Egypt.. Naguib Sawiris responds to Mustafa Bakri regarding who is responsible for the 1967 “setback.”

On Friday, Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris responded to statements attributed to Egyptian journalist and parliamentarian Mustafa Bakri, that the military leadership was responsible for the defeat of June 5, 1967, or what is known as the “setback,” and not former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The “More” news page on the “X” platform, previously Twitter, said, quoting Bakri as saying in statements during his program: “The journalist and member of the House of Representatives, Mustafa Bakri: The military leadership is responsible for the setback of 1967, not the leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.”

Journalist Mustafa Bakri said during his program “Facts and Secrets” broadcast on “Sada El Balad” on Thursday evening, that there is a “clear testimony” given by the late President Mohamed Anwar Sadat after the October 1973 victory that “the military leadership is responsible for the defeat, not Gamal Abdel Nasser,” as he described it. Bakri added: “Let everyone understand, and let everyone realize that Abdel Nasser was innocent of what happened, and that President Sadat was a witness to what happened...”

In response, Naguib Sawiris wrote through his account on the “X” platform: “The president is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and therefore the political decisions that led to the 1967 war were issued by him, and therefore the defeat of 1967 is entirely his responsibility, and your words will not benefit him.” Mustafa Bakri attacked the Egyptian businessman, Naguib Sawiris, accusing him of spreading “lies” about the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Then Sawiris wrote about Abdel Nasser in response to a blog post asking why he was present in the memory of successive Egyptian generations: “Where was Egypt’s dignity when he imprisoned opponents and tortured them? Where was Egypt’s dignity in his adventures and defeats in Yemen and the disaster of 1967 when we lost Sinai and our army returned broken from Sinai?”

Where was Egypt's dignity when freedom disappeared during his reign? The socialist system proved a miserable failure throughout the world, and communism fell in Russia,” he said.

Bakri responded to Sawiris by saying: “Engineer Naguib Sawiris has the right to criticize the late leader Gamal Abdel Nasser as he wishes. He has the right to vent his hatred on every occasion. He came out on us again on the anniversary of the late leader’s birth to re-publish his lies about Abdel Nasser.”

Although Sawiris criticized Gamal Abdel Nasser's policy, he praised his integrity, as he said in a previous blog post that the former Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was "chaste in spirit and was not corrupt."