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Title: The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War by Howard Blum ISBN: 0-06-001399-0 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.81 (16 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Some Holes, but Engaging History
Comment: Howard Blum knows how to write engaging history, and I ought to know since I spend a good portion of time reading dry as dust academic journal articles and books. Most scholarly treatments of any historical subject reek of infuriatingly dense prose, annoying jargon, and specialization carried to the nth degree. "The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War" avoids all of these trappings in an attempt to tell the events surrounding the disastrous war that started between Israel, Egypt, and Syria on October 6, 1973. I didn't realize it at the time, but this book arrives just in time to cash in on the thirtieth anniversary of that catastrophic conflict, a conflict that nearly sent the Middle East spiraling into nuclear conflagration. Howard Blum is an author who has written several other books, including "The Brigade," "Gangland," and "Out There."
According to Blum, several important factors contributed to the near defeat of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Mainly, and this factor supposedly appears in print for the first time here, the Mossad and Israeli politicians made the nearly fatal mistake of relying heavily on an Egyptian double agent when formulating their national security policies. Referred to by Blum as "The Concept," the information this agent fed Israeli intelligence gave rise to a belief that until Egypt acquired long-range missiles and bombers and the Arab states unified, Israel would be safe. This "concept" soon informed all aspects of Israeli military and political policy to the point that a secret visit to Israel by the King of Jordan about the Egyptian/Syrian war plans went ignored. Coupled with an unforgivable level of arrogance expressed by figures like Moshe Dayan, still buoyed by the country's 1967 victory over the Arabs, Israel's complacency nearly led to its destruction. Evidence about Syrian troop massing on the border or Egyptian acquisition of Soviet made SAM missiles created barely a ripple in high level military circles.
Meanwhile, an Egyptian army officer name Saad el Shazly created his own "concept," a plan to smash through the Bar-Lev defensive forts along the Suez Canal and retake the Sinai Peninsula from Israel. To accomplish this feat, Shazly would take air-to-air missiles and create a shield behind which Egyptian tanks and troops would advance into the peninsula. The Israeli Air Force was not familiar with these new missiles, so the shield would render Jewish planes ineffective against the Arab advance. Shazly, tapped by President Sadat to put this plan into action, quickly did so with an ingenuity that even Israeli generals later admired. Using high-powered water cannons purchased in Europe, the Egyptians managed to knock down giant mountains of sand the Israelis had built along the Suez. Arab forces quickly built pontoon bridges across the water and overran the forts on the coast. Simultaneously, a giant force of Syrian tanks and regular army invaded Israel from the north, capturing key military installations and nearly driving all the way into the interior of the country. The situation deteriorated so rapidly that Golda Meir and her cabinet approved the use of nuclear weapons against Egypt and Syria, a plan that fortunately never came to fruition.
Threading its way throughout the book are stories about individual figures both Jew and Arab. Blum takes us into the high command bunkers of Egypt and Israel as the war unfolds, argues that Ariel Sharon was a reckless tank commander whose attempts to make a name for himself on the battlefield cost numerous lives and nearly lost the war in the Sinai, and follows the battlefield heroics of Israeli tank commanders who often held off hundreds of tanks with a minimum of equipment and soldiers. "The Eve of Destruction" is truly a compelling narrative history that does what good history ought to do: tell the reader the big picture while showing how individual people and actions shape that picture. Many of the accounts of the big tank battles are downright gripping, making the reader feel as though they are right on the front lines with the soldiers.
Blum achieves a certain measure of objectivity about the whole affair, readily pointing out the numerous Israeli blunders before and during the war. He also shows how political posturing by Sadat led to the defeat of Egyptian troops in the Sinai. I would have liked more accounts about Egyptian and Syrian soldiers in combat, but I still feel that "The Eve of Destruction" does a better job at the balance game than many books written in recent years about the Arab/Jewish situation. Blum argues that Egypt's operation in the Sinai during 1973 was more of an attempt to regain a sense of national honor than a serious gambit to "drive the Jews into the sea," a claim that will certainly anger some readers, but one that does possess a certain logic. Moreover, the author states that in this aspect, Egypt succeeded in redeeming itself after its devastating loss in 1967. For Blum, the Yom Kippur War changed the Middle East forever, leading to Sadat's eventual overtures towards Israel a few years later and presumably, peace with Jordan as well.
I know little of this specific conflict, as I'm not much into military history. I can say I came away with a better understanding of the power dynamics in this volatile area. One problem: Blum never adequately explains how the Arabs would have dealt with Israel's nuclear weapons. Perhaps Egypt and Syria didn't know Israel possessed these weapons at the time, but if so, Blum could have elaborated on this a bit better. Anyway, Blum's book is a great read and a good introduction to the last big Arab/Israeli War (excepting the invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s, of course).
Rating: 5
Summary: History Told in an Anecdotal Style
Comment: On October 6, 1973 at 2:00 in the afternoon, the armies of Egypt and Syria went to war. Along the Suez Canal, 100,000 Egyptian men and 1,550 tanks faced 436 Israeli troops and three tanks. In the Golan Heights, 45,000 Syrian troops and 540 tanks attacked an Israeli force of 175 men and 177 tanks. An Israeli army and air force, which was viewed by the world as invincible based upon its military success of June 1967, was clearly staggered by the surprise attack that coincided with the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Howard Blum's THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War is history in an anecdotal style. Blum tells the story of the war through the broad canvass of action by the nations involved, and the smaller snapshot of the individual participants in the conflict.
Blum spends a great deal of his account attempting to answer a familiar and significant question. How did the Arab nations achieve such a surprise and why was Israel so unprepared for the war? Nearly half of the book is spent providing the answer, an answer that has eerie similarities to contemporary events in the Middle East. Israel had substantial information that war was impending. Prime Minister Golda Meir even had a secret meeting with Jordan's King Hussein wherein he advised Meir of Egypt and Syria's plans. Israeli intelligence chose to ignore the information received because it failed to comport with their strategy and analysis. In addition, the Israelis were duped by an elaborate double agent plot by the Egyptians that fed crucial false information immediately prior to the commencement of hostilities.
The initial Arab assault succeeded in administering a near knockout blow to the Israelis. For 72 hours the Israelis staggered and tenaciously sought to hold off the advancing armies from both the north and south. So bleak was the situation that Defense Minister Moshe Dayan concluded that the "Third Temple" was about to fall. Prime Minister Meir authorized the use of Israel's nuclear arsenal should the nation be overrun. But just as the Israelis had miscalculated, so had Egyptian President Sadat, and that error changed the course of the battle.
Sadat's strategy was for a limited retaking of territory across the Suez Canal. He assumed that the Israelis would counter-attack and his army had been thoroughly prepared in defensive tactics. The goal was to wear down the Israeli Army and obtain a superior bargaining position for peace negotiations. But the Israelis elected a different strategy. They eliminated the Syrian threat and then turned their attention to the Egyptian front. Through a series of maneuvers, they outflanked the Egyptians and crossed the Suez Canal. Ultimately, the Americans and Soviets prevailed upon the parties to cease the hostilities, but Israel had come perilously close to cataclysmic defeat.
THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION focuses on many of the participants in the Yom Kippur War. Blum has interviewed hundreds of the participants and presents the story of the conflict in an easily readable narrative. This is not dry history loaded with footnotes and source material. The Six Day War of 1967 changed the balance of power in the Middle East. The Yom Kippur War tilted that balance back towards level. Those wars were actually battles in what has become a 35-year war that continues to be fought to this day. For those people who wish to better understand the ongoing struggle, Blum's book is mandatory reading.
--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
Rating: 5
Summary: An engaging story
Comment: Historians could have almost predicted with certainty that the humiliation of Egypt and Syria in the Six Days War in 1967 would have consequences. But the manner in which it happened was the surprise. In The Eve of Destruction, Howard Blum opens masterfully with the strategy that the Arabs chose: a top-ranking Egyptian spy who completely fool the Mossad and the Israeli Cabinet into thinking another war would never come. It did, six years later.
Blum masterfully narrates the events leading up to war: the unpreparedness of Israel's armed forces; the "Concept"; the realistic Egyptian General's war plan; and the gambit taken by Sadat and Asad to restore Arab honor to the Middle East.
Told through some of the key players in the war, we see heroic tank battles taking place in and around the desolate Golan Heights, vastly undersized Israeli armor desperately trying to halt overwhelming Syrian forces. We watch as the Egyptians carry out the brilliantly conceived Suez Canal crossing to hold its east bank and the tactical blunders and disorder of the Israeli generals before they realize that directly assaulting Egyptian positions in the Sinai is suicide. On the southern front, the war ends largely in stalemate thanks to a counter-crossing through the Chinese Farm, but it is a close-run thing. To the north, ferocious defensive actions allow Israeli armor to block the Syrian advance and even turn it around.
Blum's unique storytelling ability grabs the reader and places him or her right on the battlefield-one can almost smell the cordite. Yet, it is blended with behind-the-scenes in-depth insight and commentary, enabling one to understand why not only the Yom Kippur War was inevitable, but why, this time, there would be no easy victories-for either side. For me, the most fascinating aspect of the book lies in the manner in which Blum describes the participants: their hopes, veuve and zest, fears, and schemes, all placed in the context of Middle East culture that is still largely an anathema to western society.
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Title: The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East by Abraham Rabinovich ISBN: 0805241760 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz ISBN: 047146502X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Two O'Clock War: The 1973 Yom Kippur Conflict and the Airlift That Saved Israel by Walter J. Boyne, Fred Smith ISBN: 0312273037 Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books Pub. Date: 14 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars by Yaacov Lozowick ISBN: 0385509057 Publisher: Doubleday Books Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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