That Yom Kippur Feelin'

Yoel Marcus, also in Haaretz, has an interesting column comparing 2006 to 1973:

Let's start with our boastfulness and arrogance before the war. We mocked Anwar Sadat's dramatic announcement in the Egyptian parliament that he was prepared to sacrifice a million solders to win back the territories conquered by Israel. We said, at the time, that it was just hot air, that he wasn't strong enough to go to war on his own - because our celebrated intelligence network didn't know that while we were sitting here bragging, Syria was secretly planning a revenge attack on Israel in cahoots with Egypt.

By the same token, we never imagined that Hezbollah, a measly gang of terrorists, all of 2,000 men, would be more prepared for a showdown than we were, and would fight back tooth and nail despite being equipped with weapons that are bows and arrows compared to our arsenal....

In both cases, Israel was taken by surprise and fell victim to what became known as "The Conception" - in a nutshell, the belief that "they wouldn't dare."

This, of course, isn't an Israeli conceit alone. The US went in to Iraq with much the same mindset, and look what it got them.

It's difficult to overstate how badly Israeli intelligence has fallen down on the job - both today, and most especially in 1973. In Israel, the result was then (and may be now) the fall of a government and, eventually, the rise of Likud. For the US, this isn't an option - the Americans missed their "accountability moment", unless the Dems are ballsy enough to talk impeachment.

It's hard to imagine what a leader could to that would be more of a reason to be removed from office, besides leading the country in to a losing war. And yet whenever there's talk of opposing politicians in the US who continue to support the Iraq disaster, the Press repeats accusations of treason. What kind of Bizarro land do we live in again?