MIDDLE EAST: Sounds in a Summer Night

As persistent as the summer drone of cicadas was the endless, repetitive caterwauling of radio voices throughout the Arab world last week. The clandestine Jordan People’s Radio (which actually broadcasts from Syria) railed at King Hussein and his men: “The Jordanian people will reply to you with ropes; they will hang you on poles and watch your rotten bodies swing!” Baghdad Radio tried to spread infection to Iran with a Persian-language broadcast: “Dear compatriots, shake off the dust of humiliation and misery. Today all freedom-loving peoples have revolted against imperialism.” Radio Cairo wooed the Sudan; the “Voice of Free Lebanon” (which uses the same Syrian transmitter and wave length as the Jordan People’s Radio) called anew for the removal of “crazy” President Chamoun, and threatened the U.S. forces with “catastrophic consequences.”

In Cairo, fountain of most of this hate, Egyptian officials hotly complained that half a dozen secret radio stations now “attack President Nasser personally in round-the-clock propaganda assaults.” Pressed for a sample broadcast from the clandestine stations (located, say the Egyptians, on the French Riviera, in Jordan, Lebanon, British Aden, Cyprus and Kenya), the officials produced the following: “Nasser is a criminal who forcibly became the leader of his country. Nasser’s gangs are never successful except in destruction, ruin and bankruptcy. Dear, sweet Jimmy Boy Nasser, a curse be upon you, a plague be upon you and all your household!”

The constant exchange of radio invective, the ceaseless calls to arms fell upon Arab nerves already raw from poverty, humiliation, despair. In Lebanon, occasional bombs still went off, and 1,700 glad-to-be-gone U.S. marines left their fly-ridden bivouac in the dusty hills above Beirut and marched down to the beach for evacuation. There were hints that another marine battalion would shortly be withdrawn from Lebanon to the “floating reserve” of the Sixth Fleet.

In iraq and Jordan, both governments were busy with trials of opposition leaders. The Iraqis rounded up 108 supporters of the deposed regime of murdered King Feisal and Nuri asSaid. The first defendant, Major General Ghazi Daghestani, predictably “confessed” that he had been involved in a plot with the U.S. and Britain to “overthrow” the Syrian government in 1956.

In Jordan, 13 of 27 gunrunners were sentenced to be hanged (though privately this time, to spare the sensibilities of the British left), and the trial began of four young men and an Arab Christian girl charged with bomb throwing. Nonetheless, King Hussein was feeling secure enough to order the release of 50 army officers who had been held on suspicion of disloyalty. Not to be outdone, Israel announced it had uncovered “the biggest spy ring ever discovered” with the arrest of twelve Israeli Arabs who were working under the direction of Syrian military intelligence.

Syria, after more than six months of Nasser’s rule by remote control, found its economy shakier than before. To quiet dissatisfied Syrian businessmen. Nasser allowed Syria a separate budget, vetoed some of his planners’ grandiose schemes and ordered a cut in armaments. Unhappy Syrian officers reportedly flung their caps on the table, the traditional gesture of threatening to resign from the army if they do not have their way. More agreeable to Nasser was his three-day meeting with Crown Prince Feisal, Premier of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, who announced that “clouds between the two countries have now been cleared off.”

Through the hot summer nights the radio voices continued to shrill defiance in accents as arresting as those of a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from a minaret, with words as incendiary as a skyful of fire bombs. Nasser’s propagandists were sure that they had the edge. Mused one contentedly: “Our radio is so successful because any Arab anywhere in the Arab world can simply turn the knob and hear the echo of thoughts that fill his own heart.”