Time to Wake Up - Part 3

But then in 1967, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria decided that they were going to eliminate this new little nation of Israel. Nassar ordered the UN troops out of the Sinai in order to make it easy for the Egyptian troops to come marching against the little territory that was held by the Jews. But they went out.

And as David against Goliath, the Israelis in that six-day war took the Golan Heights back from Syria. They took the West Bank back from Jordan. And they took the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.

So they vastly expanded their territory in 1967 in that six-day war. In 1973, again, Egypt and Syria decided that the time had come to destroy the nation of Israel. And on Yom Kippur, the highest holy day for the Jews, when there are no cars being driven on the streets by Jews, when there are no radio or TV broadcasts, but all of the Jews are gathered in their own homes to worship the Lord, on that day, they decided was the day for their surprise attack, which they called the War of Annihilation.

And they were planning in that war to annihilate the nation of Israel. We happened to be in Israel at that very time. And we were staying in the Intercontinental Hotel there in the Mount of Olives.

And because there were no Jewish buses running or the streets were pretty desolate and empty, the Arabs, they were up and about. And so I decided to take a group of kids down to the old city and go through the old city with them so that they could see the Shuk there. And it was just a time.

I had about 20 kids with me. And so we walked down from the Mount of Olives through the Kidron Valley up on into Jerusalem, the old city of Jerusalem. And as we were coming into the Shuk area, we heard the sirens going off.

And we saw these guys closing down all of the shops. And we said, hey, we're here to buy stuff. Why are you closing down? And they just ignored us and closed up the old city.

And so we headed back to the hotel. And when we got there, we found out of the attack against Israel. And we were transferred then over to Bat Yam and had a very interesting experience being there in that particular time.

But things were not going well for Israel in 1973. The Egyptians had crossed over the Suez. They had taken the Bar Lev line that had been set up by Israel.

They had overrun it. They were moving up through the Sinai. The Syrians had come down from the Golan.

They had taken the Golan Heights. They had come all the way to the hills above Tiberias. And for some strange reason, they stopped their advance.

And the Jews laughed. They say, well, they got a good view of the Sea of Galilee. So they just decided to enjoy the view.

But why they stopped, nobody really knows what they evidently didn't know, that there were fewer than 90 tanks that were able to stand against them from moving all the way to Haifa. But the Jewish troops, of course, or the Jewish people who were celebrating Yom Kippur in their homes with their families, when the sirens went off, they turned on their radios. And the men were being called to the various places.

And Israel began to sort of regroup and get their troops together. And they began to move the tanks up to the area of the Galilee. And they began to move tanks down into the area of the Sinai.

And we watched this movement of tanks as we were standing there in the Kidron Valley. But soon, the tide of battle began to turn. Eric Cherone, with his armored division, began to move down into the Sinai.

And he was a gutsy guy. They began to tell him to cease his advance. But he realized that he had the Egyptians on the run.

And so he said, what was that? My radio is breaking up. I can't hear you. And he continued.

And finally, he just disconnected the radio. And he trapped the whole Third Egyptian Army. And he was ready to move against Cairo.

And of course, up on the Golan Heights, they began to drive the Syrians back. They had destroyed the Syrian Air Force in the first couple of days. And they began to drive the Syrians back.

And so Syria and Egypt began to pressure for a ceasefire. And that's when Kissinger went over. And they had that Kissinger shuttle diplomacy, they called it, as he was going from one capital to another trying to develop.

And they did set a time for a ceasefire. And at this particular time, on this day, there will be a ceasefire. And you'll have the positions that you are holding at that time.

Well, the Syrians, in their endeavor to pressure this ceasefire, to pressure the world, to pressure Israel to stop, because Israel had come within 19 miles of Damascus, but the Syrians began to announce on Radio Damascus, on their news, that the Israelis were at the outskirts of town and beginning to bombard Damascus. Out on the Golan Heights, the fellows who were in charge of the tanks were listening to Radio Damascus. And they heard that the Israelis had come all the way to Damascus.

And they thought, whoa, we've been outflanked. We've had it. And they began to turn towards Jordan as fast as they could, driving their tanks and all of their armored equipment down towards Jordan to escape the Israelis, because surely Radio Damascus wouldn't be broadcasting lies.

And so they actually evacuated that large portion of the Golan Heights. And what Israel did was send the paratroopers in. And they landed way on back, further than Israel had ever actually occupied before, so that by the time the ceasefire came, the whole Sinai Peninsula was again