After Israel destroyed much of Egypt's air force, Egyptian state radio broadcast false claims of major victories and heavy Israeli aircraft losses. Jordanian leaders initially relied upon misleading Egyptian reports when deciding to enter the fighting around Jerusalem and the West Bank. The misinformation compounded the scale of the Arab defeat.

The defeat, known in Arabic as the Naksa, transformed Arab poetry and intellectual life. Mahmoud Darwish and other Palestinian poets confronted dispossession and propaganda, while Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai explored Jerusalem through intimate language resistant to official triumphalism.