Egypt's president from 1956 until his death in 1970, Nasser made himself the voice of the Arab world by fusing secular nationalism, anti-imperialism, and non-alignment into a force that stunned the Western powers when he nationalized the Suez Canal and turned military defeat into political triumph. At home he pursued land reform and industrialization under a one-party state with a powerful secret police. The catastrophic defeat of the 1967 Six-Day War shattered his prestige but not his hold over his people, who flooded the streets to refuse his resignation and then filled Cairo for his funeral.
In June 1967, after Israel destroyed the Egyptian air force in a single morning and overran the Sinai in six days, Gamal Abdel Nasser went on the radio and resigned. Then something extraordinary happened. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians poured into the streets of Cairo and other Arab cities, weeping and refusing to let him go. He withdrew the resignation and stayed. It was the strangest moment in the career of a man who had spent fifteen years making himself the voice of the Arab world: the leader who had just lost a war, and whose grand promise of Arab strength lay in ruins, was begged by his own people to keep ruling them. Three years later he died of a heart attack, and the crowds that filled Cairo for his funeral were larger still.