Talk:Suez Crisis/Archive 1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.


Link that from some pages on the WWI Sinai campaign come here. Can somebody fix this?

A television play by the BBC called Lipstick on Your Collar deals with the social and generational shift of Operation Musketeer in Britain. It's about the officers and men in a British Army office in London whose job it is to analyze Soviet troop movements. As the episodes continue (it's in several parts), the American rock'n'roll listened to by the young men is shown in clear contrast to the music favoured by their elders.

It's by Dennis Potter. Quite good. It may be worth a mention.

One of the bits of trivia included in the play is the debate over the landing zone selections. According to the play, and someone who knows about these things should comment, most of the bridges in the area couldn't support tanks, and the harbour wasn't deep enough to accomodate larger supply ships.

Contents

Undated pre-2003 discussions

The name used most for this war (per Google) is "Suez Crisis" (afaik, that's also the name used in Dutch and German, but that's not the issue here), rather than "Suez War". In both cases, the article should be renamed, removing the rather obsolete 1956 in the title. Any other thoughts on this? jheijmans

Vandal warning

The Chevaline page has attracted the attention of a vandal who seems concerned to obliterate any reference to the threats made by Nikita Khushchev at the time of the Suez Crisis. External references were provided in the Chevaline text and to help rebut his assertion an addition reference was made by me to the Nikita Khushchev page and the Suez Crisis page, but his seems not to have had the intended effect, as he now asserts on the Chevaline talk page that these are wrong. I fear I may have diverted his attentions here so you should be alert to vandalism here too. During the 1980's when I was an elected officer of CND we commonly referred to these defenders of the Soviet Union's absurdities as 'the Friends of Leonid Breshnev' who were an embarrassment within CND, but who couldn't be expelled. The world moves on, but some people never do.

There's a problem with most names, since:
  1. It included actual warfare, as Israel took over Sinai, U.K. and France were very close to sending in their troops. So it can't be called a "crisis"
  2. The operation's various parts had different names (Israeli attack: Operation Kadesh, joint U.K./French attack: Operation Musketeer), that cover different parts of the attack
My proposal is Suez Campaign, which seems to evade both these difficulties. What do you think? --Uriyan

I checked for "Suez Campaign" as well, which appears to be used as well, but even less than "Suez War". Of the three options, I would prefer War, since it is the only accurate description as far as I am concerned. However, we are not in the situation where we can name this situation ourselves; we have to use the common name or names for it. It appears that "Suez Crisis", no matter how "wrong" the title may be, is most widely used, followed by "Suez War" and "Suez Campaign". Therefore, I say we should name the article Suez Crisis, and create redirects for the other two. The different operations could actually deserve separate articles, in case enough information on them is available which doesn't belong at the general article (as do specific battles, for example). jheijmans

Ok, Yet Another Alternative (tm): Sinai Campaign (which in Google seems to rank less than Suez War but more than Suez Campaign). I'm lousy at choices so I leave that to you :-) I don't think the individual operations deserve articles of their own, first as they were bound together from the very beginning, secondly because there isn't too much to write on Operation Musketeer anyway (the British and the French withdrew when the Soviets began to shake their nukes). --Uriyan
I agree with jheijmans. This war is called the Suez Crisis. That doesn't mean it wasn't a war. But we have to use the name it has in English. --rmhermen

I have moved the article, including this talk page jheijmans

Can we have some citations for the allegations made in the final paragraph. They are very POV. i.e.

There were a few thousand casualties, mostly Egyptian, many civilian. in the course of the invasion the British stormed an Egyptian police station that held out under intense fire and killed almost all the policemen inside. The French were seen machine-gunning to death peasants who had jumped into the canal in fear. There were acusations of torture against the British and racism was a clear factor which allowed the invaders to justify their own inhumanity towards the Egpytian soldiers and civilians. The poorest area of Port Said, for example, was marked on British maps as "Wog-Town".
Mintguy
I've given the reference to the newspaper article I got that from. The article seems scholarly and balanced. Slaughter is "POV" by definition. AW
A newspaper article is hardly ever scholarly. Even an august body like the Independent. Robert Fisk's articles always have a slant. It's not really objective. Mintguy

I did a major update to this page because I have been reading a little about this recently and the Wikipedia page on it seemed to miss the basics of the war entirely, focusing almost exclusively in the Israeli involvement. It seems to me that this misses the essential imperial point. Also, the last version claimed that the invaders were vitorious! Even the most right-wing of tabloid papers in the UK considers Suez to be a historical disaster and an embarrassment.

I have not looked at the text that you may have replaced regarding this claim, but I suspect that the intended meaning may have been that the British and/or French military regarded their operations as having gone according to plan. The political wisdom of the instructions they received and the propaganda cost of the conduct of the operation may have been regarded as irrelevant from such a point of view. Compare the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War -- Alan Peakall 14:58 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

Consequentaly, it is not talked of very often: a "forgoten war" in UK history. It's ghost has been floating about recently beacuse of the uncanny parallels that Blair faces between Suez and the current impending war against the Iraqis.

I have not removed the details of the Israeli involvement, just refocused the article, including the main points of the war from a UK perpective. It could probably use a French perspective too, and definately needs more of an Arab POV in the mix.

AW

Asa. Musslini of the Nile are Robert Frisk's words. Please show me reference to the term not written by Robert Frisk. Mintguy

The opening clause "To persuade the British public of the need for war..." suggests that Eden didn't have conviction in terms of his fear of Egyptian nationalism, which is unfair to Eden, who BTW was a knight of the realm at the time. Mintguy

Eden compared Nasser to Hitler and Mussolini in a letter to Eisenhower and when after British troops landed he is quoted (from a Robert Frisk article) as saying "If we had allowed things to drift," he said, "everything would have gone from bad to worse. Nasser would have become a kind of Muslim Mussolini, and our friends in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and even Iran would gradually have been brought down. His efforts would have spread westwards, and Libya and North Africa would have been brought under his control." Mintguy "

"Mussolini of the Nile" is a quote by Fisk which seems to be not his own words. I have seen this used in another newpaper article too - this newspaper does not publish online - UK Dail Mail. Google only picks up Fisk articles for the term, so it may be that it is in fact his own phrase, though from your quote it is clearly Eden's thought. Perhaps it should be in single quotes rather than double. I've yet to see a source claim that Eden compared him to Hitler - Mussolini was an expansionist too. As to Eden's convictions: he may well have convinced himself that "Egyptian nationalism" was a great threat to the world, but from the Sevres meeting, it is clear that this happened only after he had convinced himself of the need to recapture British interests. Imperial expansionism always justifies itself in terms of the "needs" or "best interests" of the population of other countries. This goes for everything from Rome, to British Empire, to Hitler, to the current US empire (though let's not argue about that last one here, as it is beside the point...). Lastly, the fact that Eden had been decorated by the monarchy belongs in his article page, not on this page. AW

My reference to Eden's knighthood is because you replaced Sir Anthony Eden with just Anthony Eden. Mintguy
Daily Mail - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/. Although, I'm not sure they have the online archives. Their search facility seems to be not working at the moment. Anyway, again a newspaper, especially one like the Daily Mail is not scholarly.
Well, you don't have to tell me that the Daily Mail is not a scholarly source! And I already said that they don't publish their stuff online. But the point is that the thought behind the phrase is clearly Eden's, hence my suggestion about the quote marks. AW

References to Eden comparing Nasser to Hitler - :http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/suez.html Mintguy

:http://www.worldsocialist-cwi.org/Index2.htm?eng/2003/01/18history.html
:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-7/bowie26.html
:http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~cases/papers/appeasement.html
Mintguy
Cool AW

My point is that your use of 'propagandising' in associatiion with the phrase is clearly a POV, and not what Wikipedia is about. The aim of the article on Wikipedia should be to educate and not make a political point about a perceived similarity between Suez and the current political situation with Iraq (which was the thrust of the Robert Frisk article, your main source. The fact is that Nasser had been aiding Algerian separatists (which inflamed the French), obtaining weapons from the Soviet Union (which inflamed the Americans) and wished to unite the Arab world in a way that specifically Eden saw as a repeat of expansionism and nationalism of Italy and Germany 20 years before. On top of this the nationalisation of the Suez canal meant that access to the eastern Empire was under threat. Mintguy

Firstly: please check a link properly before you remove it.
Secondly, it will not do to simply declare as "POV" a such an important paragraph and just remove it. If you think it has a slant, then work with it and reword it. But it is simply immoral to have an article about any war, and have nothing that even mentions the human costs involved. I would like to be more specific about casualities than "a few thousand", but have not had time to do any more research yet. It would be good to have more sources for some of those points raised in the article, but I see no reason to disbelive any of them, apart from a vauge (though understandable) distrust of war journalists and newspapers. I have restored the paragraph and reworded some stuff.
Thirdly, "propaganda" is a perfectly neutral term - politians openly talk about the "propaganda war" fought by "our side" on mainstream British TV for instance.
Fourth, the article as writen makes no references or allusions to the current US/UK threat to the Iraqis. The source from Fisk may make such connections, but it was not my aim to do so. If you see any such slant, again, work with it, don't just remove stuff.
Fith: don't tell me about Nasser's international connections: put it in the article! AW
Another point: it is much beter to speak of what Eden claimed rather than what he believed, becuase the former (his words) is a straight matter of record and evidence, while we can only ever draw the latter as conclusions from the records and evidence. If there is sufficient reliable record and evidence, we can be almost completely sure that someone said something, while what they believed can usually be up for debate depending on one's interpretation of the facts. I'm not, of course, arguing that we should never refer to a specific person's beliefs, but rather that it is better to instead talk about what they said, if possible. Did Eden believe genuinely believe that Nasser was an "Arab Hitler/Mussolini"? I'm sure we could long debate this particular point, but in such cases it is much better and more neutral to simply state the facts: 'this is what Eden claimed'.
My opinion (irrelavent to the encyclopedia article, but perhaps interesting to you): whether or not Eden really belived Nasser was a new Hitler, the fact that he turned out to be wrong either shows that he was foolish or just plain lying. Since we know he lied to Parliment about UK collusion with France and Israel before the war, I personaly suspect that it was mostly the latter. AW

Are there any experts watching this page that could improve the Anthony Eden entry? Pcb21 11:18 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)


Lester B. Pearson

I noticed there was not a single mention of Lester B. Pearson, the Canadian diplomat, in the entire article about the Suez Crisis. Pearson, who later became the Prime Minister of Canada, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping to solve the crisis. It was Pearson who organized the United Nations Emergency Force, and Canada had the single largest contribution to the force of all the member countries.

I feel that this is an unwarranted omission and should be included in the article. Considering that Pearson won a Nobel Peace Prize for this contribution, its a puzzlement that nothing was said about him.

I agree that Pearson is important but he did not invent peacekeeping in the matter of Suez, as is alleged here. The UN had conducted earlier peacekeeping missions. --Ggbroad 20:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

change

the author incorrectly wrote that Israel held on to the Gaza strip after the war. that is not right, they gave it up as well as much of the Sinai that they captured....they held onto both after recapturing them in the 67 war

removed 2 things

I removed for being confusing (presumably to everyone who is not a member of the Royal Marine Commandos) and unencyclopedic:

As the Royal Marine Commandos moved inland, their war generals remarked, "I'm gonna knock ya.....right out boy."

And removed the last 7 words from this line, for hyperbole:

The operation to take the canal was highly successful from a military point of view, but a political disaster, and finished Britain as a world power.

Tempshill 16:29, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)


casualties

Jewboy, you gotta be kidding me! An article about an attack on egypt fails to mention egyptian casualties, but talks about the "plight" of jews? What a load of BS! That's like an article about holocaust talking about the plight of germans while ignoring the killing of jews. Like it or not, this isn't the israeli propaganda ministry website.

As legitimate as your point is, as well as your sympathy for the Holocaust, let's all try to think before using certain terms... Dpr 01:20, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)


French incentives

  There seems to be no discussion in the article about the French incentives to involve 
 themsleves with the Suez affair, other than the generic reference to oil supplies.  While I 
 agree this was a major strategic interest of the French government (and I applaud the 
 reference to Yergin's book), they were also contending with Soviet and Egyptian backed rebels 
  in the French colony of Algeria.  Nasser's Pan-Arabism was causing headaches for the 
 French government and they sought to pressure Nasser to cease his support for the uprisings 
[after all, the French had just recently lost Morocco and Tunisie]. Most of the secret 
 French-Israeli alliance had to do with pressure on Nasser to quit supporting decolonization 
 in Northern Africa.
  For sources on French rationale for supporting Israel and the Suez affair, see Jacques 
 Soustelle's article in Foreign Affairs (1957), Avner Cohen's "Israel and the Bomb" (1998), 
 Warner Farr's analysis of Israel's nuclear weapons program (available from FAS.org). 12 Apr 2005

Dayan's memoirs

I seem to remember in the 1970's an account of the secret talks leading up to the crisis appeared in Moshe Dayan's memoirs, which were serialised in the Observer. The British did not come out well, they refused to meet the Israelis directly, only talking throught the French. Anyone thought of incorporating this? PatGallacher 12:00, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

Magazine article, fall 2005

In case someone would like to pursue further research for this article, see O'Brien Browne, "The Long Shadow of the Suez Crisis", in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Autumn 2005. Flexiblefine 21:50, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

Fedayeen infiltration (Discussion from 67 war article, more relevant here)

Egypt sponsored fedayeen infilitration way before 1956. Not to mention, there are very pov sentences structures using Morris's claims as fact. Guy Montag 22:32, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

From The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World by historian Avi Shlaim, W.W. Norton 2001, pp.128-129:
Records of Egyptian and Jordanian military intelligence captured by the Israeli army in the course of the 1956 and 1967 wars conclusively disprove Dayan's version and substantiate Nasser's version. These records show that until the Gaza raid, the Egyptian military authorities had a consistent and firm policy of curbing infiltration by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip into Israel and that it was only following the raid that a new policy was put in place, that of organizing the fedayeen units and turning them into an official instrument of warfare against Israel.
The Jordanian documents tell a similar story. From them we learn that it was only in June 1955 that Egyptian military intelligence began to sponsor infiltration into Israel from Jordanian territory. Here, however, there was no change in the offical attitude toward infiltration. On the contrary, when the Jordanian authorities learned of the Egyptian attempt, they adopted even tougher and more comprehensive measures to counter it. These measures caused friction and tension between Jordan and Egypt.
Brian Tvedt 01:06, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Michael Oren among others, tells another story. As far back as 1950, Colonel Mustafaa Hafez sponsored Palestinian infiltration from Gaza, many of which included sabotage attacks against Negev facilities, and terror attacks agains Israeli civilians. Sourced or not, this is a discrepency in historical fact that needs to be discussed. Guy Montag 03:02, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Guy, if you can't cite sources this is by definition POV, i.e., unsourced editorial comment. No one is interested in the opinions of Wikipedia editors. If you want to make the claim above find a source. Expert opinion cited as such is not POV. Please don't label it as such. If you believe there is a dispute over the facts by experts of comparable standing, then just discuss that in the article and cite all the sources. Please don't restore the introduction making the POV claim that an invasion force was massing on Israel's borders. --Ian Pitchford 07:10, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

It is absurd to include more than the briefest mention of the pre 1956 and Suez war story here. Just because more people probably look at this article than the Suez war is no reason to include it and fight about it here. Attributing some things to Morris is ridiculous, it is like saying according to astronomer Homer J. Simpson, the sun rises in the east. The long accepted fact that Egypt did not sponsor the fedayeen before the Gaza raid is due to Ehud Ya'ari's Egypt and the Fedayeen, based on his publication of captured archives (in the early 70's iirc) not New Historians Shlaim or Morris much later by the way. As a common sense proposal, I also suggest using books for their main topic - e.g. Oren's 6 day war about this war, not the Suez war.John Z 08:47, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. The material belongs in the 1956 war article, not this one. Brian Tvedt 11:14, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
When an article starts filling with peripheral material, it's a sure sign of POV pushing. Thanks for removing it. Jayjg (talk) 20:57, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Belongs there or not, it is still wrong material. I have in my hand Israel's Secret Wars' by Ian Black and Benny Morris. He explicitly states (on p.117) that the Gaza raid was "less a consequence of the death sentences in Cairo (related to Unit 131 prisoners that Nasser promised not to execute) than of years of raiding by Palestinian and Egyptian irregulars across the frontiers of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The Arab marauding, often as close as ten miles from Tel Aviv and on the outskirts of Jersusalem, turned large stretches of the border into virtual combat zones..." So don't tell me that this is unsourced. Morris tells a consistent story, it is not he who is taking things out of context.Guy Montag 18:15, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

There's no contradiction, (I don't think Nasser promised not to execute anyone, btw) Nobody denies that there were infiltrators, many of them terrorists before Gaza. The mufti, funded by the Saudis, for instance sponsored them. The question is whether Egypt sponsored them before Gaza. The scholarly consensus answer is no, based on captured documents and other sources - (e.g. records of negotiations between Israel and Egypt before Gaza (cf Elmore Jackson's Mission to Cairo iirc) show that Ben-G didn't really insist that Egypt was doing it) -and real negotiations were hardly likely if Israel thought there was massive state sponsored terrorism coming from Egypt. John Z 19:19, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Egypt captured Gaza after the Israeli war of Independence in 1948. Afterwards, they turned Gaza into a virtual military base. Ben Gurion did not pressure Nasser because at that time he had just seized power. It was thought in all quarters, from London to Paris, to Tel Aviv, that he could be negotiated with. This is all sourced information. All you have to do is rent the book from any library and read the page I gave you. But on thing you are right. It was after the Gazan raid that Egypt officially amalgamated Palestinian fedayeen into their armed forces, but it doesn't mean that before that, Egypt did not unofficially sponsor terrorists. They did. Col. Mustafaa Hafez and Col. Salah Mustafaa both acted as controllers for various Palestinian terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank. Arguing that Egypt did not sponsor terrorism like for example, Iran does today, is simply a point of rhetoric, not reality. Guy Montag 00:50, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

The quote you provided from Black/Morris does not mention Col. Hafez or Col. Mustafaa. It refers only to "irregulars", with no mention that they were sponsored, officially or unofficially, by anybody. So the crucial claim you are making, that "Egypt sponsored fedayeen infilitration way before 1956", is still unsourced, and in fact contradicts the work of respected historians.
In Righteous Victims, Morris is consistent with Shlaim: "Until 1955 the Arab states officially opposed infiltration and generally attempted to curb it" (p. 270). John is correct that Shlaim's conclusion is baed on Ehud Ya'ari's investigation of captured Egyptian documents.
Brian Tvedt 12:25, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Morris does refer to Hafez as being responsible for sending agents into Israel; 24 of these were captured in 1954 during their missions to "gather intelligence or commit acts of sabotage". These missions/raids were organised by Egyptian military intelligence (see Israel's Border Wars, pp. 65-66) However, on pages 85-86 he writes "Throughout the early and mid-1950s Israel variously charged that the Egyptian authorities were instigating or encouraging armed infiltration from the Gaza strip and Sinai, actively helping the infiltrators, and doing nothing to curb the incursions. The reality was somewhat different and more complex, with the IDF's Gaza Raid in February 1955 marking a clear watershed: before the raid Egyptian policy had, with few exceptions, consistently opposed infiltration; after it, while continuing to oppose uncontrolled civilian infiltration, the Egyptian authorities themselves initiated terrorist infiltration for political and military reasons. In their more candid moments, before 1955, Israeli officials acknowledged that Egypt opposed infiltration. In November 1953 Dayan, then OC IDF General Staff Branch, told American officials that "the problems along the border with Egypt are not the fruit of Egyptian Government plots but a fruit of its neglect, especially in the Gaza strip area, where Egyptian rule is weak and the refugee problem is going from bad to worse. The Egyptians are busy with their internal problems... and do not pay attention to what is happening in the Strip.... and therefore... the infiltration spreads". And on page 93 "Immediately after the Gaza Raid Egyptian officials - who had hitherto referred to infiltrators as mitsalilun, a negative term connoting thieves - began to refer to infiltrators as Fedayeen (men of sacrifice), a positive term. A similar change occurred in the Egyptian media, which hailed the Fedayeen, and Egyptian documents began to refer with pride to the exploits of the border-crossers and with the delight at the distress they were causing Israeli border communities." . --Ian Pitchford 15:48, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Aftermath

"Eden's resignation marked, at least until the Falklands War, the end of the last attempt Britain would ever make to establish, as Scott Lucas writes, 'that Britain did not require Washington's endorsement to defend her interests'."

Establish what? Someone with knoweldge on this topic should fix this bit.

Never mind. The grammar was a bit unclear. I see it now. Maybe get rid of "the end of the" since it's not really necessary?

Correction: Many Jews started to leave Egypt voluntarily for Israel encouraged and financed by the Jewish Agency. One must here mention the infamous Lavon affair in which Israel used Egyptian jews to carry out clandestine operations inside Egypt. The terrorist acts were designed to scare the Egyptian jewish community into migrating to the new state east of the suez canal. I know of no evidence that Egypt expelled its own jewish citizens. A vibrant jewish community still exist in Egypt today. HAE

Actually, the Lavon affair was about discrediting the Egyptian government so that the British wouldn't give up the Suez Canal. And the Egyptians did indeed expel tens of thousands of Jews in the wake of the Lavon affair, and imprisoned at least 1,000. Jayjg (talk) 23:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The west is guiltier than you think!

Nasser was able to blockade the canal with 40 ships, because the british bomber pilots failed miserably. They were only trained in dropping A-bombs post-WWII where a mile on or off doesn't matter and so they couldn't score with required accuracy to sink the ships outside the canal using conventional gravity bombs. This was great public shame for the RAF and hotly debated afterwards, as the entire conspiracy fell through because of this fiasco.

The article should clearly mention that Eden prime minister was a notorious drug, abuser high on methamphetamines and whatever common he saw between Nasser and Hitler was the imaginary projection of his own sick mind, nothing of reality. Eden was heavily drugging himself ever since the early 1930s and should have been removed from politics due to mental instability long before.

The article is totally biased. The land which "palestinians infiltrated" was their own birthland, from where jews expelled them forcibly. So the holyland arabs were right because that was the land of their ancestors. They were living there for 1500+ years, they were living there even before Prophet Muhammad started to spread the word of Allah, when they adored animisic totems!

It should also be mentioned in the article that Nasser didn't steal the Suez Canal, the nationalization law prescribed how the canal company members will receive compensation for their lost investment. Of course after the aggressive 1956 war, noone could expect compensation any more, as they committed a serious crime against the nation of Egypt.

The personal role of Mr. K. should be more emphasized and his famous "means of total destruction" remark on soviet H-bomb and ICBM mentioned. 195.70.48.242 15:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

marek

The description of the build-up to war is quite anti-Israeli. 1) Egypt did support the incursions from Gaza before 1956 2) Egypt's closure of the Straits of Tiran was contrary to international agreements and for Israel it constituted casus belli. So not an adventure by Daian, but an effort to secure the ONLY link with oilfields in Iran (since the Suez Canal was illegally closed to Israeli shipping by Egypt). The whole focus of the article is Britain-centred though the war was started by THREE states with different objectives. Also, not everybody who reads the English version of wikipedia is British or interested in a specifically British perspective.

Vandal alert

ref above note about Mr K and his threats to obliterate London and Paris. The Chevaline page on UK nuclear history has attracted the attention of a defender of Mr K and the former USSR's absurdities. A ref to Mr K's threats in the context of UK weapon development has been repeatedly vandalised by a bully who wishes to coerce others in agreeing to obliterate any reference to the threat from the USSR real or imagined that informed UK government weapons policy. External references were then supplemented by a citation to the Suez Crisis page and the Nikita Khruschev page, but these have been rubbished by him too. I fear that the reference to your page may have diverted his attention to you also. In the 1980's when I was an elected officer of CND these 'Friends of the Soviet Union' were a pain in the ..... but couldn't be expelled. They were a source of embarrasment to CND and undermined its efforts then. The world moves on, but some people never do. If the vandal turns to your pages you'll know it when it happens, so no names here.

Brian (User:Brian.Burnell), why don't you stop your extreme uncivilness and POV insertions? You must source properly! --maxrspct in the mud 20:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I guess that the person referred to has broken cover and IDed himself. How sad. Brian.Burnell 21:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It's odd that the brief summary that precedes the index in the article mentions the USSR, but the main article doesn't. Is this due to vandalism or oversight? Also worth mentioning that Eisenhower was facing re-election that November and wanted everything looking smooth and crisis-free. - AG, Stockport, UK.

Source

Is there a source for de Gaulle's comments in the Aftermath section's third paragraph?

Are you sure the Americans didn't wound anyone?

Casualty Figures

A BBC documentary (Suez: A Very British Crisis) just quoted Egyptian casualties as 650. But this article states 1,650. The BBC is generally accurate. Which is correct? 84.153.87.177 22:16, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

France withdrawal from the military command of Nato in 1966

It looks like France policy has it roots at this crisis, ie the dual polor world that appear once in a while in the literature. That was really interesting to read.

Another interesting details missed by the article, but worth inclusion is the dynamics prior to the war. See attached bbc link [1]. It looked like the plan was raised by Israel, and the other two countries jumped on board.

"What we know now is that France got wind of Israeli plans for a pre-emptive strike on Egypt, and said to them 'Hang on, let's see if we can work something out with Britain'," says Mr Vial.
"Britain had its own reasons for wanting to get rid of Nasser, and the government was caught totally by surprise by France's enthusiasm."

Outright Bias

It is very disturbing to see how bias this supposed encyclopaedic article is! There is no mention of the Sevres Protocol which was a gross violation of international law, there is constant mention of Egyptian support for guerrilla incursions and terrorist raids against Israel. Yes this is true, but the incursions are a reaction to Israeli occupation of Arab Land resulting in hundreds of thousands of refugees in Egyptian administered Gaza retaliating against this racist movement. There have also been records of rightwing Jewish Zionist incursions and terrorist raids on Gaza by groups such as the Irgun. Just about every source used has been from rightwing Israeli-Jewish authors and articles, none of this information has come from revisionist Israeli’s such as Ilan Pappe, Avi Schlaim, John Rose or Tom Segev, and their certainly hasn’t been any use of books advocating the Egyptian point of view. This is not history, this is propaganda and plain Myth making. The Suez Crisis or War was in direct contravention of international law, it was a deceitful and hateful act conjured up during the secret meetings at Sevres, and should be remembered that way. The Egyptian people died defending their homeland and their property, the nationalization of the canal was a legal act (The U.N. and the U.S.A. will back me up on that) in which Nasser repaid the company shareholder’s properly and created no obstruction to international shipping (although Eden sent every ship he could obtain through the canal in hopes that the Egyptians would not be able to deal with the pressure). Thus I urge everyone who took part in writing this bias and unhistorical article to revise it and tell the truth about the events of 1956 as not to try and deceive the world of Britain, France’s and Israel’s innocents. History should be respected and not desecrated in this manner.

Political Defeat

Added 'Major Political Defeat for Britain' in the battlebox. Given the importance of this campaign in the decline of the Empire, it is certainly worthy of mention in the synopsis. Psidogretro 19:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)