Forty years ago, Israel experienced the most devastating war in its modern history. Israel not only suffered its worst casualties during the Yom Kippur War, but actually came close to being destroyed with Defense Minister Moshe Dayan warning that “The Third Temple is falling.”
To understand the lessons of the Yom Kippur War, it is important to understand the three key elements that led to it. These are Muslim deceptiveness, American diplomatic pressure and Israeli complacency.
Egypt had lulled Israel into complacency by faking a crisis. Before the Yom Kippur War everyone “knew” that Egypt’s air force was defunct and that its military was no threat because of an arms dispute with the Soviet Union.
While there was a dispute, one of many, with the Arab powers demanding more and better weapons, the claims of weakness were a façade. During the Six-Day War, Israel had faced overwhelming odds. Now it seemed to be facing a weakened Egypt under a “moderate” leader whose ties with his Soviet allies appeared to be fraying.
Israel was warned to avoid any provocative responses to Egyptian military preparations or it would be considered the aggressor. A preemptive strike, the move that had won the Six Day War, was out of the question. Instead Israel could only react to overt aggression while letting an enemy force that was larger than it make its preparations for war and dictate the terms of battle.
Israel had beaten Egypt before. That meant that even though Egypt had twice as many soldiers and the combined Arab attack forces had nearly twice as many tanks, Israel was considered the stronger party. And just like today, it was expected to show restraint against a “weak” Muslim enemy.
That put Israel into a box that it has never managed to get out of. Since then, the Muslim side has learned to appear weaker to maintain freedom of action. Using terrorists as proxy armies under the cover of a phony Palestinian nationalism inflicted severe damage on Israel using a “weaker” enemy.
Before the Yom Kippur War, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had made it obvious that he wanted Israel to take a beating to score points with Muslim leaders.
In his book, King’s Counsel, Jack O’Connell, a close advisor to King Hussein of Jordan, describes Kissinger meeting with Egypt’s National Security Advisor and telling him that, “If you want us to intervene with Israel, you’ll have to create a crisis. We only deal in crisis management. You’ll have to ‘spill some blood.’”
Kissinger then tried to keep President Nixon out of the loop, delaying notifying him that the war had started and trying to keep him from returning to Washington. Nixon had told Kissinger from the start that he had to “squeeze the old woman” (Golda Meir) because “we can’t have a hundred million Arabs hating us.” But Kissinger was going far beyond anything Nixon wanted.
The arms shipment that helped stabilize the Israeli counterattack was delayed by Kissinger, but finally pushed through by Alexander Haig while Kissinger was still trying to calculate a “sweet spot” that would prevent Israel from either being destroyed or winning a major victory.
The goal was to beef up the self-esteem of Muslim countries which had lost wars to Israel while using the Jewish State as leverage to force them into a relationship with the United States.