During
the past few weeks, I read what was written in Almasry alyoum newspaper about
the July 23rd revolution and Nasser. Some of what was written was
worth careful reading and discussion, while some other writings one can
describe as nonsense that has nothing to do with objective relativism nor any
branch of knowledge, unless some consider vain talk and fallacy as kinds of knowledge.
Although
some writings were objective; I preferred not to participate in such wave of writings
that was preceded by other waves in the past which did not stop during almost
seven decades inside Egypt and abroad. If I had enough space, I would have
written a few articles discussing those waves, their topics, the names of those
who participated in them and what was behind them of motives, goals and
stances.
I,
in addition to others, used to debate, discuss, disagree, agree and clarify
things until writing such articles became like a biological need for some
people that they cannot help but respond to its call. The thing that I once
called “July and Nasser Syndrome” in one of my articles, and so, I decided to
let go of the whole phenomenon as it became a monologue that is impossible to
result anything but instant joy and ecstasy, however, it definitely will not
last!
I
write this article in response to Dr. Muhammed Abul-Ghar’s call with which he
ended his series of articles asking to put an end to the struggle around the
July revolution and Nasser, and to leave the matter to historians. I wish he,
in turn, had done this and left it to the historians from the beginning and did
not participate to such periodical attacking campaign against Nasser, as he
knows who is directing it and who stands behind it. Anyway, I here do a small
contribution for whoever has the determination and ability to search and use
the scientific approach to do such task. Such contribution includes hints for
some resources and references related to our topic:
First,
there is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina website and what it tells of Nasser in
collaboration with Hoda Abdel-Nasser. Such website includes hundreds of
thousands of documents – first degree source – some of these documents were not
published before and which can tell of the biggest deep self-criticism made by
a president and revolution leader for his own experiment.
The
website also includes a complete archive for what was written about the July 23rd
revolution and Nasser in 4332 Arab newspapers and magazines and in 138 foreign
ones. It also comprises tens of documentary films and Nasser speeches’ scripts;
1377 video and audio ones. It also contains his talks to foreign TV stations.
As to the documents, it contains some written by the president himself,
sessions for the central committee, directives of the revolution council and
complete sets of documents related to the official writings and correspondence
between Egypt, Britain and the United States.
It
also includes the official British documents related to Egypt and Nasser. Such collection
contains 4207 volumes where the American documents collection contains 7965
documents. It also includes 1158 British documents and 1573 American documents.
Such website also contains the minutes of the cabinet meetings and the
classified documents containing correspondence letters among the kings and
presidents in the time from 1961 to 1967… Kennedy-Nasser correspondence… in
addition to other documents in many fields and all of them are first degree
documentary sources.
Then
we come to the autobiographies of the revolution leadership council members
including Muhammed Naguib along with other autobiographies for other members of
the Free Officers movement and elite officials like Kamal Ed-Din Refa’at,
Yousseff Seddiq, Salah Nasr and Others.
Of
the first degree resources come “Searching for oneself” by Sadat, “Political
papers” by Sayed Mari’e, “The secret history for Nasser’s rule” by Mounir
Hafez, “The tale of July 23rd revolution” by Ahmed Hamroush, “Years
of anger” and “Preambles of July revolution” by Sabri Abul-Magd, “July
revolution and Africa 1952 – 1967” by Ahmed Youssef Alqora’ie, “July revolution
and its historical roots” by Dr. Muhammed Anis and Dr. Ragab Harraz. Also,
books of late Mr. Muhammed Hassanien Heikal’s are considered a major resource
in such aspect and they are too many to count. Such books are published in
volumes by Dar Al-Shorouk publishing company. Then one can add the books of the
great historian Abdel-Rahman ar-Rafi’e.
Here
we add more examples for the resources and references:
“The
British perspective for the Egyptian Nationalist movement” by Hoda
Abdel-Nasser, “Nasser’s Ideology” by Dr. Muhamed Sha’lan and Youssef Khalil, “A
tempest on Suez 1956” by Donald Nev, “The Suez Canal; its history and problems”
by Anglo Samarko, “Problem of the Suez Canal” by Ahmed Abdel-Rahim Mustafa, “Nasser”
by Anatoli Agar Yashiv, translated by Sami Omara, “Thoughts about Nasserism and
Nasserist papers in a highly-classified file” by Refa’at as-Sa’eed, “72 months
with Nasser” by Fathi Radwan, “Communists and Nasserists” by Fathi
Abdel-Fattah, “Lieutenant Colonel Nasser” by Ahmed Abul-Fath, Galal Keshk
books, “Nasser” by Antoni Natting, “Nasser; the good and the bad” by Anis
Mansour, “Nasser from village to the big Arab nation” by Khaled Azab, “Autobiography
of a physician” by As-Sawi Habib, “Nasser and his generation” by P. J. Vatikiotis,
“Heikal remembers Nasser” and “The intellectuals and culture” by Youssef al-Qae’ied,
“Nasser and al-Manshia incidence” by Abbas Hussein as-Sisi, “Nasser from
al-Falouja siege to impossible resignation” by Jack Duhamel and Mary Loroi, “Son…
this is your uncle Gamal” by Sadat, “From Orabi to Nasser, a new interpretation
for history” by Salah Montaser, “The Arab Nationalist perception in Nasser’s
ideology 1952-1970, a study in the field of terminologies and semantics” by
Marline Nasr, “The Arab Vanguard; the secret nationalist group of Nasser” by
Abdel-Ghaffar Shokr, “Pope Kyrillos and Nasser” by Mahmoud Fawzi, “Nasser, the
dream and presence” by Hani al-Halabi…
This
is enough for now, although I still have more lists for resources and
references in different languages about the topic which is not hard for those
seeking the truth to find them.
That
was a small contribution in response to Dr. Abul-Ghar’s call. Nonetheless, I still
expect those people to respond to such syndrome as they cannot help but do so.
Translated
by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper
on September 25, 2019.
To see the original Arabic article, go to:
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