On June 9th, 1967 I was 7 years old. But I remember well the resignation of Nasser. It was an odd moment. The days before the resignation, I remember my father coming home from work and reporting the early bogus stories of Arab military successes. He was skeptical. I remember that. He distrusted claims of Arab regimes--all of them. I also felt that he was not as much as everybody else under the spell of Nasser. He liked him, and and would watch his speeches and listen to them sometimes, but he also was capable of being critical of his regime. I asked my mother the other day: I told her that I remember her crying, but I don't remember my father crying then (I remember him crying in 1970, when Nasser died). She said that, no he did cry. She said that we all cried. I remember that we did. I remember that odd night. I remember that men were on the balconies: smoking and some audibly crying. I remember the neighbor across the street: that he fainted. And then I remember people spontaneously taking to the streets in Beirut: I remember the chant: Abu Khalid Ya Habib; Badna Nusal Tal Abib (Abu Khalid (in reference to Nasser), o beloved one; we shall reach Tel Aviv). But there was something very sad about the chant, I remember. You can watch the speech and see on the face of Nasser the magnitude of the defeat. This was a very severely horrific moment in contemporary Arab history. I read somebody today saying that it was worse than 1948: in a way, it was. It led to many things--most of them not good. The defeat led to Nasser's surrender before what he had called, weeks earlier, the reactionary regimes. And now we learn that King Husayn (who was praised in Nasser's resignation speech), was doing what the Hashemites did best from the very beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict: coordinating with the Zionists, while pretending to join the fight for Palestine. Personally, I find 67 unforgivable: it is damning for Nasser, the Ba`th, not to mention the Arab reactionary regimes. Personally, while not pinning blame on one person, I believe that the death of Nasser allowed for that lousy phenomenon of Anwar Sadat (the Nazi anti-Semite who is adored in the US). Nasser, who was preparing for what later became the October war, would not have squandered the achievements of Arab armies in the early phase of the war--before Nixon famously told Kissinger to "give them all that we've got".(Read about that in William Quandt, Peace Process. (I just got the new book, Nixon and Kissinger by Robert Dallek; can't wait to finish it. Will let you know). Sadat not only officiated the rise of the Saudi era (in coordination with the US, of course), but he also unleashed (with full Saudi support) the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. I know that Tony Blair is now working to promote a new Islam--and I have no doubt that Bliar has great credibility among Arab and Muslim masses, given his long record of fatawawawa on matters dear to Muslim hearts and minds--but Nasser was the best and most effective promoter of progressive Islam. He was quite good at that. He changed Al-Azhar, and discredited conservative (not only Wahhabi) Islam: even the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's leader, Mustafa As-Siba`i felt obliged to write a book on Socialism in Islam. Yet, for me 67 is most damning on Nasser's record. He should have known earlier that `Amir, his best friend, can't be put in charge of the Egyptian army if the war for Palestine was being prepared. He allowed his friendship with `Amir to rise above the interests of Egypt and the Arab world in general. His Yemen involvement is not the issue for me: to support Republicanism in Yemen is a worthy cause for me, especially that Saudi Arabia was supporting the most reactionary forces in Yemen. Of course, 67 affected me: if effected everybody I know of my generation, with the exception of those members of the bourgeoisie with whom I went to school, and who care less about any of that. I still find it not easy for me to watch footage of the 67 war: I get angry: at Nasser, at the professional muzayidun (outbidders) of the Ba`th, and of course at the Arab reactionary forces. (Is Ba`thism in some way Nasserism but without the charismatic leader, and without skillful propaganda, and with much more effective torture techniques?) Of course, one is angry at Arab regimes not only for lousy military performance and political leadership (not to mention oppression in the name of grandiose slogans) but also for managing the worst propaganda ever. They made it so much easier for Israel--militarily and propaganda wise. I don't know where I am going with this, but I still believe that in the historical perspective Zionism in Palestine is doomed. Just think about it in the long term. One American professor who knows the Middle East well recently told me: I give Israel 80 years. Personally, I am for a secular state in Palestine where Jews, Christians, and Muslims live together in peace, but Israel has made that ideal remote (in terms of Jewish-Arab coexistence in Palestine without a religious labeled-state). Israeli crimes over the decades have endangered Jewish existence in the Middle East, and I fear that Israel will endanger that existence further--even in Palestine. Zionists miscalculated: the deep seated racism that characterized the minds of Zionist pioneers, and the contempt through which they looked at the Arabs, did not prepare them for an unexpected variable: the persistence of Palestinian struggle. That the Palestinians will not succumb to Zionist diktats. And that the Arabs will not let bygone's be bygone's. I have to go.