The Yom Kippur War Lesson

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
07 October '10

This week the protocols of some government meetings that took place immediately before and during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 was released to the public.

Frankly speaking, there weren't many surprises.

Yet the reports did serve as an important reminder of just how dangerous "best case assumption" analysis can be.There's another important lesson from the Yom Kippur War that, unfortunately, rarely is mentioned.

And that's what facilitated the Egyptian attack in Israel in the first place: Israel's acceptance of Egypt's gross violation of the cease fire that ended the War of Attrition when it movedSAM anti-aircraft missiles close to the Suez Canal just as the cease fire went into effect.

The US had a spy plane that flew over the area that first day and photographed the violations. They were aware that first day that the Egyptians had violated the agreement. Yet despite this the US asked Israel to provide evidence and for several days said it was waiting for evidence of the violation.

Before the agreement was signed, the US promised Israel that if the Egyptians moved up their missiles that America would press the Egyptians to pull them back. But when they finally had to face up to the violation, the US explained that they could not pressure Egypt.

The US ultimately compensated Israel with "black boxes" for Israeli aircraft that were meant to offset the damage to Israel's security caused by the Egyptian violation.

But the "black boxes" proved insufficient.

Those same anti-aircraft missiles ultimately provided invading Egyptian forces protection from the Israeli Air Force at the opening of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Have we learned the lesson?

Many tens of thousands of missiles now face us from Lebanon under the blind eyes of UNIFIL.

Our enemies in the Gaza Strip continually improve the range, accuracy and payloads of the rockets that threaten our cities.

Have we learned the lesson?

Or will we have to learn, yet again, in a painfully hard way that we simply cannot afford to ignore such developments.

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