Summary
David Elazar, in Lahav’s account: Israel’s chief of staff in the Yom Kippur War, whom the Agranat Commission held responsible for the failure to foresee the attack — on an essentially strict-liability standard — and recommended be discharged, while finding neither Golda Meir nor Moshe Dayan personally negligent (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2552-2791).
Details
- The commission held the military command had all the information necessary to foresee the attack but was blinded by “the conception”: Egypt would not go to war until its air power matched Israel’s, other Arab states would not move without Egypt, and the regular army could absorb an attack until reserves mobilised (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2620-2700).
- Simon Agranat recalled a sleepless night before signing the recommendation concerning Elazar, worried it failed to recognise Elazar’s successful military leadership throughout the war, but would not dissent against the commission’s unanimity (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2695-2760).
- Military officers believed Dayan had developed a separate legal defense portraying himself as an innocent civilian misled by his experts, and that the commission’s two former generals favoured Dayan; Elazar’s former mentor Yigal Allon fed the press negative evaluations of the findings (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2647-2740).
Related pages
Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, Agranat Commission, Yom Kippur War, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir