The War of Atonement, October, 1973

Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1975. First American Edition [stated]. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. viii, [4], 300 pages. Illustrations. Maps. Index. Some soiling to edges. DJ somewhat worn and small edge tears/chips. Major-General Chaim Herzog (17 September 1918 - 17 April 1997) was an Israeli politician, general, lawyer and author who served as the sixth President of Israel between 1983 and 1993. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935 and served in the Haganah Jewish paramilitary group during the 1936-39 Arab revolt. As an officer in the British Army during World War II, he was called "Vivian" the direct English translation of "Chaim" - because his first commanding officer would not say "Chaim." He returned to Palestine after the war and, following the end of the British Mandate and Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948, operated in the battles for Latrun during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The author was an Israeli military analyst and formerly the head of Israeli military intelligence. He retired from the Israel Defence Forces in 1962. After wards, Herzog practiced law. In 1972 he was a co-founder of Herzog, Fox & Ne'eman. Between 1975 and 1978 he served as Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, in which capacity he repudiated UN General Assembly Resolution 3379—the "Zionism is Racism" resolution—and symbolically tore it up before the assembly. Herzog entered politics in the 1981 elections, winning a Knesset seat. Two years later, in March 1983, he was elected President. He served for two five-year terms before retiring in 1993. In this book, he analyzes the military aspects of the Yom Kippur War and its influence on political trends. Derived from a Kirkus review: In 1973, the Israelis actually "won the most striking victory in their history," and now "Israel must restore the balance of the Arabs' imagined victory." Such martial clamor ends this narrative evaluation by General Chaim Herzog, whose voice was heard internationally during the Yom Kippur War as a blow-by-blow commentator. Herzog, who is Israel's ambassador-designate to the UN, has held a long series of high paramilitary posts. He also headed military intelligence in 1948-50 and 1959-62. Herzog asserts here that intelligence chiefs were scapegoated for the failures during the October War. Golda Meir and the General Staff deserve most blame. Moshe Dayan, indeed, refused to order a preemptive strike against the Syrians, and on the whole is "overcautious"! At the same time, Herzog frankly describes Soviet abhorrence of Sadat's war plan to restore his domestic prestige, and to hike Arab oil prices with war as the pretext. He approvingly quotes Dayan: "The key to war is the Soviet Union, the key to peace is the United States." On the level of military analysis, Herzog musters pretty stiff brass. He deplores a lack of administrative discipline, while arguing that the success of anti-tank weapons needn't mean the obsolescence of Israeli panzers. The General contends that a new showdown must come--the Soviets represent "a determined and unrelenting threat to the security of all of Europe." The book is somewhat of a gauge of Israeli factional developments, the latest of which involves Herzog himself--a cousin of Dayan's, he is being attacked for this book's criticisms of the General. All that can be said is that Herzog, a major spokesman, sounds very hawkish. Not only do-or-die partisans, but any reader willing to weigh calls to escalation, should examine the book. It is one of the strongest statements on the Mideast by a topmost official.