It's certainly not the first conspiracy theory naming Israel as a conspirator, but it may well be the most hilarious.
[Hamas Police spokesman] Shahwan said that the police got their hands on gum that increases sexual desire that, according to him, reaches merchants in the Strip by way of the border crossings. According to him, a Palestinian drug dealer admitted that he sold products that increase sex drive. The dealer said that he received the materials from Israeli sources by way of the Karni crossing.
A number of suspects have been arrested.
According to the article, it seems the rumor was started by a man seeking to blame his (presumably unmarried) daughter's sexual activity on something other than natural human sex drive.
The affair was exposed when a Palestinian filed a complaint that his daughter chewed the aforementioned gum and experienced the dubious side effects.
Of course, the story may well have some truth to it. After all, in the United States (and presumably elsewhere in the world), products increasing sex drive are regularly advertised on the cable networks. Frankly, they're even more endemic than our good friend Smilin' Bob as his "naturally male enhanced" genitals
Actually, come to think of it, some of the sex drive commercials star a different, not nearly so Smilin' Bob. Unfortunately, I can't find video of Mr. Dole's commercial on Youtube, so you'll have to live without it.
So, anyway, yes, it's quite possible that Palestinian dealers are selling drugs increasing sex drive, and if so, they almost certainly get them from Israel, since I tend to doubt Egypt makes such drugs readily available.
However, it turns out that this particular conspiracy theory is not a new one.
It apparently originated in Egypt in the 1990s, where the claim was the gum was coming from the then-Israeli occupied Gaza Strip.
If it is true, as it is whispered here, that certain young women in this provincial capital have let their moral standards lapse, then no one wants to believe they fell prey to hormones alone. No, the cause -- the curse, it is said -- was ordinary-looking chewing gum laced with aphrodisiacs capable of transporting the most innocent female into a sexual frenzy.
The potion's source, it is firmly believed here, is an Israel bent on corrupting pure Egyptian youth.
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"It was a joke at first," said Doaa Mosalem, a 19-year-old student in the School of Engineering. "We began to hear rumors that a girl had sex with seven boys on campus and another had sex with several others in a car. But now I believe that something was really going on."
I would not doubt that those rumors are true. I'm sure some female student at El Mansoura's University did indeed have sex with seven boys. After all, some people have to have more open sexual views at what is claimed to be the 15th best university in Africa (5th of those not in South Africa). But I would guess, again, a convenient scapegoat for modesty.
The rumors soon spread to the Palestinian territories, as the Washington Post describes in a 1997 article.
It joins a number of Arab fantasies that play off Israel's links to the West -- and therefore the menacing mystique of Western sexuality -- resonating from the Koranic warning against Satan as "the insidious tempter who whispers in the hearts of men."
... "He is a seducer. He comes with Barbie dolls and cocktails and provocative TV programs and movies and, worst of all, emancipated women."
Of course, it turned out the Americas (not just the United States, but Latin America as well) were the true culprits.
According to officials in Gaza, the gum was first spotted at a convenience store run by Riyadh Younis Daoud. There were several varieties, each of which came with stickers inside: "The Legend of Pocahontas," "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp," "Thunder in Paradise" and others.
Because Pocahontas had rather a sultry look, and because the gum's Spanish manufacturer mistakenly had put the words "adults over 18" on some of the wrappers, Palestinian inspectors seized Daoud's entire supply and brought it to Abdel Jabbar Tibi.
Nevertheless, the story was so endemic that the Washington Post commissioned a Professor and member of Peace Now to test the gum going into Gaza.
The Washington Post commissioned a test of allegedly contaminated chewing gum provided by Palestinian health officials.
Dan Gibson, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at Hebrew University and a member of the left-wing lobby group Peace Now, said that, using a mass spectrometer capable of detecting as little as a microgram of progesterone, he found none in the gum. When used as a contraceptive pill, according to a standard physician's reference, the effective dose is about 300 times larger than a microgram.
But it certainly makes a good story.