United Israel

President Franklin Roosevelt’s moving and historic “Day of Infamy” speech on Monday, December 8th, 1941, the morning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, is still remembered by those born before 1935, and to millions of us of the Baby Boomer generation (born 1946 and thereafter) was recounted firsthand by our parents as we came of age after the horrors of World War II. My father, like so many, joined the military that Monday morning. It was the most decisive geopolitical event of the 20th century and changed everything for all of us even after nearly 66 years. It is wonderfully preserved on the Web, in sound, film, and even the typed transcript from which the President read.

I have devoted my academic career to the study of Jesus and early Christianity. The 1st century AD also witnessed such a Day of Infamy. It was commemorated just last week, on Tuesday, July 24th, known by Jews as Tisha b’Av, the 9th day of the fifth month of Av on the Jewish/Hebrew calendar. It is a day of complete fasting and abject mourning, remembering the destruction of Jerusalem, including both Temples, the First and the Second, in 586 BCE and 70 CE respectively, as well as countless other sad and tragic days in Jewish history.

Over the years I have come to realize that when it comes to understanding the 1st century Jesus movement, which developed into the new religion called “Christianity,” there is no greater factor or event than the horrific destruction of Jerusalem in August of 70 CE by the Roman emperor Vespasian. Indeed, the Romans called this period caniculares dies, the “dog days of summer,” a name that has stuck until our time, falling between July 15 and August 15, and characterized by oppressively hot and sultry temperatures when all creatures become languid and forlorn. I would urge all my readers to carefully read through the account of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in Josephus’ Jewish War, in a translation other than that of William Whiston, which is just too outdated (1793). The Penguin edition, though abridged, by Williamson, is one easily available alternative.

I think it would be hard to overemphasize the critical and vital importance of this watershed event in 1st century Jewish Palestine. After that date everything changed, for Jews living in the Roman empire, but most decidedly for the followers of Jesus, certainly in the Homeland, but also those scattered through the Mediterranean world. To put it succinctly–nothing was ever the same again. Jesus had died in 30 CE but his influential brother James (Jacob/Yaaqov) had taken over and offered new hope and direction for the movement. When he too was brutally murdered in 62 CE by the same family of High Priests connected to the “Godfather” Annas, the Jesus movement was absolutely devastated.

Ironically, none of our New Testament documents record the horrors of August, 70 CE, and everything we have was written either a decade before or a decade after that decisive Day of Infamy. Before that date we have the authentic letters of Paul and the Q source, dating to the 50s CE. These writings anticipate an apocalyptic climax of all things directly on the horizon. After 70 CE we get our four Gospels and other materials (later Pauline letters, Peter, John, Revelation, etc.), which are basically sketching out a vision of “post-War” existence with the “End of the Age” much delayed and postponed.

The New Testament scholar, John Dominic Crossan has called the period from 30-50 CE, before Paul’s letters, the “dark age” of Christianity, due to the lack of historical sources. In terms of the first followers of Jesus, that is, those Jewish messianists led by James the Just, brother of Jesus, the “black out” hardly ends with Paul, who had begun to propose a wholly alternative vision of the “faith” of Jesus. The double blow of the death of James and the destruction of Jerusalem, with the death and scattering of those Jerusalem witnesses who had known Jesus, effectively ended any possibility of our direct access to a non-Pauline version of things. When the “curtain” comes up after 70 CE, a modified version of Paul was clearly the “only game in town,” and hope of the “kingdom of God on earth,” with a restoration of the nation of Israel under its Davidic Messiah, was thoroughly dashed.

Jews find many historic reasons to fast on Tisha b’Av, but I am thinking it might not be such a bad idea for Christians as well, at least for those who are interested in recovering the original faith of Jesus. In some ironic way I think one can say that the “end of the age” did indeed come during those dog days of the summer of 70 CE, and whether the new age that dawned was a loss or a gain is something with which all of us have to grapple. Christian pilgrims in the time of the emperor Constantine began to travel to Jerusalem to see the holy places that had become associated with the life of Jesus. One high point of the typical pilgrimage was to stand on the Mount of Olives, gazing over the plaza where the Temple once stood. We have accounts where they joyfully celebrate the confirmation of faith they received in thinking of how the Jews who had rejected “Christ” had been justly punished by the destruction of Jerusalem and their subsequent Exile. Luke offers us such a triumphant version of things as he rewrites Mark’s “little Apocalypse,” and Matthew as he reworks Mark’s narrative of the trial of Jesus:

“For great distress will be upon the earth and upon this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:23-24)

“And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” (Matthew 27:25)

Such post-War language echoes the brutally triumphant words of Paul, written decades earlier, when he speaks of “the Jews” who killed the Lord Jesus and “displease God and oppose all men,” but “God’s wrath has come upon them at last!” (1 Thessalonians 2:15-16).

Remembering Tisha b’Av…

JDT

I remember the Six Day War as vividly as any news event in my life, more vividly than even the JFK assassination, which for my generation is the “benchmark” of public memory. I was 21 years old, living temporarily in Abilene, TX, newly married with pregnant wife, just back from a year in Europe after graduating from college and preparing to head out to California to work on an M.A. at Pepperdine University. I was riveted to the radio and television and little else was on my mind throughout that hot first week of June.

June 7, 1967 is emblazoned in my mind, just as June 6, 1944 was to my parents before I was born.

Over the years I have timed a few trips of mine to Israel to coincide with the June 7th Anniversary. I went there for the 30th anniversary in 1997 and sat for hours overlooking the Old City and thinking about it all. When I began my book, The Jesus Dynasty, in 2005, I also began the preface on June 7th, in the Old City, at the American Colony hotel. I have always been that way about dates, marking them, noticing them, and just thinking about them, especially as they pertain to biblical events or modern events in the history of the State of Israel.

This year was no exception. I knew we would be digging in Israel on Mt. Zion and the times are flexible, mostly set based on my academic schedule and that of the students. Months ago it looked like we would end up there on first week of June. And so it was. I wanted to be in Israel, in Jerusalem, on the 40th Anniversary of the Six Day War–particularly on June 7th itself. I had thought about this years ago, intending to somehow be in Jerusalem on the 40th anniversary.  As it turned out, with the Mt Zion dig, it was easy to schedule. I realize that Israel celebrates “Jerusalem Day,” as they call it, based on the Jewish Calendar, on Iyyar 28th, which fell on May 16th this year. I understand the reasons for this but as an historian the more accurate “marker” of the Gregorian date appeals to me more–so June 7th was the date that was on my mind last week in Jerusalem.

I took my group to stand at the Zion Gate, where you can still see the bullet marks from the 1948 and 1967 War. We walked down to the Wall and I related the story as best I knew it. I had interviewed in the past Rabbi Ariel, who was a young man in his 20s at the time, a soldier, who made it early on to the Wall. I was able to relate to the students some of the things he had told me about the sights, sounds, and feelings of that heady afternoon when Jewish soldiers and later rabbis and others rushed down to the Wall for the first time since 1948.

I was not in the US for the 40th anniversary this year but I picked up here and there from the world news media a lot of revisionist thinking about the Six Day War, especially in Europe. In these circles Israel is to blame for an unnecessary war, deliberately provoked in order to mask their failed domestic policies. According to this line of thinking the Arabs had little to do with the outbreak of hostilities and Israel blew out of proportion the Arab threat to justify its actions. These views were recently published by Tom Segev in his book 1967 and they have been picked up with relish by an anti-Israeli press. Michael Oren, whose book Six Days of War, effectively counters this line of thinking with a careful examination of now declassified documents from the period. The truth is clear. Not only did Israel feel its very existence was in the balance, they were deeply fearful of military confrontation and desperate to avoid conflict. The victory left them reeled back on their heels in utter wonder and surprise. The truth is, no one anticipated the events of June 6-9th, and the capture of the entire West Side of the Jordan and Sinai by the Israelis, and the Old City of Jerusalem, left everyone thinking of the words of Psalm 126, which many Jews knows by heart from the Hebrew chanted in the synagogue:

When the LORD turned the returnees of Zion
We were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
And our tongue with shouts of joy;
Then they said among the nations,
The LORD has done great things for them.
The LORD has done great things for us,
And we are glad.

One has to remember that 1967 was just 20 years after the Holocaust and Israel was an adoloscent State indeed, just stirring itself into adulthood with the first generation of 1948 pioneers still dominant on the scene. I could not help noticing last Shabbat in Jerusalem that the Torah and Haphtarah readings were, respectively: Numbers 13:1 through 15:41 and Joshua 2:1-24. I should remind everyone that these readings have nothing to do with the Gregorian calendar, and that they would fall on the anniversary of the June 6th Six Day War is purely “happenstance.” The readings have indeed to do with a 40 year period, yes a 40th year anniversary, back in the time of Moses and the Exodus. One has to do with the beginning of a 40 Year period after the amazing victory over Egypt, and God basically “handing the Land” to Israel. But Israel became fearful and would not enter in. The second, has to do with the period 40 years later, with the second generation–when they did finally enter the Land, after the old generation has passed. As I sat in my hotel room last Sabbath morning thinking of this periodization I could not help but think of the rough parallels. Israel now stands on the brink of a new era. The old generation is indeed passed or passing, and a new Day has come. What the future will bring is in the hands of us all I suppose, directly or indirectly, but the situation has so drastically changed from 1967 it is hard to imagine what things were like then.

I was corresponding with Robert Eisenman last week, on the 40th Anniversary. He has a new book soon to be out, not about Jesus or the Dead Sea Scrolls, but a wonderful book of poetry that I have had the privilege to read in manuscript form titled New Jerusalem: A Millennium Poetic/Prophetic Travel Diario 1959-1962. It is wonderful stuff, his personal writings as a young man traveling the world. I highly recommend it and it will show those who don’t know him personally his wonderfully passionate soul and his sharp sense of observation and philosophical insight. In the back of the book he has a longer poem, written later than the rest, worth the price of the book alone, on the Six Day War. I hope you will order his book or get it when it comes out.

Finally, for something a bit more crazy and bizarre. It has been characteristic of apocalyptic groups, both ancient and modern, to try and make some sense out of the prophetic periods or numbers in the book of Daniel. We find indications of such in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, in Rabbinic literature, and other ancient texts. They referred to these prophetic numbers as “the times and the seasons.” Moderns groups, particularly the heirs of William Miller, but others as well, have also delved into such things in an attempt to project the numbers of Daniel into our own time. Sir Isaac Newton was more interested in such matters of biblical and prophetic chronology than he was in physics and he spent many years working on such calculations. Modern scholars would of course see this as a vain enterprise, since the numbers of the book of Daniel seem to be well rooted historically in the period of the Maccabees. However, such historical readings have not deterred those who see these prophecies as having a kind of “dual” application, in the past but also projecting into the future. Some years ago I was reading the classic commentary of Adam Clarke, the 19th century Methodist biblical scholar, on Daniel. He commented, writing in 1831, that according to his calculations, based on the 2300 day/year prophecy of Daniel 8, Jerusalem would be “vindicated” in 1966, precisely 2300 years from the defeat of the Persian king Darius (the Ram) by Alexander the Great (the He Goat) in 334 BCE, when Jerusalem lost its sovereignty to a series of Greco-Roman powers. Since it is rare for anyone involved in “Bible Prophecy” to ever predict something long ahead of their lifetime, it stuck me as strange and a bit daring. He had made one error in his calculations. In moving from 334 BCE, which he saw as the beginning of period Jerusalem’s loss of sovereignty, when Alexander defeated the Persian ruler Darius, 2300 years forward, he had forgotten to add a year since there is no year zero. Hence his corrected prediction would be 1967 as the year when Gentiles would no longer exercise sovereignty over Jerusalem. Also, something Clarke did not know, but others have since pointed out, is that the battle at the Granicus River in 334 BCE took place on the Olympiad calendar corresponding to May/June.

JDT

In a previous issue of the Bulletin (Summer, 2004), I wrote of George Washington’s famous letter of 1790 “To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island” which has become the classical expression of religious liberty in America. In this issue, I would like to again explore this principle of religious freedom and diversity in the shaping of America’s great experiment.

The horrible events of 9/11 and subsequent murderous activities of radical Islamists should remind us on a daily basis that religious liberity, toleration and diversity are precious gifts. Blessings not to be considered as our right, but to be appreciated and celebrated together and worthy of guarding and defending as our collective duty.

In August, 2004, a conference was held in Newport, Rhode Island celebrating 350 years of Jewish American history. The date of the meeting was chosen deliberately to coincide with Washington’s August 17, 1790 letter of welcome to Judah. Every August the members of Touro Synagogue read Washington’s letter aloud. The complete content of Washington’s message appeared in the Summer, 2004 bulletin.

At the conference, five other colonial Jewish congregations were also honored. The Fundamental Constitution of Carolina written by John Locke in 1669 was the first constitution in history to grant religious freedom to Jews. It was Charles Pinckney of Charleston, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, who successfully proposed a ban on religious tests for public office in the United States Constitution.

Actually, the synagogues of Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, and Richmond received their own letter from George Washington later in 1790, in which Washington said, “The liberality of sentiment towards each other which marks every political and religious denomination of men in this country stands unparalleled in the history of nations.”

Between 1790 and 1820 Charleston actually had the largest Jewish population of any city in America, surpassing New York and Philadelphia. The first Catholic Church in South Carolina, St. Mary’s, was built in 1800 on Hasell Street across the street from Beth Elohim, the first synagogue in South Carolina, and founded in 1749.

For Jewish Americans 2004 was a special year. The Jewish community celebrated 350 years of Jewish life in the United States. In 1654, after a perilous journey, 23 Jews from Recife, Brazil, landed in New Amsterdam. They were only “23 souls, big and small,” exhausted after surviving storms and pirates on the high seas. These five words in an early Dutch document describe America’s first Jews, who had fled persecution in Brazil (the Newport congregation of 15 Spanish Portuguese Jewish families arrived in the spring of 1658). Buccaneers in the Caribbean captured them before a French ship rescued them and brought them to what is now New York.

Peter Stuyvesant, the governor-general of the then-Dutch Colony of New Netherlands tried to get the Jews to leave, believing they would not assimilate, would not support themselves financially, and would not adequately participate in the Dutch colony’s lifestyle. Fortunately, The Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam disagreed and ordered Stuyvesant to permit the Jews to remain. The rest, as they say, is history.

Observances continued throughout 2004 in Jewish communities across the United States celebrating the 350th anniversary of the landing of the refugees.

The Library of Congress hosted an exhibit on Jewish life called “From Haven to Home.” The National Foundation for Jewish Culture also recognized the enormous contribution of Jewish talent to about 100 movies, from the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup” to Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List.”

Elie Wiesel, the Nobel prize-winning Holocaust scholar and survivor remarked that Jews came to America, “chased by persecution, fanaticism, intolerance, and meanness. But they managed to transform memories of suffering into an American vision of moral harmony among cultures, religions and society.”

Celebrating religious freedom and diversity is important. Our nation has a long and distinguished history of and contributions to religious freedom, something I’m afraid many of us took for granted until 9/11. All citizens share a responsibilty in preserving this uniquely American harmony among cultures and religions.

Ralph Buntyn

A Bavarian “GroBe Kreisstadt” (Country Town) of 34,000 is located in southeastern Germany. It’s a quiet, dreamy country idyll nestled not far from Munich, the metropolis with over a million inhabitants. It’s also a town with a long and rich history. The Celts settled the land from the 5^th century on and gave the rivers the names that they still bear today: Amper,Wurm and Glonn. Then came the Romans for a period.

In 805 the community was made up of a manor, a church, a mill and 6 farms. It was located at the junction of two landscape regions: in the south, a broad area of impenetrable marshland; in the north, wooded, fertile, hilly country. If you go down to the foot of the Old Town today, you can visit the tavern which still bears the name of that ancient mill, marking the start of communal history: The Steinmuhle.

From the 12^th century on many Bavarian kings would rule the area. At the death of Count Konrad II in 1182, his possessions passed to the House of Wittelsbach. For over 700 years, the Wittelsbach dukes and electors governed the fate of the market town and its inhabitants-for better and for worse. Between 1558-1573 Duke Albrecht V ruled and built the huge four-winged Renaissance palace in place of the old Gothic fortress. Part of this palace remains today as a superb attraction. Under Maximilian I (1573-1651), the market town experienced its worst time. It was plundered by Swedish troops 4 times within a period of 15 years.

With Napoleon, the little town’s era as the summer residence of the Bavarian princes came to an end. Still, it remained what it actually was: a small town where the farmers came to the cattle market and a town with renowned breweries and comfortable taverns.Then came an unexpected period of glory of a completely different kind. The painters arrived.

Only a few painters arrived in the 40’s and 50’s, but then starting around 1870, they stormed into town. Painters had discovered the landscape; they wanted to get away from their studios and out into nature. Hundreds of them made the pilgrimage from Munich, fascinated by the nuances in color of the moor landscape, in love with the rural idyll. There were famous names among them: Carl Spitzweg, Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, Ludwig Dill, Adolf Holzel and Arthur Langhammer. It would become the most important German artists’ colony.

A huge powder factory would be built during World War I on what was then the eastern edge of town. Thousands of workers came during the war to manufacture ammunition for the battlefields of Europe. After the war they lost their jobs: The Treaty of Versailles prohibited the manufacture of war materials. It would become a needy community. In 1928, 1,400 of the 7,100 inhabitants were dependent on public welfare, but a strong labor movement was also developing across Germany. What was soon to happen was not destined to bring good to the little town.

The lovely little Bavarian country town has a name.

That name is Dachau.

The presence of the empty halls of the powder factory was one of the reasons why Heinrich Himmler, the Munich Chief of Police, chose to erect the first Nazi concentration camp in Dachau.

The Nazis seized power on January 30, 1933. The concentration camp became operational on March 22, 1933. This would become the first among other camps throughout Europe to isolate enemies of the National-Socialist regime: political opponents, clergymen, so-called undesirable elements and offer a “final solution to the Jewish question”.

I had the opportunity to visit Dachau in 1993 and witness firsthand the memorial site of this reign of terror. It is an experience one is not likely to forget.

In 1937, the camp originally planned for 5000 persons proved to be too small. The prisoners had to build a larger camp which was completed in 1938. Between March 22, 1933 and April 29, 1945, more than 206,000 prisoners were registered in the official records, however, many prisoners were taken to Dachau without being registered. The exact figures are unknown.

Over 32,000 died, through torture, execution, hunger or epidemics. Horrible atrocities took place here. The experimental station of Dr. Rascher was set up in Block 5 where high pressure and exposure experiments were practiced on defenseless prisoners. Professor Schilling had prisoners infected with Malaria agents. Bio-chemical experiments were also carried out. Many of these experiments resulted in death.

The mortality rate among the prisoners increased so rapidly that the crematory constructed outside the compound in 1940 proved to be too small and a larger one had to be built by the prisoners in 1942.

Upon orders of the SS Economic Administration Main Office in Berlin, a gas chamber was installed. This gas chamber, camouflaged as a shower room, was not used. The prisoners selected for gassing were transported from Dachau to the Hartheim Castle, near Linz (Austria) or to other camps. In Hartheim alone, 3166 prisoners were gassed between January 1942 and November 1944.

The name Dachau, the lovely 1200 year old town became synonymous the world over for the inhuman error of the Nazi regime. On the 29^th day of April, 1945, American troops liberated the concentration camp. The surviving prisoners in their weakness cheered their liberators and the town too could hope for a new and democratic start.

At the end of our visit, we paused for a moment of silence as my wife Rebecca placed a single red rose beneath the statue of “The Unknown Prisoner” memorial at the former crematorium. Words failed.

If you were to visit Dachau today, perhaps you would be welcomed, as we were, with a message:

“You have come to Dachau to visit the Memorial Site in the former Concentration Camp. I should like to welcome you on behalf of the Town of Dachau. Innumerable crimes were committed in the Dachau Concentration Camp. Like you, deeply moved, the citizens of the town of Dachau bow their heads before the victims of this camp.The horrors of the German concentration camps must never be repeated! After your visit, you will be horror-stricken. But we sincerely hope you will not transfer your indignation to the ancient 1200 year old Bavarian town of Dachau, which was not consulted when the concentration camp was built and whose citizens voted quite decisively against the rise of National Socialism in 1933. The Dachau Concentration Camp is a part of the overall German responsibility for that time. I extend a cordial invitation to you to visit the old town of Dachau only a few kilometers from here. We would be happy to greet you within our walls and to welcome you as friends”

Dr. Lorenz Reitmeier, Mayor

GroBe Kreisstadt Dachau

A horrible reality burned into the collective conscience. A little country town with pity.

Ralph Buntyn

October 6, 1981. Another of those days that was destined to live in infamy and one that would make a lasting impression on me. I can still recall that suddenly out of a hushed silence, there were gasps, screams and cries that erupted from the passengers. One woman, sobbing uncontrollably, cried out “there goes the peace”.

The day had progressed uneventfully as my wife Rebecca and I boarded our El Al plane in Tel Aviv for the short flight to Cairo, Egypt. After spending ten days in Israel, we planned to stay in Cairo for four days where we planned to visit the Cairo Museum and take in the sites of ancient Egypt. Just before we were scheduled to land the announcement came over the PA system, President Anwar Sadat had been shot and critically wounded while attending a military parade. The moment remains forever etched in my memory. What followed was the reality that we were witnessing one of the defining moments in modern Middle Eastern history. After finally landing, we experienced more of the display of raw emotions and anguish amid a highly tense situation as we made our way through the airport and finally to the Cairo Concorde Hotel where we would be staying.

We were confined to our hotel for twenty-four hours as a part of the security clampdown around the city. I still have pictures today, taken from the window of our hotel room, of Egyptian soldiers and security guards stationed around the hotel and the tanks and military vehicles that rumbled down the streets to wherever. We later watched as planes landed bringing world dignitaries to attend the state funeral, including Air Force One as it arrived with the U. S. delegation.

Looking back at the historical facts of that period, I am reminded of what David Horowitz had so often said; “truth is often stranger than fiction”.

Anwar Sadat was born on Christmas day, 1918 in the Nile Delta village of Mit Abul Kom, the son of an Egyptian clerk and his part Sudanese wife. It was the year the War in Europe ended and the year that Egypt demanded, in vain, total independence from Britain. A religious child, he attended both Muslim and Coptic Christian schools. Later while attending a Military Academy, one of his classmates was the late President Gamal Abdul Nasser.

All his life, Sadat flirted with danger. His courage and a kind of reckless self assurance was one of the keys to his success. He took desperate chances as a young man, plotting against King Farouk and the colonial domination of Great Britain. As President, Sadat infuriated the Soviet Union when he abruptly threw 18,000 Soviet military personnel out of Egypt. In 1971 he raised the possibility of signing an agreement with Israel provided all the occupied territories captured by the Israelis were returned. With no progress toward peace, Sadat began to say that war with Israel was inevitable. Throughout 1972 and much of 1973, he threatened war unless the United States forced Israel to accept his interpretation of Resolution 242 - total Israeli withdrawal from territories taken in 1967. In April, 1973 Sadat again warned that he would renew the war with Israel, the same threat he had made in 1971 and 1972. Most observers remained skeptical of the rhetoric.
On October 6, 1973 on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan it happened. Egypt and Syria opened a coordinated surprise attack against Israel. The equivalent of the total forces of NATO in Europe was mobilized on Israel’s borders. On the Golan Heights, approximately 180 Israeli tanks faced an onslaught of 1,400 Syrian tanks. Along the Suez Canal, fewer than 500 Israeli defenders with only three tanks were attacked by 600,000 Egyptian soldiers, backed by 2,000 tanks and 550 aircraft. Nine Arab states, including four non-Middle Eastern nations actively aided the Egyptian-Syria war effort. The Soviets gave wholehearted political support to the Arab invasion while pouring weapons into the region. This would lead to the October 12 emergency airlift order of supplies and arms by U. S. President Nixon. Between October 14 and November 14, 1973, the sons of Joseph would provide 22,000 tons of equipment transported to Israel by air and sea. The airlift alone involved 566 flights. To pay for this infusion of weapons, Nixon asked Congress for and received 2.2 billion in emergency aid for Israel.

Thrown on the defensive during the first two days of fighting, Israel mobilized its reserves and began to counterattack. What followed, history tells us, was an epic period of intense engagement. In the greatest tank battle since the Germans and Russians fought at Kursk in World War II, roughly 1,000 Israeli and Egyptian tanks massed in the western Sinai from October 12-14. On the 14th, Israeli forces destroyed 250 Egyptian tanks in the first two hours of fighting. By late afternoon the Israeli forces had routed the enemy, accomplishing a feat equal to Montgomery’s victory over Rommel in World War II. By October 18th, Israeli forces were marching with little opposition toward Cairo. About the same time Israeli troops were on the outskirts of Damascus. This reversal of fortune would bring us to the brink of nuclear war.

The Soviets began to panic and on October 24th they threatened to intervene in the fighting. Responding to the Soviet threat, Nixon put the U. S. military on alert, increasing its readiness for deployment of conventional and nuclear forces. The danger of a U. S –Soviet conflict was real. In fact, this was probably the closest the superpowers had come to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. What followed was an intense period of diplomatic efforts to gain a cease-fire with which Israel reluctantly complied, largely because of U. S. pressure, and because the next military moves would have been to attack the two Arab capitals, action few believed to be politically wise.

By the end of the fighting, 2,688 Israeli soldiers had been killed. Combat deaths for Egypt and Syria totaled 7,700 and 3,500, respectively.

Ironically, the United States had helped save Israel by its resupply effort and then rescued Egypt by forcing Israel to accept the ceasefire. In January 1974, Israel and Egypt negotiated a disengagement agreement thanks to Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy.

The risks Anwar Sadat later took for peace overshadowed his risks in war. In 1977 defying the wrath of most of his fellow Arabs he did the unthinkable and traveled to Jerusalem, the heart of his enemy’s camp, and so began a march to a Mideast peace. His performances in Jerusalem and at Camp David shattered an insidious myth: that Arabs and Israelis could never negotiate face to face. In 1978 Sadat shared the Nobel Peace Prize with another old conspirator turned statesman: Menachem Begin.

On October 6, 1981, exactly eight years to the day he launched the Yom Kippur attack on the Jewish nation, Anwar el-Sadat, the villager who hero-worshipped Mahatma Gandhi as a young boy and would one day rise to lead Egypt, this one who would dare seek peace with the Jewish nation, would be cut down by the enemies of peace. The fanatic Islamic group called Al Taqfir wal Hijra, the largest such fundamentalist group in Egypt and whose roots were tangled in the fanatic Muslim Brotherhood, would darken the whole political landscape of the Middle East.

Providence would permit Rebecca and me to be present during this tragic unfolding of events covered and chronicled by copies of the October 7-8, 1981 issues of The Egyptian Gazette which we still retain.

We did indeed get to visit the Cairo Museum, an incredible experience. We also visited the timeless great pyramids and the Sphinx. The Sphinx, sitting as if guarding the tombs of past Pharaohs, with a weathered face and empty stare, like one who had seen too much.

Ralph Buntyn