The Israeli Armored Paradigm in the Yom Kippur War: An Evaluation

摘要

The Yom Kippur War of 1973 saw Israel suffer nearly twice the casualties and triple the duration of the previous war. This is in contradiction to the fact that Israel, following its spectacular success in the Six-Day War of 1967, was in a far better position than it had been in 1967. This work will analyze the problem of Armor preeminence in the Israeli Defense Force first to prove the existence of preeminence, then to qualify its effect in the war and then to qualify its importance in the differing factors between the 1967 and 1973 Wars. This will be done with the purpose of improving the paradigm in historical evaluation of the Yom Kippur War as well as reiterating and reaffirming some older lessons.