ABSTRACT
The disastrous defeat of June 1967 played a decisive role in forcing many intellectuals, Arabs in general and Egyptians in particular, to re-examine established concepts and to question their validity. The process did not take a sudden, dramatic turn but evolved gradually, in my case, for instance, over several years. It was helped along by the performance of the government propaganda machine in the days following the disaster. The pitiful attempts by the defeated regime to pass such a cataclysmic event off as no more than a setback, the loss of one battle in a long-term war, rang hollow to the ears of the Egyptian people. Their wounds ran too deep to be assuaged by the lying slogans launched by the regime just hours after news of the disaster broke. Among the more memorable was the use of the word ‘setback’ to describe the complete destruction of the Egyptian army, while others, such as eliminating the results of the aggression and direct American/British aggression were equally unconvincing.
