Weekend Historical Videos: 1958

The year 1958 was a crucial one in what the late Malcolm Kerr called "The Arab Cold War," when Nasserism was sparring with more traditional Western-backed regimes, with the broader Cold War rivalry providing the lens for much Western interpretation of what was going on. The overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq (and the deaths of the Royal Family), an incipient civil war in Lebanon, threats of a coup in Jordan, and the dispatch of US Marines to Lebanon and British troops to Jordan, all created a sense of explosive crisis which seemed more coordinated to many at the time than the historical evidence necessarily justifies. A few clips for this week's Weekend Historical Videos.

Two newsreels of the overall situation, clearly focused through a Cold War lens:





US Marines in Lebanon;



Video of the Lebanese crisis with only a musical background, but the presence of Pierre Gemayel in many of the clips makes me assume its a Phalangist video:



Have a good weekend.