Osama Sharshar ✍️
“Egypt has something beautiful” with its Al-Azhar and its church, with its scholars and thinkers, with its poets and creators. It is the crucible of the Arab world in which the Sudanese citizen mingled with the Iraqi, Syrian, Qatari, Saudi, Emirati, Yemeni, Kuwaiti and Algerian. Egypt was the true incubator of the Arab peoples, and it was the flower of the Arab cities that was able, with its army and people, to achieve the impossible equation, the equation of victory on October 6, 1973 through men who raised the banner of glory and put their lives on their hands in search of martyrdom for the sake of the homeland, and the equation of unifying the Arab countries behind one banner and one goal and against one enemy, which is the Israeli enemy.
At this time and in comparison to what we are living now, in the age of social media, cyber security and artificial intelligence, and what we see of bombs after bombs hitting our lands and killing our women and our people in Gaza, in the West Bank, in great Lebanon, in Hodeidah, in Baghdad and in Damascus, we find that we – as Arabs – were in the recent past a source of threat to Tel Aviv and all Israeli cities, and Israel feared the cry of the Arab citizen from the ocean to the Gulf. After 51 years, the October 1973 victory still represents a sacred battle for Egyptians and Arabs, a battle that crossed time, space and borders, and recorded exceptional heroism in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The victory was a translation of Arab steadfastness, Arab unity and the Arab national project in which exceptional and historic positions of the Arab countries appeared, which King Faisal – may God have mercy on him – used to pressure America and Europe with the oil and gas card, and threatened everyone with cutting off their energy supplies if they continued to support the Zionist entity. Houari Boumediene wrote a blank check to the Soviet Union to support Egypt with weapons. We even saw soldiers from Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia standing in one front to support the Egyptian and Syrian fronts. As a result of these exceptional positions, the Egyptian strategic deception plan, and the continuous and efficient training, the impossible happened and the military engineers’ administration, the leaders’ mentality, and the will of the Egyptian soldiers were able to penetrate the impregnable Bar Lev Line and the difficult earthen barrier, which was a military legend at that time. They were able to cross the Suez Canal in rubber boats, and it was a more dangerous breach than the breach that is happening in Lebanon or Gaza now, because the Bar Lev Line was a defensive line that could not be penetrated theoretically. It extends along the coast of the Suez Canal, starting from the canal and extending to a depth of 12 kilometers, and it has defensive fortifications and places equipped for tanks, artillery, and armored vehicles extending for a length of 170 kilometers, in addition to fortifications for soldiers that extend into the ground for several floors, and can withstand air strikes and artillery. In front of all this, there is an earthen barrier that rises to 22 meters, and slopes towards the canal at a 45-degree angle, making it almost impossible for any soldier carrying a weapon and ammunition to climb it. The political deception plan, and the implementation of this plan by officers and soldiers on the ground, was a surprise to everyone, friends before enemies, and a shocking matter for Israel, to the point that Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, considered the Egyptian surprise the end of Israel, and she said in her book (The Defeat): “The October War is the greatest danger the state has known, and I will never again be the same person I was before the October War,” and she added: “There was an overwhelming superiority over us from the Egyptian army, and we were suffering from a deep psychological collapse immediately after the outbreak of the war.” But today we live in the world of social media, and the new generations do not know the stories of heroism and glories that were written by the officers, soldiers and heroes of Egypt with sweat and blood. They were young men who were not mentioned by the media until now, and they were able to overthrow the theory of Israeli military superiority on land, sea and air, led by men such as Field Marshal Ahmed Ismail, Lieutenant General Saad El-Din El-Shazly, Lieutenant General Mohamed Abdel-Ghani El-Gamasy, Lieutenant General Fouad Zekry, Major General Mohamed Ali Fahmy and Lieutenant General Fouad Aziz Ghali. The best soldiers on earth were able to inflict a humiliating defeat on Israel, and they used the brilliant idea of the engineer officer in the armed forces at the time, Major General Baqi Zaki, which he drew inspiration from the construction of the High Dam, by using water pumps to open gaps in the earthen barrier and using rubber boats to cross the canal, which is what happened, and our heroes captured Asaf Yaguri, commander of the 190th Armored Brigade, and destroyed the tanks and weapons stores of the arrogant Israeli enemy. Rather, the Egyptian Air Force, led by Major General Hosni Mubarak’s pilot that the Israeli air force was paralyzed at the beginning of the war and his planes were destroyed while they were on the ground and had not yet moved.
This humiliating defeat for Israel taught it a lesson that it will never forget no matter how long it takes, as Egypt now possesses modern weapons capable of directly threatening Israel, and despite what we see of what is happening in Gaza and in southern Lebanon, and the unlimited military support for Israel from the Americans and Europeans, Israel is unable to provoke Egypt militarily, and is trying hard to avoid entering into a military confrontation with it.. Why? Because the Israeli military mentality knows that Egypt is the only country that can crush the Israeli fortresses, no matter what weapons it possesses, because we possess the belief and faith of the soldier, officer and Egyptian who yearns for martyrdom, and this is the difference between us and them, and the equation will be more and more adjusted when the Arabs sense that they must stand behind Egypt with its proud people and its army, the best soldiers on earth.
But unfortunately, the betrayal that is taking place in the Arab arena now towards our brothers is deplorable, with the amount of bombs that are being dropped on Lebanon and its great people and that are killing our women and our people in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and beloved Yemen.
I wanted this issue to be a memorial, historical, and very special issue for the heros who were not known by the media, sacrificed their lives and made heroic deeds that are taught and are still engraved in the conscience of this great Arab Egyptian people as a whole, to teach the new generations, the generations of social media and artificial intelligence, that Egypt is capable of achieving the impossible with the will and minds of its sons, and that no matter how many treaties and agreements are concluded, Israel will remain the first enemy of the Arab nation, and that October 6, 1973 was a flood of the Egyptian people united with the best soldiers on earth, the soldiers of the Egyptian Armed Forces, and supported by unconditional Arab support, and was able to shake the world and overthrow the theories formulated by military institutes around the world about the impossibility of crossing the Bar Lev Line or the earthen barrier, so the Egyptian people and its army, in a sincere moment expressing the national project of the Egyptian and Arab people, were able to cross and liberate all of the Egyptian land and Sinai returned to the embrace of the Egyptian people, and the Egyptian people returned to developing Sinai through real development projects, and cooperated with the people of the great Sinai tribes to preserve this historical heritage of this land The blessed one that was blessed by heaven, and carries in its heart Mount Tur, in which God Almighty spoke to His Prophet and His interlocutor, our master Moses, peace be upon him.
What prompted us to make this issue a special issue for the anniversary of the glorious October War, is that the Arab scene has now become outside the events and calls for pity as a result of the failure, weakness and apostasy in not taking a single Arab position, which made us try to restore the lost memory to the Arab peoples, and tell them to remember what happened on October 6, 1973, from a unified Arab position in which they used all the tools of political, military and economic pressure and united; they were a force that was able to shake the world and expose the dirty role of the Americans, so they gained the respect of enemies before friends.
Today we find that we have become warring peoples and tribes, and Israel has been able to manipulate and penetrate us after the keys to the game were in our hands, and we forgot in a moment of negligence of place and time Syria and Iraq, the eastern gateway to Arab national security, so Israel has begun to do with us, Lebanon and Gaza whatever it wants and has made them a strategic target to break the Arab will and humiliate the Arab world, and Netanyahu said, “I will change the map of the Middle East and I am its new ruler and I can strike any place in the world,” and I say it with all honesty and objectivity and without bias, for I am an Arab and a nationalist, but I am Egyptian first, that when Egypt is absent from the circle of conflict, all matters and things fall into the abyss and the masks fall, and those who want to jump on Egypt’s strategic and historical role, and those who appease and those who normalize are exposed. Wounded Lebanon is paying the price of Arab disintegration, and proud Palestine is defending and fighting for itself alone, while we are silent spectators, unable to say no. What is happening in Gaza, the West Bank, Holy Jerusalem, southern Lebanon, and Beirut makes stones speak and makes people disbelieve in everything and cry over what we have come to. I believe that we need to read the past with the eyes and minds of the future, and to restore our positions, dignity, and the cry of God is Great that used to shake the enemies and resound in the sky, and to recall the memory of our symbols, our youth, our media, and our internal front from the ocean to the Gulf that used to stand like a solid structure in the face of all the challenges that besieged our Arab world, and we must admit that what is happening today reveals the great difference between truth and illusion, between men and pseudo-men, between positions and pseudo-positions, so we must make our generations who live and see through what is called social media and the virtual world proud of people who made glories and heroisms and wanted nothing but to see their homeland honorable and the Arab world united, but we are now living in an absurd time, a time of division, weakness, humiliation, and normalization with the Zionist entity.
What kind of normalization would there be with an enemy that wants to prey on the Arabs and eliminate them from the world map and remain the only force or God’s chosen people?!.
What we have reached is at the hands of some of our rulers who accepted to be followers in the American house of obedience and not at the hands of the people.
I believe that the October 6, 1973 war is an addition to history and is history itself; because it was the last real military war in which Egypt and the Arabs were able to achieve the impossible, which is the great October victory, after they raised the slogan (And prepare against them whatever you are able of power), so the most dangerous message of the October War, which coincided with the tenth of Ramadan, is that victory does not come by force of arms alone, but by the force of faith, belief and reliance on God.. And the believer does not truly rely on God except by trusting in God (So when you have decided, then rely upon Allah. Indeed, Allah loves those who rely [upon Him]).. And the cries of Allah is greater were stronger than nuclear bombs.
And so are the confrontations and challenges, money does not make men, but men make glories and heroism.
I believe that the memory of October 6 and the great victory achieved by the Egyptian people and army at a time when no one expected Egypt to fight at all, came at an important time to be a warning cry for the Arab peoples and Arab rulers, and a message from the heroes of October 6 to everyone: restore the glories of the October victory, stand behind Egypt and its people, and you must know that Egypt, which God has blessed and kept in a bond until the Day of Judgment, is the leader and the major Arab state that can stop the Zionist tide and make Netanyahu realize his natural size, but you ran without coordination with Egypt in the Abraham normalization project, which is a position that made us all losers today, only because you wanted to jump over Egypt’s role and position in that it is the safety line, the defense line and the real attack line against this Zionist state that is trying to seize all Arab lands because it has guaranteed that Egypt has been neutral and that some Arab countries stand against it in secret but apparently claim to be with it. Today we must instill love of the homeland and belonging to it – despite the rumors and lies – in children and the new generation; because it is the weapon of the coming confrontation. The war of rumors will be no less dangerous than the war of missiles and bombings, because it works to destroy the national identity and make many of the sons of one homeland spies for America and Israel, and this is what must be done now unfortunately.
Fear God for your people!
May God raise you to the heaven!
