The 200 days of dread (Hebrew: מאתיים ימי חרדה) was a period of 200 days in the history of the Yishuv, from the spring of 1942 to November 3, 1942, when the German Afrika Korps under the command of General Erwin Rommel was heading east toward the Suez Canal and Palestine.
The question of whether the Yishuv would need to defend itself against a possible German invasion rose twice during the Second World War. The first major threat was a German invasion from the north, from the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in control of Syria and Lebanon. This danger ended after Operation Exporter, the allied invasion of these countries on June 8, 1941 and their liberation from Vichy control.
Later, in 1942, a more serious threat emerged as the Afrika Korps, under the command of Erwin Rommel, threatened to overrun British possessions in the Middle East. The threat of a German invasion of Palestine caused significant anxiety in the Jewish Yishuv, lasting two hundred days until November 1942 and the Allied victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein.
Famous quotes containing the words days and/or dread:
“Back in the days when men were hunters and chestbeaters and women spent their whole lives worrying about pregnancy or dying in childbirth, they often had to be taken against their will. Men complained that women were cold, unresponsive, frigid.... They wanted their women wanton. They wanted their women wild. Now women were finally learning to be wanton and wild—and what happened? The men wilted.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites...”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 1:12,13.