REPOST: Zain Alloul, "The Story of the Six-Day War" (1967)
Intro to Repost
The following post was taken from the Elders of Ziyon blog, which took it from a pan-Arab news site, Rai al Youm. Islamists still today preach that Jews are descendants of pigs and apes, so the child’s beliefs about Jews having horns are relatively tame.
Of note, she’s talking about Jews, not Zionists/Israelis. And she repeatedly speaks of Egypt and Arab Leagu, but there are no mentions of Palestine, not once.
The Arab website that shared this did so proudly, not finding anything wrong with depicting horned Jews. Just imagine the situation was reversed!
Let’s be clear, the horrors these children face are tragic… albeit caused by Arab leaders complete refusal to coexist with a people who fund their economy and educate their workforce.
Elders of Zyon link: https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2023/06/an-arab-account-of-june-1967-describes.html Please check out their site for more great content!
زين عالول: قصة حرب الأيام الستة
Sirens are blaring and my father is screaming and ordering us to go to the shelter.
The shelter is a garage at the bottom of the house, and we put some necessities in it like first aid and some food and water.
President Gamal Abdel Nasser told us that we will be victorious and we love him. Yes, we love him in all his speeches. We sit and listen to every word of his speech emanating from the radio that is in our salon.
From the morning, patriotic songs resound in the sky.
The Egyptian radio announces that we have weapons. Land, sea and air.. and we have the conquering and victorious missiles.. and the promising…!! that will reach the depths of the Zionist entity in the homeland..
Ahmed Saeed - who does not know him!! He shouts on the Voice of the Arabs radio station, we will be victorious!! Yes, I am sure that we will be victorious over them. The Arab armies of Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq are ready on land and in the air.
Composers, artists, and poets are also gathered, so the radio building has become like a beehive in the morning, and patriotic songs are ringing loudly. Here it is, Umm Kulthum and Abdel Wahhab, singing a song. I now have a gun.. and what gun..!
And Ahmed Saeed is famous for phrases such as “a total war, our goal is to destroy the Israeli myth that says that Israel will remain forever .. and any survival and every one of the millions of Arabs has lived in one and only hope which is: to die to live and to live to die on the day that Israel is destroyed.”
Today, victory will be achieved, and this enthusiastic atmosphere was weeks before the date of the fateful fifth of June. Even our poet, Fadwa Touqan, had a symposium in the municipal library, answering the questions of the women of Nablus society after Certain victory How will they celebrate??
The statements that Ahmed Saeed was broadcasting, and even the broken Hebrew that the Egyptian radio was broadcasting from Cairo directed towards Israel, convinced many Israeli civilians that they would confront the powerful Arabs, and they had no choice but to fight, and to fight with all their might.
Out of their fear, they began to appeal to their Arab neighbors to protect them in the event of revenge and the entry of the Arabs into Palestine.
The problem was that the Arabs also believed Ahmed Said and his ilk and convinced themselves that an easy victory was on the horizon. It would eliminate the Israelis...!
What happened??? Ahmed Saeed, where are you?? Foreign radio stations are saying something, and they are saying: The Israeli Air Force has been destroyed. The Egyptian Air Force was destroyed while it was still on the ground on the morning of June 5, 1967, in a lightning attack.
What do you say?? It is not possible that this is the beauty of Eid al-Nasser. He said we will destroy them while we believe him. We named our newborn children after him. Do not believe it??!! Here we are still in the shelter and the news continues from the radio around us.
Nablus in 1960 (image taken from Elders post)
****
On the third and fourth day, the war ended..! So it is defeat.. it is calamity.. it is humiliation... it is brokenness..!!
On the fifth day, enemy planes dropped leaflets calling on us to surrender, so are we ready to surrender!!?? In the eastern neighborhoods, white sheets began to be unfurled.. and the West followed suit.. Nablus is sandwiched between two mountains from the east and the west.. Oh my God, this is how...
Enter the Jews!! They occupied us...!! My father screamed with tears in his eyes.. We wonder in fear what they look like. Do they look like the monsters we see in the pictures? Do they have horns?? Or what would happen in our house with four girls ..!? We were young girls.. we didn't know the truth..
Our father ordered us to cover ourselves...because they might kidnap girls or... or...
Our dear neighbor had binoculars that clearly saw distant objects, and of course, on his high balcony, he began to give the neighbors, through the holes in the windows and windows, signs and explanations of what he saw.
Suddenly, we heard the roar of a tank on our street. How did they arrive so quickly? They saw our neighbor and thought he was sending war signals. They do not know the people of Nablus and their love for gossip. News spread faster than wildfire.
With caution and terror, and from the holes in the shutters on the windows, we saw what we saw.. The soldiers in the neighbor's house were searching and they led them outside and armed them. The father ordered us to lie down on the ground, they will kill them!!! And then our turn will come. We did not yet know that they were cowards.. As soon as they heard a gun shot from another neighbor, they had gathered the soldiers and fled. That was the first time we saw these monsters in human forms..!
Thoughts on Repost
What can be taken away from this that wasn’t already known?
Palestinianism is a culture that revolves around death. Their dream is, as the poor girl puts it, “to live to die.” They are so certain of death, they refer to Jews as “cowards” for running from gunshots. Yes, in this twisted world, young girls are told they should die, and that they should not fear gunshots. Schools are used as human shields.
They fear the “horned Jews” more than death.
Many Free Palestine supporters continue to use this rhetoric today. They raise their kids on the idea that Jews really have horns, while telling the West they want a Jew-free state to have peace. This is a “culture” people support in 2023, one that prioritizes death and humiliation of enemies, that just six decades ago openly praised Egypt as their leader.
