It is a little known fact that the largest existentialist scene outside France and Europe was in the Arab World. Between the end of World War I and the Six-Day War of 1967 war various variants of Arab existentialism dominated local culture with fundamental influence on free thought, literature and literary criticism. No Western intellectual was more discussed, debated, translated and commented upon than Jean-Paul Sartre. The attachment to Sartre was so powerful that the entire post-colonial project of forging a new Arab self was intimately informed by his categories of thought and action. Beyond the fact that many Arab intellectuals were “thinking with Sartre,” they also developed a two-way relationship with him in a fashion that informed and nourished his global stance on neo-colonialism.
Yet, close and promising as this relationship was, shortly after Sartre’s visit to Egypt and Israel in March 1967, the relationship collapsed amongst Arab accusation of Sartre’s betrayal and defection to the Zionist camp. What happened? Did the champion, theoretician and global activist of Third World liberation change his mind? What kind of support did he render Israel and what does it mean in terms of his philosophy? Based on new archival sources and extensive research in Arabic and Hebrew, we can now begin to explore in greater depth the real reasons behind this rupture and its implications.
