The secret of Israel’s Power

by Uzi Eilam

  Director of Research and Development

  On Monday October 1, Yitzhak and I went in to see Tzvi Zur, the assistant defense minister, who announced the conclusion of Yitzhak’s term as director of the defense ministry’s R&D Unit and officially appointed me to the position. The ceremony with the CGS took place in the evening, and was attended by Naomi and our children Osnat and Nimrod. It also marked Nahum‘s appointment as deputy director of Research and Development, and his promotion to the rank of colonel. I was promoted to the rank of brigadier general by Tal and Elazar, the CGS himself. Tal was extremely friendly, and even added a congratulatory note to the bouquet of flowers he sent me, which he signed using his nickname, “Talik.” During my last conversation with Yitzhak before we went up to the Chief of Staff ’s office, I told him I was concerned that I might not have the long-term perspective and the broad understanding of the issues that the job required. Although he told me that these things would come with time as I did my job, I was not sure if he really meant it or if he said it just to reassure me. Despite how happy I was to reach this long awaited day and to finally receive the appointment, I was concerned about the many complex issues that lay ahead.

  I spent my first day as director of R&D in meetings with my deputies to define precisely each of our realms of responsibility, and in a meeting with the R&D department directors, which included an update on working procedures for the department directors and for the unit as a whole. I also had two meetings with Tzvi. One was related to our relations with Asia, and the other was a routine working meeting between Tzvi and the director of Rafael (the Hebrew acronym for the Authority for Development Arms Systems). The minister’s hall was directly connected to the office of the CGS, and I decided to try to barge in on Elazar in order to enlist his support in my efforts to institutionalize my membership in the General Staff Working Group, as well as Nahum’s membership in Tal’s Operations Branch Working Group. Tal had previously opposed the appointment of an air-force officer like Nahum as deputy director of R&D, because he saw the Operations Branch Working Group as the supreme forum of the ground forces. I was concerned that he would work against us in the Working Group by not providing Nahum with the status and authority required to fulfill his position both inside and outside the R&D Unit. I managed to get ten minutes alone with the CGS. After explaining the problem and receiving his authorization and his advice how to proceed, I left with an extremely positive feeling toward Elazar as a person. Before I left his office he told me that we still needed to sit together for a long, serious meeting. At the time neither Elazar nor I had any idea that this was a meeting that would never take place, and that the war that was about to break out would shift our focus so rapidly.

  The day I was appointed as the director of R&D, Yonah Efrat replaced Rehavam Ze’evi as OC Central Command. In the evening, I drove to the Binyanei Ha-Umah convention center in Jerusalem for the farewell ceremony held in Ze’evi’s honor. Jordan Valley veterans were well represented by the outgoing OC and I felt a deep identification with the sentiments expressed on stage that evening. Just a few days later, when we were in the midst of the first days of the defensive battle of the Yom Kippur War, I recalled how relaxed and carefree we all were, and how we all failed to notice the dark storm ahead of us.

  And the War Begins...

  On Friday morning, the day before Yom Kippur, Tal’s bureau chief informed me that we were on alert-level B. Later that morning during an impromptu meeting of the General Staff I learned that we were actually closer to alert level C. In my journal I wrote that during the meeting, Intelligence Branch Chief Eli Zeira spoke of clear indications that preparations for a joint Egyptian–Syrian attack were underway and informed us that the families of the Soviet advisors in Cairo and Damascus were being evacuated by airlift. Nonetheless, his assessment was that there was no real chance of a war breaking out, and that the worst that would happen was that the Syrians would try to snatch part of the Golan Heights and perhaps one of the settlements. Zeira also estimated that the Egyptians would limit themselves to massive shelling and perhaps a cross-border incursion. Although Moshe Dayan was present at the meeting, he allowed the CGS to lead it and did not interfere. It was decided to leave the alert level unchanged and to suspend leave for all on-duty regular forces and reserve forces, but not to mobilize the reserves on the day leading up to Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. This was not my first General Staff meeting, but now that I had officially assumed my new position I took my role much more seriously and kept detailed notes on the main issues that were discussed. My notes, which reflect everything said at the General Staff meetings throughout the entire war, were saved under the title assigned by the R&D administrative secretariat: “The War Journal.”

  Friday October 5, 1973

  Briefing at General Staff Headquarters (concluded at 12:00 noon)

  Intelligence Branch

  Syria – is in an emergency layout and has carried out an exercise for conquering the Golan Heights. Two squadrons of Sukhoi-7s were moved up to Damascus from the more remote T-4 airfield.

  Egypt – An armored exercise combined with a state of alert regarding a possible IDF incursion during the exercise (day and night). The Canal Zone has been reinforced...

  There is considerable anxiety and serious concerns about a possible Israeli attack against Syria and Egypt.

  This has stemmed from a number of actions of the IDF: A paratroop exercise in the Sinai Peninsula.

  During the Yom Kippur War 99

  The air battle in Syria, which has been understood as a planned component of a series of provocations aimed at heating things up.

  Our many aerial photo flights.

  The print media in both countries are feeding the general mood and their hostile intentions. The Russians sent 11 Russian cargo planes (6 to Egypt and 5 to Syria), possibly to extract Russian personnel from the two countries. There is no explanation for this.

  Most Soviet shipping vessels left Alexandria this morning.

  The Intelligence Branch Assessment: The probability of a war initiated by either Egypt or Syria is low, and their actions are the result of their fear. There is a possibility, albeit an extremely unlikely possibility, of a limited Syrian or Egyptian attack in the form of a quick grab and subsequent advantageous use by Syria, or a raid or a shelling attack by Egypt.

  Things may begin to evolve and then spin out of the Arabs’ control. The General Staff

  The CGS accepts the Intelligence Branch assessment as reasonable. Alert-level C has been declared throughout the IDF. The regional commanders have the authority to make exceptions in applying alert-level C (sleeping arrangements, etc...). The state of alert applies to all command personnel of the reserve units. The CGS estimates that if there is a plan to attack from Syria and Egypt simultaneously, we will receive prior warning. If we do, we will mobilize the reserves. Mobilization will be carried out via [the Israeli military radio station] Galei Tzahal.

  At 5:45 a.m. on the morning of Saturday October 6, I was awakened by a phone call from Tzvi Zur, who was already in the office. He asked me about the state of various Rafael facilities. The R&D Unit already had representatives at the General Staff Command Center (which in Hebrew is typically referred to as ha-bor, or “the pit”), and I was able to answer his question within just a few minutes. At 8:30 a.m. I was again awakened by a phone call, this time by Colonel Avi Har-Even, who was on duty in the Command Center. Har-Even told me that they were starting to implement a silent mobilization of the reserves. By 10:00 a.m. the CGS Preparatory Working Group had already met. It turned out there was now general certainty that a war would break out on two fronts and that it would begin at 6:00 p.m. that evening. I asked Nahum, Colonel Yehoshua Rozen, and Colonel Yaakov Livni to join the Deputy CGS Preparatory Working Group meeting which Tal led at noon. The meeting addressed the overall effort to build an order of battle for both fronts, as well as a number of other issu
es. At 2:00 p.m., when I was on my way back to the General Staff Command Center from a meeting with the R&D department directors, the air-raid sirens began to wail. Intelligence Branch Chief Zeira, who was walking toward me at just that moment, went pale, and muttered, “So, it’s starting in spite of it all... They’re getting the planes in the air.” I could hear a sense of surprise and disappointment in his voice and I felt my heart sink.

  I headed down to the Command Center for three hours of confusion and lack of clarity. I noted that the General Staff war room looked like a brigade war room and was so noisy that it was impossible to think straight. The radio transmitters that lined all the walls, each monitoring a different frequency, sputtered out broken bursts of conversations of our military units in various theatres. For me, the metallic sound of the voices over the radio conjured up the familiar feeling of being under fire in battle, when you hear the whiz of every burst fired in your direction and the sound of every shell falling near you. At a certain point Tal talked with Colonel Dan Shomron, the commander of the 14th tank brigade, the front brigade in the Sinai Peninsula. Shomron reported that the 7th Egyptian division had not yet entirely crossed the Canal and was not yet moving eastward on the Gidi Road, as the rumors circulating in the Command Center had it.

  By afternoon, the entire staff and all the department directors were in the office, tense and anxious to hear a rundown of the situation. Simcha Maoz received my permission to join a logistics team serving with the division commanded by Arik Sharon. The following day a few other R&D staff members who wanted to and could join the war on the front were also released from their responsibilities within the unit. My heart told me that my place was also at the front with the soldiers, but my head knew that this was neither right nor possible. In the evening the R&D department directors received instructions regarding the issues on the agenda and the major tasks required of us. They included:

  Assisting in quick weapons acquisition, if required.

  Planning and establishing teams to collect data for subsequent lesson generation.

  At this stage, there would be no mobilization of our reserve forces.

  Maintaining the NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) Defense Department in full operation.

  Maintaining a core staff in the Ground Department and mobilizing its people into the war effort.

  Providing assistance in weapons acquisition by the professional departments of the R&D Unit (Electronics, Planning and Economics; Missiles and Rockets; and Infrastructure).

  We then set procedures for updating and pinpointing with an emphasis on information security, and scheduled a meeting for 8:00 a.m. the next morning. This gave us the feeling that the R&D Unit was beginning to organize itself and to play a supporting role in the war, although we still lacked a true understanding of how difficult the war would actually turn out.

  When I got home Nimrod was asleep, under the influence of the sedative that Naomi had given him. Without it the worried child had been unable to relax. Naomi and Osnat were relatively calm, and the neighbors came over for an update and to hear words of encouragement. I did the best I could to radiate optimism although I too was unable to hide my anxiety.

  Despite my concern I waited until 6:00 a.m. the next morning, Sunday, October 7, to go down to the Command Center to learn about the events of the previous night. Nothing significant had been received from the Suez Canal front, and to me this seemed to be the result of unclear and incomplete reporting. The Syrians had taken advantage of the night to penetrate deep into the southern Golan Heights. They still held our Mt. Hermon post, which was now color-coded red and prominently displayed on our maps to indicate an enemy position. I briefed the department directors at 8:00 a.m., and immediately afterward I met with former R&D Department Director Ben Bar-On and my assistant Ronny Katzin to discuss the various ways of going about generating lessons. We discussed a draft agenda for discussion with the department directors as soon as possible. We also talked about the need to begin operating on the fronts with the fighting forces. At 9:00 a.m. I went down to the Command Center for a meeting of the Operations Department Director’s Preparatory Working Group, in which the Intelligence Branch and the Operations Department provided a more exact update regarding the situation. My journal contains the following description of the meeting: “It was attended by almost all the despondent officers of the Command Center – the primary corps commanders, generals in the reserves, and others.” I must admit that I was also drawn to the Command Center by the urge to know what was happening on the front lines. Nonetheless, the R&D Unit had plenty to do, and participating in the preparatory working group meetings in the Command Center played an important role by facilitating smoother operation of the unit. I held a meeting with the department directors on preparations for gathering data for subsequent lesson generation, and I took clear notice that this was well received by all participants, who now felt that they were playing a role in the war effort. However, it was also clear that they were extremely tense and that it was difficult for them to relax. That Sunday, the second day of the war, they hardly worked; every time I returned to the office from the Command Center, everybody was desperate to hear about ongoing military developments.

  The situation on the front lines went from hope to despair, as the air force swung from mission to mission and from theatre to theatre like a pendulum. In the morning our planes carried out successful attacks against the anti-aircraft defenses and airports in Egypt. In the midst of an attack on the Egyptian missile batteries, however, the mission was suddenly changed, and the air effort was now refocused on the Golan Heights. There, the initial task of providing emergency support for our ground forces was replaced by an attack on the Syrian missile batteries in order to establish freedom of air action in the air over the Golan Heights. In the afternoon we had a relatively good Deputy CGS Preparatory Working Group meeting, which was supposed to be immediately followed by a CGS Preparatory Working Group meeting. This was the turning point. The CGS Preparatory Working Group was repeatedly delayed until eventually the CGS himself announced that Tal would be flying up to the northern command post, that he himself would be heading down south, and that Ze’evi had been appointed as acting Operations Branch chief.

  The sense of discouragement that overcame all of us was compounded by the fact that Colonel Itzik Ben-Shoham, commander of the 188th armored brigade who until that point had been holding off the 3rd Syrian armored division, had been either seriously wounded or killed. His deputy and their operations officer had also been either seriously wounded or killed, and now there was no one to take matters into hand within the brigade. Ben-Shoham, with his black hair and laughing eyes, had been a highly skilled and extremely professional commander. The same day, Sunday, October 7, I had been scheduled to visit his brigade as part of Moshe Dayan’s order to plan a new obstacle against a Syrian attack in the Golan Heights. But the war broke out and we never made it to the Golan Heights. Instead of meeting Ben-Shoham up north as planned, we listened as the military radio transmissions testified to the almost impossible battle he had commanded.

  From the south we received persistent reports that Egyptian tanks were rolling through the 10-kilometer area located to the east of the Canal, and that communication with some of our strongholds had been lost. Dayan returned from the south and infected us all with his despondency. Rumors holding that Dayan himself had described the unfolding events as “the destruction of the Third Temple” (a way of referring to Israel) spread like wildfire through the General Staff Command Center. At the end of the day, Haim Bar-Lev flew north to work with OC Northern Command Major General Yitzhak Hofi, Elazar flew south to determine what actions needed to be taken there, and Tal remained at the Command Center. Again, interpretations abounded. The preparatory working group meetings in the Command Center were conducted through the fog of cigarette smoke, as a bluish cloud floated above the group. The pungent smell of sweat mingled with smoke that stung their eyes, bu
t stronger than anything else was the smell of fear. The ventilation system in the Command Center was not designed to accommodate such a large number of people, and it appears that fear was not the only thing bothering the officers. They were suffering from a lack of oxygen as well.

  On the third day of the war I was charged with the task of updating the branch heads of the defense ministry. The meeting was run by director-general Itzhak Ironi, and it was also attended by the directors of the defense industries. The director-general requested that the working group be provided with a daily summary of the events on the front lines. During the first meeting, the group sat mesmerized for 40 minutes, listening to an overview that was designed to be balanced, realistic, and optimistic, to the extent that this was possible under the circumstances. Ironi asked that a summary be presented at 5:00 p.m. each day, and my participation in all the meetings of the working groups and preparatory working groups in the Command Center provided a solid foundation for those presentations. In the long term, these meetings also helped boost the status of the R&D department.

  Hard Times

  On Monday, October 8, I was exhausted when I finally got around to the task of writing in my journal to sum up the day’s events at the end of the day. At 6:00 a.m. that morning there had been an air of optimism in the Command Center. The Northern Command had drawn up plans to use Brigadier General Rafael Eitan’s division to push the Syrians eastward and to use Brigadier General Moshe Peled’s division to push back enemy tanks from south to north. Divisions here are referred to by the name of their commanders and are justifiably attributed the same characteristics. There was a positive feeling regarding people like Eitan and Peled, who were leading the battles against the Syrians. In the course of the day both Syrian infantry divisions were almost completely routed and the southern Syrian armored division was halted. However, later in the morning, when Rozen and I listened to radio communications from the northern and southern fronts and when we heard the details of the battles, it became clear that things were not so simple. Air force pilots were engaged in non-stop efforts to provide support for the ground forces, and I thought to myself how wonderful our pilots were. The Golani Brigade launched a failed attack on Mt. Hermon in which 30 of our soldiers were killed and 70 wounded, and it was not at all clear that these numbers were final. Thus far, Mt. Hermon had cost us 100 lives.