New Israeli readings of the lessons of the 1973 war

The 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War (1973) is approaching. The Israelis commemorate the anniversary on two dates: according to the Hebrew calendar, which fell last Monday, and according to the Gregorian calendar, which falls on October 6.

Hardly an anniversary of the 1973 war passes without the secrets and struggles of the generals during it being unveiled in Israel. In general, the new revelations confirm that Israel did not expect this war, and criticized itself for it very harshly, knowing, according to one account, that it had received a warning about the intention of Egypt and Syria to wage war, but it was not convinced by this warning, “as it reached it before the Arab attack.” "Only one day" for some of them. The element of surprise, which is one of the most important elements of war in general, revealed a weakness in the Israeli intelligence services, especially the Military Intelligence Division. This aspect has been addressed extensively over the past years.

If we turn a blind eye to the various repercussions that these revelations had that were related at the time to purely military aspects, then the systematic way of thinking behind those conflicts has something that refers to two related issues in terms of meaning and structure, and was in turn the impetus for formulating the most important assumptions that were important, not in those matters. Not only the period, but also in the periods that followed.

The first issue is that what prevailed among the Israeli security establishment, on the eve of the 1973 war, was that the Israeli army’s preparation for any war it might fight must be done not on the basis of the strength possessed by the Arab opponent it will fight, but rather on Israel’s assessments of its intentions. This is a conclusion stated by all those who blamed Israel, with its political and military institutions, for being intoxicated by the feelings of euphoria that overcame it after the victory it achieved in the 1967 war. These are feelings that, following that war, caused widespread assessments by the Israeli security establishment regarding the strength of Egypt and its army. It is based more on intentions and desires than on their real strength, foremost of which is the appreciation that Egypt is no longer capable of waging a war against Israel. One of the Israeli officers who participated in the October War testified that he personally heard the head of the Military Intelligence Division in the Israeli army at that time say in a course for officers from the Paratroopers Division that “Egypt has become a deplorable country”!

Those who advocate this issue take their inspiration from the testimony of the Israeli Minister of Security during the 1973 war, Moshe Dayan, before the Agranat Committee, the official Israeli investigation committee that investigated the facts of the October War, who confirmed that his major mistake was his assessment in which he underestimated the capabilities of the Egyptian army, and exaggerated the assessment of their capabilities. Israeli army.

The second issue, in turn, refers to the factor of surprise, but not to the possibility of waging war, but rather to the ability of Arabs in general to wage it. In this regard, Michael Milstein, one of the most prominent Israeli researchers specializing in Arab affairs and a former security official, wrote that the new records regarding the Israeli government’s deliberations on the eve of the outbreak of the 1973 war and during it, which were recently unveiled on the occasion of its half-century anniversary, are embodied in concrete How the main surprise that gripped the leadership in Israel was not simply the outbreak of war on October 6, but rather the behavior of the Arab side. This researcher goes on to say: The Israeli leadership was astonished by the mere fact that the Arab armies fought with courage and determination, reaped successes, demonstrated wisdom and awareness, excelled in decoding the Israeli way of thinking, and worked guided by a complex strategic logic whose mysteries were difficult for experts in Israel to decipher. He concluded that the roots of this Israeli surprise lie in the view of contempt towards the Arab person, which was planted in the roots of the political and military leadership in Israel, as well as among the general public, and which deepened more and more after the 1967 war.