On October 5, 1973, during Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement, a national day of prayer for Jews, Egypt and Syria jointly attacked Israel. Overcoming the surprise and reacting correctly was essential. Tsahal has reached its limits. The fighting is terrible. As long as Israel loses ground, no intervention demanding a ceasefire! On the eighth day of fighting, Israel announced that it had succeeded in containing the attacks. On the ninth day, the encirclement of the Egyptian army sounded incredible. As soon as it became clear that the Jews were gaining ground, UN injunctions for a ceasefire were immediate, permanent and accompanied by threats of intervention from the great powers. In the space of a few days, Israel loses 10 armored tanks, while 264 Egyptian tanks are destroyed. An Israeli unit was 30 km from Cairo. The UN demanded an immediate end to the fighting. On the Syrian front, the fighting continued for another ten days.
Israel has not fought two nations. Among the Egyptian and Syrian prisoners were soldiers from Uganda, Libya, pilots from Iraq and even Tunisians. Soviet technical advisors were also present on the ground in Syria. As for Saudi Arabia, it was the financial guarantor. Tsahal did not stand up to a few regional armies, poorly trained and lacking in effective weaponry. No, the little David stood up to an international coalition.
A neutral UN?
The UN troops in the Sinai Peninsula guaranteed the maintenance of an army-free zone, or demilitarized zone, of non-aggression, according to the Km 242 peace treaty. However, a few days before the attack began, as in 1967, UN troops withdrew at Egypt’s request, without informing Israel! The despicable bias of the UN is indisputable.
International consequences
The battle of Yom Kippur also has an extraordinary prophetic aspect. The conflict has repercussions all over the world. All it takes is one economic exchange, one word of political support for Israel, and the consequences are immediate. Denmark and Canada are deprived of oil because of their support for Israel. Even Switzerland is trembling: we have refused to send a shipment of blood to Israel for fear of reprisals from Arab nations. As a young volunteer blood donor, I was furious.
My thoughts kept returning to the text: At that time, I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all peoples; all those who lift her up will be bruised; all the nations of the earth will gather against her.85 No one exults with joy, saying to themselves, this is wonderful, the prophets announced it two thousand years ago. It’s happening before our very eyes, we see it on TV, God is great. God watches over his people! No, people get upset about Israel, including gentiles and committed Christians.
1974 | In the Maalot school, three Palestinians take 115 children and their teachers hostage. They demanded the release of 23 Palestinian prisoners. To increase the pressure, the terrorists kill some of the children. The Golani unit intervenes and manages to save some of the hostages. Thirty-one people plus the three terrorists are killed.
Palestinians are not liked in Syria. Driven out of Jordan, many families of fighters have regrouped in the Syrian city of Hama. Frequent fighting takes place between Syrian soldiers and PLO Fedayeen.
To enter Israel illegally, terrorists use the Yarmouk riverbed, the natural border between Syria, Jordan and Israel. To put a stop to this, Israel created a crocodile farm. A few males from Florida were released into the river. Since then, the border has been hermetically sealed.
1975 | On November 10, 1975, in its boundless wisdom, the UN accepted a resolution equating Zionism with racism. The U.S. ambassador to the UN, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, made a speech from the rostrum demonstrating that it was a lie to associate apartheid, racism and Zionism. Another spontaneous reaction came from Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov: “It‘s a lie that the United Nations has declared to be true. Putting Zionism and Nazism on the same racist level is a total aberration, but it has been done.
Massacre at Damour
1976 Between Beirut and Sidon, the village of Damour stretches along both sides of the coastal road. Palestinian militia units surrounded the mainly Christian town of 25,000 inhabitants. The siege lasted 11 days. The water supply was cut off, and commander Zuheir Moshen forbade the Red Cross to enter the town to evacuate the wounded. On January 20, the Lebanese Phalanges were overwhelmed. Between 500 and 600 people were locked inside the church to be slaughtered and burned. In the days that followed, 15,000 Christians fled southwards. The Lebanese civil war had begun, and the fighting in the Beirut region continued unabated.
Entebbe Raid
On July 4, a commando from the Palestine Liberation Front and two members of the Baader Gang hijacked an Air France Airbus plane over the capital of Uganda. Most of the passengers were Jews. President Amin Dada accepts the aircraft, the terrorists and the hostages. The ransom demanded was enormous, especially as no guarantee of the release of the Jewish hostages was given. An Israeli commando team freed the hostages in Uganda and brought them back to Israel. A literally phenomenal feat of arms.
1977 | I was a volunteer in Upper Galilee and my kibbutz was 27 km from the Lebanese border. The volunteer leader, Aaron, would often say: You see these atrocities being committed in Lebanon, thousands of people are being killed in the Bekaa Valley and nobody in the Western world is interested in them, no authority to say stop! It’s like for us: either we win and are condemned by the UN, or we lose, and no one will remember us, not even an international body will intervene! What lucidity.
But what is Aaron talking about? What do these references to the Bekaa Valley mean? He’s the one who tells me that the Palestinians are driving the Maronite Christians out of this beautiful green valley, to take over the land.
Resumption of negotiations
The new President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, is not satisfied with the political situation in the Middle East. He makes his first presidential visit to Israel. He wants to relaunch talks between Egypt and Israel. The Jews are tired of the hypocritical lies of their adversaries. Their tongue is forked like a snake’s, their language double, they refute in front of the media what they affirm at the negotiating table, an Israeli official told journalists.
However, a first step was taken on November 19, 1977. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was the first Arab head of state to visit a country with which his nation was still officially at war. Such a visit was unthinkable given the various wars that had pitted the two countries against each other.
Third Sinai withdrawal
1978 | In December, in the name of peace, Israel agreed to hand over the Sinai Peninsula, with its wealth of black gold and magnificent sandy beaches, to Egypt for the third time. This was the fruit of the Camp David talks. Jimmy Carter was able to listen to and reconcile two men: Presidents Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. The 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty stipulated that, in return, Israel would obtain normalization of Israeli-Egyptian diplomatic relations and guarantees of freedom of movement on the waterways of the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran. The land-for-peace agreement also covers military forces, which each country was willing to stop assembling near the border. Israel also offered a guarantee of free passage from Egypt to Jordan. This agreement is still in force.
Poisoning
The most unimaginable things happen. After numerous hospitalizations, the reason for the food poisoning is discovered: Jaffa citrus fruits, poisoned by mercury injections, are found in the Netherlands. The world of citrus growers was outraged. Research is carried out to find out where the poisoning took place. Isolated acts by Palestinian workers in Israeli orchards.
1979 | For the armed Muslim groups, the peace agreement is a real betrayal, and they will not only denounce it, but also demonstrate their disagreement with all-out terrorist acts. One tactic is to drop parcels or luggage containing homemade bombs in public or high-traffic areas. The Egged transport company is an ideal target. It’s easy to board a bus and leave, forgetting your satchel. A few minutes later, the explosion kills the passengers. Concerts and stores are not spared.
Social movement
The Arab Workers Movement calls on Palestinian workers to demand higher wages and more vacations. It’s a social movement with union aims for Palestinian and Arab employees. The demands are often justified, but very badly perceived because of the terrorist attacks.
As Israel celebrates the planting of its 26 millionth tree, numerous forest fires keep firefighters on constant alert. The fires cease immediately after this declaration: The Palestinians say these lands are their country. If it were, they wouldn’t set fire to their forest. We Jews know that the forest is life. It deserves our protection.
Fatahland
Yasser Arafat and his men set their sights on overthrowing Syrian President Hafez el-Assad. The fighting around Hama lasted two years. The number of casualties would never be known. But in 1981, the PLO and its leader had to leave Syria. Where to flee? Obviously, they would reinforce the Fedayeen in Lebanon. A new area called Fatahland in southern Lebanon was the talk of the town. It’s a PLO base, used to train fighters, organize and carry out attacks and kidnappings.
Eurovision
Israel, with Atari Gali and her song “Honey-hallelujah”, wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
PLO diatribes
1980 | In three international speeches, on February 11 in Venezuela, in the summer in Mexico, and in November in Taipei, Yasser Arafat asserts: We (PLO) will fight until the total destruction of the Jewish entity, until the liquidation of the last Zionist. Let us unite to destroy Israel! Hitler had the same words in his mouth at the Reichstag in Nuremberg in 1935. How can we not think of King David’s text They form treacherous plots against your people, they conspire against those you protect: Come, they say, let us exterminate them from among the nations, and let the name of Israel be remembered no more.86
Jerusalem, capital of Israel
In response to Palestinian provocations, Prime Minister Menachem Begin declares to the whole world that Jerusalem is and will remain Israel’s eternal capital. No possible peace process must divide it. As Psalm 122.3 says: Jerusalem, you are built like a city whose parts are bound together. This is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, according to the law of Israel, to praise the name of the Lord! It was on the basis of this text from the Bible that the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, enacted the Jerusalem Law, declaring Jerusalem the eternal and indivisible capital of the State of Israel.
Arab countries apply pressure and eleven nations move their embassies from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.
Revisionism
The negationists make their appearance, led by university professor Robert Faurisson, who enjoys the popularity of scandal. In December, on Europe 1, the far-right Frenchman launches the scandal with these words: Hitler’s so-called “gas chambers” and the so-called “genocide” of the Jews form one and the same historical lie, which has enabled a gigantic political-financial swindle whose main beneficiaries are the State of Israel, international Zionism, and whose main victims are the German people – but not its leaders – and the entire Palestinian people. Impeachment, a teaching ban, and the courts get involved in the scandal. Faurisson owes his salvation to his friend Noam Chomsky, an American philosopher and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught all his life. He made a name for himself as a committed anarchist. He launched a petition in favor of freedom of speech and expression for Faurisson. Professor Faurisson remained in his post, but the legal machine was set in motion. In 1981, he was convicted, but took the opportunity to speak of a victory for the revisionists. His sentence was far too lenient, and he was not even removed from the teaching profession.
Connivances
The theses of the far-right appeal to the far-left, who spread the false theories of the revisionists far and wide. Socialists, Palestinian and Arab politicians in Europe propagate the message, which is consumed with delight by all young immigrants from North Africa, second-generation youngsters who feel badly about themselves.
The start of misinformation
The news business is at a turning point. Articles and broadcasts castigating the decisions of the Israeli authorities are all the rage. The left has embraced the cause of the poor Palestinians martyred by the evil Jews. It’s a caricature spread far and wide.
One Russian author is becoming more and more widely read: Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In his book The Gulag Archipelago, he gives a detailed account of life in Russian prisons. He speaks of innocent Jews dying for no reason…
Tammuz nuclear reactor
1981 | President Menachem Begin orders the Israeli air force to bomb and destroy the Osirak nuclear reactor in Tammuz, Iraq. Under no circumstances will Israel allow an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction for use against our people. The military operation consisted of three fighter jets flying in very close formation under an international airliner. Undetectable by radar, they flew in close to bomb and destroy the nuclear reactor under construction.
Expropriation
In order to keep his word, according to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Menachem Begin gave Sinai back. The Jewish pioneers who had settled there were forced to leave a region that had been conquered three times. The inhabitants of Yamit, near El Arisch, refused to comply. The army had to expropriate them one by one, carrying them. It’s an unpleasant experience for the policemen and young soldiers. They have to obey an order, but sympathize with their fellow Jewish expellees.
Genocide of Lebanese Christians
The Palestinians, expelled from Syria, settled in Lebanon. The PLO was incensed by its various failures. With unprecedented violence, Yasser Arafat’s terrorists drive out the 180,000 inhabitants of Zahlé and the surrounding area, as well as the population of Damour, estimated at 20,000. More than 300,000 Christian Maronites and neighboring villages were forced to flee the Bekaa Valley in the face of Palestinian troops. Mercy is but a memory. During the massacres of the population, children are not spared. Behind the mountains of Lebanon, the wonderful Malbech and Bekaa valleys, famous for their excellent wines, become a huge mass grave. UN-sponsored refugees kill innocent, peaceful Christians. The Syrian army lends a 70,000-strong hand to the PLO.
According to observations and information received from the Maronite Church, 150,000 Lebanese have been executed, 100,000 have managed to flee and 50,000 are missing.
And what about the UN? Absolute silence, the silence that kills. The leaders of the PLO and their soldiers do not respect international conventions without being prosecuted or condemned. The Palestinians have imposed Fatahland on Lebanon, and nobody is stopping them from fulfilling their every wish. From Damour southwards to Zahlé, the whole of Lebanon is invaded and controlled by the Palestinians. The only exception is a small strip 15 kilometers wide in the very south, along the border with Israel. Here, some 35,000 Lebanese Christians have found refuge and weapons to defend themselves.
UN observers witness and Israel reports on the atrocities committed by their new northern neighbor. Lebanon’s Christians fled and told of their tragedy as they crossed the border at Metulla. For five years, the Christians of southern Lebanon are fed and armed, receive mail, export and import through the Good Border with Israel. They lived disconnected from their capital, which did nothing to improve their situation. A confrontation with Fatah troops is out of the question.
Various acts of terrorism
Radio Voix du Liban was set up in a bus near the border. For many years, it enjoyed the protection of the Tsahal. But an attack put a definitive end to the broadcasts of this unique free radio station.
The total number of innocent victims of PLO terrorist acts this year exceeds the sad figure of 1,400 deaths in Lebanon alone.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is very angry with President Anwar Sadat. During a political rally, they assassinate him.
Journalistic injustices
1982 | Journalistic misinformation becomes almost grotesque. Example taken from the daily La Suisse, first week of May 1982. A grenade thrown into a church in Beirut kills 118 people. This information is published as a news item. The same week, on half-page: Israel, violent incidents in Nablus. Israeli soldiers injure 20 people during demonstrations in Nablus.
No, the story doesn’t end there. Consider the bias of the United Nations. The action of Tsahal and the Israeli police was condemned by the UN on May 14 1982. On the other hand, the PLO, guilty of the massacre in the Beirut church, was ignored, forgotten and never condemned!
The most dramatic is the UN sanction, which shows that misinformation is universal. 20 wounded Palestinian thugs outweigh the 118 Christians killed as they celebrated God as a family, men, women and children together. Where is there a spark of justice? And it’s happening all the time.