For the past 50 years Yom Kippur has acquired an additional
significance.
Alongside the solemn
occasion of our Day of Atonement we commemorate the anniversary of the Yom
Kippur War. This year and every year since 1973 it has become a soul-searching occasion. The memoirs of aging
generals, new revelations from our own and foreign sources, shed more light on
the battle narratives and all aspects of the war. The critics have spared none.
Our intelligence community, the commanders in the field, as well as Golda
Meir’s kitchen cabinet’s decisions and vacillations are all mercilessly
scrutinised. All this self-flagellation has had a cathartic effect
on the IDF’s military intelligence, in fact on everyone.
The declassification of
military and government archives is defined by law.
Consequently, new media
reports last week, like the following one, weren’t surprising: -
“Ahead
of the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, the Israel State Archives have
been declassified revealing, hitherto undisclosed material. New documents from
Golda Meir’s bureau, relating to
the 1973 Yom Kippur War and its aftermath.
Voluminous
materials have been disclosed over the last 50 years, including significant
new documents discovered in journal
entries made by
Meir’s secretary Eli Mizrachi.
Some of the documents provide records of
deliberations between Golda Meir and security chiefs in the days and hours
before Syria and Egypt launched the coordinated war on October 6, 1973, as
Israel was marking Yom Kippur.
Israel hadn’t expected the attack to materialise
despite clear
signs that the armies were preparing for an invasion, believing that following
Egypt’s defeat six years earlier in the Six Day War, Cairo would only attack if
it first gained the ability to paralyse Israel’s Air Force.
A day before the war began, Military
Intelligence Directorate head Eli Zeira told Meir that the predominant assessment
was that Israel’s “readiness stems mostly from our enemies’ fear
of our deterrence,”
adding: “I think they aren’t about to attack, we have no proof. Technically,
they are able to act. I assume that if they are about to attack, we will get better
indications.”
In another assessment hours later, Zeira and
IDF chief of staff David Elazar repeated their stance that Syria and Egypt were
most likely to be planning a limited aggression or even merely deploying forces
defensively.
Elazar added: “I must say, we don’t have
sufficient proof that they don’t intend to attack. We don’t have conclusive
indications that they want to attack, but I can’t say based on knowledge that
they aren’t preparing.”
I want to insert an excerpt
from an article written four years ago by the late Shmuel Even, a research
fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). It presents a
different version of then Chief of Staff, David Elazar’s contribution to the
deliberations: -
“From
an analysis of the events, it appears that the chief of staff, David Elazar,
had a clear risk management approach. On October 5, 1973, a day before the war,
he put the regular army on high alert and reinforced the front lines. He did
this despite the assessment of the head of Military Intelligence that the
likelihood of war was extremely low. However, Lieutenant General Elazar’s
decision was far from being sufficient to withstand the attack that broke out
the following day at 1:50 pm, in part because both he and Defence Minister
Moshe Dayan failed to properly assess the risk. Namely,
that the regular army would be hard put to contain the offensive before the
arrival of reserve forces. In addition, Defence
Minister Dayan and Prime Minister Golda Meir rejected the chief of staff’s
suggestion made the next morning to carry out a preemptive air strike against enemy forces, as
they were concerned about the diplomatic risk involved, which made it even more
difficult for the permanent army.
The lessons learned from this sequence of events are that risk management is an
essential part of the role of statesmen and military leaders, and the military
and diplomatic risks on the strategic level should be managed jointly and
should be subject to policy goals.”
The following morning at 7:30 a.m. — 6.5 hours
before the combined Syrian and
Egyptian offensive, Meir’s military secretary read to
her an overnight telegram from Mossad chief Zvi Zamir, indicating that war was imminent.
Syria was massing tanks and missiles in the
north. Egypt was conducting military manoeuvres near the Suez Canal. Russia had
begun evacuating families from the region. Yet that afternoon General Eli
Zeira, the head of Israeli military intelligence, announced at a staff meeting
that a coordinated attack by Egypt and Syria was "low probability - even
lower than low."
Just before midnight, London time, ‘The Angel’ (Ashraf Marwan)
appeared at Mossad’s safe
house.
A brief margin note: -
“At an earlier time Marwan had approached the Mossad through a go-between offering
his services. The Mossad
determined that the documents he presented were genuine. Still, a rapidly formed working group of
Mossad agents debated the risk in dealing with a walk-in, a
volunteer who shows up bearing gifts.
They considered the possibility that he was a double agent spreading disinformation. It was decided, however, that this walk-in's
credentials were worth the gamble.”
Back to Zvi Zamir at the London safe house- Marwan spoke to Zamir for less than an hour and then left.
Zamir phoned an aide at 3:40 a.m. on the
morning of Yom Kippur. The
Egyptians and Syrians, he said, will attack simultaneously on both fronts at
sunset.
At an Israeli cabinet meeting that morning, Marwan’s
warning failed to convince
Meir’s cabinet ministers. The last time he had promised war
would break out, reserve
army forces were mobilised. The alert dragged on needlessly for months and cost
the IDF $35 million.
I’ll pause here in
order to add a few details concerning Ashraf Marwan ‘The Angel’ - In
an article he wrote for the Jerusalem Post recently Yonah Jeremy Bob
quoted remarks made by the current Mossad director David Barnea at a Mossad book
launch event.
“The Angel’s” true identity, Ashraf
Marwan, was revealed decades ago. Books have been written attempting to
decode when he was helping the Mossad when Egypt, and when he had ostensibly
played both sides, including his multiple warnings to Israel that Cairo was
going to initiate a war – warnings which were dismissed by a good deal of the
Israeli defence establishment. However, Mossad Director David Barnea
concluded unequivocally that Marwan was only working for the Mossad and that
there were no dual loyalties.
Marwan held top intelligence positions in Egypt
both during Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat’s tenures as
president, and was married to one of Nasser’s daughters, giving him unique
access to the intentions of Egypt’s rulers.
The
Mossad book reveals new information from protocols of discussions Sadat had
with Russian officials in Moscow in 1971.
In the protocols, Sadat’s intentions to try to regain all,
and not just part, of the Sinai, by either diplomatic negotiations or by a war
with Israel are detailed clearly.
The Mossad says that this is the first time
that it has been revealed that Sadat was open to the idea of a more limited war
for the purpose of helping move negotiations forward.
Just the same, Meir and
her war cabinet ministers considered the option of leaking knowledge
of the impending attack with the
object of forestalling it.
Yigal Alon advocated leaking the knowledge of
the attack plan to media outlets before a cabinet meeting scheduled for noon
that day. However, Meir only backed leaking the information to foreign
diplomats, and she ended up informing US ambassador Kenneth Keating after
Dayan said: “We must tread carefully, so there’s no panicking.”
Meir asked Keating during their meeting to
convey a message to Egypt: “We have no doubt that we will win, but we want to
announce… that we aren’t planning an attack, but of course we are ready to
repel their attack.”
When Keating asked if Israel would strike
preemptively, Meir answered that it wouldn’t, “though it would have made it
much easier for us.”
A day after the attack materialised — again
surprising Israel since it happened earlier than expected — Dayan acknowledged
to Meir and Alon that his assessments had been proven wrong.
“We had an assessment that was based on the
previous war, and it was incorrect. We and others had wrong assessments about
what would happen during the attempted crossing of the Suez Canal,” he said.
Only days later, after Washington was
convinced, Israel hadn’t initiated the war, did the US provide weapons, with
Meir saying: “There is a decision in principle by US president Richard Nixon on the supply of
Phantom II F-4 interceptor fighter bombers. Now
there’s just the issue of carrying this out. Kissinger is looking for a way to
fly them in.”
However, it was not until after the Yom Kippur
War that the Mossad gained a more significant and parallel recognition and access to
IDF intelligence regarding the ‘bigger picture’ and long-term strategic questions
of war and peace – especially regarding alerts to the likelihood of
war.
Furthermore, in 1973 Unit 8200 was an
almost unknown, largely disregarded team operating with
primitive surplus American military equipment. A far cry from its current standing. Peter
Roberts, the Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, claims that, "Unit
8200 is probably the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world and
stands on a par with the NSA in
everything except scale. They are highly focused on what they look at —
certainly more focused than the NSA (the US National Security Agency) —
and they conduct their operations with a degree of tenacity and passion that
you don't experience anywhere
else."
There’s a postscript
regarding Ashraf Marwan’s life after the Yom Kippur War.
Following the Camp
David Accords 1978 and earlier still, it’s unlikely that Marwan’s services were
required by the Mossad. He could afford to rest on his laurels.
He was independently
wealthy and appears to have spent most of his time with his family in their
London home.
In a piece
published in The Guardian on the 15th of September 2015 the
author queried – “Who
killed the 20th century’s greatest spy?
When Ashraf Marwan
fell to his death from the balcony of a London flat, he took his secrets with
him. Was he working for Egypt or Israel? And did the revelation of his identity
lead to his death?
This much is certain:
Ashraf Marwan was alive when he tumbled from the fifth-floor balcony of his
London flat. The Egyptian businessman landed, shortly after 1.30pm on the 27th of June 2007, in a private rose garden. A woman screamed; someone called the police. The paramedics arrived too
late. Marwan died from a ruptured aorta.
Whether he fell or was pushed has never been
established conclusively.
A debate continues
over whether Marwan was a well-connected and resourceful Israeli spy or a
brilliantly manipulative Egyptian double agent.
Marwan's sister said he was in good spirits only hours before his death. But
another unidentified friend said Marwan’s health had declined, he
simply, lost his balance and fell.
There were also reports
that he made many enemies through his activities involving armaments sales.
Nevertheless, Egyptian
authorities arranged a grand funeral and Marwan was hailed as a hero.
Well, the Ashraf Marwan
saga seems to have ended well for everyone, with one possible exception-
In 2019, the founder of an Egyptian publishing
house, Khaled Lotfi, was sentenced to five years in prison for
distributing a novel about Marwan on the grounds that the book revealed
Egyptian military secrets.
Shana Tova
Beni,
14th of September, 2023
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