New photos show Golda Meir in Yom Kippur War operational meetings
Pictures released show prime minister Golda Meir meeting with top generals and soldiers in briefings
By ANNA AHRONHEIM, JERUSALEM POST STAFF, BEN HARTMANPrime Minister Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War.(photo credit: DEFENSE MINISTRY)
The Defense Ministry's IDF Archive has released the pictures from meetings held by then-prime minister Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War.Prime minister Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War (Defense Ministry). The pictures show Meir meeting with top generals and soldiers in briefings, as well as Moshe Dayan and other top military officials attending briefings and meeting with troops.Prime minister Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War (Defense Ministry). The Yom Kippur War came almost as a complete surprise to Israel, and warning notice was given too late for an orderly call-up of the reserves before the Syrian and Egyptian armies launched a joint surprise attack on IDF positions in the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.IDF troops during the Yom Kippur War (Defense Ministry).The war, lasting until October 26, 1973, has gone down in Israel’s history as a failure and saw 2,688 IDF soldiers killed, thousands more wounded and hundreds captured. More than 1,000 tanks and hundreds of aircraft were destroyed or damaged.IDF troops during the Yom Kippur War (Defense Ministry).Meir resigned after the war amid criticism and a loss of public confidence in the government.“I think the headline for what happened to us on the eve of Yom Kippur would be ‘mistakes,’” Meir is quoted as saying, before describing her restlessness and concern on the eve of the war, and her disagreement with the military brass about calling up reservists.
She describes her decision to not order a preemptive strike when war seemed imminent, saying she was concerned it would jeopardize the support of the Americans, and that she feared that the military did not have sufficient supplies to carry out such an attack.“I knew and know now too that it may have been, maybe possible to say, certainly that some boys might have stayed alive, but I don’t know how many other boys would have died because of a lack of equipment,” she told the commission.
