The myth of defeat: the memory of the Yom Kippur war in Israeli society

Abstract

The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 arouses an uncomfortable feeling among Israeli Jews. Many think of it as a disaster or a calamity. This is evident in references to the War in Israeli literature, or the way in which the War is recalled in the media, on the anniversary of its outbreak.' Whereas evidence of the gloom is easy to document, the reasons are more difficult to fathom. The Yom Kippur War can be described as failure or defeat by amassing one set of arguments but it can also be assessed as a great achievement by marshalling other sets of arguments. This article will first show why the arguments that have been offered in arriving at a negative assessment of the War are not conclusive and will demonstrate how the memory of the Yom Kippur War might have been transformed into an event to be recalled with satisfaction and pride.2 This leads to the critical question: why has this not happened? The background to the Yom Kippur War, the battles and the outcome of the war, lend themselves to a variety of interpretations.3 Since these are part of the problem which this article addresses, the author offers only the barest outline of events, avoiding insofar as it is possible, the adoption of one interpretive scheme or another. In 1973, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, fell on Saturday, 6 October. On that day the Egyptians in the south and the Syrians in the north attacked Israel. The attack came as a surprise. The question of why Israel was surprised, should it have been surprised, and who was to blame for the surprise is a matter of debate, but it is beyond dispute that war found the Israeli public as well as the army unprepared. In the first few days the Israeli army suffered 'heavy' losses and was forced to retreat along both fronts. On the third day, Israel launched a counter attack on the southern front which failed. However, the tide of the war turned in the early days of the second week. Within two weeks the Israeli army had advanced into enemy territory inflicting heavy casualties on the Egyptians, encircling one of its armies, although it never dislodged the Egyptian army from the Sinai desert, and advancing in the north to within artillery range of Damascus. A cease fire was declared on 22