Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (23992)	4/8/2002 8:22:43 PM
From: epsteinbd	Respond to of 281500

No source that I remember, even though I read the transcript at least once. It was surrealistic. A world premiere. Note that on that day, the Egyptians were yelling everywhere that they HAD US pilots as prisoners, and Nasser confirmed that to Hussein who couldn't imagine that the Arab Leader maximo would lie so bluntly. So after a couple of minutes of arguing he finally accepted.

To: Win Smith who wrote (23992)	4/8/2002 9:11:39 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Do you have a source for that? I have this vague recollection of stories of cooked communications between Egypt and Jordan, but I couldn't find much when I looked it up recently. King Hussein recounted the story in his book My "War" With Israel (William Morrow, New York, 1969). Raphael Patai quotes King Hussein and recounts the story in The Arab Mind (Charles Scriber's Sons, New York, 1976) as an interesting and completely verifiable instance of the operation of the concept of 'face' among modern Arab leaders, and the price that saving face can exact. p102ff: On Monday, June 5, 1967, in the early morning hours, the Israeli air force destroyed practically all the combat planes of the UAR (United Arab Republic) with negligible losses to itself. At about 9 AM, Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, commander of the Egyptian forces in Cairo, sent a coded message to Gernal Abdel Moneim Riad, the Egyptian officer in command of the Arab forces on the Jordanian front. The message, according to the account given by King Hussein of Jordan, read as follows: 1.Israeli planes have started to bomb air bases of the UAR and approximately 75 per cent of the enemy's aircraft have been destroyed or put out of action. 2.The counterattack by the Egyptian air force was under way over Israel. In Sinai, UAR troops have engaged the enemy and taken the offensive on the ground. 3.As a result, Marshal Amer has ordered the Commander in Chief of the Jordanian front [ie General Riad] to open a new front and to launch offensive operations, according to the plan outlined the day before. A few hours later, in a second message, Marshal Amer informed the Jordanian front "that the Israeli air offensive was continuing. But, at the same time, he insisted that the Egyptians had put 75 per cent of the Israeli air force out of action. The same message said that UAR bombers had destroyed the Israeli bases in a counterattack, and that the ground forces of the Egyptian army had prenetrated into Israeli by way of the Negev." King Hussein concludes his account of Marshal Amer's message with an understatement that bears the stamp of Harrow and Sandhurst rather than that of the impassioned eloquence of his Hashemite forebears, "These reports -- fantastic to say the least -- had much to do with our confusion and false interpretation of the situation." ... On the same fateful day of June 5th, Nasser phoned King Hussein and told him the same story: "Israel bombed our air bases. We answered by bombing hers. We are launching a general offensive in the Negev." Next morning, when the damage done by the Israeli air attack could no longer be kept a secret, Nasser in a telephone communication with King Hussein suggested that a communique be issued by the Jordanians, as well as by the Syrians, to the effect that American and British aircraft were collaborating with Israel and attacking Egypt from their aircraft carriers. This at the time seems the perfect plan to save face. It was no longer little Israel that had dealt the blow to Egypt, but the great powers, the United States and Great Britain, to whose combined strength it was not shameful to have succumbed. Yet in the very same telephone conversation in which he suggested this face-saving device to King Hussein, President Nasser could not resist the temptation to continue trying to save his own (that is, Egypt's) face vis-a-vis Hussein, and said "We will fight with everything we have. We fought on all fronts, all night. If we had a few problems at the beginning, so what? We'll come out of it all right. God is on our side...We dispatched our planes against Israel today. Our planes have been bombing the Israeli airports since early morning." A few hours later, at 12:30 PM, King Hussein sent a personal telegram to Nasser in which he informed the Egyptian President in simple and matter-of-fact language (we are again reminded of the King's British education) that the situation on the Jordanian front was desperate. This frank admission of defeat by Hussein finally broke the hold that wadj had on Nasser and he was able in his reply (which he sent after a delay of eleven hours, at 11:15 PM) to admit that he, too, had been defeated.