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History’s Out of the Ordinary Radicals

Khalid Elhassan June 29, 2020 33 min

Lebensborn - Schutzstaffel — Kidnapping of Polish children for the Lebensborn association. Wikimedia

21. Targeting Egypt’s President

From left to right, Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, at the conclusion of the Camp David Accords. Associated Press

October 6^th has been a day of national commemoration and celebration in Egypt, ever since 1973, when the Egyptian military successfully crossed the Suez Canal at the start of the Yom Kippur War. The war ended in defeat, but it had been a tough fight that cost their Israeli opponents dearly, and marked the first time that the Egyptian military had put up a credible effort, so it was worth celebrating.

By the time the eighth anniversary rolled around in 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who had been in office in 1973 and enjoyed a huge bump in popularity and prestige, as a result, was becoming quite unpopular. In addition to an economic downturn, Sadat had entered what was viewed by many Egyptians as a controversial rapprochement with Israel.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.