Egyptian soldiers who participated in the 1973 war against Israel chanted "God is Great". They chanted this phrase as they went out to defeat one of the most powerful armies in the world then. They achieved victory.
God always stands by our side
as we stand against aggressors and as we defend our land. War is always
difficult, but Egyptians had never sought it. Egyptians had never been
warmongers, but they cannot do without their dignity, even for a day. We are a
nation that always proves itself at tough times.
Egyptians stood against the
Hyksos in the past, they stood against the tartars and stood against the
Crusaders. They also stood against the Ottomans. They had never been broken in
the past. This is our record.
The Egyptian nation has always
been active and interactive. It wrote its history with sweat and blood.
Conscience was born here, lived
here and will never die here. We have sworn an oath to keep this conscience
alive so long as we are alive. We will never retract or recede. We will never
be defeated or let our country down.
Egyptians always waged wars in
defense of their land and honor. They had never been invaders in the past. They
will never do this in the future.
In March 1839, the Ottoman army
was at its most powerful. Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II took the chance of the
revolution in Palestine against the Egyptian army's recruitment system and
ordered a quarter million soldiers and European mercenaries to march to
discipline Egypt's then-ruler Muhammad Ali Pasha and occupy Egypt.
As a result, then-commander of
the Egyptian armies, Ibrahim Pasha, asked his father, Muhammad Ali, to allow
him to cross the border to stop the Ottoman troops. Nonetheless, Muhammad Ali
Pasha asked him to wait so that Egypt would not have pulled the trigger first.
The Ottoman army was deployed
in Gaziantep, near the border with Syria. The war on Egypt was declared only in
late May. This was when Muhammad Ali Pasha gave orders for Ibrahim Pasha to
start his offensive.
Ibrahim Pasha gave his troops
the orders to start marching and start the confrontation, after a long and
exhausting journey.
The Egyptian army was made up
of 40,000 soldiers then, whereas the Ottoman army was made up of 250,000
soldiers.
The battle started on June 21.
Ibrahim Pasha was wounded by shrapnel, causing him to fall on the ground.
Soliman Pasha al-Faransawi and his brigade hurried to help and rescue this
great commander from death. This caused Ibrahim Pasha to order his army to
retreat.
The same event gave the
Ottomans confidence that they would be victorious. They won the first round of
fighting against the Egyptians anyway.
Nevertheless, the Egyptian army
recuperated quickly. On July 24, Ibrahim Pasha gave his troops new orders to engage
in a new round of fighting, but this time the Egyptian army crushed the Ottoman
troops and was about to totally obliterate them. Around 200,000 Ottoman
soldiers were killed and 12,000, including officers, taken hostage.
This gave the Egyptian army the
chance to march toward Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman state for the
second time in less than six years. However, the Egyptian army did not do this,
because its doctrine is not about aggression or occupation.
Can the fools of today learn a
lesson from this history?
