Black October: Old Enemies at War Again

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from an article published in TIME magazine on October 15, 1973.)

The sirens began to wail while all Israel was observing Yom Kippur, the holiest and also the quietest day of the Jewish year. By tradition, tens of thousands of servicemen were home on leave; Israeli Broadcasting had shut down for the day; and just about the only vehicles on the highways were ambulances.

As crowds of worshipers emerged from synagogues at the end of the five-hour-long morning services of atonement, they found the streets filled with speeding trucks, buses and Jeeps. The Israeli radio was back on the air. All afternoon its broadcasts of news bulletins and classical music were interrupted by such incongruous phrases as "meat pie," "sea wolf" and "wool string" -- military codes calling reservists to duty. By late afternoon, virtually every Israeli -- and much of the rest of the world as well -- knew that what Defense Minister Moshe Dayan defiantly called "all-out war" had begun again.

The fighting erupted when Egyptian troops surged across the Suez Canal and Syrian soldiers struck in the north on the Golan Heights. Both forces swept through Israel's front lines and punched their way into Israeli-held territory under the glare of an afternoon sun. Backed by heavy artillery and strafing jets, they maneuvered with tanks and armored vehicles. Helicopters carried some Arab troops into battle. United Nations observers reported seeing Egyptians crossing into the Sinai Desert at five points along the 103-mile canal front; Syrian troops were spotted moving into Israel over the central section of the Golan Heights cease-fire line by other U N. teams. The Syrians were soon stopped, but the Egyptians claimed that within hours they occupied nearly all of the east bank of the canal -- a claim quickly denied by the Israelis. Though both Egypt and Syria insisted that invading Israeli troops had started the war, the evidence clearly indicated that the fourth Arab-Israeli war in 25 years had been launched by a massive Arab invasion. Within 24 hours, Israeli troops had stemmed the Arab thrust and were delivering a brutal counterattack.

News of the invasion sent Israeli civilians cleaning out their bomb shelters, filling their bathtubs with water and taping their windows for blackouts. At several synagogues, services were interrupted as the sextons stood up and called out the names of young men who were being summoned to duty; other worshipers, on hearing the news, quickly folded their prayer shawls and departed: some returned later, in uniform, to bid their families goodbye. That day, Israeli warplanes buzzed Israel's principal cities, perhaps as a signal for air force callups; but it was a curious occurrence, because planes had never flown over Israel during Yom Kippur before.

The suddenness of the fighting created some curious anomalies on both sides. Despite a blackout, the shop-window lights on Tel Aviv's fashionable Dizengoff Street and Allenby Road snapped on automatically at sundown; shopkeepers quickly turned them off. In Cairo, which lies but seven minutes by jet from the canal, the streets were brightly lit for hours after sundown. "You mean," demanded a sidewalk vendor in disbelief, "that we are fighting Israel with all these lights on?" By late evening, when the government ordered that all electric lights and headlights be daubed with blue paint, the war reports seemed more convincing.

From the beginning, the Israeli government maintained an outward calm that made a convincing show of its self-confidence. Prime Minister Golda Meir went on the air in late afternoon to assure her countrymen that "grave losses have been inflicted on the enemy." Her voice was firm, but she spoke in more measured and deeper tones than usual. "We have no doubts as to our victory," she said. "But it is our belief that this renewal of Egyptian-Syrian aggression is an act of madness."

When the fighting broke out, President Richard Nixon was at his home in Key Biscayne, Florida, where he was awakened at 6 a.m. Saturday by a telephone call from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Nixon was kept informed of developments through the day by calls from Kissinger as the Secretary of State sought to get the two sides to stop shooting at each other. After trying vainly to work out a peace formula with the Israeli and Arab Foreign Ministers in New York, where he was conferring with diplomats attending the U.N. General Assembly, Kissinger flew to Washington. In a spasm of telephone calls, he talked to every permanent member of the Security Council. That evening he chaired a meeting of the Washington Special Action Group, a "crisis management" team made up of representatives of the State and Defense departments, the CIA and the National Security Council. But there was, in truth, very little that the U.S. could do to stop the bloodshed.

For once, neither superpower was directly involved. The Administration, in fact, had seemed to be uncertain about how much credence to give early intelligence reports that told of the buildup of Arab forces a week before the war. In his discussions with Arab Foreign Ministers before the war, Secretary of State Kissinger remarked, not one had indicated that the military buildup was a prelude to a resumption of fighting; instead the discussions had centered on finding a means for new negotiations.

The Soviet Union may well have had a better clue to what was going on. A few days before the fighting began, the Soviets reportedly removed their advisers -- an estimated 3,000 strong -- from Syria. No public explanation was offered, but some observers believed that Moscow took the action after failing to convince the Damascus government of "the futility of embarking on military adventures." Nonetheless, Moscow publicly supported the Arabs. A Pravda article said that the war was "carefully prepared and planned in Tel Aviv."

Considering the shortcomings of the Arab attack, it could have been. On both the Suez and Golan Heights fronts, the Arabs placed emphasis on artillery, armor and infantry troops. They made no attempt to knock out the Israeli air force, their single most deadly enemy. Nor did they bomb Israel's population centers -- partly, no doubt, for fear that Israel would retaliate by bombing their cities. Once Egyptian troops were committed east of the canal, they had no way to retreat as long as Israeli jets prowled the waterway.

By Sunday morning, after nearly a day of intense fighting, Israeli forces had seized the initiative on both fronts. The Egyptians began to fall back, having failed to put enough tanks across the canal during the night. They also failed to dent Israel's air supremacy, and in the early hours of the second day of fighting, the Egyptian air force did not even take to the air to support ground troops. Israeli planes penetrated deep into Egypt, knocking out missile systems and other defenses. Defense Minister Dayan said that the mop-up might take several days, but he predicted that the curious battle of Yom Kippur was already decided.