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Six Day War Caused Sexual Impotence, Price Hikes

The Associated Press looks at the lingering psychic wounds in the Arab world from the 1967 Six Day War:

Egyptian columnist Wael Abdel Fattah wrote in the independent weekly Al-Fagr newspaper that Arabs blame the defeat for “everything” — from “price hikes, dictatorship, religious extremism, sectarian strife, even sexual impotence.”

“A military defeat, that could have been limited, has been transformed to an overall defeat, represented by regimes … and societies that fear change,” Syrian writer Bakr Sedqi said in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.

Jordanian columnist Faisal al Ref’ou said the defeat has fueled a cycle of violence all over the region.

“Our Arab nation didn’t learn from the history lesson,” he wrote in Al Rai, Jordan’s largest newspaper. “We’re still at square one. We still have the spear in our abdomen in Gaza, Baghdad, Darfur, and Mogadishu. And our executioners are the same — they hand us the knives and we stab ourselves.”

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