On the Edge of Disaster

ZUCKERMAN, ALAN

On the Edge of Disaster The Yom Kippur War. The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East Abraham Rabinovich Schocken Books, N.Y. N.Y. 2004, 560 pp., $27.50 ALAN ZUCKERMAN On Yom...

...In this war, the Arabs had the better weapons, not only more of them...
...H e has authored and co-authored several books including The Transformation of lews...
...He teaches us that neither the start of the Six Day War nor its military and political results were predictable...
...He depicts tank crews thrown into battle, with no idea how to cope with new anti-tank missiles...
...Some readers—like me—will find his descriptions of tank skirmishes, sagger missiles, RPGs, and soldiers struggling across the sand to find their comrades captivating...
...Three weeks later, the cease-fire found Israeli troops in "Africa," surrounding two Egyptian armies, and their advances brought them closer to Damascus than they had been at the start of the war...
...Moshe Dayan, the Defense Minister, wondered aloud about the destruction of the Third Temple (i.e., the State of Israel) and Prime Minister Golda Meir struggled through tears to juggle national and international pressures, while waiting for the IDF to regroup...
...Sacrifice a small number of soldiers, while absorbing the first blow, and then rely on the IDF to recover and win...
...After all, as he notes, if the top echelon had determined that international political constraints prohibited Israel from striking first, leaving a line of thin forces at the Suez Canal and on the Golan makes some sense...
...2004, 560 pp., $27.50 ALAN ZUCKERMAN On Yom Kippur, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel...
...they advanced with methodical precision...
...This time the Arabs did not cut and run...
...This led to negotiations that culminated five years later in Sadat's visit to the Knesset and finally to a peace between Israel and Egypt, the first such treaty between the Jewish State and an Arab enemy, now turned neighbor and partner...
...Rabinovich does not adequately address the reasons for the absymal state of defense and strategic preparations in the Sinai and on the Golan...
...Because of these weaknesses, the analysis compares poorly to that offered in Michael Oren's Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East...
...And here too lies the book's weaknesses...
...Furthermore, the new Soviet surface-to-air missiles neutralized the vaunted abilities of the Israel's pilots until the last days of the war...
...Oren draws together a massive display of research and theoretical insights on the inherent uncertainty of military decisions and outcomes and their political consequences...
...Rabinovich's book is least helpful, however, when it attempts to analyze the large strategic and political issues that preceded, surrounded, and followed the war...
...Perhaps in the first days they feared that their strategy not only doomed the soldiers in the field, but that the IDF would not be able to turn the tide...
...Eschewing these analytical issues and the accompanying strategic and political matters, Rabinovich portrays Israeli soldiers—but not Israel—in the Yom Kippur War...
...Indeed, Rabinovich offers gripping portraits of outgunned and overwhelmed Israeli units on the Bar-Lev in the Sinai and in forts on the Golan resisting with all their personal fortitude and intellectual strength...
...Alan Zuckerman is a professor of political science a t Brown University...
...T h e rout shocked Israeli leaders...
...Abraham Rabinovich's book offers a detailed account of this war, the moments leading up to it, scores of particular encounters and battles, and its immediate aftermath...
...And through all this, Rabinovich shows, the soldiers of the IDF fought, dangled on the edge of disaster, persevered, and prevailed...
...Israeli fighters—and occasionally Egyptian soldiers—are the book's subjects...
...only six years from the Six Day War, they could not imagine facing organized, determined, and well-trained Egyptians and Syrians...
...The more distant the analysis from depictions of the Israeli soldiers and the batdes, the less satisfying the book...
...Despite Kissinger's numerous shuttles between Jerusalem and Damascus, no parallel agreement ensued between Israel and Syria, foreshadowing failures that would repeat themselves in the coming decades...
...Led by their generals, especially Elazar and Gonen in the Sinai (and Bar-Lev who would leave the cabinet to lead the forces in the south) they had badly under-estimated their foe...
...We watch as the Israelis go through shock and panic, then figure out how to respond—and win...
...Whether or not this war "transformed the Middle East," as the volume's subtitle says, it certainly transformed relations between Israel, Egypt, and the United States, if not Israel, Syria, and the Palestinians...
...T h e IDF had snatched triumph—or at least, as Rabinovich says, a "tie"—from the mouth of defeat...
...Details of fighting, forts, patrols, tank maneuvers, Sinai dunes, and Golan ditches fill the book's pages...
...Their armies pushed rapidly and forcefully across the cease-fire lines of the Six Day War, mauling Israeli troops caught in their way...
...Jettisoning years of dependence on the Soviets, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat turned to America for political and diplomatic support...
...Directed by the American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the Egyptians and Israelis conducted their first face-to-face negotiations, at Kilometer 101...
...Equally astonished, the Nixon White House and the Kremlin scrambled to keep up with rapidly changing military and political realities...
...No matter how brutal a strategy from the point of view of the Israeli soldiers on the front line, this understanding offers possible insight into the vacillation, weakness, and blunders that characterize Rabinovich's portraits of Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan...

Vol. 29 • August 2004 • No. 4


 
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