opposite. The idea of mines in the Straits made the whole situation look somehow irreversible in Israeli eyes.
* * *
People trying to analyze the events from the outside tend to forget one element. Yet this above all fanned the flames of war. In the Middle East, propaganda plays a decisive role. Millions of people all over the Arab world who can't read newspapers, and who wouldn't read them if they could, listen for hours on end to the radio, smoking their narghila and sipping their strong coffee in innumerable village coffee houses.
Israelis believe propaganda, certainly their own, but also that of the Arabs, especially if it confirms what they suspect anyhow, that the Arabs are out to kill them. For the Arabs, however, propaganda means something quite different. They love it, they adore it, and they certainly don't expect it to be an accurate presentation of facts. The Arab language is a very rich and beautiful one, and Arabs love it as Italians love music and the French love food. Words, beautiful words coming out of the radio, are for most Arabs intoxicating, making them forget a reality which is still far from satisfying their aspirations. Words easily become a substitute for reality.
It was, therefore, quite natural for Radio Cairo, transmitting in Arabic to the Arab world and in Hebrew to Israel, to utter the most blood-curdling threats and prophecies from the very beginning of the crisis. Turning on his radio, the Israeli heard that the hour of revenge had struck, that the Zionist robbers were going to be thrown into the sea, that Palestine would be liberated, that the refugees were about to return as a victorious army and take possession of their land again. Newspapers carried photographs of Nasser and his military chief, Abd-elHakim Anrer, laughing outrageously while inspecting an Arab air force unit in Sinai. It looked sinister indeed. Merely irritating in another situation, but accompanied