Over 80,000 people crowded into Tel Aviv’s main Malchei Yisrael Square outside the municipality building Saturday night to attend a memorial meeting and peace song festival in memory of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
The meeting was arranged by Abie Nathan, owner and operator of the pirate Voice of Peace floating radio station, and the square was renamed “Sadat Square” for the day to mark the event.
It was attended by Egyptian Ambassador Saad Mortada, who said the Egyptian people had proved its support of Sadat’s peace process by the manner in which it had calmly accepted his successor, Hosni Mubarak.
Nathan told the crowd, “It takes more strength to declare peace than to make war.” A long list of Israel’s most popular singers and song writers donated their services to the mass happening, at which peace and popular songs were interspersed with readings from the Bible and the Koran.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
