Israeli Government Tries to Save Money by Dismissing Warnings of Impending Attack, Suffers Worst Military Setback in Israeli History
Israel defeated Egypt and seized the Sinai Peninsula in the 1967 Six-Day War. Thereafter, Egyptians and Israelis glared at each other across the Suez Canal, as years of low-intensity warfare simmered, comprised of artillery exchanges, commando raids, and air attacks. In the meantime, Egypt rebuilt, reorganized, and retrained its military for a rematch that all knew was coming.
Years before the attack, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat began running massive military maneuvers near the Suez Canal, in order to accustom the Israelis to large-scale Egyptian troop movements in vicinity of the Sinai. That way, when the time came for the actual attack, the Israelis would be lulled into dismissing its preparations as just another drill.
By mid-1973, however, a highly placed Mossad agent had informed the Israelis of the Egyptian plan of attack. What the Israelis did not know was when the attack would begin. Israel’s small population precluded a large permanent military establishment, so knowing the when was vital. Israel could not afford to mobilize hundreds of thousands of soldiers indefinitely, just to have them ready when the Egyptians finally got around to attacking. Instead, Israel used a small standing military, that would get fleshed out in time of war with a rapid mobilization of civilian reservists. Such mobilizations were highly disruptive and expensive, however, and the mass of civilians taken from their daily occupations could not be kept in uniform for long.
The Egyptians played upon that vulnerability. Months before the planned attack, the Egyptians tricked the Israelis into believing that an attack was imminent, causing Israel to declare a disruptive and expensive emergency mobilization. No attack came, and the Israeli government ended up with egg on its face. Thus, when the Egyptians began preparing for the real attack a few months later, the Israeli government, burned once by a false alarm, was reluctant to call another mobilization.
A week before going to war, the Egyptians carried out major military maneuvers near the Suez Canal, during which they called up reservists. Israeli intelligence dismissed it as just another drill. To further lull the Israelis, the Egyptians announced the demobilization of the reservists called up for the “military exercise“, two days before launching their attack.
Reluctant to declare another expensive and disruptive mobilization, the Israeli government ignored dissenting voices sounding the alarm that Egypt was preparing for actual war. So when the Egyptians attacked across the Suez Canal on October 6th, 1973, Israel was caught off guard and wrong-footed. The Israeli Defense Forces sustained high casualties as their forward fortifications were swiftly overrun, and the Egyptians secured a beachhead on the eastern side of the canal. The IDF eventually clawed its way back up, encircled an Egyptian army weeks later, and prevailed in the war. However, their early setbacks and high casualties at war’s beginning were a direct result of the Israeli government’s attempt to save some money.
