Letters: Yom Kippur War in context
Re “An unnecessary war?,” Opinion, Oct. 10
Yigal Kipnis omits important context about the events leading up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel.
Recall that in 1957, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip to Egypt in return for international security guarantees. Just a decade later, in May 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled U.N. peacekeepers from Egypt’s border with Israel (the United Nations meekly complied), poured tanks and troops into Sinai and Gaza in preparation for an invasion of Israel, blockaded Israel’s port of Eilat — an act of war under international law — and boasted that “our basic objective will be to destroy Israel.”
His actions triggered the Six-Day War, in which Israel recaptured the Sinai and Gaza.
In 1973, Israel feared Egypt simply wanted another chance to attack Israel from the pre-1967 borders.
Regardless, the Egyptian-Syrian sneak attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, cannot be justified.
Stephen A. Silver
San Francisco
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