Last week the Yom Kippur War returned with staggering intensity. Thirty-seven years after the war ended the trauma of that terrible experience came back to haunt the Israeli public when the government published the minutes of its sessions during those fateful days. Even today it boggles the mind to read about the terrible lapses of Israel’s political and military leadership. Perusing those minutes one realizes just how much trouble the country was in at that time. The crisis could have led to the destruction of Israel as a state. All signs indicated that we were on the verge of a tough war. Intelligence flowing in from various sources warned of a simultaneous attack by Egypt and Syria an attack that was liable to come at any moment. But the policymakers especially in the intelligence wing decided to ignore all the warnings. In a tangible manifestationg of the pasuk “He turns the wise backwards and makes their knowledge foolish” (Yeshayahu 44:25) the experts “determined” that all the Arab states were doing was engaging in an intimidation maneuver. 

The number of errors and miscalculations that were made by those entrusted with Israel’s security is staggering – in the military echelons and even more so in the government offices. HaKadosh Baruch Hu took away their intelligence and their ability to interpret the situation correctly. And in contrast to the Six Day War when all the mistakes of Israel’s leaders ended up somehow contributing to a victorious outcome in the Yom Kippur War even the right decisions turned into stumbling blocks.

That should say something to us.

The worst part of all: Reading the documents today one is astonished at what took place at the government’s emergency meetings back then after the alarms were sounded at 2 o’clock on Yom Kippur afternoon. The minutes of those meetings on those first days of tragic casualties while Egypt advanced steadily into Sinai evoke a sad picture of despair impotence loss of direction and bewilderment on the part of Israel’s leaders. They simply didn’t know what was happening to them. They felt like animals caught in a trap with no way out. Prime Minister Golda Meir was actually contemplating suicide and legendary Defense Minister Moshe Dayan looked at the devastation being wrought and admitted that his approach had been completely wrong and that he did not know what to do at that critical hour.

Reading all these facts one is deeply shaken. To think that the whole population of Israel at that time was in a storm-tossed ship without a captain!

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And then suddenly a turnabout took place and the IDF won a victory greater than any it had won before. Despite being totally unprepared and suffering heavy losses in the early days of the war Israel managed to come within a hundred kilometers of Cairo the Egyptian capital and even closer than that to Damascus the capital of Syria. Glowing victory notwithstanding a sour taste of failure lingers with the Israeli people to this day when they contemplate the events of the Yom Kippur War. The Egyptians celebrate their lost war with victory festivities while we grieve over the many casualties that war incurred and over our failed leadership as well.

Yitzchak Zamir was then serving as Mossad chief and was in fact the man who finally brought the decisive intelligence about the outbreak of war to the government as conveyed to him by his agent in Egypt the son-in-law of that country’s president Jamal Abdul Nasser. Zamir recently posed the painful question that begs for an answer: “Why did we deserve this?”

I will do my best to answer that question in accordance with what I have heard from gedolei Yisrael.

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A disaster came in the wake of Israel’s astounding victory in the Six Day War; that disaster was arrogance and pride. The wide expanses of Eretz Yisrael opening up before our eyes gave us a sense of elation that was hard to contain. The feeling that no one could stand against Israel’s victorious army and that heaven was hardly the limit threw us down into the depths of “Ani ve’afsi od – I and none besides me.” When a human being foolishly believes that  his power and might his resourcefulness and the strength of his own hand brought him success he forgets Gd: “And your heart will grow haughty and you will forget Hashem your Gd” (Devarim 8:14) and this allows every sort of distortion to take root in his heart. It makes him feel as though everything he does is right — it worked didn’t it? — while the pasuk says regarding the conquest of the land “Do not say in your heart… because of my righteousness Hashem brought me to inherit this land… not through your righteousness and the uprightness of your heart do you come to inherit their land” (Devarim 9:4-5). The Torah demands a little humility; it is the only way to see things from a proper perspective. Pride is a self-punishing crime; it warps a person’s view of reality. In popular jargon this is called “living in a movie.” A proud person loses his power to make a cool rational decision based on an accurate assessment of the given situation. This childish sense of self-satisfaction generally takes hold of anyone who holds power and makes no room in his heart for Gd. In the case of Israel’s leaders their exaggerated confidence caused them to underestimate our enemies and to think they would never dare attack. In that bubble of superiority they didn’t see what was actually happening they failed to read the signs and the rest is history.

To make matters worse the pride in Israel’s miraculous victory in the Six Day War led to a moral decline in the country in all areas of life in a way we hadn’t seen for years prior. No need to go into detail or expound on this.

The dismal state of affairs sounded an alarm in the ears of the gedolei Torah and many of them warned of trouble to come in the wake of that moral decline. I remember the words of Rav Elazar Menachem Shach ztz”l who wept on one occasion while euphoria over the victory still filled Israel’s streets and government corridors and said that Jews would be stabbed in the streets of Israel’s cities. That gloomy prophecy came true in vivid detail although it upset many people who thought it was merely a canard spoken by an anti-Zionist. All they wanted was to sleep in peace and go on with their sweet dream.

We paid the price for that arrogance in blood sorrow and in a partial return to a sense of our actual dimensions.

True the people of Israel were saved in the end. Tel Aviv didn’t fall to the Egyptians as Moshe Dayan envisioned when he reached his breaking point. They were pushed back nearly to Cairo. That was in fulfillment of the pasuk in parshas Ha’azinu “For Hashem will judge His people and will reconsider His servants when He sees that the power is increasing and none is controlled or strengthened” (Devarim 32:36). During Operation Kadesh in 1957 as I sat with the rest of the bochurim in the bomb shelter of Yeshivas Ponevezh our rosh yeshivah   Rav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman ztz”l said these words to us paraphrasing the meforshim: “When HaKadosh Baruch Hu sees that no one is helping the Jewish nation He comes to its rescue even if its behavior and its sins have rendered it unworthy.”

Herein lies an interesting paradox. Although a great victory took place in the Yom Kippur War we have no benefit from it; we’re merely stunned by its disastrous beginning and by the many lives it claimed. Due to our sins Hashem made certain that even though we won a big victory we would never take pleasure in it the way we took pleasure in the victory of the Six Day War.

I can only hope that Mr. Zamir and his colleagues can appreciate this answer to his question.