All Gummed Up

Hamas suspects that Israeli intelligence services are supplying its Gaza Strip stronghold with chewing gum that boosts the sex drive in order to "corrupt the young," an official said on Tuesday.

"We have discovered two types of stimulants that were introduced into the Gaza Strip from Israeli border crossings," Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan told AFP.

"The first type is presented in the form of chewing gum and the second in the form of drops," he said.

This is old news.

In 1996, rumors surfaced in the press that Israeli-made chewing gum, exported to Egypt, was intended to make Arab women promiscuous.

and here:

...in Mansura, rife with talk about orgies said to have occurred at the local university campus, the specter of moral breakdown has created an atmosphere of crisis.

``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.''

Exactly what happened at Mansura University is still elusive, even after weeks of reports in anti-Israeli newspapers and furious allegations by a member of Parliament, Fathy Mansour, who has accused Israel of ``a huge scheme to ravage the young population of Egypt.''

A laboratory analysis by Egypt's Ministry of Health found nothing in the brands of so-called Israeli gum, traced to smugglers in Gaza, that could stimulate sexual arousal, the health minister, Ismail Sallam, said in a news conference recently. And an investigation by the vice squad in al-Daqahlya province found nothing to back up reports that women driven to passion by the gum had carried out sexual attacks on their male classmates...``We are no longer safe,'' said Sayada Abdul Moneim, a 20-year-old high-school graduate who, like her friend Mosalem, wore her hair veiled in a gesture of Islamic modesty. ``Women should be more prudent. I now use a brand of gum that is made in Egypt. It is not very good quality, but at least it is safe.''

In an interview, a university official at the Youth and Sports Affairs Department said several young women had confessed to her that they had had sex with male students after chewing the gum. ``We women are very weak,'' said the official, who insisted on anonymity. ``Anything like that gum could affect us.''

...Even without evidence that the Israeli gum delivers anything more than fresh breath, authorities in Mansura have swept it from the streets, closing kiosks and arresting dealers for trafficking in smuggled goods.