Taking Arabs Seriously: Arab Anti-Americanism, the "Big Lie," and U.S.-Lebanese Relations during the 1967 War

Following the first day of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser delivered a speech to the Arab world, accusing the United States of colluding with Israel against the Arab nation. Despite myriad fervent U.S. public statements and cultural efforts denying belligerency, many local Lebanese embraced this false rumor and pressured Beirut to unwillingly severe official diplomatic ties with Washington. This turn of events profoundly impacted U.S.-Arab relations and played an integral part in making the modern Middle East. Alongside the U.S. military intervention in the Lebanon crisis of 1958 and the U.S. sale of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel in the summer of 1962, the popular embracing of the “Big Lie” finalized the cultural process in which the United States became an “imperial” power in the popular Arab imagination.

Using postcolonial Lebanon as a case study, this paper examines popular perceptions of and experiences with U.S. global power during the 1967 war. Above all, it seeks to understand how and why this “Big Lie” gained remarkable popularity. By taking the views of local Arabs seriously, it goes beyond traditional interstate relations and combines top-down and bottom-up approaches in order to illuminate power negotiations between a global superpower, the United States, and the Arab masses of Lebanon. In this spirit, local Lebanese actors are rendered the subjects, rather than the objects, of international and transnational history. The voices and actions of national and local leaders, as well as everyday men and women are integrated into the global story of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. By unearthing local agency, this paper de-centers the Cold War from postwar global affairs and analyzes the legacy of Empire in the postcolonial era.