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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some Holes, but Engaging History, October 7, 2003
This review is from: The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War (Hardcover)
Howard Blum knows how to write engaging history, and I ought to know since I spend a good portion of time reading dry as dust academic journal articles and books. Most scholarly treatments of any historical subject reek of infuriatingly dense prose, annoying jargon, and specialization carried to the nth degree. "The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War" avoids all of these trappings in an attempt to tell the events surrounding the disastrous war that started between Israel, Egypt, and Syria on October 6, 1973. I didn't realize it at the time, but this book arrives just in time to cash in on the thirtieth anniversary of that catastrophic conflict, a conflict that nearly sent the Middle East spiraling into nuclear conflagration. Howard Blum is an author who has written several other books, including "The Brigade," "Gangland," and "Out There." According to Blum, several important factors contributed to the near defeat of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Mainly, and this factor supposedly appears in print for the first time here, the Mossad and Israeli politicians made the nearly fatal mistake of relying heavily on an Egyptian double agent when formulating their national security policies. Referred to by Blum as "The Concept," the information this agent fed Israeli intelligence gave rise to a belief that until Egypt acquired long-range missiles and bombers and the Arab states unified, Israel would be safe. This "concept" soon informed all aspects of Israeli military and political policy to the point that a secret visit to Israel by the King of Jordan about the Egyptian/Syrian war plans went ignored. Coupled with an unforgivable level of arrogance expressed by figures like Moshe Dayan, still buoyed by the country's 1967 victory over the Arabs, Israel's complacency nearly led to its destruction. Evidence about Syrian troop massing on the border or Egyptian acquisition of Soviet made SAM missiles created barely a ripple in high level military circles. Meanwhile, an Egyptian army officer name Saad el Shazly created his own "concept," a plan to smash through the Bar-Lev defensive forts along the Suez Canal and retake the Sinai Peninsula from Israel. To accomplish this feat, Shazly would take air-to-air missiles and create a shield behind which Egyptian tanks and troops would advance into the peninsula. The Israeli Air Force was not familiar with these new missiles, so the shield would render Jewish planes ineffective against the Arab advance. Shazly, tapped by President Sadat to put this plan into action, quickly did so with an ingenuity that even Israeli generals later admired. Using high-powered water cannons purchased in Europe, the Egyptians managed to knock down giant mountains of sand the Israelis had built along the Suez. Arab forces quickly built pontoon bridges across the water and overran the forts on the coast. Simultaneously, a giant force of Syrian tanks and regular army invaded Israel from the north, capturing key military installations and nearly driving all the way into the interior of the country. The situation deteriorated so rapidly that Golda Meir and her cabinet approved the use of nuclear weapons against Egypt and Syria, a plan that fortunately never came to fruition. Threading its way throughout the book are stories about individual figures both Jew and Arab. Blum takes us into the high command bunkers of Egypt and Israel as the war unfolds, argues that Ariel Sharon was a reckless tank commander whose attempts to make a name for himself on the battlefield cost numerous lives and nearly lost the war in the Sinai, and follows the battlefield heroics of Israeli tank commanders who often held off hundreds of tanks with a minimum of equipment and soldiers. "The Eve of Destruction" is truly a compelling narrative history that does what good history ought to do: tell the reader the big picture while showing how individual people and actions shape that picture. Many of the accounts of the big tank battles are downright gripping, making the reader feel as though they are right on the front lines with the soldiers. Blum achieves a certain measure of objectivity about the whole affair, readily pointing out the numerous Israeli blunders before and during the war. He also shows how political posturing by Sadat led to the defeat of Egyptian troops in the Sinai. I would have liked more accounts about Egyptian and Syrian soldiers in combat, but I still feel that "The Eve of Destruction" does a better job at the balance game than many books written in recent years about the Arab/Jewish situation. Blum argues that Egypt's operation in the Sinai during 1973 was more of an attempt to regain a sense of national honor than a serious gambit to "drive the Jews into the sea," a claim that will certainly anger some readers, but one that does possess a certain logic. Moreover, the author states that in this aspect, Egypt succeeded in redeeming itself after its devastating loss in 1967. For Blum, the Yom Kippur War changed the Middle East forever, leading to Sadat's eventual overtures towards Israel a few years later and presumably, peace with Jordan as well. I know little of this specific conflict, as I'm not much into military history. I can say I came away with a better understanding of the power dynamics in this volatile area. One problem: Blum never adequately explains how the Arabs would have dealt with Israel's nuclear weapons. Perhaps Egypt and Syria didn't know Israel possessed these weapons at the time, but if so, Blum could have elaborated on this a bit better. Anyway, Blum's book is a great read and a good introduction to the last big Arab/Israeli War (excepting the invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s, of course).
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excitingly Told Tale, September 30, 2003
This review is from: The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War (Hardcover)
Howard Blum tells the untold story of the Yom Kippur War in his latest, The Eve of Destruction. It is a well told tale concentrating on the battle itself as told from the leaders and planners and, in the case of Israel, the soldiers who actually fought the battle. The more personal, intimate touches help hold the reader's interest and the author keeps the whole story moving at a brisk pace. It is an intense read, particularly the sections covering the failures of Israeli intelligence. The action is focused on the war itself, with little outside political context given. Neither the role of Russia or the United States is touched on in any extensive way, and Syria, due to lack of sources, is silent. But what the book does do, it does well. An exciting read.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Yom Kippur War, Vanity Fair Edition, May 28, 2005
This review is from: The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War (Hardcover)
Howard Blum's "The Eve of Destruction" is written in the unique narrative style that similar articles for Vanity Fair and like periodicals have utilized. These include looking at an historical period through the eyes of actual participants from different vantage points, using recently declassified intelligence, sprinkled in with some gossip, speculation, and innuendo. Nonetheless, Blum's book is an easy read that drills into the reader several concepts that he or she is sure to come away with.
Among those themes: (1) the complete aura of self-confidence bordering on conceit among certain Israeli military and political leaders following their smashing victory in the 1967 Six-Day War that the Arabs would not even dare to launch an attack; (2) "The Concept", the plan designed by Egyptian Saad el Shazly which was predicated on crossing the Suez Canal, breaching the Israeli forces on the other side, and then STOPPING rather than continuing to penetrate deep into the Sinai; (3) the reliance on "The Source", an Egyptian spy (double agent?) who assured his Israeli handlers that war would not come; (4) the sense of panic among some Israeli leaders (Moshe Dayan's "Third Temple" cry, Golda Meir's contemplating suicide rather than being the prime minister who oversees Israel being overrun); (5) the valiant, courageous, and indefatigable bravery of men such as Avigdor Kahalani, commander of a tank battalion in the Golan Heights region on the Syrian front.
The central characters continually revisited are Yossi Ben Hannan and his wife, Nati. Ben Hannan was an Israeli celebrity, featured on the cover of LIFE magazine right after the euphoric 1967 War. He and his wife were actually on their honeymoon in India when he made the trek back to Israel (using unconventional means!). Battlefield accounts as seen through various Israeli and Egyptian military men supplement the newlywed's storylines.
Blum is way too critical when he attempts to second-guess military strategy and generals. Military decision-making involves split-second decision-making made in real time, in the heat of battle. Much like a baseball player's batting average, your misses are compared not to a 100% success rate, but to historical norms and other battlefield commanders. A hitter who is successful 1/3rd of the time is going to bat .333 and be a star, not someone criticized because he fails 2/3rds of the time. That said, the criticism of Ariel Sharon reeks more of the Vanity Fair mindset to disparage strong military men and conservatives, in this case a career general and former Likud political leader, rather than pointing to specific flaws in his battle strategies. Indeed, the post-war Israeli commissions praised Sharon, even as they whitewashed the judgments of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan. Dado Elazar, the Chief of Staff, took the blame along with the intelligence services (brokenhearted, Elazar died of heart troubles and depression in 1975).
On the other hand, Blum does give you an in-depth look into the difficulty of the decision making that Israeli leaders had to make. When "The Source" had warned of a possible attack in May 1973, the entire country was put on alert. This is something that we in the United States never have to contend with. However, Israel is a small country (population in 1973: about 4 million) and mobilization and then de-mobilization for false alarms is not only nerve-wracking but also costly in economic terms (most able-bodied young men and women have to leave civilian jobs and report to their units). When you are convinced that you are superior to your enemy, and you have a border-line call about whether he is going to attack, and if a false mobilization will cost your economy a good chunk of yearly production growth, you may decide "eh, what the hell" and downplay it. This is what Israeli intelligence did (for a number of reasons, not just economic) and since the overconfidence was not justified, it had nearly disastrous results.
"The Eve of Destruction" is not a book that introduces any new historical insight. It's a narrative that weaves together articles from Israeli and Arab newspapers, first-person accounts and autobiographies from men involved in the conflict, and recollections from some of the major actors. If you want a behind-the-scenes look at some key individuals involved in the 1973 conflict, this book gives it. If you are looking for a comprehensive account of the 1973 conflict -- like Rabinovich's "The Yom Kippur War" -- you're looking in the wrong place.
My main quibbles with this book: if you are going to utilize narratives of various characters who tell you how they lived through and experienced the 1973 conflict, then you need a "Where Are They Now" section to complete it. What did Yossi and Nati Ben Hannan and all of the other characters do after the war the next 30 years? Blum's post-war summary is woefully short of telling us what happened between the 30 years since the end of the Yom Kippur War and the suicide-bombing war that Israel was confronting in 2003 which introduces the book.
There is also very little tactical or strategic military overview; most of the book focuses on localized battles (this is the nature of the narrative style he uses so it is not unexpected). The book itself fails to live up to the attention-grabbing title; there is not much coverage of the deliberations (serious or feigned) considering the use of nuclear weapons, as Israeli leaders (if not Dayan) never really considered Israel to be on "the eve of destruction." Finally, the detail drops off very quickly as we approach the end of the conflict; the war just seems to end very quickly relative to the in-depth accounts leading up to the war and during it's early stages.
All things considered, a good story that is easy to read and understand. If you don't want to read a longer, more difficult story of the 1973 conflict, this book will give you the basics and you can pursue more detailed analysis from any of the paths Blum's book just touches upon.
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