Arab publics acclaimed the arms deal for humiliating the West, not for Soviet alignment

Evidence

This reaction was due, not to any special love for the Soviet bloc, nor to any desire to see its influence extended in the Arab world, but to a lively appreciation of the quality of Colonel Nasser’s act as a slap in the face for the West. The Colonel’s slap, and the red-faced, agitated, and ineffectual Western response to it, gave dramatic expression to a mood and a wish that unite many people in the Middle East—the mood of revulsion from the West, and the wish to spite and humiliate it. There are many statesmen and even a few governments in the Arab world who believe that the long-term interests of their countries and peo­ ples require co-operation with the West, help from the West. They can, however, only pursue such policies by disregarding or suppressing popular feeling. It is the policy of rejection and insult that arouses immediate and spontaneous en­ thusiasm among the mass of the people. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1185

Categorization

• XREF: The affective logic — symbolic humiliation of the West matters more than actual alignment — is a mechanism passage for how the region’s politics became legible to Western observers as pure anti-Western sentiment, connecting to Said’s critique of Orientalist reading.