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הצופה שנרדם: הפתעת יום הכיפורים ומקורותיה
מלחמת יום הכיפורים היא האירוע הטראומטי ביותר בתולדות מדינת ישראל ואחד האירועים הטראומטיים ביותר בחיי ישראלים רבים . ערב המלחמה, האמינה הנהגת המדינה, ממש כמו אזרחיה, כי ישראל היא מעצמה צבאית, כי צה"ל יושבת לבטח על קווי הגנה שאינם ניתנים להבקעה בתעלת סואץ וברמת הגולן, וכי מחשש תבוסה הערבים לא יצאו למלחמה נוספת. כל אלה קרסו בתוך שעות. בבוקר ה-7 באוקטובר עמד "הבית השלישי," כפי שהאמין משה דיין שר הביטחון, בסכנה.
ובלב הקריסה הזו עמדה ההפתעה האסטרטגית.
כיצד קרה הדבר וכיצד הופתעה ישראל , למרות שפע המידע ההתרעתי שעמד לרשותה, הן שאלות שעד היום לא ניתנה להן תשובה משכנעת. הצופה שנרדם מתמודד עימן, תוך שימוש בחומר חדש רב, כולל מסמכי מודיעין רבים הרואים כאן אור לראשונה. בין השאר הוא עונה על השאלות הבאות:
מדוע לא היתה התייחסות של ממש להתרעת המלך חוסיין בסוף ספטמבר והתרעות נוספות שהתקבלו באותו שבוע?
כיצד שחק אמ"ן את ערך המידע ההתרעתי שהגיע בימים שלפני פרוץ המלחמה, וכיצד מנע הפצת מידע בעל ערך קריטי למחליטים?
כיצד ומדוע לא נמסר לקברניטים שאמצעי האיסוף המיוחדים של אמ"ן לא הופעלו ערב המלחמה, למרות שאלה הבינו שהאמצעים פועלים?
מה היה חלקם האישי של ראש אמ"ן ועוזריו במחדל קריטי זה?
מה היו השלכות המחדל המודיעיני על יכולת הקברניטים לבצע הערכת מצב ריאלית ערב המלחמה ועל היערכות צה"ל לקראתה בשעות לפני שפרצה?
ובלב הקריסה הזו עמדה ההפתעה האסטרטגית.
כיצד קרה הדבר וכיצד הופתעה ישראל , למרות שפע המידע ההתרעתי שעמד לרשותה, הן שאלות שעד היום לא ניתנה להן תשובה משכנעת. הצופה שנרדם מתמודד עימן, תוך שימוש בחומר חדש רב, כולל מסמכי מודיעין רבים הרואים כאן אור לראשונה. בין השאר הוא עונה על השאלות הבאות:
מדוע לא היתה התייחסות של ממש להתרעת המלך חוסיין בסוף ספטמבר והתרעות נוספות שהתקבלו באותו שבוע?
כיצד שחק אמ"ן את ערך המידע ההתרעתי שהגיע בימים שלפני פרוץ המלחמה, וכיצד מנע הפצת מידע בעל ערך קריטי למחליטים?
כיצד ומדוע לא נמסר לקברניטים שאמצעי האיסוף המיוחדים של אמ"ן לא הופעלו ערב המלחמה, למרות שאלה הבינו שהאמצעים פועלים?
מה היה חלקם האישי של ראש אמ"ן ועוזריו במחדל קריטי זה?
מה היו השלכות המחדל המודיעיני על יכולת הקברניטים לבצע הערכת מצב ריאלית ערב המלחמה ועל היערכות צה"ל לקראתה בשעות לפני שפרצה?
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
532 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
10 people are currently reading
101 people want to read
About the author
Uri Bar-Joseph
14 books17 followersUri Bar-Joseph (Hebrew: אורי בר-יוסף) is professor emeritus in the Department for International Relations of The School for Political Science at Haifa University. He specializes in national security, intelligence studies, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 28, 2024
the wilde Amazone
Outstanding case study of organisational failure
A thorough but crisp and well-written analysis of Israeli intelligence failure to anticipate and prepare for the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The author is laser-like in his dissection of process and personality failures in creating an organisational mindset with which a whole range of alpha males found it easiest to go along; alarming in the sense that faced with complex analysis large organisations delegate analysis and therefore delegate responsibility and control - without realising they have done so. Full of wider applicability.
M M MacNair
//////
Why Israel Slept
In the literature on strategic surprise, the majority opinion, expressed by writers like Richard Betts and Ephraim Kam, is that surprise attacks almost always succeed, and it is very hard for the victim to properly read the intelligence before it is too late. Standing in the opposite corner is Uri Bar-Joseph.
In his extremely detailed analysis of the failure of Israeli intelligence on the eve of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Bar-Joseph concludes that the surprise was anything but inevitable. In fact, he argues that it should have been anticipated. In the weeks leading up to the war, Israel had numerous sources gathered from signals, human, and aerial intelligence all pointing to war.
One source even handed Israel the entire Egyptian war plan! Another source warning of war was none other than King Hussein of Jordan. Many within Israel's intelligence and military apparatus argued that war was imminent. Yet when the war did break out on October 6, Israel was unprepared. Why?
According to the official Israeli body set up to investigate the failure, the Agranat Commission, the fiasco was mostly due to the failure of the intelligence chiefs to properly read the numerous signals pointing towards war. Bar-Joseph agrees with this conclusion, but takes it one step further.
He argues that the top two officials, Eli Zeira and Yonah Bandman, not only did not read the signals correctly, they in fact overstepped their legal bounds and prevented information pointing towards war from reaching the chief of staff and generals.
A week before the war, Zeira refused to activate sensitive listening posts in Egypt that might have provided unambiguous evidence of war. He then lied to the chief of staff and told them they are in fact activated. A day before the war, Zeira delayed the transmission of a signals intercept warning of war.
Moreover, Zeira was so sure the Arabs would not attack, he never even considered the possibility of an all-out war. Bandman was also sure there would be no war, and refused to include language in his reports warning even of the possibility of war. He also distorted data to make the border seem quieter than it was.
The reason these two men so sure there would no war was that Israel had destroyed the Arab armies in 1967. By 1973 the Arabs were still weaker than Israel, lacking bombers and Scuds to attack Israeli air bases. Moreover, Egypt faced the massive Suez Canal, called the best anti-tank ditch in the world by Israeli generals.
Therefore, the option of all-out war to cross the Canal and retake the Sinai seemingly made no sense to these men. But Egypt's Anwar Sadat did not seek to retake the entire Sinai. He simply wished to press the Israelis into negotiation for it. He realized he could not do so while Israel held all the cards.
As Bar-Joseph documents, Sadat made the decision for a limited war, crossing the Suez and staying put, in late 1972. Therefore, Sadat went to war, but with limited objectives, in spite of all Israeli projections.
This book is meticulously researched and documented. An enormous number of intelligence reports are shown here for the first time. The 1973 war has also been a major case for building the theory of strategic surprise, along with Pearl Harbor and Barbarossa to name only two others.
Yet Bar-Josephs conclusions are entirely opposite to those of several other scholars.
Both the documents presented here and the differing conclusion Bar-Joseph arrives at makes this book very important for strategic theory.
In addition to the theoritical contributions, this book also makes historical contributions.
Not only does Bar-Joseph explain why the surprise happened, he examines its results in the opening hours of the war.
He assesses that the decision by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to send the air force north to Syria instead of focusing on the Suez Canal was a mistake, since the comportmant in the Golan was too small for planes to operate effectively. The air force would have been much better focusing on the Suez theater.
Moreover, he claims Israel was fortunate that the chief of state and Prime Minister kept their cool, since Dayan and the chief of the southern front went to pieces. Yet all this would not have mattered, the author claims, if different men had been in charge instead of Zeira and Bandman.
For the fact that the watchman fell asleep, Israel paid a high price indeed.
Eric Gartman
//////
This book came to my attention through Ron Hassner
by seeing it in a photograph of some of his books
..........
Ron Hassner is an American political scientist and international relations scholar.
He is a Professor of Political Science at University of California, Berkeley.
His scholarship focuses on religion and conflict, especially territorial disputes over sacred spaces. His research also encompasses religion in the military and the effectiveness of interrogational torture.
Hassner is a recipient of Berkeley's campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award.[4]
Education and career
Hassner holds
1995 B.Sc. International Relations - London School of Economics
1997 masters International Affairs - Columbia
2000 masters Religious Studies - Stanford
2003 Ph.D. Political Science - Stanford
He was a post-doctoral scholar at Harvard University's Olin Center.
In 2004, Hassner joined the political science faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.
Since then, he was visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.
In 2014, he received Berkeley's campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award.
Outstanding case study of organisational failure
A thorough but crisp and well-written analysis of Israeli intelligence failure to anticipate and prepare for the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The author is laser-like in his dissection of process and personality failures in creating an organisational mindset with which a whole range of alpha males found it easiest to go along; alarming in the sense that faced with complex analysis large organisations delegate analysis and therefore delegate responsibility and control - without realising they have done so. Full of wider applicability.
M M MacNair
//////
Why Israel Slept
In the literature on strategic surprise, the majority opinion, expressed by writers like Richard Betts and Ephraim Kam, is that surprise attacks almost always succeed, and it is very hard for the victim to properly read the intelligence before it is too late. Standing in the opposite corner is Uri Bar-Joseph.
In his extremely detailed analysis of the failure of Israeli intelligence on the eve of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Bar-Joseph concludes that the surprise was anything but inevitable. In fact, he argues that it should have been anticipated. In the weeks leading up to the war, Israel had numerous sources gathered from signals, human, and aerial intelligence all pointing to war.
One source even handed Israel the entire Egyptian war plan! Another source warning of war was none other than King Hussein of Jordan. Many within Israel's intelligence and military apparatus argued that war was imminent. Yet when the war did break out on October 6, Israel was unprepared. Why?
According to the official Israeli body set up to investigate the failure, the Agranat Commission, the fiasco was mostly due to the failure of the intelligence chiefs to properly read the numerous signals pointing towards war. Bar-Joseph agrees with this conclusion, but takes it one step further.
He argues that the top two officials, Eli Zeira and Yonah Bandman, not only did not read the signals correctly, they in fact overstepped their legal bounds and prevented information pointing towards war from reaching the chief of staff and generals.
A week before the war, Zeira refused to activate sensitive listening posts in Egypt that might have provided unambiguous evidence of war. He then lied to the chief of staff and told them they are in fact activated. A day before the war, Zeira delayed the transmission of a signals intercept warning of war.
Moreover, Zeira was so sure the Arabs would not attack, he never even considered the possibility of an all-out war. Bandman was also sure there would be no war, and refused to include language in his reports warning even of the possibility of war. He also distorted data to make the border seem quieter than it was.
The reason these two men so sure there would no war was that Israel had destroyed the Arab armies in 1967. By 1973 the Arabs were still weaker than Israel, lacking bombers and Scuds to attack Israeli air bases. Moreover, Egypt faced the massive Suez Canal, called the best anti-tank ditch in the world by Israeli generals.
Therefore, the option of all-out war to cross the Canal and retake the Sinai seemingly made no sense to these men. But Egypt's Anwar Sadat did not seek to retake the entire Sinai. He simply wished to press the Israelis into negotiation for it. He realized he could not do so while Israel held all the cards.
As Bar-Joseph documents, Sadat made the decision for a limited war, crossing the Suez and staying put, in late 1972. Therefore, Sadat went to war, but with limited objectives, in spite of all Israeli projections.
This book is meticulously researched and documented. An enormous number of intelligence reports are shown here for the first time. The 1973 war has also been a major case for building the theory of strategic surprise, along with Pearl Harbor and Barbarossa to name only two others.
Yet Bar-Josephs conclusions are entirely opposite to those of several other scholars.
Both the documents presented here and the differing conclusion Bar-Joseph arrives at makes this book very important for strategic theory.
In addition to the theoritical contributions, this book also makes historical contributions.
Not only does Bar-Joseph explain why the surprise happened, he examines its results in the opening hours of the war.
He assesses that the decision by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to send the air force north to Syria instead of focusing on the Suez Canal was a mistake, since the comportmant in the Golan was too small for planes to operate effectively. The air force would have been much better focusing on the Suez theater.
Moreover, he claims Israel was fortunate that the chief of state and Prime Minister kept their cool, since Dayan and the chief of the southern front went to pieces. Yet all this would not have mattered, the author claims, if different men had been in charge instead of Zeira and Bandman.
For the fact that the watchman fell asleep, Israel paid a high price indeed.
Eric Gartman
//////
This book came to my attention through Ron Hassner
by seeing it in a photograph of some of his books
..........
Ron Hassner is an American political scientist and international relations scholar.
He is a Professor of Political Science at University of California, Berkeley.
His scholarship focuses on religion and conflict, especially territorial disputes over sacred spaces. His research also encompasses religion in the military and the effectiveness of interrogational torture.
Hassner is a recipient of Berkeley's campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award.[4]
Education and career
Hassner holds
1995 B.Sc. International Relations - London School of Economics
1997 masters International Affairs - Columbia
2000 masters Religious Studies - Stanford
2003 Ph.D. Political Science - Stanford
He was a post-doctoral scholar at Harvard University's Olin Center.
In 2004, Hassner joined the political science faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.
Since then, he was visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.
In 2014, he received Berkeley's campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award.
Displaying 1 of 1 review