Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 10, 2011

"There's no place for Jews in Libya"

From JPost, in a further followup to this and this:

A few hundred angry protesters gathered in central Tripoli on the eve of Yom Kippur on Friday, calling for the deportation of a Libyan Jew who has been trying to reopen a synagogue sealed since ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi expelled the country’s Jewish community in 1967.

The protesters carried signs reading, “There is no place for the Jews in Libya,” and “We don’t have a place for Zionism.”

The crowds tried to storm Italian Libyan Jewish psychoanalyst David Gerbi’s Corinthia Hotel in central Tripoli. There was also a demonstration in Benghazi in the east of the country.

According to Gerbi, the crowd wanted to forcibly remove him from the hotel.

“They were impeded by hotel and Libyan security and government officials,” he said.

Gerbi said that National Security Adviser Abdel Karim Bazama, rebel leader Mustafa Saghezli, Interior Minister Ahmed Dharat and Justice Minister Muhammad Allaghi were among the government officials present at the hotel.

“The Tripoli crowd dispersed after Allaghi warned that any use of force on the part of the protesters would immediately result in strong international condemnation,” Gerbi said.

“He [Allaghi] reassured them the ‘problem’ would be resolved within 48 hours.”

The demonstrations were ignited by an attempt by Dr.Gerbi to clean the debris and pray in Tripoli’s abandoned Dar Bishi Synagogue. Dr. Gerbi had joined the National Transitional Council (NTC) rebel group last spring, first as a volunteer at the Benghazi Psychiatric Hospital and then joining and helping the rebels themselves.

“This incident has served to expose the dangerous reality simmering beneath the surface,” he said.

On Sunday, after a personal meeting with Libyan and Italian diplomatic representatives, he agreed to return to Rome on Tuesday by military plane in order to ease the tension.

To me, the most remarkable part of this story is that a protester actually tried to translate "There's no place for Jews in Libya" into Hebrew just for a protest sign.

The poster behind it says "Libya for the Libyans - not for the Jews" with "Jews" crossed out.

And the protesters in this photo are women.

(h/t Israel Awareness)

Video and updates of clashes between Copts and cops in Egypt

Al Masry al Youm has some additional news from Cairo:

10:45 pm: An eye-witness reports that protesters attempting to move from Abdel Moneim Riad Square to Tahrir Square were charged by a police pick-up truck travelling at high speed. The pick-up truck emerged from behind military police, who were blocking the entrance to Tahrir. Small groups of protesters continue to attempt to re-group in the surrounding streets.

(Arabic edition quotes a witness as saying they ran over five protesters. Video here:)

(The video caption says that Copts took weapons from the security forces.)

10:45 pm: Hundreds of thugs attack the Coptic Hospital in Ramses, where scores of injured are currently being hospitalized. The thugs smashed cars in the street but were unable to gain entry to the hospital.

10:50 pm: Prime Minister Essam Sharaf states on his Facebook page: "What is happening now is not clashes between Christians and Muslims. Rather, it is an attempt to sow chaos and strife."

11:26 pm: A fierce street battle continues on Ramses Street, near the Coptic Hospital between two groups in civilian clothes. A number of cars are on fire as the groups throw molotov cocktails and stones back and forth.

11:43 pm: A group of men march up Qasr al-Ainy Street in downtown Cairo chanting, "Islamic, Islamic!," a common slogan of Islamist groups. State TV has announced that a curfew is in place from 2:00 am until 7:00 am.

11:50 pm: State TV announces that the death toll from the clashes has reached 23. There are no specifications of how many of the dead are soldiers or police and how many are protesters.

11:55 pm: Further confirming speculation of a crackdown on independent media, Randa Abul Azm, a journalist with the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya tells Al-Masry Al-Youm that earlier in the evening a group of plainclothed men tried to break into their building after they spotted a camera on the balcony. The landlord then told the Al-Arabiya producers to stop filming or he would turn off the electricity. "This is very reminiscent of 2 and 3 February," when the Mubarak regime cracked down on independent media ahead of the "Battle of the Camel" attacks on protesters.

12:00 am: Prime Minister Essam Sharaf writes on the cabinet's Facebook page that "invisible hands are plotting to partition Egypt."

12:18 am: Eyewitnesses in downtown Cairo report that groups of thugs are attacking Christian-owned businesses, including a liqour store on Mahmoud Bassiouni St., near Abdel Moneim Riyadh Square, which was the center of clashes earlier in the evening.

12:45 am: Prime Minister Essam Sharaf announces that he will host an emergency meeting with the "ministerial crisis management committee" on Monday to discuss this evening's events.

Al Arabiya has the death toll at 24.

At least 22 killed in clashes between Copts and Egyptian security

From Al Arabiya:

At least 19 people were killed and dozens were wounded as death toll surged in clashes between Coptic Christians and Egyptian security forces on Sunday near the state television building, known as Maspero in Cairo, Egypt’s interior ministry said.

Al Arabiya TV’s correspondent, whose office buildings are in the area, said there was heavy gunfire in the clashes as protesters seized weapons from torched military vehicles. She said she saw bodies outside the building but did not know if they were just wounded.

The clashes were prompted by an attack on a Coptic Christian church in Merinab village in Aswan on Sept. 30 by Muslims who said the church did not have the proper license to build a dome.

State television said the church was attacked after Aswan governor Mustafa al-Seyyed was reported as saying Copts had built it without the required planning permission.

“Down with the marshal,” the demonstrators chanted on the march to Maspero, referring to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi who took power in February after president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in the face of mass street protests.

“We were marching peacefully,” Talaat Youssef, 23-year old Christian trader told Reuters at the scene.

“When we got to the state television building, the army started firing live ammunition,” he said, adding army vehicles ran over protesters, killing five. His account could not be immediately confirmed.

“The army is supposed to be protecting us,” Youssef said.

Al Masry Al Youm quotes Al Jazeera as saying the death toll has reached 22.

Here is a graphic photo of four of the dead Christian protesters (from Twitter).

(h/t Sophie)

Wikileaks endangers remaining Iraqi Jews

From McClatchy:

BAGHDAD — An Anglican priest here says he's working with the U.S. Embassy to persuade the handful of Jews who still live in Baghdad to leave because their names have appeared in cables published last month by WikiLeaks.

The Rev. Canon Andrew White said he first approached members of the Jewish community about what he felt was the danger they faced after a news story was published last month that made reference to the cables.

"The U.S. Embassy is desperately trying to get them out," White said. So far, however, only one, a regular confidante of the U.S. Embassy, according to the cables, had expressed interest in emigrating to the United States.

"Most want to stay," White said. "The older ones are refusing to leave. They say: 'We're Iraqis. Why should we go? If they kill us, we will die here.'"

The U.S. Embassy said it would take steps to protect the individuals whose names appear in the cables and suggested in a statement that should any wish to leave, the U.S. would help relocate them.

"Protecting individuals whose safety is at risk because of the release of the purported cables remains a priority. We are working actively to ensure that they remain safe," the embassy said.

It slammed WikiLeaks for releasing the cables. "Releasing the names of individuals cited in conversations that took place in confidence potentially puts their lives or careers at risk," the statement said.

A furious White also hit the website for publishing the cables. "How could they do something as stupid as that?" he said. "Do they not realize this is a life and death issue?"

WikiLeaks did not respond to a request for comment. Previously, WikiLeaks has said that it had no choice but to make its copies of the cables public after the publication in a book of a password that opened an encrypted version of the cables already available on the Internet.

"We had to warn them of the danger and tell them that we want them all to leave," White said. "I never wanted the Jews to leave Iraq. They belong here."

If White persuades Baghdad's remaining Jews to leave it will mark the end of a 2,700-year presence that dates to the Assyrian conquest of the Judean Kingdom.

It is very easy to find the relevant Wikileaks cables. Here's part of one from 2007 that describes the Rev. White and one of the fearful Jews of Baghdad:

XXXXXXX married YYYYYYYYY in October, 2005 in a synagogue in Amman, Jordan. After returning to Baghdad, XXXXXXXXX received a phone call on December 19, 2005 from someone claiming to be from Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), who said that his group had kidnapped her husband and would not release him unless the Government of Jordan freed an AQI captive (reportedly named Sajidah), and Coalition Forces left Iraq. XXXXXXX said that the captor yelled anti-Semitic slurs at her, roughly translated as "Down with the Jews." XXXXXXXX offered to pay ransom, which the group refused, and then they threatened to cut her husband's head off and mail it to her. She has not heard again from the captors or her husband.

XXXXXXX described an intense fear of publicity. She blames a non-governmental organization, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), for publishing her name in Arabic on the internet, as well as her mother's name and other identifying information. This information may have exposed her and her husband to danger, she said. She was extremely nervous to meet an American diplomat, and strongly requested that her identity be protected. (NOTE: Time magazine reported July 31 that Reverend Canon Andrew White, an Anglican Chaplain in Iraq, is in contact with eight Jews remaining in Baghdad, and that he has provided the group food and money. White told Time that the Baghdad Jews have not been able to agree to apply to go to Israel together, and one woman regularly goes to a Baghdad synagogue. END NOTE.)

XXXXXXX reported that Baghdad has one remaining synagogue, on Betawin Street. She said that the synagogue is old but has no outer markings to indicate that it is a house of worship, let alone a Jewish synagogue. Inside, XXXXXXXX said, it is very beautiful. She prays there alone, she explained, because the other Jews are too scared to join her. She said that praying in the synagogue helped her to cope with the grief of losing her husband.

From 2008, referring to the same woman:

At religious services and on other occasions, XXXXXXX met repeatedly with a number of Embassy political, economic, and military officers, earning their trust over time. She reported reliably about local developments in Baghdad, sharing stories of violence and reconstruction in her neighborhood in the Rusafa district. She relayed details about the Jewish community that matched those reported to post from other sources, including Christians in Baghdad and the expatriate Iraqi Jewish community in the U.S., Britain, and Israel. She proved to be a reliable source of information and a generous conduit of support for her community in Baghdad.

She, in turn, appeared to relish the opportunity to pray with others, as she said that none of the other Iraqi Jews will risk visiting Baghdad's only remaining synagogue. After one of her first Shabbat services, she told Embassy officers, "This is the first time I haven't prayed alone in three years." During Passover in April 2008, she delivered matzah to four others. One of them reportedly told her, "This is the first time I've truly celebrated Eid (Passover) in more than 20 years." She said that she has shared with other members of her community numerous other donations sent to them from the U.S., including religious implements and commercial products difficult to find in Baghdad markets.

The latter cable lists every member of the community and personal details about them.

(h/t CHA)

Post Yom Kippur, pre-Sukkot open thread

A busy Sunday between holidays here at Chez Elder so here's an open thread.

Sunday links

A Jewish couple, trying to reach a Jerusalem hospital while the wife was in labor, was attacked by Arab stone throwers and "nearly lynched"on Yom Kippur.

Reports that relatives of the Fogel family murderers told Jews of Itamar "We'll Fogel you" while drawing their fingers across their throats.

A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Jaffa synagogue.

Reports that Egypt is demanding 81 prisoners in exchange for Ilan Grapel, and that even the Egyptians admit the case against him is weak. Which means he isn't a prisoner - he is a hostage.

The Union of European Football Associations has charged Legia Warsaw after its fans unfurled a massive "Jihad" banner against Israel's Hapoel Tel Aviv.

Barry Rubin has a nice roundup of important trends.

I don't know how popular it is, but Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a nice Arabic website.

(h/t Kramerica, CHA)

Jerusalem Greek Orthodox archbishop supports Assad

From Syria's SANA:

Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church in Palestine and Jerusalem, Atallah Hanna, on Saturday stressed that Syria is the country of amity among all religions where people, Muslims and Christians, live under national unity led by President Bashar al-Assad.

During a reception to a delegation of Arab students who are studying at the U.S. universities, Archbishop Hanna stressed the need to differentiate between the honest reform calls and the calls that imply vandalism and sabotage to Syria.

"We support reform and see that there is a conspiracy that aims at sabotaging Syria. We call upon Syrians to confront the conspiracy and support the reform program led by President al-Assad", he added

Hanna was awarded our 2006 Dhimmi of the Year award for so blatantly disregarding his own religion in favor of Islam.

He was fired as spokesman of the Greek Orthodox Church in 2002 for refusing to sign a document condemning terrorism. He also called upon Arab Christians to join Muslims in suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. And he accused Israel of spreading AIDS among Arabs using promiscuous Jewish women.

Oh, Hanna was also awarded the "Jerusalem Prize" by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Culture in late 2004, well after his support for terrorism was widely known.

A mini-resort in Gaza

A man in Gaza recently developed a plot of land he owned in Khan Younis into a mini-resort with only two hotel rooms - and a pool.

He calls it Chalet Gardenia.

Just another indication of how Gazans are spending their money.

Christians in Egypt fear more Islamist pressure

From AP:

On her first day to school, 15-year-old Christian student Ferial Habib was stopped at the doorstep of her new high school with clear instructions: either put on a headscarf or no school this year.

Habib refused. While most Muslim women in Egypt wear the headscarf, Christians do not, and the move by administrators to force a Christian student to don it was unprecedented. For the next two weeks, Habib reported to school in the southern Egyptian village of Sheik Fadl every day in her uniform, without the head covering, only to be turned back by teachers.

One day, Habib heard the school loudspeakers echoing her name and teachers with megaphones leading a number of students in chants of "We don't want Ferial here," the teenager told The Associated Press.

Habib's was allowed last week to attend without the scarf, and civil rights advocates say her case is a rare one. But it stokes the fears of Egypt's significant Christian minority that they will become the victims as Islamists grow more assertive after the Feb. 11 toppling of President Hosni Mubarak. It also illustrates how amid the country's political turmoil, with little sense of who is in charge and government control weakened, Islamic conservatives in low-level posts can step in and try to unilaterally enforce their own decisions.

Wagdi Halfa, one of Habib's lawyers, said the root problem is a lack of the rule of law.

"We don't want more laws but we want to activate the laws already in place," he said. "We are in a dark tunnel in terms of sectarian tension. Even if you have the majority who are moderate Muslims, a minority of extremists can make big impact on them and poison their minds."

Habib's experience was startling because in general, Egypt's Christians, who make up at least 10 percent of the population of 80 million, have enjoyed relative freedom in terms of dress and worship. The vast majority of Muslim women in Egypt put on the headscarf, known as the higab, either for religious or social reasons, but there's little expectation that Christians wear it.

The demand that all students wear the higab was a decision by administrators and teachers at the high school in Sheik Fadl, 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Cairo in Minya province. They said the headscarf was part of the school uniform, necessary to protect girls from sexual harassment.

A top provincial Education Ministry official, Abdel-Gawad Abdullah, said in an interview with CTV, a private Egyptian Christian television network, that the ministry gives schools the right to decide on school uniforms, and that parents during screening and application can either accept or refuse.

"And if the father wants to move his daughter to another school, it is OK," he said. "All the girls, including the Christians, put on the head cover and they have no problem," he added.

Habib was finally allowed to attend last Tuesday.

"I am happy I did what I want and that no one can force something on me. But I am afraid of the students and the teachers," she told AP. "The teachers are not normal with me and I am sure they will give me low grades at the end of the year."

The idea that wearing the hijab stops sexual harassment in Egypt has been thoroughly debunked - and some think the veil even attracts unwanted attention!

A new poll by Al Ahram says that 70% of Egyptians feel the greatest danger in Egypt is security chaos, while 17.5% feel the greatest danger is an Islamist takeover. Unfortunately, I don't know how many Egyptians in general (without ranking the issues) feel that an Islamist takeover is a concern.

One other point: when a wire service like AP releases a story, it gets picked up by newspaper and and other media that subscribe to AP's services. Popular stories can be picked up by hundreds or even thousands of media outlets, depending on how important the editors of the media outlet feel that this story is.

This story was republished on websites of only 13 media outlets, according to Google News.

(h/t Mike)

Yep, Lebanon is nothing more than a Syrian satellite

I mentioned last week how there have been four recent incidents where Syrian troops entered Lebanon with impunity, and no official complaints by Lebanon in response.

Now Lebanon notes this as well:

Ali al-Khatib was originally from the Syrian border village of Meshrfeh, but married a Lebanese woman and moved across the border to the East Bekaa village of Ersal. The farmer was the reason two Syrian army tanks crossed the border into Lebanon on Thursday night, the second time this week, without sending either a notification before or an explanation afterward to the Lebanese authorities.

They shot Khatib dead before returning to their side of the border.

The entrance of Syrian troops into Lebanon to pursue Syrian nationals raises complicated questions on how much Lebanon can defend its own sovereignty and how the Syrian regime still has such a strong grip on Lebanon’s army and government. The Lebanese government did not file a complaint and did not summon the Syrian ambassador to Beirut to request an explanation.

“We asked Foreign Minister [Adnan Mansour] to summon the Syrian ambassador to inform him about Lebanon’s protest on this crossing, but he didn’t,” lawyer and former Labor Minister Boutros Harb told the National New Agency. “This is a [planned] crossing of the border between Lebanon and Syria, and a lack of respect to Lebanese sovereignty. Not summoning the Syrian envoy means that the cabinet is a partner of the Syrian regime in violating Lebanese sovereignty,” he added.

The March 8-led government’s Justice Minister, Shakib Qortbawi, defended the cabinet’s decision not to issue a statement on Tuesday’s incident, saying that the “issue is being handled by security forces.” There was also no reaction from the cabinet. Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdel Karim Ali said that the Syrian incursion was blown out of proportion in the Lebanese media for political purposes.

Analysts say that had this happened anywhere else, the reaction to the incidents would have been much greater: they would have triggered a diplomatic scandal, the ambassador of the offending country would have been publicly summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and presented with a complaint and a warning, and there would be a complaint filed with the Security Council.

But Lebanon’s March 8 government, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, did no such thing.

According to March 14 MP Mouin Merhabi, the incidents in Ersal are not the only occasions the Syrian army has crossed into Lebanon. Merhabi, who kept track of similar incidents in North Lebanon, said that “Two weeks ago, two men were kidnapped by the Syrian army from Akroum, North Lebanon, and then returned.”

“There was another incident when they shelled Lebanese army vehicles and broke one down. This is an infringement of Lebanon’s sovereignty,” he added.

According to lawyer and constitutional expert Marwan Sakr, there is no treaty that can provide an excuse for the Syrian incursions. The cooperation agreement signed between the Syrian Defense Ministry and its Lebanese counterpart in 1991 implies that a Syrian military operation cannot be conducted on Lebanon’s territory without prior consultations with the Defense Ministry in Beirut.

Lebanese have noted the irony of Hezbollah pretending to defend sovereignty from supposed Israeli aggression while at the same time completely submitting to the authority of Tehran and Damascus.

G'mar chatima tovah 5772 - גמר חתימה טובה

I want to wish all of my readers who observe the holiday a g'mar chatimah tovah, an easy fast and a meaningful Yom Kippur.

A large percentage of my recent webpage hits have been for people looking for a translation of that phrase, so here it is again:

Literally: A good final sealing
Idiomatically: May you be inscribed (in the Book of Life) for Good

I unconditionally forgive anyone who may have wronged me during this year, and I ask forgiveness for anyone I may have wronged as well.

Specifically (as enumerated last year, courtesy of The Muqata):

If you sent me email and I didn't reply, or didn't get back to you in a timely fashion -- I apologize.
If you sent me a story and I didn't publish it or worse, didn't give you a hat tip for the story -- I'm sorry. (I sometimes get multiple tips for the same story and I usually credit the first one I saw, which is not always the earliest.)
If you requested help from me and I wasn't able to provide it -- I'm sorry.
I apologize if I posted without the proper attribution, with the wrong attribution, or without attribution at all.
I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you personally.

May this be a year of life, peace, prosperity and security.

(For those who want it, the Vidui of the Chida can be printed from here.)

Links

Tablet interviews the Columbia student who was steered away from Joseph Massad's courses

MEMRI shows us an Iranian e-book: "The Holocaust: The Jews' Greatest Lie."

Evelyn Gordon asks "How Often do Palestinians Have to Spell Out Their Goal?"

The New York Times has a fascinating account on how Zionists - and Zionist intelligence - managed to convince a hostile UNSCOP to recommend partition in 1947.

YNet looks at how to obtain atonement for a nasty talkback.

I missed this JPost piece where a German concentration camp inmate had written a Rosh Hashanah machzor (prayer book) on torn paper bags.

And, in a most inappropriate Yom Kippur eve link, the 8 best Jewish moments on South Park. You might want to wait a couple of days before clicking that one....

(h/t Ben, CHA)

American Jewish "settlers" are more liberal than messianic

From Ha'aretz:

Something strange happened among the hills and red-roofed settlements of the West Bank: Western left-leaning radicalism moved in with right-wing Zionist ideology. At least that's the claim of an American doctoral student, who says American immigrants to Israel who move to the settlements are not stereotypical gun-toting extremists but rather represent a larger and more diverse dynamic than they are given credit for.

"Stereotypes exist because they also have some elements of truth to them, but there is a much wider, more nuanced story behind that," Sara Hirschhorn, 30, said. American Jews who settled in the West Bank represent "a very heterogeneous and dynamic movement," she added. "It doesn't necessarily fit into any preexisting categories. In addition to that, I believe that my findings bring the discussion out of this typical left/right discourse that we have developed when we talk about the settler movement. There is a very wide spectrum, which certainly runs the gamut of everything you can imagine."

Hirschhorn's dissertation, which she is doing at the University of Chicago, presents the first known attempt to draw up a comprehensive demographic profile of Americans within the Israeli settlement movement. Her findings seem to imply they are somewhat overrepresented: According to Hirschhorn, who had access to confidential records from the American consulate in Jerusalem, 45,000 settlers have American citizenship, or about 15 percent of the Israeli West Bank population. In comparison, Americans make up less than 8.5 percent of all Israeli Jews, based on estimates of 500,000 Americans among Israel's 5.8 million Jews.

"Jewish-American immigrants [to the territories] were primarily young, single, and highly identified as Jewish or traditional but not necessarily Orthodox in their religious orientation," Hirschhorn said. "They were primarily political liberals in the United States, voted for the Democratic Party and have been active in 1960s radicalism in the United States, participating in the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle against the Vietnam War. This perhaps does not necessarily correspond to the idea we might have in mind about who these people were before they came to Israel."

Hirschhorn started working on her dissertation three years ago. It is based on archival research and 25 interviews with various leading American-Israelis active in the settlement movement.

"Many of them were activists in the U.S. long before they became activists in Israel," Hirschhorn told Anglo File recently in Jerusalem. "A lot of them were heavily involved not only in secular activism but also in Jewish activism, especially around Beitar and other Jewish-Zionist youth movement in the U.S., some more right wing and some more left wing."

Many Americans who moved to the settlements after the Six-Day War see what they're doing in Israel as an extension of their radicalism in the United States, Hirschhorn said. "They would also say that what some of them consider what they're doing in the territories in part as an expression of their own Jewish civil rights."

"In coming to Israel and participating in the settlement movement these American Jews continued in their radicalism," the Massachusetts native said. "While many other from their generation went back to a more conventional lifestyle - becoming soccer mommies and moving to Scarsdale [and affluent New York suburb] - here they moved to a hilltop on the West Bank."

Hirschhorn added that many Americans who move to the West Bank are trying to recapture the pioneering idealism of the state's Zionist founders, while others are driven by a Biblical imperative to settle the land.

I never thought about the link between '60's style radicalism and those who choose to live in Judea and Samaria for ideological reasons, but there seems to be something to that. I'd love to see this paper when it is published.

Bodyguard saved Israeli ambassador's life during Sadat assassination

An interesting story at Al Masry al-Youm:

A former bodyguard recently recalled saving the life of the Israeli Ambassador Moshe Sasson during the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The Israeli guard, who declined to reveal his identity, recounted the experience with his back to the camera during an interview on Israel’s Channel 10 news program which aired Thursday evening.

“I grabbed the ambassador, threw him on the ground, tossed over the chair and covered him with my body,” he said. “I lowered his head and people looked in our direction. No one understood what was happening.”

While Thursday marked the 38th anniversary of Egypt’s crossing of the Suez Canal during its 1973 October War with Israel, it also marked the 30th anniversary of Sadat’s assassination in 1981 during an annual victory parade to honor the event.

During the march, Israeli ambassador sat close behind Sadat.

According to the news network, Israeli investigations conducted shortly after the assissination revealed that the body guard’s quick response – along with that of a colleague – saved the ambassador’s life.

“The shots went on for 51 seconds, which is a long time,” the body guard said. “They shot bursts from 4 AK-47s. They would just use up their ammo and reload, and there was no one fighting back from our side.”

During the military parade, six planes soared over the platform where Sadat was sitting with his retinue. The body guard says that while everyone looked toward the sky to view the display, he and a fellow body guard fixed their eyes on the street below.

“Suddenly, we saw a truck stop and an officer get out,” he said. “The officer ran toward the platform with something in his hand and threw it – people watched but didn’t understand what was happening. Then there was a big explosion.

“They were shooting people, and they were being killed and wounded - a terrible panic. Most of the bullets didn’t hit Sadat but instead struck our area. We thought it was a military coup.”

In addition to Sadat, 11 others - including a Coptic Orthodox bishop, the Cuban ambassador, and an Omani general - were killed. Another 28 were wounded, including Vice President Hosni Mubarak, four US military liaison officers, and Irish Defense Minister James Tully.