When Pakistani Pilots Battled Israelis

Did you know that there are only two countries in the world that were built upon religious ideology? Pakistan and Israel.

Israel created for Judaism and Pakistan for Islam. It is also said that the one country that Israel is most scared of is Pakistan as it is the only Muslim country with the military might and religious zeal that compares with Israel.

Although Pakistan has never had a direct major military conflict with the Israelis, Israel will always remember the support that Pakistani officers provided the Arabs in the two Arab-Israel wars.

The feats of our pilots and military in both these wars are unparalleled. Pakistan had a small but lethal contingent of about 16 pilots who served as volunteers in Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq during the 1967 and 1973 wars.

In the 1967 Arab-Israel war, volunteer pilots from the Pakistani Air Force downed no less than 10 Israeli aircrafts without losing a single pilot or a single aircraft!!

One of the notable names in the 1967 war was Group Captain Saiful Azam. He holds the record of being the only fighter pilot in history to shoot down three confirmed kills of Israeli aircrafts in air-to-air combat and damaging one plane that crash landed.

In the 1973 war, our pilots were again at the forefront and inflicted yet more damage to the Israeli air force.

In 1973, Flt. Lt. A. Sattar Alvi became the first Pakistani pilot to shoot down an Israeli Mirage in air combat, he was flying a Syrian aircraft. Similarly PAF pilot Flt. Lt. M. Hatif, in an Egyptian MiG-21 shot down an Israeli F-4 phantom during air combat. As mentioned earlier, we did not lose a single pilot or an aircraft.

Although these names are seldom mentioned in Arab war history we know that:

Flt. Lt. A. Sattar Alvi was awarded the Wisaam Faris and Wisaam Shuja’at in 1973, by Syrian president Hafez al-Assad
Saiful Azam was honored with medals in Iraq and Jordan for his heroics

Today however, for some reason the tides have turned completely. No country, including Pakistan, is willing to support or fight side by side with the Palestinians and thus the poor people of Palestine have been left alone to fend off tons of Israeli bombs with a handful of homemade rockets.

It is my humble request to our leaders, that this is the time to unite against the aggressors and defend our Palestinian brothers, sisters and children. Pakistan has everything required to unite the Muslim ummah into one and defeat these merciless aggressors!

The Article originally published at: Pakistan Insider

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