Last modified on December 21, 2021, at 01:00

Yom Kippur War

Yom Kippur War
Overview
Part of Arab-Israeli conflict
Date October 6, 1973-October 26, 1973
Location Golan Heights, Sinai peninsula
Combatants
Flag of Israel.png Israel Egypt
Syria,
Pakistan[1]
Commanders
Moshe Dayan
David Elazar
Saad El Shazly
Mustafa Tlass
Hafez al-Assad
Hosni Mubarak
Anwar Sadat
Strength
375,000 - 415,000 troops 914,000 – 1,067,500 troops
Casualties
around 2,700 deaths 8,500 - 18,000 deaths


The Yom Kippur War was fought between Israel, Egypt, and Syria. The war commenced on October 6, 1973 when Egyptian mechanized divisions crossed the Suez Canal by using a series of pressurized water cannons to demolish sand walls on the opposite side of the canal, and then crossing on pontoon bridges. This was concurrent to a Syrian advance into the Golan Heights. The date was chosen because Yom Kippur is the holiest and most solemn day in Judaism, and many Israeli army were stood down during that time. The delay in mobilization, and the lack of a preemptive strike against Egyptian and Syrian forces allowed the initial success of these advances. However, the lack of commercial traffic (due to the solemnness of Yom Kippur) allowed Israeli forces to mobilize more quickly than usual.

At first, the Israeli counterattack was focussed primarily against the forces in the Golan Heights as these were much closer to Israel proper, whereas the Egyptian forces in the Sinai peninsula were not as immediate a threat. Initial counterattacks against both armies were ineffective because the Israelis were hugely outnumbered in armor, although the Egyptians and Syrians were fielding obsolete Russian tanks as opposed to the more modern European and American tanks fielded by Israel. To counter this advantage, the Arab armies armed their soldiers with Russian anti-tank weapons. Additionally, both armies used fixed SAM emplacements, and avoided leaving the coverage of this air umbrella, thus blunting the offensive power of the Israeli air force.

Facing defeat, the Israelis implored the United States for military aid, as the Europeans refused to assist under threat of an Arab oil embargo. The United States airlifted a large number of tanks and aircraft into Israel, thus replacing Israeli losses. Because of the influx of materiel, the Israelis were able to commit their forces to a renewed offensive posture, overwhelming the older Egyptian and Syrian divisions.

Because the Israelis through the majority of their reserves into the Golan Heights theater, they were able to push back the Syrian advance, and counterattack into Syria, though this counterattack was ultimately turned back by a combined Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi force. In the Sinai, after several attacks and counterattacks, both sides went into a defensive stance to hold the ground that they had. On October 14, the Egyptian forces decided to attack first, but made a tactical blunder in attacking the Israelis head on and outside of their SAM umbrella. The Egyptian tanks were decimated by the superior Israeli armor and air power. The following day, the Israelis counterattacked across the Suez canal.

By October 23, the Israeli army, though pushed back from the outskirts of Damascus, still had captured additional territory near the Golan Heights, and was close to encircling the Egyptian army in the Sinai peninsula. The United Nations chose this time to impose a cease fire which went into effect at sundown on the 23rd. However, overnight the Israeli army continued its attack in Egyptian territory in order to complete the encirclement of the Egyptians. In a conference with Golda Meir that evening, Henry Kissinger asked "how can anyone ever know where a line is or was in the desert?" Their army now encircled, the Egyptians had no choice but to accept the cease fire in exchange for the creation of UN checkpoints to allow non-military supplies to reach their army, and the exchange of prisoners of war. Although the cease fire did not bind the Syrians, they decided not to further counterattack the Israeli army, though their combined force of Syrian, Iraqi, and Jordanian troops had the Israelis in a state of retreat.

Ultimately, the cease fire led to an armistice, and the Camp David Accords wherein Egypt agreed to a lasting peace in exchange for the return of the Sinai peninsula, which the Egyptians had lost during the Six Day War, and the recovery of which had been the primary goal of the Yom Kippur War. However, the airlifting of supplies by the United States to the Israelis directly precipitated the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.

Al-Shazli

The U.A.R. (short lived United Arab Republic - covered territory between Egypt, including the Gaza Strip, and Syria) made a pact, by Col. Mohammed Saad el-Shazly, with Nazis in 1961, contacts began in 1960. The neo Nazis would disseminate Arab propaganda, in exchange, the U.A.R. will finance them.[2][3]

Shazly was the author of a horrific pamphlet issued to Egyptian troops during the Yom Kippur War exhorting them to "kill mercilessly" all Israeli POWs. “Hit them, kill them wherever you find them as they (the Jews) are a nation of ... character."[3][4]

Saad El-Shazly perpetuated the myth about "Greater Israel." He flatly asserted that Ariel Sharon would "aspire to conquest over an area greater even than the biblical dreams of a land from the Nile to the Euphrates" and saw air power as Israel's means to this ambitious end.[5]

See also

Further reading

  • Tucker, Spencer C., ed. The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict A Political, Social, and Military History (4 vol. 2008)

References

  1. https://tribune.com.pk/story/855837/50-years-on-memories-of-the-1973-arab-israeli-conflict
  2. B'nai B'rith Messenger⁩⁩, 17 September 1965.

    World Press In A Nutshell

    By OSCAR GAVRILOVICH

    COMPILED AND WRITTEN EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE B'NAI B'RITH MESSENGER

    Arab Links With Nazi Underworld

    LATELY European papers exposed Arab backing of global nazi and neo-nazi organizations.

    One of the periodicals, devoting several pages to this unsavory partnership was Paris La Terre Retrouvee.

    It contends that the first inkling of such a unison came in 1960. when the now deceased former SS-officer Karl-Heinz Priester invited 300 leaders of neo-nazi groups to come to Wiesbaden, West Germany, for an organizational meeting of a world-wide neo-nazi party.

    West German authorities, however, prohibited this assembly and seized the documents which Priester had brought with him.

    From these it was established that Priester, a co-founder of the Fascist Internationale at Malmo Sweden, was also one of the Arab League's top agents in Europe.

    Digging farther into the links between Arabs and nazis, the name of Mohammed Al-Shazli popped up. He was a colonel on the United Arab Republic's general staff, and a former military attache to London The Fuehrers of the English nazi party, Colin Jordan and John Tyndall, readily admitted to the London Daily Telegraph their intention of carrying on an anti-Semitic propaganda with the financial support of the United Arab Republic.

    ACTUALLY COL. AL-SHAZLI and the two nazi leaders formally agreed that the English nazi party would dissiminate Arab propaganda material against Israel. In exchange the U. A. R. would finance the anti-Jewish nazi campaign in England. The Arabs and nazis, however, made the mistake of putting their agreement Into writing which then came into the wrong hands.

    La Terre Retrouvee has published the entire text of the accord between the English nazi party and the UAR marked top secret. It stresses the need of a joint fight against the organized forces of Zionism and the World Jewry to be financed by the United Arab Republic.

    The agreement then enumerates the appropriations which the UAR would grant to the nazi party for specific services , for the publication of propaganda bulletins , leaflets and books, and for the distribution of already existing hate material against Israel and the Jews.

    Thus, says the French periodical, the myth that Arabs are not antiJewish, only anti-Zionist finally has been dispelled.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Shazly Appointment Raises Storm, JTA, January 14, 1974.

    A storm is brewing here over the Foreign Office’s anticipated acceptance of Gen. Saad el-Shazly as the new Egyptian Ambassador to Britain. Informed sources told the Jewish. Telegraphic Agency yesterday that approval of Shazly’s appointment is expected next week despite the general’s known association with British neo-Nazis when he served in London as a military attache in 1963 and the recent revelation that he was the author of a pamphlet issued to Egyptian troops during the Yom Kippur War exhorting them to kill captured israeli soldiers.

    The JTA was told that the Foreign Office wants to avoid what it describes as a major political row with Egypt even though it is “somewhat annoyed” with Cairo for having announced the designation of Shazly before his accreditation was confirmed, a move contrary to standard diplomatic practice. The Foreign Office had refused to confirm or deny that Shazly was the Egyptian Ambassador-designate even after the news was out in Cairo. But on Friday, a Foreign Office spokesman finally admitted that an application for accreditation of Shazly had been received from the Egyptian government.

    ASSOCIATION WITH NEO-NAZIS CITED

    The announcement prompted Michael Fidler, a Conservative MP and past president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to send a letter of protest to Foreign Secretary Sir Alex Douglas-Home. The text of Fidler’s letter, made available to the JTA today, said in part: “It would be infamous if Gen. Shazly, with his record eleven years ago in London of close association with the National Socialist Movement and/or other fascist organizations in Britain should now be permitted to come here in such capacity. The entire British community would be shocked to think that a person who could act in this fashion should now be coming again in this capacity.”

    Fidler enclosed a copy of a news item from the Daily Express “which quotes more recent sentiments expressed by Shazly in connection with the killing of Jews–whether Israeli prisoners of war or other.”

    The notorious Shazly pamphlet was brought to the attention of members of Parliament of all parties and British veterans and student groups last week by Moshe Barneah, secretary of the Israeli branch of Amnesty international. He noted that thousands of them were distributed to Egyptian soldiers by the Army information Service with instructions signed by Shazly who was chief of staff of the Egyptian Army at the time of the Yom Kippur War.

    The instructions ordered Egyptian soldiers to “kill mercilessly” all Israeli POWs. “Hit them, kill them wherever you find them as they (the Jews) are a nation of [sic] treacherous character. They pretend to give up only to kill you in treacherous ways,” the pamphlets said.

    A spokesman for the Egyptian Embassy here “strongly denied” yesterday that the former Egyptian chief of staff had at any time given orders to kill Israeli POWs. The spokesman claimed that such orders bearing Shazly’s Lame were forged by Israeli veterans organizations.
  4. Dershowitz, Alan M.. Defending Israel: The Story of My Relationship with My Most Challenging Client. United States: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2019.

    Documents discovered by Israeli troops during the war showed that Egyptian general Saad el-Shazly had distributed written orders to kill Israeli soldiers even after they surrendered...

    that “racist ideology, which brought the destruction of the Jewish communities at the hands of the Nazis.
  5. Saad El-Shazly, The Arab Military Option (San Francisco: American Mideast Research, 1986), pp. 17, 31.; Daniel Pipes, (Supposed) Imperial Israel: The Nile-to-Euphrates Calumny, Middle East Quarterly, March 1994.
    Long after Abdel Nasser's death, and through years of Egypt's peace with Israel, his acolytes continued to warn against Greater Israel. General Saad El-Shazly flatly asserted that Ariel Sharon would "aspire to conquest over an area greater even than the biblical dreams of a land from the Nile to the Euphrates" and saw air power as Israel's means to this ambitious end.
"The Mufti.. concocted a new kind of antisemitism that combined traditional Muslim antisemitism, like the anti-Jewish verses you find in the Koran, with the Nazi antisemitism that demonised Jews... His whole ideology was antisemitic and from the very beginning he targeted Jews, not Zionists."
The difference between lies and reality is sometimes just a color on a map


W. Ormsby-Gore as he was preparing the royal commission report, "Though I knew there was ill-feeling between Jews and Arabs, I had not realized the depth and intensity of the hatred with which the Jews are held by the Arabs..."
"It is not Israel's settlement blocks but rather the Palestinian ideological blockade that constitutes the biggest barrier to peaceful arrangements . The Jew-hatred in this region must no longer be played down as a kind of local custom ..."
The only tweet (July 2014) on the Twitter account of the late American Elan Ganeles - murdered by Arab-Islamist "Palestinian" on Feb 27, 2023 hy"d: "I think you're always going to have tension in the Middle East, when there's [are] people who want to kill Jews, and the Jews don't want to be killed, and neither side is willing to compromise."