Grandma's army

The entire world has changed dramatically since the 1970’s – a decade which is, for Israel, one of the most traumatic. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 left the country devastated by the loss of 2,600 soldiers. In spite of the astonishing victory against all odds, the country lost faith in its leadership and, with it, a sense of security. [That is perhaps one of the reasons that, in 1977, a right-winged government defeated the impregnable Labour Party for the first time]. Although terrorism has been an ongoing factor since before Israel existed, the 70’s was a nightmare. Palestinian terrorists were sowing terror against Israelis, both on Israeli soil and around the world. The most glaring example was the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, in which eleven members of the team were murdered. In the same year, Ben Gurion Airport became a slaughterhouse, when three Japanese men - who had been recruited by the “Popular Front for the Liberation of P