian resistance which had pulled back most of their forces to protect the canal. But then the [[Soviet Union]] threatened to intervene on behalf of Egypt, creating a wider conflict and a risk of a world war. Nasser was allowed to keep the canal, and international pressure by the United States caused Britain, France and Israel to back off.<ref>[[World History Lecture Thirteen]]</ref> The Aswan dam was built, in part with Soviet economic aid.
In 1956, Nasser seized the [[Suez Canal]] from the French and British companies that controlled it. His plan was to nationalize the canal to raise money to build the [[Aswan Dam]], and needed cash after the Americans and British withdrew a pledge to help fund it. But Nasser's seizure of the Suez Canal created the “[[Suez Crisis]]” for a week because many nations, including [[Israel]], relied on the Canal for shipping. The British and French provided air support for an invasion by Israeli troops into the Sinai peninsula, which easily overcame Egyptian resistance which had pulled back most of their forces to protect the canal. But then the [[Soviet Union]] threatened to intervene on behalf of Egypt, creating a wider conflict and a risk of a world war. Nasser was allowed to keep the canal, and international pressure by the United States caused Britain, France and Israel to back off.<ref>[[World History Lecture Thirteen]]</ref> The Aswan dam was built, in part with Soviet economic aid.
Author [[Matthias Küntzel]]’s article<ref name=kuntzel-2017>Matthias Küntzel, [https://fathomjournal.org/1967-nassers-antisemitic-war-against-israel/ “1967 | Nasser’s Antisemitic War Against Israel”]. ''Fathom Journal'', Spring 3l2017</ref>, shows that the 1967 Six-Day War was driven not primarily by territorial disputes or immediate military necessity, but by deep-rooted antisemitism and anti-Zionist ideology in the Arab world, especially as embodied by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Main Line.
Author contends that Nasser deliberately escalated tensions with Israel in 1967 despite opportunities for compromise. He contrasts Nasser with Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, who in 1965 urged Arab leaders to accept a peaceful settlement with Israel based on the UN partition plan. Bourguiba advocated coexistence and negotiation, but Nasser rejected this approach and instead pursued confrontation.
He points out that:
* Nasser sought not coexistence but Israel’s destruction.
* Soviet misinformation and support contributed to the crisis, but Nasser made the decisive choices.
* Antisemitic ideology, influenced partly by European fascism and Nazi propaganda, shaped Nasser’s worldview and Arab political culture.
* Mass anti-Israel sentiment in the Arab world (“the Arab street”) reinforced and encouraged Nasser’s course toward war.
The Road to the Six-Day War.
The article outlines the escalation in May–June 1967:
* The Soviet Union falsely warned Egypt that Israel was massing troops near Syria.
* Nasser moved Egyptian troops into Sinai, expelled UN peacekeepers, and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping.
* Arab leaders and media increasingly used militant rhetoric calling for Israel’s destruction.
* Israel, fearing an existential threat, launched a preemptive strike on June 5, beginning the Six-Day War.
Author emphasizes that international observers found no evidence of the Israeli troop buildup claimed by the Soviets.
Soviet Role.
The Soviet Union played a significant but indirect role by:
* Arming Arab states.
* Spreading false intelligence about Israeli troop concentrations.
* Encouraging anti-Israel propaganda.
However, author says Moscow did not actually want Israel destroyed and later tried to reduce tensions once the crisis escalated too far.
Nasser’s Ideological Background.
A central section examines Nasser’s early political influences:
* As a young man, he was associated with the ultranationalist Young Egypt movement, which admired Nazi Germany.
* He had ties to members of the Muslim Brotherhood before coming to power.
* Postwar Egypt under Nasser became a refuge for some former Nazis and German military experts.
Nasser embraced antisemitic conspiracy theories, including belief in the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Holocaust denial, and that these beliefs shaped his hostility toward Israel.
Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism
Anti-Zionism in the Arab world often merged with antisemitism:
* Israel became a political scapegoat in Arab politics after 1948.
* Nazi propaganda in Arabic during World War II had long-term influence on Arab political discourse.
* Arab governments used anti-Israel rhetoric to channel domestic frustrations.
Scholars such as Ruth Wisse and Bernard Lewis state hostility toward Israel reproduced classic antisemitic themes.
Conclusion.
The Six-Day War resulted less from immediate strategic necessity than from ideological hostility toward Israel rooted in antisemitism and radical anti-Zionism. Nasser both reflected and amplified these sentiments among Arab populations.
==Nasser’s Antisemitism==
{{quotebox-float|
The Sources of Nasser’s Antisemitism:
Nasser was born in 1918. In 1935 or 1936 he became a member of the Young Egypt Society led by Ahmad Hussein – a radical nationalist movement that was pro-Nazi in several respects. ‘The Second World War and the short period before it fired the spirit of our youth,’ wrote Nasser, ‘and moved our whole generation towards violence.’ Leading members of the Young Egypt Society included Ali Maher and Aziz al-Misri, two prominent Egyptian politicians who were known for their anti-British and pro-Axis stance.
In 1937, Nasser entered the Military Academy. In 1938, the core of the Free Officers movement that would take power in 1952 was formed. When in 1942 ‘the Germans were close to Egypt’, recalled movement member Abdel Latif Boghdadi, we ‘thought it our duty to do something against the British. We formed a secret organisation in the Air Force to disrupt and impede the British withdrawal from the Western Desert by sabotaging their lines of communication and supply.’
In 1943, Nasser and some of his military colleagues held meetings with Mahmud Labib, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Those gatherings took place once a week and ‘continued uninterrupted until May 1948, when mobilisation for the Palestine war [of 1948] occurred.’ In the 1930s the Brotherhood had received financial aid from Nazi Germany because of its antisemitic orientation. Thus, in 1947, Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s leader, explained the United Nations decision in favour of a partition of Palestine in antisemitic terms, deeming ‘the whole United Nations intervention to be an international plot carried out by the Americans, the Russians, and the British under the influence of Zionism.’ In 1948, the Brotherhood was nevertheless by far the largest political organisation in Egypt with at least one million members.
Nasser was among those officers who provided lengthy clandestine training to the Brothers in preparation for the Palestine war of 1948. It was thus no accident that in 1949 Nasser’s name was found on a manual about grenades in a Muslim Brotherhood hideout. After the Free Officers’ revolution had swept away the monarchy and the old power elites in July 1952, ten of the fourteen officers now running the country had, at one time or another, sworn loyalty to the Brotherhood. With good cause the Soviets condemned the ‘reactionary officers’ group’ and their new ‘military dictatorship’.
In 1942, at British instigation, Aziz al-Misri and Ali Mahir had been dismissed because of their explicit pro-German stance; both were reinstated ten years later by the Free Officers: Al-Misri was hailed as the ‘spiritual father’ of the July revolution and the Officers made Ali Mahir the new prime minister. It was not by chance that Egypt was henceforth to become the El Dorado of former Nazis war criminals and antisemites. One example is that of air force officer Mohammad Radwan. He had managed to reach the German lines during the war. He made his way to Germany, where he was arrested by the Allies in 1945 and then sentenced in Egypt to fifteen years in jail. In 1952, he was released and then employed in the Armed Forces’ Department of Public Affairs. Another is neo-Nazi publisher Helmuth Kramer: He received political asylum in Egypt in 1965 after a German court had found him guilty of ‘spreading Nazi ideas’. According to Kramer, Nasser personally dealt with his asylum request and gave permission for him to continue publishing his books.
Since Moscow had refused to deliver intermediate-range rockets to Egypt in 1959, Nasser invited more than 300 German engineers and scientists who had formerly worked for the Nazi government to develop such missiles. In 1962, missiles were for the first time on display at a Cairo parade. ‘The staff of the Israeli embassy in Paris mourns and the Jews in New York are in fear,’ Al-Ahram rejoiced.
Though Nasser denied being an anti-Semite (‘I have never been anti-Semitic on a personal level’) he emphasised the great relevance of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for an understanding of world affairs and claimed publicly that ‘three hundred Zionists … govern the fate of the European Continent’. Whoever believes such a thing must of course deny the Holocaust. Nasser denied it both directly (‘No one … takes seriously the lie[sic] about six million Jews who were murdered’) and indirectly, by claiming that ‘Ben-Gurion … has killed as many Arabs as Hitler killed Jews.’
Whoever believes in the Protocols will also seek to destroy Israel. And, indeed, Nasser’s obsession with the Jewish state was a constant theme of his time in power. Firstly, he considered Israel a bridge-head of Western imperialism, a conspiracy theory that gained some credibility after Israel’s involvement in the Suez crisis of 1956. Second, he considered Israel to be expansionist by nature. ‘Arab unity means the liquidation of Israel and the expansionist dreams of Zionism’ he told a crowd in 1965.
Nasser’s background did not of course rule out a later change of course. In 1953, his friend and combatant Anwar al-Sadat praised Adolf Hitler as an ‘immortal leader’ but 26 years later recognised Israel’s right to exist. Why was Nasser incapable of making such a move?<ref name=kuntzel-2017/>}}
=== Syrian Muslim Brotherhood praise for Hitler comparisons to Nasser ===
During the [[Suez Crisis]] in 1956, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood newspaper ''Al Manar'' responded positively to comparisons between Egyptian president [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]] and [[Adolf Hitler]] appearing in sections of the French press.<ref>{{cite news |title=Nasser c'est Hitler et nous en sommes fiers proclament les Frères musulmans de Syrie |newspaper=Le Monde |date=18 August 1956 |language=fr |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1956/08/18/nasser-c-est-hitler-et-nous-en-sommes-fiers-proclament-les-freres-musulmans-de-syrie_2244506_1819218.html }}</ref> According to ''Le Monde'', ''Al Manar'', identified as an organ of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, wrote: {{blockquote|"We will not conceal from the French that Hitler enjoys deep affection and vivid admiration in the Arab world because he fought during the last world war against our traditional enemies, the French and the English, whose cities and industries he destroyed. If such was our feeling toward Hitler, to whom no bond united us, what then should it be toward the Arab brother who inflicts defeat after defeat upon our enemies?"<ref>{{cite news |title=Nasser c'est Hitler et nous en sommes fiers proclament les Frères musulmans de Syrie |newspaper=Le Monde |date=18 August 1956 |language=fr |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1956/08/18/nasser-c-est-hitler-et-nous-en-sommes-fiers-proclament-les-freres-musulmans-de-syrie_2244506_1819218.html }}</ref>}} A March 1957 article in ''The Canadian Jewish Chronicle'' similarly reported that the Syrian daily ''Al Manar'' had praised Nasser as a counterpart to Hitler.<ref>{{cite news |title=Syrians Heil Hitler |newspaper=The Canadian Jewish Chronicle |date=15 March 1957 |page=11 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pzohAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA6 }}</ref> The paper quoted editor Bashir al-Auf as stating: {{Cquote|"One should not forget that, in contrast to Europe, Hitler occupied an honoured place in the Arab world. His name awakened in Arab hearts feelings of love and enthusiasm. The Arab world should be congratulated on producing in its midst this Hitler who has shaken the world from end to end. English and French journalists are mistaken if they think that by calling Nasser Hitler they are hurting us. On the contrary, his name makes us proud. Long live Hitler, the Nazi who struck at the heart of our enemies! Long live the Hitler of the Arab world who has opened the gates of victory and eternity for his people."<ref>{{cite news |title=Syrians Heil Hitler |newspaper=The Canadian Jewish Chronicle |date=15 March 1957 |page=11 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pzohAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA6 }}</ref>}}
=== Nasser's reaction to Hitler comparisons ===
French magazine ''Réalités'' later described reactions in Egypt to comparisons between Nasser and Hitler. In a 1958 retrospective account, the publication stated that Nasser appeared amused when compared to Hitler during the Suez Crisis.<ref>{{cite book |title=Réalités |publisher=Société d'études et publications économiques |year=1958 |page=56 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WXggAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Hitler%20the%20outstanding%20enemy%20of%20Egypt's%22 }}</ref> The article stated: {{Cquote|"They're calling me a Hitler!" he exclaimed, grinning broadly. [...] If in Europe, even in Germany, a comparison to the Fuehrer is considered insulting, in Egypt it is a resounding compliment. For was not Hitler the outstanding enemy of Egypt's two greatest foes, Britain and Israel?<ref>{{cite book |title=Réalités |publisher=Société d'études et publications économiques |year=1958 |page=56 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WXggAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Hitler%20the%20outstanding%20enemy%20of%20Egypt's%22 }}</ref>"}}
==Soviet ally & Genocidal: before/after Six-Day war==
==Soviet ally & Genocidal: before/after Six-Day war==