Same war, different story - (Yom Kippur War)

Ha'aretz ^ | Saturday, October 04, 2003 Tishrei 8, 5764 | Amos Harel

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Same war, different story

From crossing the Suez Canal to launching Red Sea bombing missions, members of the Israel Defense Forces General Staff recount and reflect on their experiences during the Yom Kippur War

_{By Amos Harel}

The following statistic may sound somewhat surprising: About half the members of the current Israel Defense Forces General Staff didn't participate in the Yom Kippur War. They lived through the most traumatic experience in Israeli history - and still the most influential in shaping the army's approach to security - as high-school students. Other generals were soldiers or petty officers doing their obligatory military service. But the most veteran members of the General Staff experienced the war from another direction. Three senior officers: Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Moshe ("Boogie") Ya'alon, commander-in-chief of the air force, Major General Dan Halutz, and commander-in-chief of the navy, Major General Yedidya ("Didi") Yaari, were drafted in October 1973 as reservists. Another major general, head of the personnel directorate, Gil Regev, was discharged from service in the Israel Air Force in 1976 and only the Lebanon War (1982) brought him back to active duty.

The four remember in detail and without difficulty the chain of events that began on Yom Kippur 30 years ago. But each of them drew different conclusions. Ya'alon and Yaari speak of the importance of casting doubt on the analyses made by the commanders, while Halutz emphasizes deterrence as the only factor that will guarantee Israel's existence. Regev remembers the large number of casualties in his squadron, but in discussing the battle sorties he admits, "We even enjoyed ourselves. There was fun in it, too."

Ya'alon and Halutz returned to active duty in order to fill the ranks in their battalions, which had suffered losses (Ya'alon to the 50th Battalion; Halutz to Ha'ahat, or "The One," squadron), but the chief of staff says that, until he was appointed a colonel, he thought each time that he would be discharged immediately at the end of his next task. Yaari decided to return, as opposed to his friends in the battalion, because he felt "my country [was] being destroyed." Regev, on the other hand, chose an agricultural career, "because there was a feeling that you have nothing left to offer me."

Ya'alon was drafted into the Nahal Brigade (which combines military combat duty with work on outlying settlements or outposts) in November 1968. The company commander of the 50th Battalion considered Ya'alon to be officer material, but Ya'alon, a sergeant, felt a greater commitment to his Nahal group, which was headed for Kibbutz Grofit in the Arava. Ya'alon, who had participated in the War of Attrition in Sinai and in actions against terrorists in the Jordan Valley, chose the kibbutz because "that was the order of priorities at the time. First of all, fulfilling the mission of building the kibbutz. The view then was that, in terms of security, we had achieved peace and quiet. The Six-Day War [in 1967], which I was sorry to have missed, was considered the `last' war."

On Rosh Hashanah 5734 (September 1973), Ya'alon was elected secretary of Kibbutz Grofit. On Yom Kippur, he was drafted with Danny Matt's brigade of paratrooper reservists. "The war was a complete surprise. We waited with our gear for a few days at Sirkin [air force headquarters], and that was the hardest part of the war, because the news began to filter in. We heard that the 50th Battalion had retreated at night, on foot, from the line of strongholds in the Golan that had been breached, and we thought that was impossible."

A few days later, the brigade was sent to Sinai, where it was the first to cross the Suez Canal with Ariel Sharon's division. Before the crossing, there were several days of digging in on both sides of the Akavish (Spider) road. "We were bombed by Egyptian planes, and we saw our planes downed by anti-aircraft fire, and again we didn't believe it was possible. There was a feeling of devastation."

The feeling changed with the crossing of the canal, after which the battalion advanced to Ismailia, and afterward, due to a change in plan, to Suez. ("My battalion was the one that didn't get into trouble," Ya'alon says.) Ya'alon served in the reserves continuously until February 1974, but his company emerged from the war with relatively light injuries. "We had only one dead. That was also a matter of good commanders, from the platoon commander to the battalion commander."

After crossing the canal, in an Egyptian village on the way to Ismailia, "we made the decision that I would offer to return as a platoon commander to the 50th Battalion for one year. That was because of the overall situation in the country, and also because of the harsh reports about what had happened to the battalion."

On the way home from his first leave, Ya'alon passed by the headquarters of the 50th Battalion of the Nahal Brigade and asked to meet with the battalion commander, Yoram ("Ya-Ya") Yair. Yair, who knew him from his compulsory service, agreed to accept him. In April he reenlisted and went to an officers' training course. His first position was as a platoon commander in the company of Yitzhak Eisenman (later Yitzhak Eitan, chief of Central Command under Chief of Staff Ya'alon). "The kibbutz accepted it. There were quite a number of people at the time who did the same. Not only Halutz, Didi and I.

"The first lesson I learned from the war was: Cast doubt. Don't rely on anything. That's one of the messages that I transmit in lectures to cadets at Bahad 1 [the IDF officers' training base]: Always ask questions. There's freedom of thought in the IDF, and an obligation to criticize. Before becoming chief of Military Intelligence, I read the entire Agranat Committee Report [that investigated the Yom Kippur War], and then I sat for hours with Eli Zeira [then head of Military Intelligence], Yoel Ben-Porat and others. I asked myself whether it could happen again. The answer was that it was liable to happen. In the final analysis we're only human, and people look for concepts to hold onto. It's dangerous, mainly when there are commanders with charisma who impose their opinion and don't allow for an open discussion. Even today I don't conduct discussions according to order of rank, because brains aren't confined to the top echelons. I don't know better than the battalion commander of Nablus what's happening in his command. I have to listen to him."

Ya'alon talks about a mistake in the IDF's concept of defense in 1973. "Some of the officers had a concept of `don't give an inch,' which had been appropriate for Israel before 1967. But Sinai is not the Tul Karm-Netanya road. There's an important lesson in the failure of the attempt to overturn the Egyptian hold on Sinai: It would have been better to stop their progress, to get organized and only then to counterattack."

He considers the change that has taken place since 1973 in the public attitude toward the IDF "a healthy process. We aren't gods. The situation that existed then, before the war, is dangerous. The personal behavior of some of the commanders was seriously defective. I still saw vestiges of that 20 years later."

When the recordings of the wartime radio operators of Shmuel ("Gorodish") Gonen, chief of the Southern Command during the Yom Kippur War, were published recently in the newspapers, he read them, but lost interest "when the story turned into gossip." Although he ordered that the investigation of the Yom Kippur War be completed, the public uproar doesn't convince him that the full military investigation should be published. "It can be published 50 years afterward, as mandated by law. We may publish certain parts, but what's the hurry? Where's the urgent need?"

We waited impatiently

When the war broke out, Dan Halutz and Gil Regev were pilots in Phantom squadron Ha'ahat, perhaps the most famous squadron in the Israel Air Force. Halutz, the older of the two, had been discharged from the standing army shortly before the war; Regev was still in the middle of his service. When he was called to the squadron on Saturday morning, on Yom Kippur, the first day of the war, Halutz, who was about to begin his university studies, thought it was going to be just another day of battle. Less than a month earlier, there had been such a battle with Syrian planes. "I didn't want to miss it," he says.

Regev says he was "in a classical situation for war. No worries, no children. You're at the height of your powers, and you don't know that it's dangerous. In war, not everyone who takes off lands. But until it happens, you don't understand."

"We were waiting for the war impatiently," admits Regev. "Every pilot waits. We considered ourselves the best squadron in the world, and on the first day we had a feeling we would win." But sobriety came quickly, during Operation Dugman 5, an attack on Syrian anti-aircraft missile batteries. Regev considers it the "trauma of the war." He says it was "a colossal failure that was etched in our awareness. We attacked SE6 batteries [of anti-aircraft missiles] that weren't where we thought they would be, because the photograph was not up to date. When we set out, the sortie was considered `a piece of cake.'"

Seven Israeli fighter planes were downed in the attack, three of them from the squadron. By the end of the war, Ha'ahat had lost seven pilots and navigators, with another 14 captured. Fifteen planes were damaged. He still keeps a group picture of the pilots of Ha'ahat taken before the Independence Day flyover in May 1973. Only a few of them came through the war in one piece. "We got up on the last day of the war, looked around in the briefing room, and it was almost empty," says Halutz.

Both agree that aerial war is primarily a personal experience. "You're busy thinking about personal survival," says Halutz. "I didn't feel at any stage that the destruction of the Third Temple was approaching. Despite the difficult beginning, I had faith in the ability of the IDF."

For Regev, "nothing interested me, except for the mission. I locked myself away from all the noises. I flourished in the war, but in the squadron there was a sobering up. There was some anger. We didn't imagine we would end up with captives and dead. After the war, in the neighborhood where the pilots' families lived, the issue was left unresolved. Over the years it has become worse."

Halutz says his "professional self-confidence was strengthened. After you've done what is necessary, and you and your array weren't harmed, it gives you professional satisfaction. Afterward, when I commanded a squadron, the main document I published about the conduct of the war was derived for the most part from the lessons of the war on the national level. I have no doubt that our existence here rises and falls on one thing: on our image as a regional power and on our ability to use it when necessary. When the other side feels there's a large gap between our image and our capability, it won't hesitate to exploit that. Experience, including that of the past three years, teaches: If you're not strong enough, you won't survive."

Halutz refuses to discuss his frustration at the events preceding the war. "I don't want to be a critic after the fact," he explains, choosing to mention his reservations about the decision regarding a cease-fire at the time when the Egyptian Third Army was surrounded. "The pilots put up protest posters when the members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee visited the squadron. We felt we were at the climax of the operation and suddenly they stopped it." He hasn't visited Egypt since then, but claims he feels no hostility toward the Egyptians.

Regev speaks of contradictory feelings. "There was a feeling that this was a superfluous war, which wasn't worth the price, but that I wouldn't have forgiven myself if I hadn't participated in it. It was the most significant event in my adult life. Nothing taught me more about myself and my friends."

Regev chose to be discharged. "There was a feeling that we had had our fill. You have nothing more to offer me, leave me alone, we've seen you. The people above you, from the prime minister to the General Staff, lost some of their glamor. I was outside for seven years, busy with harvesting, I barely came for practice flights." It was the Lebanon War and the temptation of going over to the F16, which had excelled in that war, that brought him back to active duty in 1983.

Halutz, on the other hand, returned in 1975. "The situation in the squadron made me decide to return to service. I understood that Ha'ahat was the place where I had to be. Everywhere in the air force they were missing people to occupy central positions. The air force lost 46 pilots and navigators in the war. A similar number of air crews fell into captivity." He was discharged again in 1978 and returned to active duty five years later, in a joint decision with Regev and for very similar reasons.

Two air force commanders emerged from the ranks of Ha'ahat in the war (Halutz and Eitan Ben Eliyahu), as did another major general (Regev), five brigadier generals and a large number of colonels. Most of them still meet occasionally, in the context of what they call the "beer forum."

"This is a group of people with whom I have almost a blood relationship," says Halutz. Regev speaks of "a core of people who feel they can do anything, take on any assignment. Meanwhile, we drink beer once a month."

No need for `frogs'

At the age of 56, Yedidya Yaari is "the oldest general" in the IDF. Soon it will be decided whether he will continue with a fifth year as commander-in-chief of the navy. Yaari, grandson of the legendary leader of Mapam (the former left-wing Zionist socialist party), was drafted into the naval commando in 1965. In July 1969, he was severely injured in a commando operation on Green Island, Egypt's most fortified position in the Suez Canal zone. At the end of a period of convalescence of about eight months, he was discharged from active duty, "with the clear intention not to return."

Sergeant Major (res.) Yaari did, however, return to reserve duty in the commando unit a year later, but was already deeply involved in another career, as a photographer and photographer's assistant for Israeli films ("I have credits in `Nurit' and `Abu al-Banat'").

In early 1973, he went to Amsterdam to look for work in films, and meanwhile supported himself as a security guard for El Al. When the war broke out, he wasn't able to return to Israel. "For a week they didn't allow me to fly," says Yaari. "The station head said: `At the moment we only need tank crews, pilots and doctors. `Frogs' stay here.' I was living in a small attic in Amsterdam, and I was stuck all day with journalists, who were full of the pictures of our captives in the Suez Canal strongholds. I was climbing the walls. After a week I returned to Israel and reported at the battalion. They said: `It's a good thing you came. We need someone with just your expertise.'"

Yaari was one of the only reservists in the naval commando who knew how to sail patzhanim, boats to which 300 kilograms of explosives were attached. The members of the commando were sent to the Red Sea to compensate for the inferior situation of the navy, which was operating small Hornet missile boats against the Egyptian missile ships. Yaari and another reservist were sent on a dangerous mission. Each of them sailed a patzhan by himself for about 100 nautical miles, to the port of Ardaka on the Egyptian coast.

According to the plan, they were supposed to abandon the boats by means of a kind of ejection seat, a very short distance from the Egyptian missile ships, so that the boats would explode the missile ships. But the operation went wrong: The engines died several times along the way, and a strong opposing wind sprayed foam into the eyes of the sailors, "so all we could see toward the end were two narrow slits of light."

Yaari sailed his boat into strong and effective Egyptian fire. "I barely saw a silhouette, and I assumed it was the missile ship. A port engine started coughing again, so I stepped on the gas and operated the ejection seat." The boat passed several meters from the pier and began to go around in small circles, until it self-destructed about 15 minutes later. His partner in the mission was somewhat more successful: His boat struck slightly to the left of the prow of the Egyptian missile ship.

"That was a maturing experience," says Yaari. "We emerged with a bitter taste of failure, and that's no cliche. We flubbed it." Afterward, it turned out the explosions had torn holes in the missile ship. The ship was towed to another place and was destroyed three days later in another operation.

For the navy, this was a different war from the one fought by the rest of the IDF. After its relative failure in 1967, the navy ended the 1973 war with a major victory over the Egyptian and Syrian fleets, but the atmosphere in the country filtered down to the commando unit at Sharm el-Sheikh, where Yaari remained in the reserves for four months after the end of the war.

"When I told the guys that I was returning to the army, they called me a `traitor.' There was a general atmosphere of incitement, quite justified," he says. "That was the real trauma. But I told myself that this wasn't the last war. There was a feeling that we had been really close to a holocaust, a feeling that intensified when we learned more about what had happened. I didn't see how I could continue in the previous directions I had been pursuing. I swore to myself that I wouldn't be stuck ever again in an attic in Amsterdam when my country was being destroyed."

He learned two lessons from his experiences in the Red Sea: "You have to be a skeptic all the time, even concerning what you are ostensibly sure of. On the other hand, there's no reason not to dare. Even when the situation is impossible, there's still something you can fix." On the national level, "everyone had a part in the failure. Between the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur, we lost our sense of proportion as to our strength and the limitations of our real capability. When I examine how the public regards a general in the IDF today and how they regarded them then, I unequivocally prefer the approach today. It's true that there is despicable disparagement, and we are often hit below the belt, but at least we aren't creating some kind of false picture of supermen with endless capabilities, like some of the generals of 1967."

Yaari returned to the army, did an officers' training course, and later was promoted to commander of the naval commando and of the Israel Navy. As in the case of many others of his generation, it wasn't the result of an organized plan. "At first I intended to remain for only a few years." He is no longer interested in photography. "I've been completely cured of that. When I look at a camera today, it's a foreign object for me."

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