The Yom Kippur War;The Last Nuclear Moment

The New York Times | October 6,2003 | Avner Cohen

[the_greatest_country_ever]

How do we know that this story is true and not just more of the same Zionist propaganda the Jews broadcast through their own western media organs to further the interests of the Zionist entity? [Sarcasm Off]

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[Southack]

Ah, how quickly the writers at the New York Times forget...that India and Pakistan went to the brink of nuclear war two years ago.

[Paleo Conservative]

Yet, while Israeli intelligence had detailed knowledge of Egyptian and Syrian war plans, and Prime Minister Golda Meir had even been secretly warned of an imminent war by King Hussein of Jordan on Sept. 25, the information was not translated into military preparedness. This colossal failure ? due to a combination of arrogance, self-deception and misperception ? is part of Golda Meir's legacy.

Similar to the Stalin's denial prior to Barbarosa. Soviet spy Richard Sorge knew all about the plans for the German invasion of the Soviet Union from his espionage in Tokyo, but Stalin refused to believe him.

[the_greatest_country_ever]

There are many, many reasons why your comparison of Golda Meir with Josef Stalin in the context of this article's subject matter is wholly inaccurate and misleading.

[Paleo Conservative]

I'm only making a very restricted comparison as to their failures to heed credible evidence of a potentially regime ending attack on their country. Morally there is no comparison between the two. Stalin was a monster who was at least as bad as Hitler.

[the_greatest_country_ever]

My comment was made strictly from a historical perspective. Certainly I never assumed you were comparing the two in terms of their moral character.

Stalin was being besieged from every conceivable allied governmental source even from his very own intelligence gathering networks warning him about Hitler's inevitable attack,the most emphatic of all from Great Britain and to which in every case he dismissed out-of-hand.

Stalin believed that all the various reports of an imminent German invasion were all part of the same desperate allied plot towards convincing him to open a second front on Nazi Germany. He even steafastedly refused to fortify his troops on the German-Soviet border so as not to give Hitler the slightest pretext for invasion.

[Brandon]

By Oct. 21 the Israelis were within 20 miles of Damascus

If only they'd finished the job when they had the chance ..... :(

[Timesink]

Ultimately, Mrs. Meir's nuclear legacy goes far beyond those days in October 1973. Her prudence contributed significantly to the creation of the nuclear taboo — the recognition that nuclear weapons are not like any other weapons humanity has ever invented; that under virtually any circumstances they must never be used.

I don't see anything in this article that indicates nukes wouldn't have been used had the US not thown a massive amount of air support to Israel.

[mitch5501]

"...it demonstrated to the world that Israel was a responsible and trusted nuclear custodian"

Yep,which is why it really gripes my cookies when I hear people constantly whining about how Israel,America etc have WMDs so why pick on Iraq?

Sooner or later people who are not "a responsible and trusted nuclear custodian" will have a nuclear weapon and will use it at the earliest available opportunity on those same folks.

"Like John F. Kennedy a decade earlier, Golda Meir had stared into the nuclear abyss and found a path back to sanity"

No doubt there are certain folks who would stare into the nuclear abyss and grin from ear to ear.It seems only a matter of time before we have more "nuclear moments".

good read,thanks

God bless

[mitch5501]

"I don't see anything in this article that indicates nukes wouldn't have been used had the US not thown a massive amount of air support to Israel."

I'm not sure you were meant to.The point I think is that they were willing to try whatever it took in order not to use them.I expect that they probably would have used them had not American support been forthcoming.

There are some folks who would actively pursue the option of using a nuclear weapon regardless of what other options they had.It would be their first choice.

[Truth666]

Wrong ! In 1999 alone there were at least three such moments. Ans they were not the last ones.

[FreedomPoster]

>>The shock Israelis felt at the Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack on Oct. 6, 1973, can best be compared to that felt by Americans after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

That would be a very poor analogy. Americans in St. Louis weren't in any danger of being overrun by the Japanese is a week or two. Isrealis in Tel Aviv faced a real possibility of being overrun by Arab armies.

I would expect that the Israelis felt a much more serious shock.

[chilepepper]

Events of the Yom Kippur War were very dangerous not just in Israel -- the overseas Naval base I worked at went on a very high state of alert when the airlift kicked in...

The airlift was primarily supplied from NATO stocks since these were the closest, and there was great fear that the Soviets would take advantage of NATO's depleted tanks, ammo and other things to expand a war which they no doubt had a hand in since Egypt and Syria were Soviet clients...

[jonalvy44]

agree

[Brian Allen]

<< By Oct. 21 the Israelis were within 20 miles of Damascus and had crossed the Suez Canal, encircling the Egyptian Third Army. >>

An extraordinary time for me. From mid-September though late October 1973 I was "working" in Cairo and only after the cease-fire was negotiated went by train to Khartoum, where I found much of the Egyptian air farce parked in rows at the airport waiting out any risk of having to face combat.

Too bad the Big General didn't annihilate the Egyptian Third Army AND nuke Damascus, Cairo and Amman.

Like the Chinese when a handful of Englishmen in a few wooden ships at the end of a ten thousand miles and six months long line of supply and communications totally defeated them in what Peking's self-appointed mass murderers like to call the "opium wars" -- and sulk about still -- and the Japanese at the end of the second world war, the Arabs would have experienced the total defeat and total humiliation they will need if the personality changes witnessed in the nineteenth century's whipped Chinese and the twentieth century's arse-whipped and wiped-up Japanese are ever to occur among the islamofascists!

Bump/Ping/Ping

[Brian Allen]

<< the_greatest_country_ever


By Oct. 21 the Israelis were within 20 miles of Damascus

If only they'd finished the job when they had the chance ..... :( >>

Even though, because of where I was required to be that month, I might have been vaporized, I 100% agree.

[See #16]

The fat lady will not and cannot sing until we have inflicted both total defeat and abject humiliation upon the hesperophobically-islamofascistic Arabs.

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

It was even closer than that. In a story I've never seen in print, the Pershing units of the 56th Brigade in Germany received incorrect orders and went to the field with live ammo and were ready to mate warheads when someone realized the mistake.

This is the only time this ever happened, and the only time live rounds were issued other then on our hard sites. It was very strange being in the German woods wondering what was going on in the middle east.

[ought-six]

The writer does not mention how close the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. came to going at each other during the Yom Kippur War. The USSR had set in motion its plans to intercede militarily on behalf of its close ally, Syria. Nixon found out about it, and told Breszhnev that if Soviet troops joined the fray, the U.S. would strike Soviet targets. Our military, especially the Air Force (of which I was a member at the time) went on high alert, and we put a hell of a lot of B-52s and F-111s in the air, and scrambled our strategic forces. The Soviets had second thoughts, and decided to sit this one out.

[chimera]

I recall there was another close shave in the 1967 war when the Israelis were doing their usual number of kicking Arab butt. The Soviets were just freaked at how badly their client Nasser had been creamed, and were in such a state of shock to the point of thinking about taking out Israel themselves. The Washington-Moscow hotline got a workout on that one.