Israel's Agonizing Reappraisal

...rather, it is a subject for debate by politicians, sociologists and perhaps philosophers...

...Despite the setbacks in the first days of the war and the very heavy casualties (for which the defense leadership is blamed), most Israelis do believe their army again scored a major victory...

...NOT SURPRISINGLY, Likud pushed for the elections to take place by the end of the year...

...Third, and most important, a pro-dove coup in the Labor coalition would have undermined the nation's confidence in the continued strength and superiority of the Israeli Defense Forces...

...Ousting Dayan, therefore, was seen as possibly creating an impression of intraleadership warfare at the expense of national security—and at the very moment the government is seeking to utilize the nation's confidence in the military establishment to lift the Israeli public out of its political depression...

...In this regard, Israelis have been recalling one of the more familiar lines from the sermon of Moses: "But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked...

...Overall, the opposition has been accusing the government of timidity, blindness, stupidity, and negligence...

...The fundamental problem of how Israel misunderstood Egypt's disposition and intentions, and assumed that the post-1967 status quo would prevail for years to come...

...The punishment was not long in coming...

...They hoped, for example, that eventually the anti-Dayan elements in the Labor Alignment would succeed in making him the scapegoat for the October mistakes and they were encouraged by the fact that at least some of Moshe Dayan's Cabinet colleagues were not averse to his departure from the Ministry of Defense...

...Meir (and her closest confidant, Minister Without Portfolio Israel Galili), shooting at General Dayan would have amounted to shooting at the Prime Minister, too...

...As Election Day approaches, the main opposition bloc of four right-of-center parties, Likud, is expected to present an even more intransigent program than before...

...Thou hast waxen fat and grown thick...

...Yet since this position is shared by Mrs...

...Jeshurun is one of the Biblical synonyms for the Children of Israel, and what they kicked (in the face) were the commandments...

...Interestingly, though, this figure is considerably lower today than it was prior to the recent hostilities...

...The failures that lay on the borderline between the military and the political establishments—the specific analysis of available military intelligence, the general evaluation of the preparedness and capabilities of the Arabs, the suitability of Israel's basic strategic conceptions in light of changing circumstances, etc...

...Deuteronomy 32:15...

...This second issue is as complicated as the intricacies of modern warfare, but essentialy it concerns three different areas: ?The mistakes that were made by the military machine on the logistical, operational and command levels...

...in November 1972, it stood at 77 per cent...

...the incumbent Labor Alignment, in turn, has been stressing the difficulties of functioning in the shadow of the Soviet involvement while being restricted by its dependence upon U.S...

...ON THE EVE OF THE ELECTIONS Israel's Agonizing Reappraisal BY ELIAHU SALPETER TEL AVIV ISRAEL is now in the midst of the most agonizing reappraisal of its 25 years of existence, and the agony is neither less pronounced nor less significant than the reappraisal...

...Moreover, they continue to feel that the full impact of that victory was blunted by Secretary of State Henrv Kissinger's hastv agreement to the immediate cease-fire Moscow demanded to save its Egyptian client from total defeat...

...Meanwhile, in a more general sense, there seems to be an almost complete consensus here that Israel had grown too confident and too prosperous in the wake of its smashing victory in the Six Day War...

...This, possibly, is one of the major causes for the current depression and frustration here...

...Consequently, in defending itself, the government faces the uneasy choice between appearing only a little less inflexible than the opposition or painting an overly optimistic picture of the chances for a genuine peace with the Arabs...

...First, any party politicking that smacked of a personal vendetta would be rejected by the majority of the voters in the midst of the present emergency...

...The October fiasco is widely attributed to a decline in the state of Israel's fitness, flowing from the nation's desire for normalcy...

...support...

...Its apocalyptic prediction of what would happen should Israel make major concessions to the Arabs may strike a responsive chord in the hearts of many voters, Auschwitz still being less than a generation past...

...Public opinion polls taken after the signing of the October ceasefire agreement reveal that 84 per cent of the Israelis continue to believe the true aim of the Arabs is not to regain the territories they lost in 1967, but to destroy the Jewish State...

...Not that the latter approach would find a widely receptive public, for in mid-November 59 percent of those polled said they do not believe the Arabs are really ready to make peace with Israel...

...And the average Israeli is too sophisticated to accept as a panacea the replacement of the present government in the parliamentary elections now scheduled to be held December 31...

...Thus it not only grossly underestimated the enemy but, what is worse, relaxed its own guard, becoming careless about some of the most vital spheres of its existence...

...Thus the Meir forces, after some stormy internal battles, entered the electoral fracas with their Labor list intact...

...As time went by, however, and more information reached the public through the press and through the nation's superconductive grapevine, the questions became much broader: Why was Israel not as prepared as it should have been for the Arab attack...

...Initially, the questions about the opening days of the Yom Kippur War—when the Egyptians managed to establish themselves along a narrow strip on the east bank of the Suez Canal and the Syrians succeeded in driving their tanks into the Golan Heights—centered on the issue of surprise: Why didn't Israel's vaunted intelligence realize that the Arabs were about to strike until less than 24 hours before the actual attack...

...The extent to which their strategy will succeed at the polls, however, is at this point very much an open question...

...Nonetheless, in the longer, historical sense, it may be the most important question of all...

...Second, the main argument of Dayan's critics—beyond his formal (and certainly not insignificant) responsibility as Defense Minister for the course of the war—is directed against "securitism," the pejorative epithet for his conviction that Israel's security is based on military strength...

...Nonetheless, the events of October will have their effects at the polls...

...The dominant mood to emerge here since the cease-fire is an amorphous political depression, stemming as much from uncertainty about the future as from the feeling that the events of the first two weeks of October both need not and should not have occurred...

...This, of course, unlike the other two areas, can hardly be the subject of formal inquiries...

...The Leftists, on the other hand, urged postponement, calculating that the passage of time would reinforce dovishness in the general public as well as in the government...

...ELIAHU SALPETER, our regular Middle East correspondent, is a member of the editorial board of Ha'aretz...

...Indeed, the time between the end of the war and the elections is far too short for the nation to fully digest its recent traumatic experience and firmly translate the resulting awareness into political terms...

...These topics are expected to be taken up by a special Committee of Inquiry appointed by Prime Minister Golda Meir...

...one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...Everyone realizes that something has to be done, and fast, to put the system back into top shape—but most people are still at a loss as to exactly what...

...But the Labor majority realized that ganging up on Dayan could boomerang—in three ways...

...The Chief of Staff has already announced an all-out investigation of these matters from the highest to the lowest ranks...