In a recent symposium hosted by the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate for military heroes who have conducted historical operations in the war with Israel for more than half a century, General Abdel Hamid Khalifa revived the memory of those present about the details of what the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir called the “Good Saturday”. The successor to the revenge for the children of «School of the Cow» killed by Israeli aircraft, through a qualitative process in which 45 officers and soldiers were killed and destroyed five tanks, and captured an Israeli soldier returned from the back lines, Sergeant Yair Dori Zvi.
"This operation came at a very sensitive time," Khalifa said at a symposium on "Commando Tournaments" by the popular resistance historian, Mohamed al-Shafei, and attended by the commander of the Saeqa brigade in the October 1973 war. The brutal aggression launched by Israeli aircraft on Bahr al-Baqar Elementary School on April 8, 1970, in which 46 Egyptians, including 30 children, were martyred. It also came in the wake of the death of the Egyptian Chief of Staff Abdel-Moneim Riad. Israeli.
He continued that «the importance of this process was critical even years after it occurred, it has been a sad period for Egypt, where the late President Anwar Sadat declared that 1972 is the year of decisiveness, in the sense that he would declare war to liberate the Arab territories occupied by Israel in 1967, but for political reasons did not So, there were demonstrations and popular demands calling for military action to overcome defeat, Sadat had to raise morale and confirm his determination and determination on what he announced, he held a meeting with the leaders of the armed forces, and I was summoned to the meeting, and I was a junior officer at the time, where he was surprised by Sadat says to the leaders that we will go War depends on God and heaven My children like Abdul Hamid Khalifa. »
`` At this point, Sadat stopped and asked me to stand, and he was surprised to ask me in front of the big leaders.I tell you what you did to Israel with the 35th Brigade to avenge the cow's sea and the martyrdom of Abdel Moneim Riad, and about the process that Golda Meir described as Black Sabbath.
In his testimony, Khalifa referred to the Sinai Bedouin tournaments in the battles of attrition and the October 1973 war, and their role in a ground operation conducted by the 35th Brigade behind enemy lines in the 1973 war in Zafarana, 170 km from the Canal.
Major General Nabil Abul-Naga told the story of the operation, which was later taught in NATO and documented in Journey to Hell.