Leadership by Henry Kissinger

Author:Henry Kissinger [Kissinger, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

Assassination

As a young boy, Sadat had admired the efforts of Egyptian patriots to fight for independence. He cherished one legend in particular: that of Zahran, a young Egyptian sentenced to hanging by the British. While others shuffled meekly to their fates, Zahran walked to the scaffold with his head held high, proclaiming in defiance: ‘I am dying to free Egypt.’ Sadat’s daughter Camelia wrote that, all his life, her father had modeled his conduct on Zahran’s example.[213]

On October 6, 1981, Egypt celebrated the eighth anniversary of the October War. Sadat was sitting on a reviewing stand at a military parade when suddenly one of the trucks slowed to a halt. A group of soldiers – fundamentalists within the Egyptian military, including an Islamic Jihad member who had escaped arrest in the earlier crackdown – started firing on Sadat. They killed the president and ten others.

Sadat had believed that Egypt’s freedom would be achieved first through independence and then through historic reconciliation. His aim was to resurrect an ancient dialogue between Jews and Arabs, based on his understanding that their histories were meant to intertwine. It was precisely this belief in the compatibility and coexistence of societies founded on different religious faiths that his opponents found intolerable.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Prime Minister Begin praised Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and declared that he had been ‘murdered by the enemies of peace’, adding:

His decision to come to Jerusalem and the reception accorded to him by the people, the Knesset, and the government of Israel will be remembered as one of the great events of our time. President Sadat did not pay attention to abuse and hostility, and went ahead with endeavors to abolish the state of war with Israel and to make peace with our nation. It was a difficult road.[214]

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.