Main Trends in the Historiography of the Yom Kippur War: A Thirty-Year Perspective

Abstract

Although the Yom Kippur War was the most traumatic event in Israel's history and had an enormous impact on Israel's subsequent development, it has not yet received the academic attention it deserves. The article reviews the somewhat dialectical form in which the academic and non-academic discussion of three critical aspects of the war has developed since the mid-1970s: the mistaken intelligence estimate before the war, and the institutions and persons responsible for this failure; the causes of the intelligence fiasco; and the impact it had on the course of the war. Finally, the article raises a number of questions concerning the 1973 war that remain to be thoroughly explored, and urges that they be studied even though not all the empirical evidence is yet available.