2,656 killed, 7,251 wounded, 294 captured, 102 planes shot down, 1,200 tanks gone. These are the numbers of the Yom Kippur War, but this is the dry part of the terrible trauma that some of us - those who have experienced, those who have fought, certainly those who have lost their minds - carry to this day.
But it was not just a terrible war, it was a war of surprise. One that stopped life in an instant and took many moments to bring them back. Israeli sports have been dramatically shaken. Athletes went to war, some did not return and some returned, but not whole. Physically and mentally.
Israeli sports were before the holidays of Tishrei 5734, different from what we know today. It will be difficult today to find an athlete who will go into battle, but at that time, even those who were not combative knew what a battle was and there were those, especially kibbutzim, who had this routine: Sports alongside combat service.The war did not pity anyone.
Starred in the days before the war.
Young Uri Melmillian with Dovid Schweitzer (Photo: Arie Kanfer, from the book "First Half" edited by Berni Ardov and Uri Sheretzky)
Israeli football was three years after the World Cup appearance, a few months after the failure to reach the World Cup in '74.
The two biggest stars in Israeli football, Motlé Spiegler and Giora Spiegel, made their first steps as legionnaires in France;
A new factory, the Koratch Cup, entered European basketball, and Israeli representation in Europe increased;
Israel still competed with Asia, so from a continental point of view, its achievements were many.
Israeli athletes were Asian champions or Asian champions, the dominoes team was even the continental champion and reached the World Championships in Belgrade in those weeks.
The sport marked in those days a year for the massacre of athletes in Munich and the weightlifting and wrestling industries were still licking wounds.
The Football Association has decided to start the season with cup games so that the senior teams will enter the circle of games already in the third round (1/64) on September 15, and will entertain the people of Israel during the holidays against lower league teams. The plan was to hold the sixth round between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in the form of a home and away. Simchat Torah has already planned to hold the first game in the round of 16. At the center of the sixth round was a Jerusalem derby, between the 16-and-a-half-year-old Uri Melmillian Cup winner of the Hapoel Jerusalem Cup and Betar Jerusalem. 1: 2.
On Wednesday, October 3, three days before the outbreak of hostilities, most of the rematch took place. Shalom Avitan gave Betar a 0: 1 victory and a victory in the double encounter in the derby. Four teams from the second division qualified for the quarterfinals and one (Tzafririm Holon) from the third division.
Shortly before Rosh Hashanah, FIBA determined the rivals of the 6 Israeli representatives (four men's teams and two women's) in the European Cups. The Betar Jerusalem Cup finalist was scheduled to meet Ankara College. In the Korach Cup, Hapoel Jerusalem was scheduled to meet AEK Athens and Maccabi Raj the German Bamberg. Unlike Maccabi Tel Aviv, whose games were scheduled for the end of November because they went straight to the second round, the other teams were scheduled to play at the beginning of November.
"We knew there was an unusual tension but we did not know how much." The pit in the General Staff during the Yom Kippur War (Photo: Official website, IDF Archives at the Ministry of Defense)
At the same time, the basketball team was about to participate in the European Championships in Spain, at a house held in Badlona, aiming to finish in a good place in the middle. Israel opened its games with a loss to the Czech Republic and later defeated Romania and Poland, lost to Turkey and in fact decided to meet it again in the battle for seventh place. All that interested her in those days was the attempt to bring the game ahead of Yom Kippur evening to the noon before the start of the fast.
On Friday, October 5, on the eve of Yom Kippur, an article by the military correspondent Yaakov Erez was published on the front page of Maariv, which was 31 words long, and somehow managed to pass the censorship test. "The IDF is following what is happening on the Egyptian side of the canal," was the headline. These were the only 31 words written about something that looked like warming up in the sector.
Itamar Marzel was part of the squad, a 23-year-old coordinator from Kibbutz Yagur: "It was not so clear what was happening. There was some pressure, we understood that something significant was happening. We knew there was an unusual tension but we did not know how much. When you are abroad, automatically Everything related to national security is gaining strength. It makes you deal with it more significantly. When you are on a national mission, all the more so. There was an alertness mixed with ignorance. We were not comfortable with what we heard. "
A significant number of the actors did not do combat service. The American Jews did not serve at all, Tziki Inbar from Kiryat Haim served in the Air Force's media, Hanan Keren was an IDF in the Nahal, Molly Avishar in the Air Force, Boaz Yanai in the Northern Command and Marzel was a storekeeper. "Had it not been for the accident in which I burned 25 percent of my body, I would have gone to either the paratroopers or the Golani or the Armored Forces, because socially I would have had no other option," Marzel explained the situation this week.
The only combat. Gur Ben David (Photo: Courtesy of the photographed)
The only player on the team who was not "Jobnik" was Gur Ben David. Lieutenant Gur Ben David for you, fighter pilot. Ben-David was the son of the chairman of the basketball association, Asael Ben-David. He was a young pilot, when he was stationed in Ramat David in the 110 Skyhawks Squadron. : 1. His ticket at Hapoel Tel Aviv; 2. He has not played for two years; 3. He is a pilot, new to the base, and does not know what they will allow him.
Ram was not alarmed, he arrived at the Hapoel basketball center, Ami pulled out and organized the card. He then reached out to the base commander, Zurik Lev, and arranged a training pass for him. Through Gvat / Yagur he returned to the national team and found himself at the European Championships in Spain, alongside his father.
When the alert level rose they did not try to get him from the squadron at all, "I was not an important pilot," he explained this week. The team finished its game against the Turks with a victory and finished the championship seventh. From the field, the players continued to a synagogue in Badlona to be present as the Israeli team in the "Kol Nidrei" prayer. On Saturday they planned to reach the final between Spain and Yugoslavia, at the Palacio de los Deports in Barcelona. At noon, rumors began to circulate that something was happening in the country. It is not yet the cellular age and there were no televisions in the hotel rooms either, so the information flowed from Israeli journalists walking around the lobby and the team's coach, Albert Hemo, who managed to localize on a television that recorded Egyptian television broadcasts. Team manager Amiram Shapira, who had connections in security systems, also provided information. "The feeling was that we would finish soon, that it would be over in hours. We did not understand the magnitude of the blessing," Ben-David repeated this week.
In the evening, Ben-David and Marzel sat down with Dan Shilon, who broadcast the final but also received news from Israel, through the headset.
"There was a sense of urgency but not terrible drama," Ben-David summed up the outbreak of the war.
Pictures that are hard for him to forget.
Itamar Marzel (left) in front of Barry Leibowitz (Photo: Official website, from the book "First Half", photos by Aryeh Kanfer, edited by Uri Sheretzky and Berni Ardov)
The next day, the team began its journey home. First a flight from Barcelona to Rome and from there an EL AL flight to Lod airport. In Rome, the Israeli team already understood what was happening. "The terminal was packed with young Israelis who came with the backpacks to return to Israel. We skipped the backpacks to get to the check-in counter," Ben-David recalled. "Somehow - you know, maybe because I'm a pilot - they gave us priority. I don't know who pulled what strings, but we got on a flight that was loaded far beyond what was allowed. People were sitting on the floor." The captain of the Boeing 707 was Mario Shaked. Two days after landing the plane in Lod, the fighter jet he was piloting was hit and he was killed.
Gur Ben David's older brother, Hemi, was killed in 1957 on the way to Petra, the Red Rock. Gore was then 5. Father Asael, who sat next to him the entire flight, showed no signs of apprehension. In the field, the mother waited and from there the family traveled, in complete darkness, to the base in Ramat David, dropped off the basketball-pilot there, and returned home to Jerusalem.
Cousin was not fit to fly. For three weeks he did not fly, only threw into the basket. The squadron commander, Zvika Hess, told him to wait a bit, offered him a refresher flight. Gur Ben-David insisted, and an argument began between them. Hess came up for discussion at the base headquarters, and Ben-David took advantage of his absence to persuade the squadron's deputy commander, Avraham Villan, to stroke him. On Friday, Ben-David also played against Turkey in Badalona, on Monday afternoon he went on the first operational raid of his life and bombed Fort Said.
He had 28 bombing raids during the war. In Syria, Egypt, it fired missiles, crossed Lake Bradville and reached missile positions from the west. More than once he had an abortion. He dodged missiles, flew in front of a wall of anti-aircraft shells, maneuvering so that the guided anti-aircraft guns would not hit. "There was an incident where the carrier thought I was injured," he recalled this week. "He yelled at me, 'Two, you're burning, jump.'" Ben-David was a tall guy, and was afraid that his knees would knock on the instrument panel when the refuge chair came out of place, so he hesitated a bit. Luckily it turned out that the carrier had an optical fault,Because of the glare of the sun.
There is nothing like a cousin to explain the dissonance: "A 21-year-old guy who came from the heights of the European Championships and falls into this thing. To this day I wonder how I managed to take him in such a cool way. It's not that you go through fears, but I managed to get through it .
After the war, Ben-David returned to basketball and continued the strange combination for many more years. "It is a unique combination in the history of the State of Israel. There were days when in the morning I attacked the Syrian Mount Hermon and in the evening I played with Yad Eliyahu."
They came to take Marzel from the kibbutz. The shock of the Israelis attacking the flight in Rome was replaced by the shock of being told that a pilot, Ben Yagur, had been shot down.
From there he reached the Yemeni field and set out with Arik Sharon's division for sorties in Sinai.
"I got there on Tuesday. I saw 600 soldiers walking around without affiliation. Suddenly a truck arrived and brought loaves of bread. There was an attack on the truck like in Arab armies. I tried with another guy to organize camp life. After a month there was a lull and I went down to Fayed (west of the canal - RA). ), Where I was in the battalion of Giora Lev (later the mayor of Petah Tikva - RA). I was in the supply battalion. An extraordinary experience. "
"We skipped over the backpacks to get to the check-in counter. People were sitting on the floor."
El Al counter in London during the Yom Kippur War (Photo: GettyImages)
Gideon Rice was less fortunate. Rice is ranked 44th on the all-time top scorers list with 3,855 points. Rice came from a family of athletes in Brenner Hill. The eighth Maccabiah champion in the long jump and the Israeli champion four times. On the third day of the war, as commander of a Centrion company, he hijacked a Sager missile in his command tank, near a trading post in the Golan Heights. He lost his forearm and ring finger in his right hand and eye following the injury. The thumb was saved. Following his work in the battle he was awarded the Masterpiece Medal and returned to play after a year of rehabilitation. Luckily he was left-handed and continued to play with 8 fingers and one eye while scoring non-stop.
The war also claimed lives. Yitzhak Hochman, "Hochla", was probably the most famous of them. Khokala starred in Elitzur Tel Aviv's basketball teams and moved to Hapoel Holon before the war when he also joined the national team. He was killed on the official last day of the war, in the unnecessary battle in Suez. and handball, some groups working settlements have been killed in the war.
on Sunday after the outbreak of the war was reported in Maariv naively that the Israeli championship cruise will start on Friday 12th October. more fog of war it was shell shock. 18 sailors foreigners were invited to that in the Israel Open, 11 of whom received during Announcements that the sailing association would not be able to guarantee their safety and canceled their arrival.6 sailors arrived and despite the cancellation of the championship, refused to leave on the grounds that they were safer in the country than in the air.
On Sunday, less than 24 hours after the outbreak of hostilities, the Football Association decided to postpone the opening of the leagues for a week, as most of the footballers were recruited.
Members of the association's management were also recruited and the meetings of the various committees were canceled.
On October 22, the association's chairman, Menachem Heller, announced that the league would be renewed on the first Saturday after the war, with all the teams that the teams will play. "Justice will, in this case, be equal for all teams," he said. Maccabi Jaffa, who served as an aircraft mechanic, said at the time: "A month and a half of training was lost.
You have to wait three weeks to a month after the end of the war to get back in shape. "The opening of the basketball league was postponed for a week and finally began after six months.
Less lucky and still - did not give up basketball.
Gideon Rice (Photo: courtesy of the photographers)
The American actors insisted on staying. 8 days after the outbreak of the war, Mark Turnshain of Hapoel Tel Aviv even donated blood. On October 24, in the midst of preparations, and with the entry into force of the ceasefire, FIBA decided to exempt the Israeli teams from playing in the European Cups and also added the Egyptian team Sport Club Gezira, which then played. In the European framework.
All 6 Israeli groups - 4 men and two women, were determined to be technical losers. Finally, Maccabi Tel Aviv men and Hapoel Tel Aviv women managed to get permission to play because they qualified directly for the second round and were given a time interval.
Maccabi Tel Aviv football coach Yitzhak Shneur, a driver at Dan, was recruited when the fighting broke out and drove for 40 consecutive hours. the battles.
team athletics preparing the first Asian Championships to take place in the Philippines from 18 to 23 November. 30 athletes were supposed to go to the championship, the end came just five. Although the war insisted sports Association show signs of routine, at any price.
In late October, it was decided to resume Football activity in the second round of the Cup quarterfinals on November 10 and 17, five weeks after the outbreak of the war. Seven, for friendly matches.
At the same time, the team resumed its activities without a number of players, including two Maccabi Haifa players, Boma Weinberg and Shaya Schwager.
Weinberg, the purchasing goalkeeper from Rehovot, served as a tanker and was wounded on the 12th day of the war, near Ismailia, by shelling shells in his leg and left hand.
Schwager, a football legend, was also an armorer.
One day, in the Syrian enclave, in utter darkness, someone pulled out of a minefield a lost hand, foot and eye.
No one knew what was going on with Schwager and the rumors lost touch with reality.
There were fans who went out to look for him among the sooty tank skeletons, expecting the worst.
Cup final to open a hinge.
Yohanan Wallach (Photo: National Photo Collection, Moshe Milner)
Former national team and Hapoel Haifa stopper Yochanan Wallach was known for his combat past. From a combat soldier in Nahal he became a car player at the World Cup in Mexico. During the war he found himself recruited for nine months, trained a little at Hapoel Tiberias, went to training only at the end of the season. He went straight to the opening of an axis on Mount Dov.
On the Sunday after the outbreak of the war, he arrived in Rosh Pina. At the Mahnayim junction there was another who directed them to the right to the Golan. I saw our phantoms fall from the Syrian missiles. On the first day there was an atomic mess. "
Wallach had two clashes. The first was the shooting, and the commander of the terrorist cell was killed.
After the war (November 24, 1973), the football league began. Maccabi Haifa received a radius penalty in the disciplinary court and asked to hold its game in the first round against Hapoel Kfar Saba in Kfar Blum, in the Galilee finger. where is. In the second cycle Bloomfield is reached at the last moment, when everyone was already dressed. when he finished the game, showered, went into army uniforms and returned to the Syrian enclave.
only two security guards and two policemen were deposited to maintain order in Kfar Blum, but at any moment they crossed reservists longitude Even after a soldier broke into the field and demanded that he whistle for Pendel, Finkelstein insisted on ending the game when he scolded the soldier. In the absence of Weinberg, Schwager, Moni Adler and Shlomo Benado, Haifa 2 and marked for herself the continuation of a very difficult season.
"Take advantage of the situation" - Makhanes and Maccabi Netanya won the championship at the end of the season
Two weeks earlier, the Cup games had resumed. Tzafririm Holon, as mentioned in the third division, hosted the power champion RAJ. Only four of its car players showed up for the concluding training session. Actors and Sharaf said that "it is not a matter of starting like this". All the teams started the games with youth players in the lineup.
Nor did the association's decision to allow 3 exchanges during the emergency period soothe much resentment among the groups. In the second round, Betar Jerusalem defeated Hapoel Jerusalem 1: 5 in a derby, taking the hegemony in the city. 160 footballers and seven coaches were recruited with the renewal of the season.
On December 20, after four rounds in which Hapoel Jerusalem scored only one point and threatened to suspend games The freeze will not be announced, the association decided to hold test games at the end of the season: the last two in the first league and the first two in each district in the first division,In a one-round league method.
It was a weird season. Teams with talented youngsters, such as Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Netanya, took advantage of the lack of stars in the rivalry to create an arrowhead. It took a long time for Hapoel Jerusalem to recover, and the last two emerged as Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel Tel Aviv. Hapoel called Roni Calderon from France, who rescued her from tests, and the champion, Hakoach Raj, entered the cauldron, finding herself in the tests. The season ended with the Maccabi Netanya championship starring the boy Oded Makhanes, but also in one of the most violent games in the history of football, the semi-final match between Hapoel Petah Tikva and Betar Jerusalem at the Stable Stadium, which is also remembered as "Night of the Tubes".
Many Betar fans came to the game, knocked down the perimeter fence and beat the Hapoel Petah Tikva players. Hapoel Petah Tikva's newcomer, Boris Norman, ran to the dirt embankment, jumped from it to the wall and from there grabbed a taxi and arrived home. Uzi was, yet, you know, there was a war here.