To mark the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, which will take place in October of this year, the IDF Archives at the Ministry of Defense is launching today (Thursday) a large and comprehensive website, with tens of thousands of documents, photographs, videos, recordings and testimonies from the war.
Among the archival materials exposed on the site for the first time are most of the intelligence material from the month preceding the war, submitted to the Agranat Committee by the head of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Eli Zeira, the diaries of Brig. Gen. Yoel Ben-Porat about the intelligence failure and the lack of warning despite the abundance of information and signs indicating that war is about to break out, and testimonies from the fall of the Hermon outpost.
Among the archival materials, most of the intelligence material from the month before the war, submitted to the Agranat Committee by the head of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Eli Zeira, photo: Coco
On the website you can find, among other things, a letter written in the Intelligence Bulletin of October 6, 1973, the day the war broke out, at 09:00: "It seems to us that there is coordination between the steps taken by Egypt and Syria. The armies of Egypt and Syria are in fact ready for war, the forces near the borders are of unprecedented intensity. If a decision is made at the strategic level to start fighting, they will be able to do so from the current deployment without the need for further preparations... On the one hand, we assume that the strategic echelons in Egypt and Syria are aware of the lack of chance of succeeding in the war and the risks of doing so. On the other hand, we are witnessing extensive military preparations, and we also have information about a trend to start a war in the immediate term."
The day before, on October 5, the Intelligence Bulletin reported on the hasty evacuation of Soviet women and children from Syria. "From all of the above, two main possibilities can be raised: a. A Syrian decision to remove the Soviet advisers and experts, as Egypt did. 5) The hasty evacuation of Soviet women and children from Syria in light of the USSR's assessment / knowledge that a flare-up of war between Syria and possibly Egypt and Israel is expected. This possibility is reinforced by the news of the flight of <> Aeroflot planes to Egypt at the same time as the planes to Syria."
Senior members of the General Staff lean over maps during the war, Photo: IDF Archive at the Ministry of Defense
On the website you can find the diaries of Brigadier General Yoel Ben-Porat, who wrote, among other things: "Already on Friday at 2:30 A.M. (36 hours before the opening of fire), a telegram encrypted with code words arrived at the Mossad that was vague, but two words from its contents were absolutely clear: war imminent – immediate war... Apart from the three (the head of the Mossad, the head of the Palestinian Intelligence Authority and the head of Military Intelligence), no one heard about the information, not the prime minister, not the defense minister, and not the chief of staff."
The site reveals for the first time the testimony of Gadi Zidover and David Nahliel from the Syrian invasion of the Mount Hermon outpost, where they describe the outpost's lack of preparedness for war, and the battle in which many of the soldiers of the post fell and were taken prisoner by the Syrians. Zidover and Nahliel were among the soldiers who were rescued.
"We heard shouting in Arabic and bullets on the doors. This is where the panic of power began. I put them in two rooms that wouldn't bother.... Soldiers who were afraid started disappearing into the tunnels, there are a total of about 400 meters of underground tunnels. They hoped in this way to be saved," Zidover wrote. "The people blocking the openings were barely with a magazine, no belt, no grenades and no weapons. So after firing a few bursts and maybe hitting some Syrian, they would have been eliminated... I took the people out of both rooms, they started choking, panicked and got on top of each other. Bambi directed them to the burrow and I covered the passage with Uzi and Rimon. Apparently, what stopped the Syrians was the smoke and gas they themselves infiltrated. We didn't shoot and the Syrians had no other reason to stop. We went into the burrow and I organized protection for the burrow, including closing the door. At certain stages we thought we were hearing Hebrew, but we were joking."
IDF soldier during the war, photo: Nathan Fendrich Collection, National Library of Israel
He continued: "I took Bambi and we went up to one of the towers that connected to the burrow to see what was going on outside. I must have seen four standing above us with Kalashnikovs, helmets and leopard clothes... They discovered us, shouted in Arabic, ran towards the tower and threw a grenade." He continued: "I had a plan to flee after the Syrians calmed down. I explained the plan to MM... I had 2 magazines, the rest were without weapons and without ammunition. I had one grenade.... We started hearing the screams of the hits. I saw that there was no point in fighting, and I started gathering people shouting. We ran out of ammunition, I heard them loading Kalashnikov cartridges."
Asked whether they knew about a special alert before 14:00 P.M., Nahliel replied: "We knew there was an alert, but we certainly didn't think about war, maybe a day of battle. It wasn't clear to us that there was a war." According to him, "All the personnel at the post were in fact members of the Air Force and the Signal Corps. They had personal weapons, but they did not have ammunition for war alert. They didn't know how to fight and were also afraid. I went downstairs to get two boxes of MG. I told them to go upstairs to fight because soon there would be joy here. They didn't tell me which of them didn't want to fight, but the fear was evident in their eyes and they were probably panicking." Nahliel also spoke about the "murderous fire" that passed right next to him, and added: "It was very difficult to breathe. The guys took flannels, urinated on them and put it in their noses so they could breathe. They apparently threw 2 smoke grenades into the elm from the stairs. I heard someone shouting "Gas!"
IDF officers when discussing all operational plans during the war,
The website, which went live today, reveals and makes available to the general public for the first time original materials on a considerable scale about the Yom Kippur War, including: 15,301 photographs, 6,085 documents, 215 films, 40 audio recordings and 169 maps, which can illustrate the battlefield, considerations and deliberations of decision makers, dramatic events in the fighting and small moments in the lives of the fighters.
The website also includes exclusive materials presented to the Agranat Committee and recently approved by the government committee headed by Supreme Court Justice (retired) Prof. Yitzhak Englard, including intelligence materials and original documents by Lieutenant Siman Tov that indicated concrete signs of war.
IDF Chief of Staff David Elazar in a helicopter on the southern front during the war,
According to the Ministry of Defense, the website, established by the Ministry of Defense's ICT Division, is intended to make materials and photographs available to combatants and their families that they did not know existed, including debriefings and battle reports of fighters written in their own handwriting. Making the photographs accessible and receiving feedback from the general public can help the IDF Archives at the Ministry of Defense identify figures and places and fine-tune historical research.
The website contains a database of operational debriefings at the various command levels of a variety of units, from the level of the Minister of Defense, through the General Staff, the branch commands (land, air and sea) to the level of combat and combat support units. In addition, the site has focused pages dealing with the main events in the Yom Kippur War and the personalities who played a decisive role in its management at the various levels of command, with links to relevant documents and photographs.
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