The Beatles, the Yom Kippur War, and a Song Still Beloved by Israeli Soldiers

Sept. 20 2018

In the summer of 1973, the Beatles’ “Let It Be,” which had been released three years prior, was a mainstay of Israeli radio, leading the songwriter Naomi Shemer—best known for her “Jerusalem of Gold”—to compose a Hebrew version, to be sung to the same tune. Then the Yom Kippur war broke out, and the song she had written no longer seemed appropriate, as Lahav Harkov writes:

Shemer changed the lyrics to a prayer expressing hope for the battles to end and for IDF soldiers to return home peacefully. . . . Shemer wrote the song for the singer Chava Alberstein, who had wanted to perform it at an event for pilots’ wives. . . .

At first, [Shemer] kept the Beatles’ tune, but her husband, Mordechai Horowitz, on a reprieve from fighting in the war, said: “I won’t let you waste this song on a foreign tune. This is a Jewish war, and you should give it a Jewish tune.” . . .

That day, Shemer was asked to perform on television, and she came up with an original tune for the song in the car on the way to the studio, a tune that she described as [capturing] “the sigh and distress of the war.” The song was broadcast the next day, and a day after that, Alberstein performed it on Army Radio. Shemer’s “Let It Be” became the unofficial song of the Yom Kippur War, played and sung by soldiers on duty.

[According to Shemer], the then-IDF chief of staff David Elazar first heard the song after the war ended, and it made him cry.

A video of Shemer performing the song—whose title, Lu y’hi, means “may it be”—can be found at the link below. Lyrics in Hebrew and in English translation can be found here.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Arts & Culture, Israeli music, Naomi Shemer, The Beatles, Yom Kippur War

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023