I read that in the 1967 war, while Israel was beating the crap out of Egypt, their allies, the Syrians, asked how things were going. Egypt in effect, said they were slaughtering the Israelis and now was the time to get in.
The Israelis got wind of this and because they were doing so well, moved a lot of troops up the entire length of Israel and waited.
The Syrians believed the Egyptians, stormed across,got their azz beat, and lost the Golan Heights to boot.
[Sidebar] Dunno if it’s an Urban Legend, but Israel was supposed to have a mole in the Syrian military. He mentioned how hot it was for their troops on the Golan Heights and suggested they plant trees to shade the emplacements. A few years later when the war broke out, the Israelis targeted all the groves of trees and wiped out the emplacements.
In fact Egypt learnt the lesson and their initial offensive against Israel in 1973 was a sweeping success.
Then the Syrians bogged down and asked Egypt to keep pushing on their front but the Egyptian generals had no plans to move forward as they reached initial objectives.
Egyptian politicians took over to pushed further and it ended in another disaster for Egypt and Israel’s victory.
You are 100% correct. Pollack discusses this. It came during the first day of the war when the Egyptian air was being slaughtered, and yet reported they were winning. The Syrians heard about it, and jumped in on day 2, only to have the Israelis turn their attention to THEM!
It’s not an urban legend. That “Mole” was Eli Cohen (Eliyahu/Elijah), an Egyptian born Jew, who became the advisor to the Syrian Minister of Defense. I believe that he was found out by a quirk of fate power outage in Damascus, during a routine radio transmission, but I have forgotten the details. He was a good “friend” of Assad the Elder, who became so embarrassed that nothing, not a huge ransom, or pleas from nations around the world, could dissuade him from having Cohen publicly hanged.
Google the name, ELI COHEN. Should be an interesting read.