ABSTRACT
Nizar Qabbani In the 1960s, we claimed to be the stronger military power in the Middle East, a claim that was revealed to be nothing more than an empty boast on the morning of 5 June 1967. To the same extent that we overrated our own abilities, we underestimated those of our historical enemy, which we dismissed as ‘a bunch of Jewish gangs’. Events were to prove that the enemy was far more dangerous than we had talked ourselves into believing. Nor were these the only instances of ‘big-talk’ during the 1960s, a decade that has become synonymous with hyperbole. A number of notorious examples come to mind, as when we described the British prime minister as an effete sissy – a particularly offensive characterization in the Arabic language – or when we taunted the United States of America by inviting its president to ‘go drink from the sea, first from the Red Sea and, after it is dry, from the
Mediterranean’, or when we spoke of the Qaher and its sister missile the Zaher as the ultimate weapons.
