On Saturday night time, I used to be seated on the primary El Al aircraft to fly from the USA to Israel since Hamas had attacked my nation. Many airways had canceled flights to and from Israel, however El Al had refused to grant the terrorists that victory. Although we took off after midnight, sleep was not possible. My thoughts writhed pondering of the studies of insufferable Israeli casualties, the pictures of the captured and the useless, and the prospect of wider struggle.
Alongside these waking nightmares was an agonizing irony. I’d simply come from taking part in occasions in New York marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur Warfare. Simply as in 1973, when Israeli reservists dwelling or vacationing overseas rushed to rejoin their items already in fight, my aircraft was full of younger males able to commerce the thrills of New York for the horrors of a struggle beneath means. Their presence was another excuse to mirror on the eerie similarities and stark variations between these two wars, each of which broke out on Jewish holidays—essentially the most solemn, Yom Kippur, and now Simchat Torah, our happiest.
Warfare, in Israel, is a recurrent actuality. One used to interrupt out each six years or so, however lately the space between conflicts has dwindled. Between 2006 and at present, Israel fought 4 wars with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and a fifth, in Lebanon, with Hezbollah. None, nonetheless, might examine to the scope, the destructiveness, and the agony of the Yom Kippur Warfare. That’s, till now.
Maybe the closest similarity between the 2 conflicts is their tragic predictability. Effectively earlier than October 1973, Egyptian and Syrian leaders said their dedication to take again the territories that they had misplaced in 1967. Their armies repeatedly mobilized. However Israeli leaders catastrophically ignored these warnings. The Arabs, they believed, had not but recovered from their humiliating defeat six years earlier and would by no means dare to assault.
Equally, earlier than Saturday’s assault, the heads of Hamas often broadcast their ideological and theological dedication to Israel’s destruction. They repeatedly boasted about their preparations for a serious offensive. However like their predecessors in 1973, Israel’s present leaders have been lulled into pondering that Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been deterred by the Israel Protection Forces’ overwhelming firepower and technological know-how, and have been much less all in favour of struggle than in bettering Gazans’ high quality of life. Although a lot stays unknown about what, if any, particular warning Israel obtained previous to the assault, our lack of preparedness this time was equally egregious.
After the Yom Kippur Warfare, Israel established the Agranat Fee to analyze its many failures and assign blame, which fell primarily on the army for failing to anticipate the Egyptian-Syrian assault. However the public held politicians accountable as effectively, and compelled resignations. The present struggle will little doubt yield the same investigation, and its findings are certain to be monumental. A number of resignations will seemingly ensue.
The comparisons solely go up to now, nonetheless. Militarily, these two wars already look very completely different. The Yom Kippur Warfare started with a large typical assault by the Egyptian and Syrian armies in opposition to Israeli forces within the Sinai desert and the Golan Heights. The struggle was fought removed from Israeli inhabitants facilities with only a few civilian casualties. The present struggle started not with hundreds of enemy planes and tanks however with waves of terrorists carrying automated rifles and grenades. The preventing raged in Israeli cities and cities and on farms. Many tons of of civilians—together with girls, youngsters, the aged—have been killed, maimed, or captured in a matter of days. Israeli neighborhoods have been focused by hundreds of terrorist rockets.
Each Egypt and Syria neighbor Israel and in 1973 straight threatened its borders. Right now, these borders are threatened by terrorist teams financed and educated by a state positioned nearly 1,500 miles from Israel. The primary menace to Israel is now not Arab however Iranian.
Financially and tactically, Iran backs Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and Iran has a urgent curiosity in struggle. The ayatollahs noticed an Israel deeply divided over the federal government’s proposed judicial reform, the place air-force pilots and different reservists against that overhaul had been refusing to report for obligation. Iranian rulers additionally noticed an America determined to keep away from additional international entanglements, and a Western world reluctant to face by Israel’s excessive right-wing coalition. However the Iranians are additionally afraid. They concern an impending peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia and its promise of Saudi nuclearization. Taking a look at America’s political polls, these rulers concern the return to the White Home of Donald Trump, who canceled the nuclear deal that President Barack Obama had negotiated with Iran and that President Joe Biden promised to revive. Trump, who ordered the assassination of the Quds Drive commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, could be keen to bomb Iranian nuclear amenities—or so the ayatollahs imagine. What higher means for Iran to benefit from these alternatives, and allay these fears, than by triggering a destabilizing Center East struggle?
The Yom Kippur Warfare ended with an astonishing army victory for Israel, its forces completely surrounding these of Egypt and its artillery effectively inside vary of Damascus. Nonetheless, the value for Israel was excruciating: 2,656 Israeli troopers killed. The present struggle has already claimed some 700 Israeli lives and can absolutely take extra because the battle continues. Victory, even when definable, will seemingly be Pyrrhic. The 1973 struggle created the circumstances for negotiations between Egypt and Israel and led, six years later, to the Camp David Accords. However Egypt’s president on the time, Anwar Sadat, sought peace; Hamas’s leaders search genocide. This struggle will at greatest conclude with Hamas’s uprooting from Gaza and, nearly definitely, its leaders’ deaths.
The Yom Kippur Warfare had a profound influence on Israeli society and politics. The Israeli folks’s belief of their leaders, their relationship with the state—whether or not rooted in Judaism or democracy—and their attitudes towards peace have been irrevocably altered. The Peace Now motion, devoted to ceding territory for treaties, and the Bloc of the Devoted, totally against such concessions, each emerged within the struggle’s aftermath. The present battle, too, is definite to have a tectonic impact, additional shaking Israelis’ confidence within the authorities and even perhaps the military, and making them both extra against, or extra determined for, peace. The struggle, some Israelis will say, occurred due to the absence of a two-state resolution. Most others, although, will argue that such an answer would end in Hamas ruling not solely Gaza but additionally the West Financial institution. The following struggle, they warn, could be actually existential.
In fact, the conclusion of this struggle might nonetheless be far off. With an Israeli floor incursion into Gaza nearly sure to be launched, it’s tough to think about Hamas within the West Financial institution, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and even radicalized Israeli Arabs remaining passive. A regional struggle wherein terrorists hearth tens of hundreds of rockets at Israel and Israeli forces battle on a number of fronts is a really actual chance. Iran may additionally exploit the chaos to additional enrich its uranium stockpile and rush to make nuclear bombs. October 7, 2023—like October 6, 1973—was solely the start.
These have been the ideas coursing by my head because the El Al aircraft approached Israel’s coast with no obvious indicators of battle beneath, and the pilot introduced preparation for touchdown in Tel Aviv. The chief flight attendant expressed needs for the security of our households and assist for the troopers of the IDF. We landed with out incident, and the passengers, together with the younger reservists returning for obligation, disembarked. The flight was full and so was the airport. A protracted line of taxis awaited. Life in Israel went on.
Exiting the airport, I needed to remind myself of the horrors occurring a number of dozen miles away. I recalled how Israel had picked itself up after the Yom Kippur Warfare and healed its nice many wounds. In time, it grew into an prosperous and dynamic state. Whether or not we are able to rebuild once more after this struggle—whether or not, as Ezekiel requested, our dry bones will rise—is the best query we must reply. For now, our solely activity is to unite politically, to mourn our unspeakable losses, and to battle.
