Israel loses the 1973 war

Lusitania

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The reason the French were the Isreali main backers was because the French were fighting the Algerian separatist and rebels who were coincidently being supplied and financed by none other than Egypt so the French supplied Israel with not only weapons but also secretly provided them the detonator for nuclear bomb. It was not till the mid 1960s that the French now expelled out of Algeria decided to cut ties with the Israelis at which time the US had taken up Israel as it main supporter.

In 1967 the Israelis had attacked the Arab armies in a pre-emptive strike to eliminate the threat of being attacked. In 1973 during the preceding 6 months to the war the Israeli armed forces had mobilized several times in response to Egyptian and Syrian military maneuvers but in each time the arabs had stood down and Israeli responded like wise (Israeli mobilization means that country basically stops as majority of able bodied men were called up to serve). The Israelis were warned by both US and Europe not do the same thing so it was forced to play the waiting game while it was being continually threatened.
 
What State?

The goal was the destruction of the State of Israel.

So when that looks plausible, yep, Cairo, Aswan Dam, Damascus, Baghdad, Riyadh, along with Medina and Mecca, with a strong possibility for a few towards the USSR. It's estimated they had between a dozen to 21 bombs at this point

Yes, the Samson Option was ugly

As soon as the US hear about the first detonation by Israel in Soviet union POTUS will use the hot line to Moscow and tell Moscow Israel will not have any support from USA. Then POTUS will go live on air and tell the American people that Israel have nuked Soviet and that American can not be allied with such a rouge nation.
 

Lusitania

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As soon as the US hear about the first detonation by Israel in Soviet union POTUS will use the hot line to Moscow and tell Moscow Israel will not have any support from USA. Then POTUS will go live on air and tell the American people that Israel have nuked Soviet and that American can not be allied with such a rouge nation.

I am sorry but the plight of Israel being invaded by Arab "warmongering" nations would be headline news and great pressure would of been put on the American government to intervene. There was no way the US or even Europe would of allowed the Arab countries to invade Israel proper. They would not of allowed the second holocaust to take place.* Israel right to exist was indisputable. Same as the US if it was being invaded by foreign power it would of felt it in its power to defend its self with what ever means available.

* Western news organization and those sympathetic to the Jewish state would of framed the invasion of Israel by countries on record stating they wanted the destruction of Israel as second holocaust.

Note: we have to think that in 1973 the WW2 had only ended less than 30 years and the horrors of the Nazi atrocities was still fresh in peoples minds. Plus the negative attitudes in regards to the occupation of the gaza and West Bank was not formed (only start in 1980s)
 
Sadat's troops actually achieved most of their initial goals, but the Syrians failed by the numbers after a brief initial surprise surge. When the IDF managed to get its feet back under it they tore into the Syrians with a will, leading Damascus to scream for help from Egypt. Sadat sent his forces forward, out of their SAM coverage

Lack of SAM coverage wasn't the main cause of defeat on October 14, 1973. Btw recent works say the magnitude of the setback was exaggerated.

If Sadat leave the Syrian Keystone Kops to their fate, he gets a tactical victory, at the cost of the entire Arab world hating him to the 10th Generation,

In fact, as Shazly pointed out, the Egyptian attack of the 14th wasn't necessary to help Syria since Iraqi reinforcements had already diverted the advancing Israelis.
 
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If the Syrian army had moved to seize strategic objectives instead of getting bogged down beating up the overstretched joke that was Israel's supposedly awesome military, yeah, the Arabs would have won.

After breaking through, the Syrians should have gone straight for the Jordan river crossings and thus prevented Israeli reserves from reaching Golan. Btw Syria shouldn't have deployed for an attack as early as september since that caused Israel to send the 7th to reinforce Golan. With just the 188th there Syrian armor would've had a much esasier time.
Egypt should have avoided squandering its armor and troops in a series of futile attacks and kept more of the 21st, 4rth and 6th in reserve.
 
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Syria's contribution to the war and it's rather embarrassing defeat show that it's unlikely to be a real winner in any scenario in the 1973 war,

Syria would've stood a chance had it not made a number of mistakes before the war and during it. After breaking through in the central Golan, Turkmani should've gone straight for the Jordan river bridges.

if anything the only way the two powers 'win' is if Egypt just remains under their SAM defence net on the western side of the Sinai and doesn't try the offensive towards Southern Israel as they did in real life that resulted in massive losses.

I assume you're referring to the failed offensive of October 14, 1973. It was toward the central ridge in Sinai, not southern Israel, lol. Btw recent works say the magnitude of the disaster has been overhyped--although it certainly was a key factor in defeat.


Syria probably always loses, and probably always fails to take and hold the Golan heights if just due to technological inferiority

Syrian technology was adequate, and not bad for the time--T-62 tanks (more than Egypt had) SAM-6s, Shilkas, good 130mm guns, night vision gear etc.

Their best bet really is to take the heights if they somehow break through and then just wait there,

Agreed.
 
No.

America was the first nation to recognize Israel as a state.




https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/232949/american-public-opinion-holocaust.aspx




https://muse.jhu.edu/article/43122

Why would you speak to someone in such a condescending way when you aren't even correct in making such a bold assertion?
@Father Maryland reacted to a comment that transported the result of the process you rightly describe to an earlier date. Yes there was already widespread civil support of the jewish cause, but not as dominating and everything overrulling in government, as presented earlier. That is anachronistic and simplistic. The period directly after WW II was an era where if you want to see a principle at work in US foreign policy, you could say it is brinkmanship. Why did the US recognise Israel so quickly? To not let them fall in the USSR sphere, which was a possibility not inconceivable at the time as some other posters also mentioned. I think that was a more determining factor than any internal sympathy. That the US government at that point in time was stil balancing it's middle eastern policy with the Cold War as leading principle is shown in my eyes best in 1956. 56 also shows that until that period there were other influential (at least that's what they thought) players at work in the middle east. Another complication missed.
 
There is a scenario where the Egyptian attackers can do better. Sadat did not take it because of what he saw as his obligation to the Syrians. Egypt and Syria, although acting in concert, had very different goals for the war, although Sadat made statements about liberating all of the territory seized in '67 what he really wanted was to get back the Sinai and have the U.S. and maybe the Soviets broker a long term peace deal. Syria, on the other hand, wanted to stomp the Israelis, get back the Golan, "liberate" the West Bank, and put Israel in as tough of a position as possible
yes, people tend to forget that Egypt's goal in the 73 war was not 'destruction of Israel', but 'get back the Sinai'. And they might have done that if they hadn't been tempted to move outside the 'box' they had set up along the Canal. Syria, OTOH... one of the big 'what ifs' of history has to be just what they intended to do if they had broken through the Golan Heights and gotten down into Israel proper...
 

CalBear

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Lol, not according to Shazly; btw even Gamasy in the end denounced him as a traitor.
Of course he is/was seen as a traitor, he made peace with Israel. He didn't take back Gaza, he didn't recover the West Bank, and, worst of all, the Peace he signed left the Israelis in control of the Old City.

Now the reality is, outside of the need to placate the "Arab street" NONE of those secondary issues are, in any way, important to Egypt. Gaza was a nightmare, even in '73, the West Bank and the Palestinian population was no more strategically critical to Egypt at the time than it was to Andorra, and the only way to get the Old City back in 1973 was to pry it out of Israel's hands (something that WOULD have set off the Sampson Option, mainly because it would mean that Israel was about to be cut in half and rolled up).
 

CalBear

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No.

America was the first nation to recognize Israel as a state.




https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/232949/american-public-opinion-holocaust.aspx




https://muse.jhu.edu/article/43122

Why would you speak to someone in such a condescending way when you aren't even correct in making such a bold assertion?
I reckon he said that because it was true.

Review my earlier post on U.S.-Israeli relations. It wasn't until LBJ took office that U.S.policy shift for a mild "pro-Arab" bias to on weighted towards Israel.
 
Syria, OTOH... one of the big 'what ifs' of history has to be just what they intended to do if they had broken through the Golan Heights and gotten down into Israel proper...

To my knowledge, they never had any intention of entering Israel proper. It was tough enough just to get back the Golan. The '67 border made the best possible defense line when Israel's forces, once fully mobilized, were considerably stronger.
 
I reckon he said that because it was true.

Review my earlier post on U.S.-Israeli relations. It wasn't until LBJ took office that U.S.policy shift for a mild "pro-Arab" bias to on weighted towards Israel.

I reckon this

It took decades of concerted PR effort to get the West to really give a shit about the holocaust. In the immediate post war world the Holocaust just wasn't really a factor in common conception.

is blatantly false.

Yes, context is everything. To claim however that the US, right after the formation of the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, would just not give a shit about another genocide of the Jews occurring a mere three years after the end of the Holocaust is just absurd. The West did give a shit about the Holocaust, and not subsidizing the state of Israel to the tune of billions of dollars upon its inception, or even taking a hard-line diplomatic approach towards supporting the new state towards whatever ends, does not therefore allow anyone to conclude that the US and Co. would sit idly by and let hundreds of thousands of more Jews die in another genocide.

The American public gave a shit about the Holocaust, and you can bet they'd give enough shits to intervene over another genocide. If you disagree, why?

That comment is a response to this, for reference.

2, even if things DID degenerate to such a situation, which I find extremely unlikely, the USA not 3 years ago finished beating the shit out of an evil fascist regime that tried to exterminate Jews. What do you think their response will be to even a hint of someone attempting to exterminate a bunch of Jews?
More likely, one of two things happens: The US steps in and mandates that the Jewish forces sit down, shut the Hell up, and let the Arab majority run the damn useless marshland; or, the Soviets make flexing motions and the US doesn't have enough nukes ready to deploy yet, so the US evacs the Jewish civilian population and says "hey, we're, uh, ending immigration quotas for Jews, come here and you're all cool with us, OK?"
You have an extremly rosy view about how ethnic cleansing works,or how much worth of any goodwill of the west was when shit hits the fan. the yews didn't believe it would save their hides,and considering what utter disgrace the western actions were before,during and after the holocaust they were probably right about that.
 
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CalBear

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To those who seem to think that the U.S. was poised from the get-go to bail the Israelis out, consider this. Early on during the Syrian attack in the Golan the IDF had a TOTAL of 3,000 troops and under 200 tanks facing off with FIVE full Syrian Divisions. The 6th Fleet and its two CBG did nothing. Two days into the war, with the Egyptians still holding initial gains, and the Syrians actually overlooking the Jordan River the Israelis started to beg the U.S. for resupply and aid because the cupboard was getting pretty bare. The American response was "sounds like you might want to negotiate a cease-fire" in that case.

It wasn't until the Israelis very ostentatiously started to assemble their special weapons in a manner that was virtually certain to come to the attention of U.S. intel assets that Nixon jumped in.
 

CalBear

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I reckon this



is blatantly false.

Yes, context is everything. To claim however that the US, right after the formation of the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, would just not give a shit about another genocide of the Jews occurring a mere three years after the end of the Holocaust is just absurd. The West did give a shit about the Holocaust, and not subsidizing the state of Israel to the tune of billions of dollars upon its inception, or even taking a hard-line diplomatic approach towards supporting the new state towards whatever ends, does not therefore allow anyone to conclude that the US and Co. would sit idly by and let hundreds of thousands of more Jews die in another genocide.
Well, the article linked is a single counterpoint to numerous other, equally well respected works by other historians that note that prior to the 1960s there was relatively little interest in the Holocaust, even in the U.S. The article is also entirely confined to the U.S., not the "West" overall.

The question about what the West overall would have done, and how quickly it could have managed it, is an interesting one. The U.S. did have carriers in the Med, but not much in the way of combat personnel. Direct intervention by U.S. forces against a Soviet Ally in that scenario leads to some very worrisome results.
 
Well, the article linked is a single counterpoint to numerous other, equally well respected works by other historians that note that prior to the 1960s there was relatively little interest in the Holocaust, even in the U.S. The article is also entirely confined to the U.S., not the "West" overall.

The question about what the West overall would have done, and how quickly it could have managed it, is an interesting one. The U.S. did have carriers in the Med, but not much in the way of combat personnel. Direct intervention by U.S. forces against a Soviet Ally in that scenario leads to some very worrisome results.


Like the Korean War? The US intervened in a war against a Soviet Ally a mere two years later. How many Americans knew what a Korean was before that intervention, do you reckon?
 

CalBear

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Like the Korean War? The US intervened in a war against a Soviet Ally a mere two years later. How many Americans knew what a Korean was before that intervention, do you reckon?
Well, in 1950 the Soviets had roughly 5 nuclear weapons and ZERO credible delivery systems (the Tu-4 doesn't qualify as a credible intercontinental bomber) while the U.S. had roughly 300. In 1951 the figures were 438 to 25, 1952 840 to 50, 1953 1,169 to 120. Soviets still lacked any sort of delivery system that could threaten the CONUS. In 973 the USSR had ~16,000 nuclear weapons and a number of credible manned and unmanned delivery systems while the U.S. had just under 28,000 (not that it matters once you get over about 400 credibly deliverable weapons it starts to be a "bounce the rubble" and counterforce game. In 1950 there was zero chance of a serious nuclear exchange. To this day I consider it to be proof of a Supreme Being that there was not an exchange in the 1970s-80s.

I'd guess that almost no Americans knew where Korea was, but they did know that the "Commies" were the bad guys and that we'd better stop them over there before they got over here.

Obviously my use of the term reckon has rankled you, for that I apologize.
 

hipper

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Ehh without a massive foreign intervention in 48 there's about a 99 percent chance of complete ethnic cleansing at best or Rwandan style rapid brutal genocide at worst if the Arab armies completely win. Without a much earlier POD their really isn't any likely hood that the Jewish population is allowed to remain/allowed to remain alive.

And since nobody was stupid enough to get sucked into the quagmire that Palestine was at the time that means genocide and ethnic cleansing.

obviously not since zjews continued to live in Jerusalem while the old City was under Jordanian controll
 
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