Letter: Judging Sadat’s Own Words

How true it is that how events “are taught or reported by subsequent generations depends on who writes their histories and what sources are used” (“It’s Time to Reassess Sadat, Begin and Carter,” June 8).

Here are excerpts from Anwar Sadat’s “Peace With Justice” speech before the Knesset in 1977. Of interest is what he meant by “justice” and “right of return”: “How can we achieve a durable peace based on justice? … For there is no peace that could be built on the occupation of the land of others; otherwise, it would not be a serious peace. … If you have found the moral and legal justification to set up a national home on a land that did not all belong to you, it is incumbent upon you to show understanding of the insistence of the people of Palestine for establishment once again of a state on their land. … Here I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that it is no use to refrain from recognizing the Palestinian people and their right to statehood as their right of return.”

Also of interest is the world’s disregard of Egypt’s ongoing violation of Article 5 of Annex 3 of the Israel-Egypt treaty: “The Parties shall seek to foster mutual understanding and tolerance and will, accordingly, abstain from hostile propaganda against each other.”

From a New York Times article on Sol Linowitz on Oct. 19, 1980.

Then there is this from Sadat: “Poor Menachem, he has his problems. … After all, I got back … the Sinai and the Alma oil fields, and what has Menachem got? A piece of paper” (quoted in a New York Times article on Sol Linowitz on Oct. 19, 1980).

Lastly, there is this from an interview with Sadat in the Egyptian newspaper al-Anwar on June 22, 1975, cited in Steve Posner’s book “Inside Israel”: “The Zionist conquest to which we are being subjected will not be terminated by the return of the occupied territories. … The effort of our generation is to return to the 1967 borders. Afterward the next generation will carry the responsibility.”

Perhaps this clarifies what Sadat meant by “a durable peace based on justice.” Using the above sources certainly gives one pause, doesn’t it?

— Julia Lutch, Davis, Calif.