In recent weeks, Israelis have been debating and pondering the reasons for the most important strategic surprise in their country’s history. On October 6th, 1973, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, many Israelis were praying in their synagogues and fasting, when the sound of sirens froze the blood of the population, announcing a simultaneous surprise attack by the Egyptian and Syrian armies. In the first days of the war, the impression was that the Arabs would succeed in conquering Israel. In the just-released film Golda, about prime minister Golda Meir, we see how the Israeli leader ignored the secret service warnings and decided not to mobilize reserve forces. To this day, Israel has been debating that moment and how, after almost three weeks, Israel finally managed to win the war.
On October 7th, 2023, exactly 50 years later, the surprise has been even greater. No one imagined that the Islamist movement Hamas, trained and financed by Iran, would dare to launch a practically kamikaze attack inside Israeli territory and conquer several border towns for long hours. When the soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas in 2006, the entire country was at war for years until he was finally released in 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
