Yom Kippur: 1973

I was 11 years old during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War known as the "Yom Kippur War" or the "Ramadan War." I remember hearing the news on the radio as my family drove to Yom Kippur services that morning. I remember the feeling at Yom Kippur services - panic, a feeling that Israel was going to be destroyed, that another Holocaust was about to happen. I also remember a sermon by the rabbi that had people extremely emotional, crying, etc.

In the end, the Yom Kippur war led to large casualties on both sides, initial Arab military gains followed by a fierce Israeli counterattack that took them across the Suez Canal and on the outskirts of Damascus, a U.S. emergency airlift of military resupplies to Israel, a tense nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union which led President Nixon to lower the U.S. "DEFCON" status from 4 to 3, "shuttle diplomacy" by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and ultimately Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem (on November 19, 1977), the Camp David accords (1978) and an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty (1979). Now, 26 Yom Kippurs later, that peace treaty still holds, but it's a "cold peace" rather than a "warm" one, and Israel remains in a state of war with the other 1973 combatant nation, Syria. But there hasn't been a major Arab-Israeli war between nation states since 1973. Let's hope it stays that way for a long time to come.