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The Legacy of the Yom Kippur War - 40 Years Later

(New Republic) Michael Oren - The Yom Kippur War erupted on October 6, 1973, when Egyptian and Syrian forces surprised and overran Israeli positions. The following three weeks of fighting were brutal, the scale monumental. The offensive was eventually blunted and beaten back to an Egyptian enclave surrounded by Israeli forces. Cairo came within Israel's striking range. 80,000 Egyptian soldiers nearly surrendered for lack of water, and those soldiers and Cairo were saved by a last-minute application of American might and statecraft. Tens of thousands of Syrian troops, spearheaded by divisions of Soviet-made tanks, punched through Israeli defenses on the Golan Heights. They were stopped by numerically inferior Israeli forces and compelled to fall back on Damascus, which was also threatened by IDF guns. Each year there is an outpouring of public grief over the battlefield deaths of more than 2,500 Israeli soldiers - the equivalent, in current per capita terms, of 230,000 Americans - and the maiming of vastly more. Israel's enemies saw how, while enjoying total surprise and overwhelming advantages in men and material, Arab armies still could not prevail, could not even avert defeat. Despairing of destroying Israel by conventional means, its adversaries turned to terror and delegitimization, which have similarly failed. The writer, an historian, served as Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. (2009-2013).
2013-10-18 00:00:00
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