The Yom Kippur War has a devastating…
November 1973 CE
The Yom Kippur War has a devastating effect on Israel.
More than six thousand troops have been killed or wounded in eighteen days of fighting.
The loss of equipment and the decline of production and exports as a consequence of mobilization come to nearly seven billion U.S. dollars, the equivalent of Israel's gross national product for an entire year.
Most important, the image of an invincible Israel that has prevailed since the June 1967 War is destroyed forever.
Whereas the June 1967 War had given Israel in general and the declining Labor Party in particular a badly needed morale booster, the events of October 1973 shake the country's self-confidence and cast a shadow over the competence of the Labor elite.
A war-weary public is especially critical of Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, (who nonetheless escapes criticism in the report of the Agranat Commission, a body established after the war to determine responsibility for Israel's military unpreparedness).