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Egyptian army in 1973 war: "Hear no evil?" (Egyptian Archives/Al-Jazeera)
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| By israelinsider staff March 20, 2007 |
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Members of the Egyptian army killed ''dozens, if not hundreds'' of captured Israeli soldiers in the 1973 Mideast war, according to an Israeli TV documentary screened Sunday.
Channel 10 TV screened interviews with Israelis who served in the 1973 conflict, relating cases in which they said Egyptian forces killed soldiers who had surrendered or been taken prisoner. The Israeli commercial TV channel said that the documentary was a response to the Egyptian outcry over another program shown earlier this month on Israeli state TV about the 1967 conflict.
Egyptian media claimed that the program confirmed Israeli forces executed 250 captured Egyptian soldiers, a claim that sparked widespread outrage in Egypt, caused the cancellation of a trip to Egypt by Minister Benyamin Ben-Eliezer and one of the serious crises in relations between the two countries since they signed a peace treaty in 1978.
The documentary producer denied that his film made such an allegation. Participants said the 250 were armed Palestinian fighters -- fedayeen -- killed in a battle, but senior Egyptian officials demanded a probe anyway.
In the 1973 war, Israeli forces were caught by surprise in a two-front attack by Egyptian and Syrian armies. Thousands of Israeli soldiers on the front lines were killed, wounded or captured. The Channel 10 documentary showed film of the execution of Israeli soldiers in the Sinai desert and the Golan Heights.
Defense correspondent Alon Ben-David said the interviews were conducted during a visit by the former prisoners of war to the sites of the Sinai desert battles, which the Egyptians have been transformed into museums.
Ben-David concluded that there were "dozens, if not hundreds, of cases of captured Israeli soldiers murdered in cold blood by their Egyptians captors.''
One of the ex-soldiers, Issachar Ben-Gavriel, said he was one of a group of 19 Israeli soldiers who surrendered at the Suez Canal, flying white flags and raising their hands when the Egyptian soldiers gunned down most of his colleagues. ''They (Egyptians) just shot them,'' he said, ''11 guys.''
Another Israeli who fought in the 1973 war, Eitan Mor-Gan, said he was among a group of captured soldiers who the Egyptians lined up against a wall. An Egyptian officer told the soldiers, ''I will kill whoever stays on the ground. Whoever manages to get up will be saved.''
Mor-Gan got up. |
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