RUTHFULLY YOURS

A Lesson From the Yom Kippur War for a Perilous Time : Yossi Klein Halevi….see note please

Posted By Ruth King on October 4th, 2013

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304176904579111084193512104.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Golda Meir didn’t strike pre-emptively in 1973 because she was ‘scared’ of angering the White House.

With all due respect for Halevi, the real lesson from the Yom Kippur War is that Israel has a strategic need as well as  legal and historic rights to retain Judea and Samaria. ….Sadat, humbled in war even with the help of Kissinger who pummeled Israel into accepting Egypt’s terms for a final cease fire line, then came to Jerusalem to bark his demands before Israel’s parliament which acquiesced to all his demands including the promise of “autonomy” for West Bank Arabs….And the rest is the history of the foul and dangerous notion of “territory for peace which has clouded all Israel’s subsequent negotiations….rsk

As Israeli leaders weigh their response to the tentative dialogue between Tehran and Washington, which they regard as an Iranian ruse, the invisible presence at the cabinet table in Jerusalem will be the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

In declassified testimony just released by an Israeli national commission investigating the country’s initial failures during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, Meir explained why she hadn’t ordered a pre-emptive airstrike against Arab forces, though she knew by the morning of Oct. 6 that an invasion would happen within hours. She feared losing American support. “I am scared,” she recalled telling her cabinet. “We will not receive necessary assistance when we have the need for it.”

Meir’s restraint was vindicated by an American airlift of military aid during the war. Yet her decision not to order a strike, along with the army’s failure to respond to earlier intelligence warnings by drafting reservists, almost resulted in Israel’s first military defeat.

As Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a coordinated attack on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, a relative handful of soldiers and tanks were all that stood between them and the Israeli home front. Despite initial failures, the Israel Defense Forces reversed the invasion and achieved a victory that is studied in military academies around the world. Still, over 2,500 Israelis were killed and thousands more wounded—the equivalent today of 230,000 American dead.

In recent weeks, Israelis have been commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, arguably the most traumatic conflict in Israel’s history, with reunions of army units and media programs offering more revelations about the those terrible days in early October 1973. Once again, Israelis are debating the causes for the war’s initial setbacks. And many Israelis have concluded that the war—or at least its most devastating consequences—could have been avoided.

Hawks argue that the “sin” of the war was Meir’s fear of American reaction. More profoundly, they note, the lack of preparation at the front revealed a near-fatal complacency, a failure to take seriously the continuing existential threats to the Jewish state. The inevitable conclusion is that Israel must never be caught unprepared again, and must be willing to defend itself even at the risk of international isolation.

For dovish Israelis, the sins that led to the failures of the Yom Kippur War were arrogance and an excessive reliance on military power. They recall how, in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, Israeli leaders dismissed Arab fighting capability and reassured the nation that Arab armies wouldn’t dare attack. That attitude led generals and politicians alike to ignore strong intelligence warnings of an imminent two-front attack.

Worse, doves conclude that the war might have been avoided had Israeli leaders responded to overtures in the months before fighting erupted from Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, who, four years after the Yom Kippur War, came to Jerusalem on a mission of peace.

For many years, the dovish interpretation of the Yom Kippur War prevailed. The fear of missing a historic opportunity for peace emboldened Israeli leaders to initiate peace talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1993. Now, though, as Tehran moves ever closer to a nuclear-weapons capability, the most compelling lesson of the 1973 war for Israelis may not be the arrogance of power but the opposite: Meir’s hesitation to launch a pre-emptive strike against imminent threat.

For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, time is pressing. Israel’s window of opportunity for striking at Iran is closing. The concern in Jerusalem is that negotiations between Washington and Tehran over the coming months will effectively end Israel’s military option. The agonizing dilemma, then, may come to this: Can Israel risk entrusting its fate to President Obama?

Mr. Netanyahu, along with much of the Israeli media, endorsed Mr. Obama’s agreement with Russia to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons. But profound doubts remain about the implementation of the agreement and especially about the president’s handling of the crisis. Israelis are concerned about an American president whose red line fails to intimidate a besieged dictator, who then publicly wavers about reinforcing his threats, and who then entangles himself in a process of congressional approval he might have lost.

Now Israelis fear that the president may inadvertently allow Tehran to become the next North Korea, using negotiations as a cover to realize its nuclear ambitions. At the United Nations on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu insisted that Israel wouldn’t allow that to happen: “I want there to be no confusion on this point. Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”

Like Golda Meir, the prime minister has so far pulled back from ordering an airstrike, in part because he has feared alienating the American president. But with growing questions about America’s position in the Middle East, this time the Israeli government may well conclude that the danger of not pre-empting outweighs all the other dangers—including a strained relationship with the White House.

Mr. Halevi is a senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He is author of the book, “Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation,” published this month by HarperCollins.

Comments are closed.