Photos: Photo: USNWR

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gyptian businessman Shafik Gabr has vivid memories of where he was on October 6, 1981, the day his country’s president, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated.

Gabr, a close friend of Sadat’s sons-in-law, was working in his Cairo office when he received a telephone call describing “chaos” that erupted at the military parade Sadat was attending.

“I tried to make some phone calls,” Gabr said in a telephone interview last week from Cairo. “It was extremely difficult to reach anyone, but a dark thought entered my mind that something dramatic and drastic had happened.”

A few hours later, Gabr reached one of Sadat’s sons-in-law, who confirmed the worst.

“It was extremely devastating,” said Gabr, who later the same day had to travel crosstown to visit his pregnant sister. “I remember a curfew in place. Very few people were in the streets, which is rare for Cairo. You could sense the shock and sadness of what happened.”

Today, Gabr is chairman of ARTOC, a Cairo-based industrial, energy, and investment conglomerate, and head of a foundation bearing his name that promotes dialogue between the Arab world and the West.

Much of that dialogue was impossible until March 26, 1979, the day former foes affixed their signatures to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, whose terms were hammered out a year before at Camp David.

Israel did pay a high price for peace, relinquishing the Sinai Peninsula it had captured in 1967; its oil fields, which then provided Israel with 90% of its energy needs; and several Jewish settlements Israel had built there, which it was now forced to evacuate.

However, the treaty has brought substantial benefits. Egypt and Israel fought three wars — in 1948, 1967, and 1973 — but nary a skirmish since Sadat, Menachem Begin, and US president Jimmy Carter signed the Camp David accords. Egypt, and its formidable armed forces, were removed as a potential combatant, and US military and economic aid plied Cairo from the Soviet orbit, weakening Moscow’s influence in the Middle East.

But the path to Camp David was paved by Sadat’s risky and groundbreaking decision to visit Jerusalem and address the Knesset in November 1977 — the first time an Arab leader conferred recognition to Israel since its 1948 statehood.

Four years earlier, the same Anwar Sadat outraged Jews, ordering the Egyptian army to launch a war on Israel on Yom Kippur. Egypt’s attack caught Israel off guard. Even though Israel recovered with IDF tanks poised 60 miles from Cairo when a cease-fire ended hostilities, Egypt’s initial gains enabled Sadat to claim a degree of victory and offer peace from a position of strength.

“He was a truly unique human being,” said Gabr, who met Sadat personally on three occasions: once during a lengthy conversation in the garden of Sadat’s private residence in Giza, and twice more when his friends married Sadat’s daughters.

“He knew the hurdles, challenges, and obstacles that he faced, but at the same time, he wasn’t just a politician, he was a leader. His vision was that peace was a necessity, not a luxury. It had to come from a commitment that could be implemented, and that’s why he had the courage to go to Israel. But he knew this could be a very costly initiative and that his life could be in danger.”

Forty years later, most Israelis still employ the term “cold peace” to describe Israeli-Egyptian relations.

“How can people talk about a cold peace when there are daily flights between Cairo and Tel Aviv and there are significant Israeli investments in Egypt and Egyptian investments in Israel?” Gabr asked. “There is cooperation on a government-to-government level in defense, intelligence, security, and agriculture, and energy, in ways that I couldn’t have envisioned years ago.”

Sadat’s bravery is soon to be commemorated in Washington, D.C. In December, President Trump signed legislation passed by a two-thirds Congressional majority to bestow Sadat posthumously with the United States’ highest civilian honor — the Congressional Gold Medal.

The idea is the brainchild of Ezra Friedlander, CEO of the Friedlander Group, a DC-based government advocacy group.

“Hakaras hatov is always a good starting point,” said Friedlander, who explained his motivations a few weeks ago when we met in the lobby of Jerusalem’s Leonardo Hotel following his visit to Egypt with a Jewish delegation that met with Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. “Without prompting and without pressure from the international community, Sadat publicly declared in Arabic he wanted peace with Israel and told his people he was going to Jerusalem to pursue it.”

For the past two years, Friedlander led a team of lobbyists who met individually with elected officials to win their support. “Anwar Sadat is no longer a household name, and we had to make literally tens of thousands of contacts with members of Congress, meet them, and send follow-up e-mails. It was a herculean task.”

Asked if the government of Egypt retained him to do this, Friedlander replied: “I decided to launch this effort, and I am my own client on this one. As a young kid, I remember going to my upstairs neighbor to watch Anwar Sadat getting off the plane on a Motzaei Shabbos in Israel. It was 1977, I was nine years old, and that image remains etched into the hard drive of my brain.”

I asked him if Menachem Begin isn’t equally deserving of the Congressional Gold Medal.

“Actually, Ron Dermer [Israel’s ambassador to the US] raised that issue with me,” Friedlander said. “I told him you’d be diluting the message to give the award to both. The emphasis was not on the fact that peace was achieved. For that, Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize [along with Sadat]. But because of Anwar Sadat, Israel is forever safer. Because the largest Arab country made peace with her, there is no way any conventional army would ever wage war again with the State of Israel.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 754)