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The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War

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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).

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.

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.

This absorbing new book deftly employs the prosaic tools of journalism to approach the subject of the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Given the fact the war was one almost lost by the Israelis before they narrowly turned the tide, the riveting story-telling techniques used by author Howard Blum adds to the quality and drama of the unfolding events that fateful October. According to the author, even more than the six-day war in 1967 in which the Israelis made a preemptive strike against the forces arrayed around them to rewrite the maps and borders of the Middle East, this was a fateful struggle that created the perspective and defensive tactics that the Israelis have used to combat their enemies in the decades since.

Blum uses a variety of materials and documents to inform his history of the conflict; availing himself of newly released documents, a growing collection of memoirs and personal accounts, and by painstakingly squaring off with some provocative and quite insightful questions for the more than 200 interviewees he spent hundreds of hours with; the answers he derives leads him in unsuspected directions, and offers the reader an opportunity to understand the conflict as an unqualified disaster for everyone involved, Israeli and Arab alike. Furthermore, by inquiring as to how it was that Israel allowed itself to be so surprised and so unprepared for the onslaught of the invading Arab forces, and how it was the attack that was driving so forcefully into the heart of the country was finally slowed and turned around.

One fascinating and quite controversial aspect to the book is its reputed discovery of an Egyptian double agent who had successfully won the trust of the Israeli intelligence community and then subsequently gulled the top-level Israeli military leaders into believing that no attack was possible unless and until the several Arab states coalesced into a unified coalition, even while another Egyptian high in his country's planning prepared a scenario designed to play to the Israeli's strengths and use them against them to draw them out into dangerous territory and then counterattack again and again, bleeding the Israeli forces into defeat. To the extent it is true, it worked quite well, with the feckless Israeli Defense Forces flailing about ineffectually, losing large numbers of men, planes, and tanks in the first fateful 72 hours. So bad was the loss of men and equipment that the Israelis asked for and were given dozens of U.S F-4s, which were flown to Israel so urgently that many of them still carried USAF markings and insignia.

One point to ponder is the degree to which this supreme fighting force was caught unaware, given the fact of just how close Israel came to total defeat in the autumn war. Blum provides the reader with a stirring and unforgettable description of the war and its progress, and in doing so provides the reader with a much more complete picture of Israel's precarious position, an historical fact that should serve to remind us as to why Israel's "obsession" with security is not necessarily the result of a siege mentality. This is truly a great read; enjoy!

On October 6, 1973 at 2:00 in the afternoon, the armies of Egypt and Syria went to war. Along the Suez Canal, 100,000 Egyptian men and 1,550 tanks faced 436 Israeli troops and three tanks. In the Golan Heights, 45,000 Syrian troops and 540 tanks attacked an Israeli force of 175 men and 177 tanks. An Israeli army and air force, which was viewed by the world as invincible based upon its military success of June 1967, was clearly staggered by the surprise attack that coincided with the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Howard Blum's THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War is history in an anecdotal style. Blum tells the story of the war through the broad canvass of action by the nations involved, and the smaller snapshot of the individual participants in the conflict.

Blum spends a great deal of his account attempting to answer a familiar and significant question. How did the Arab nations achieve such a surprise and why was Israel so unprepared for the war? Nearly half of the book is spent providing the answer, an answer that has eerie similarities to contemporary events in the Middle East. Israel had substantial information that war was impending. Prime Minister Golda Meir even had a secret meeting with Jordan's King Hussein wherein he advised Meir of Egypt and Syria's plans. Israeli intelligence chose to ignore the information received because it failed to comport with their strategy and analysis. In addition, the Israelis were duped by an elaborate double agent plot by the Egyptians that fed crucial false information immediately prior to the commencement of hostilities.

The initial Arab assault succeeded in administering a near knockout blow to the Israelis. For 72 hours the Israelis staggered and tenaciously sought to hold off the advancing armies from both the north and south. So bleak was the situation that Defense Minister Moshe Dayan concluded that the "Third Temple" was about to fall. Prime Minister Meir authorized the use of Israel's nuclear arsenal should the nation be overrun. But just as the Israelis had miscalculated, so had Egyptian President Sadat, and that error changed the course of the battle.

Sadat's strategy was for a limited retaking of territory across the Suez Canal. He assumed that the Israelis would counter-attack and his army had been thoroughly prepared in defensive tactics. The goal was to wear down the Israeli Army and obtain a superior bargaining position for peace negotiations. But the Israelis elected a different strategy. They eliminated the Syrian threat and then turned their attention to the Egyptian front. Through a series of maneuvers, they outflanked the Egyptians and crossed the Suez Canal. Ultimately, the Americans and Soviets prevailed upon the parties to cease the hostilities, but Israel had come perilously close to cataclysmic defeat.

THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION focuses on many of the participants in the Yom Kippur War. Blum has interviewed hundreds of the participants and presents the story of the conflict in an easily readable narrative. This is not dry history loaded with footnotes and source material. The Six Day War of 1967 changed the balance of power in the Middle East. The Yom Kippur War tilted that balance back towards level. Those wars were actually battles in what has become a 35-year war that continues to be fought to this day. For those people who wish to better understand the ongoing struggle, Blum's book is mandatory reading.

--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman

This is simply a wonderful book, very readable and enlightening on the subject of the War of Atonement. It being the 30 year anniverary of the war it is a prescient work of important proportions. Having just succeeded in his wonderful book 'the Brigade' Mr. Blum now tackles this great subject. The Yom Kippur war was a truly traumatic event for Israel. A war that almost launched the 'Sampson option' and one that brought the great powers to the brink of world war. it witnessed a great airlift ot israel from america and setbeacks, the worst in history, for the ISraelis in the first 72 hours. Stunning defeats of ISraels Tanks in the Sinai and her air force forced a rethinking of ISraeli military abilities.

Blum bring this epic struggle to light in a humaness not seen in most military/political books. A wonderful account!!! Very human, very much accesible which brings one right to the sinai to face the Egyptian onslaught, then whicks you up to Mount Harmon in the Golan and then back to the stench of the smoke filled Pit where great minds like Mr. Dayan plotted the fate of the Jewish state, watching as counterattack after counterattack failed to dislodge to Egyptians.

We learn more insight into the 'Sampson Option' when Golda contemplated launching the weapans that would have ended a million lives in Egypt and Syria, in order to save the remnant of Jewry from genocide at the hands of viscious arabs.

A great compendium that showcases two future Prime miniters, 'Arik' Sharon and Netanyaho.

A must have for any collection on the arab-israeli conflict. A neccesary work. Far superior to 'Two O' Clock War' which is weaker. Also look into 'The Brigade' also by Blum and a stunning account of the Jewish Brigade in WWII.

The Israeli swagger that became a regional pose following the military victories of 1948 and 1967 quickly became a limp following near defeat at the hands of Egypt and Syria in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Howard Bloom's appropriately-titled chronicle of that October surprise reads like a novel, complete with an amorous young couple whose honeymoon was rudely interrupted by the outbreak of hostilities and a mysterious double agent called 'the In-Law'. Yet the events he describes were all too real.

Though Blum is able to distill the self-denying heroism of Egyptian and Israeli soldiers into page-turning narrative, he reserves harsh invective for the Israeli military and political leadership whose success 17 years earlier blinded them to the realities of Egyptian and Syrian military rehabilitation on two of their nation's borders.

Had it not been for Egyptian over-reaching-a breathtaking victory of hubris over battlefield facts-the Jewish 'Third Temple' experiment might well have gone down in flames. The close call stunned Israel and contributed to the volatile mix of military strength and a persistent sense of insecurity that has characterized the state ever since.

Blum is especially compelling when he describes the internecine battles within Egypt's ruling caste and the impossible survival of the Israeli line in the Golan during the hellish tank battles that should have put Syrian tanks in Tel Aviv rather than left them in smoking ruins just miles from Damascus. In its desperation, Israel nearly went nuclear, a scenario almost too dire for contemplation.

Blum's reporting is heavily dependent on personal interviews with those for whom a now settled fact was a minute-by-minute struggle for survival.

As my first glance into the history of this war, it was extremely interesting to read about the war, and the Arab buildup prior to the fighting from the Arab perspective. Add this to the already exciting account of how an outnumbered Israeli military force was able to defeat a technologically superior enemy, throw in some amazing strategic and political blunders, and you have yourself a fantastic book.

Historians could have almost predicted with certainty that the humiliation of Egypt and Syria in the Six Days War in 1967 would have consequences. But the manner in which it happened was the surprise. In The Eve of Destruction, Howard Blum opens masterfully with the strategy that the Arabs chose: a top-ranking Egyptian spy who completely fool the Mossad and the Israeli Cabinet into thinking another war would never come. It did, six years later.

Blum masterfully narrates the events leading up to war: the unpreparedness of Israel's armed forces; the "Concept"; the realistic Egyptian General's war plan; and the gambit taken by Sadat and Asad to restore Arab honor to the Middle East.

Told through some of the key players in the war, we see heroic tank battles taking place in and around the desolate Golan Heights, vastly undersized Israeli armor desperately trying to halt overwhelming Syrian forces. We watch as the Egyptians carry out the brilliantly conceived Suez Canal crossing to hold its east bank and the tactical blunders and disorder of the Israeli generals before they realize that directly assaulting Egyptian positions in the Sinai is suicide. On the southern front, the war ends largely in stalemate thanks to a counter-crossing through the Chinese Farm, but it is a close-run thing. To the north, ferocious defensive actions allow Israeli armor to block the Syrian advance and even turn it around.

Blum's unique storytelling ability grabs the reader and places him or her right on the battlefield-one can almost smell the cordite. Yet, it is blended with behind-the-scenes in-depth insight and commentary, enabling one to understand why not only the Yom Kippur War was inevitable, but why, this time, there would be no easy victories-for either side. For me, the most fascinating aspect of the book lies in the manner in which Blum describes the participants: their hopes, veuve and zest, fears, and schemes, all placed in the context of Middle East culture that is still largely an anathema to western society.

This is a very exciting history of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Blum had access to some sources that had previously been classified. And this book, with facts and plenty of anecdotal material, is quite interesting.

We see how in Sinai, the Israelis were improperly prepared, slow to react to the threats, managed to waste a day due to poor coordination, yet did get around to counterattacking and getting the upper hand. And we see how Israel's position in the Golan was critical. Losing the Golan could have meant having much of northeastern Israel being overrun rather quickly, having far more casualties, and being forced to withdraw forces from Sinai in an attempt to protect the northern front.

And we see the issue of the use of nuclear weapons. Would Israel have actually used nuclear weapons? I certainly do not know. But it appears that Israel was quite ready to threaten to use them, either to give their enemies pause or to convince the United States to give Israel a significant amount of arms, rapidly.

But what about the element of surprise?

It seems to me that in wartime, surprise is surprisingly easy to achieve. The German attacks of May, 1940, in the middle of a declared war, seemed to catch France and Britain off-guard. The German attack on the Soviet Union, in June of 1941, something a huge number of people obviously saw coming, clearly caught the Soviets off-guard. Pearl Harbor, at a time of very high tension between the United States and Japan, caught us off-guard. D-day caught the Germans off-guard. I suspect that the Inchon landing in the Korean War was a big surprise too. And with the Middle East clearly heading towards all-out war in June 1967, the Egyptians were shockingly unprepared for Israel's warplanes. So it is no surprise that even with all sorts of people betting on war (some of whom had good reasons to be sure about it) in 1973, Israel wasn't sure the war was coming until it actually started. Blum correctly implies that Israel ought to have done a little better here, but I think we're missing the perspective of just how tough it is to do that.

More recently, we in the United States were taken by surprise by the events of September 11, 2001, even though once again, there was plenty of information that ought to have warned us.

Blum shows how Shabtai Brill deduced days in advance of the attack that war was coming. I'm sure he wasn't the only one who was ignored. IDF reserve general Rahavam Ze'evi said that Israeli intelligence had 500 indicators that an attack was imminent, but Israel's assessment still had a big element of doubt. Blum does cast some blame on a bad Israeli intelligence source, but obviously this is just one element of a not very surprising part of the story.

I think readers of this book may also want to look at what Bruce Brill has to say. His article in the May, 1994 issue of Midstream, is readily available for free on the internet. Brill quotes Prime Minister Golda Meir, who felt that an attack had to be imminent, given the rushed exodus of Soviet advisor's families on the night of Thursday, October 4. Meir was not the only one who thought so. That day (afternoon in the US, very late at night in Israel) Brill says that he himself got a phone call from his supervisor at the United States National Security Agency, who told him that the war would start Saturday.

Given that all sorts of people were aware that war was coming and that war did indeed start as expected, I see no reason to disbelieve Bruce Brill about what he was told and when he was told it. However, Brill concludes from this that the United States intentionally held back information from Israel. I think that is too strong a conclusion. Just as Israel had a tough time deciding what to do with its information, I'm sure the United States had some problems deciding what to tell Israel. But I can see how some folks in Israel might afterwards have decided that they would rather know what we know outright (via espionage if necessary) than hope to be told what we know.

In any case, Blum's book is certainly one to read to learn more about the Yom Kippur War.