The Historiography of the Yom Kippur War: A Forty Years’ Perspective and a New Discussion

Abstract

This article traces the development of the historiography of three interrelated elements of the Yom Kippur War: First, the political alternative to the war, primarily the diplomatic process that had taken place since early 1973, which compelled the Israeli leadership to choose between a comprehensive settlement that would lead to a withdrawal to the 1967 borders, and an Egyptian war initiative that was likely to end in an Egyptian defeat; second, the causes for the IDF’s lack of readiness when war started and the implications of this insufficient military readiness on the course of the war during its first days; third, the causes for the intelligence fiasco, primarily the personal role played, on the eve of the war, by the director of Military Intelligence in misleading the Israeli leadership to believe that a specific means of intelligence collection on which they counted to get a war warning was operational, while, in fact, he did not allow its use. The article shows how the institutional history of the 1973 war – the Agranat Commission Report – withstood the test of time, and how the ‘new histories’ of the sources for the military fiasco had failed to meet this challenge.