Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East

****.5

Military history is not one of my preferred genres, but the utter failure of Israel's security forces to prevent the Oct 7 attack demonstrates that even 50 years later the lessons of the Yom Kippur War weren't truly taken to heart. This book was published just before that, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the previous debacle, which must be revisited in order to fully understand the current situation.

The book starts in the euphoria in the wake of Israel's stunning victory in the 1967 Six Day War, which Kaufman attributes to luck as much as to sound strategy. But the good times are short lived, as the oft-ignored War of Attrition quickly began and lasted until 1970, with Israel scrambling to procure sufficient weaponry to show more combat the tons of materiel pouring in from the Soviet Union to Egypt.

It then introduces the major players, and traces the origins of the "conceptia", the disastrously flawed notion held by the echelons of Israel's military-political-intelligence apparatus that the Arabs wouldn't dare attack again without warning. But rather than dwell on that, the book quickly pivots to a lengthy play-by-play account of the war. Which is revealed to be a muddled mess with costly mistakes all around, and almost as much infighting as actual fighting.

A bit more interesting are the recently declassified documents that shed light on the behind-the-scenes diplomacy and politics, both internal discussions as well as secret negotiations. The actions of the Nixon administration and the response of the Soviets are particularly alarming, and show how easy it is for a local conflict to quickly escalate out of control into a much larger global problem.

The book concludes with a look at the aftermath of the war, including the results of Israel's Agranat Commission of Inquiry, which the author thinks misattributed a lot of the blame. In his view, despite the failure to fully prepare and the heavy losses the war was ultimately a major victory for Israel, and not the dismal failure as perceived by Israelis ever since. In this reckoning, prime ministers Levi Eshkol (1967) and Golda Meir (1973) come out looking good, with Meir in particular emerging as tough, calm, collected, and not at all at fault. The situations of defense minister Moshe Dayan and general Ariel Sharon are more complex, both are shown to have made some truly terrible decisions, but they also demonstrated the audacious leadership that ultimately won the war for Israel.

The book definitely changed the way I view the war, and there are some clear lessons to be learned. Not just about the war itself or even its lead-up, but the reckoning afterwards. Drawing the right conclusions and learning the right lessons are at least as important as the fighting itself, which is often haphazard and plagued by elements out of the control of the decision makers. Let's hope that Israel does a better job this time around.

Audiobook: As I'm used to by now, the narrator is unable to utter most of the Hebrew (and presumably Arabic) words and names without either mangling the pronunciation, sounding like he's being tortured, or both. show less

Does everything a good history should do. Portraying the common soldier on the battlefields to the Generals and the politicians making the decisions. The narrator managed to be entertaining on what can be a dark subject.