Israel had advanced warning that Syria and Egypt were about to attack but nevertheless kept the front lines poorly defended. In a channel 14 Hebrew video it is revealed that Golda Meir had a secret meeting 11 days before the Yom Kippur War where Jordan’s King Hussein revealed the coming Syrian & Egyptian attack plans against Israel.
Not that Hussein was a Tzaddik, rather he had a political interest to deny Syria the victory, so he told Israel. Israel did not adequately prepare.
Besides Hussein’s warning, Israel also had a number of spies that also warned about the coming attack. See for example, the Hebrew video https://special.now14.co.il/kipur2/. Also some Israeli military officers, such as, Yoel Ben Porat figured out the coming attack by monitoring Soviet communications ordering their personnel to leave Egypt and Syria because of the coming attack.
What was the political reason to ignore the warnings?
Without sufficient documentation we are left to speculate. In an article by Israelnationalnews.com Shimon Cohen & Mordechai Sones suggest, Israel’s big war casualties were planned in advance to start the so-called “Peace Process”.
Cohen continued: “Later on, the name Joe Alon was mentioned as someone who revealed a document in which Kissinger and Dayan allegedly signed an agreement that would give the Syrians and Egyptians a small victory that might take the lives of 200 to 300 Israeli soldiers, but that Arab national pride would be restored, after which they would agree to sign a peace agreement for thousands of years. Dayan thought it worthwhile, he felt that the cost was the worth it. This was the same Dayan who visited Tel Fares 11 days before the war and declared ‘there will be war’.”
Cohen adds that while in a “fixed” soccer game, those who rig it are put in jail, “in this case there were thousands who were sold out, when they thought they would sell out 300, and I am one of those few who were there. They just sold us. General Hofi was shocked and said he’d heard rumors, but Peled openly said that it had already been delivered. Hofi told us that Gorodish (the new and inexperienced commander of the southern front, later blamed for the initial failure and high casualties, ed.) was visiting the Northern Command and told him that there had been an organizational overhaul: There were no tanks on the ramps as per regulation, oil taps intended to ignite the canal in the case of an Egyptian crossing were not opened, and mines that were supposed to block the Egyptians had been blown up earlier. In other words, the Egyptians were given absolute autonomy to cross the canal and kill our soldiers so that they could reach the target of overrunning seven kilometers east of the [Suez] canal.”
He said that commanders also brought them to positions without them knowing how to use their weaponry. One example is when the commander of the outpost arrived at Tel Fares with three Vulcan 022 anti-aircraft guns, but in less than 15 minutes the weapons were rendered inoperative. “They stood in the wrong place. The shells fell in such a way that the guns were destroyed. A Syrian unit entered and slaughtered them. Twenty-three men were butchered with knives. These are things that people must be told. Leaders must draw conclusions and lessons so that this will never happen again. Our children must never be in a similar situation, not one that has even the slightest resemblance to that time.”
In a Hebrew web site at https://www.hativa14.com/2013/02/1073 there is a ~45 minute English video about the great tank battles that took place during the war. Vilnagaon.org feels the video is neutral about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in the war between Egypt and Israel and they unlike the authors in this web site, have a positive view of the Camp David “Peace Treaty”. The video also gets it wrong about Israel being caught by surprise.
Nevertheless, despite all its faults, the video captures in a dramatic way, the desperate situation that Israel faced at the outset and the rapid change in the tide of the war at the end where Israel “claws out” a stunning military victory.
Currently at this point in time, at the end of this particular video there is a link to just one other video on the same web site. We have no control over how long this policy will continue. So let the cautious beware.