The Arab Alliance Wins The Yom Kippour War!

I wouldn't call 200+KT boosted fission weapons primitive. IIRC that was best estimate for Israel's weapon inventory at the time.

Apologies, I placed the YKW in the early 60s in my head for some reason - the Isrealis had a collection of what were effectively dirty bombs at the point I believe.
 
What about a limited Arab victory? Syria retakes the Golan Heights, digs in and holds the IDF until a ceasefire, In the south Egypt secures the bridgehead over the Suez Canal and prevents the IDF from crossing. At some point the UN would impose a ceasefire and negotiations would follow regarding the status of the Sinaai. This would result in a situation similar to today except Syria has the Golan, Isreal keeps the West Bank and Gaza Strip with continuing Palestininan problems. The Araabs would be in a better position for the next Arab Isreali War perhaps in the late 1970s or the early 1980s. Isreal would have some military lessons to learn.
 
What about a limited Arab victory? Syria retakes the Golan Heights, digs in and holds the IDF until a ceasefire, In the south Egypt secures the bridgehead over the Suez Canal and prevents the IDF from crossing. At some point the UN would impose a ceasefire and negotiations would follow regarding the status of the Sinaai. This would result in a situation similar to today except Syria has the Golan, Isreal keeps the West Bank and Gaza Strip with continuing Palestininan problems. The Araabs would be in a better position for the next Arab Isreali War perhaps in the late 1970s or the early 1980s. Isreal would have some military lessons to learn.

I think that was Egypt's plan... for Sadat, the war was more about breaking the diplomatic logjam and getting talks going than actually conquering Israel. It almost worked... at one point, an American official (whose name escapes me) said that the Arabs had gotten a lot of their honor back, so why not make peace now? Of course, this was before Syria's losses causing the Egyptians to come out of their defenses/Israel's counterattack/drive to the canal with the rolling bridge, etc. made it all irrelevant...
 
I find it hard to believe advancing Arab armies would be involved in mass rapes and murders of innocent civilians in all fairness!:mad:
 
The Arabs never had a chance of winning because declassified Soviet archives revealed that the Soviets never supplied vital components with their more advanced military equipment because the Soviets feared that if Israel was in real danger of collapsing it would trigger a Third World War by dragging the Americans into it but they also feared that the defeat of Israel would change the balance of power in the Middle East that didn't favour their own geopolitical interests, especially when we consider that a sizeable minority of Soviet citizens were Muslims and that Soviets had major problems with rebellious Muslims in places like the Caucasus and their central Asian SSRs.

The Soviets had problems during the RCW because they had problems everywhere. Beyond that the Central Asian SSR's were to some degree the most loyal to the U.S.S.R, whatever the paranoia in Moscow about their growing population. The Chechens wernt a problem until the U.S.S.R itself fell apart & Russia was in a tailspin.

Because most people didn't know at the time that the Soviets had deliberately withheld vital components from their equipment the myth was created that Arabs were utterly incompetent and the Israelis were invincible. In fact, the Yom Kippur War was the equivalent of a boxer fighting five opponents in wheelchairs.

If the Arabs had won the Arabs would've ended up embroiled in a brutal war of occupation not unlike that which the Soviets and the Americans later faced in Afghanistan and the Americans faced in Iraq. In the longer run the Palestinian state would've ended up something like Lebanon is today where the various religious groups control their own areas on a day to day level but a democratically elected central government operates and the key leadership positions are rotated between the two major faiths in that country.

Not really Israel is too small for large-scale partisan warfare, in any event the Arabs wont toalarate a large Jewish population...
 
Two of the reasons the Israelis were caught to badly by surprise were:

a) Egypt lacked the means to power project from the Sinai into the Negev, and

b) The Syrians were too caught up in their hatred of Israelis to bypass the IDF strongpoints in the Golan Heights. Instead of sweeping in and over the Plains of Gallilee into the Israeli heartland, they burned through time and military resources they didn't have to waste destroying one IDF unit after another in the frontlines. These things happen when you fight a war using not your brains but your glands. If the Syrian Army had had the leadership of the Egyptian Army...:eek: Well, instant sunshine.:(:mad:

* Israel was not exactly caught by surprise. There were many warnings and red lights, but Israel was skeptical that the Arabs would invade after their crushing defeat in 1967. However, right before the war, there were various signs detected, including a warning from Ashraf Marwan (Mossad mole in Egypt) and Soviet advisors and their families leaving. Hours before the war, the Israeli cabinet met to debate the issue. Reservists were being called up a few hours before the actual attack began.

* The primary Syrian objective was the conquest of the Golan Heights. The option of an invasion into northern Israel was left open, but it was to be conducted after the Golan was captured. The Syrians did bypass some Israeli strongpoints; IDF actually had heavily-fortified infantry bunkers at the first line of defense, but they were so hard to take and Syrians so intent on advancing that they simply bypassed them. In the end, hugely outnumbered IDF armored forces with air cover stalled the Syrians and made them pay heavily for ground gained until reinforcements showed up.
 
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Sadat never intended to destroy Israel entirely; in fact, his primary war aim was to cross the Suez Canal, hold the eastern passes in the Sinai and then wait for international opinion to turn in his favour, leading to a negotiated peace. This only failed IOTL because he got carried away and ordered an advance across the Sinai desert where the Egyptian tanks were picked off by superior Israeli airpower and artillery.

I'd call a successful Arab war being thus:
Sadat keeps to the original plan and forms a defensive line to the East of the Canal; the Israelis can'y displace them despite Sharon's flying columns (which IOTL came within spitting distance of Cairo).
Israel is forced to come to terms with Egypt but, instead of a bilateral peace which passed IOTL because Egypt was pretty screwed militarily, Carter is able to use Egypt's military strength to force Israel to come to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.

After the peace talks, I'd say a good result being Egypt retaining the Sinai Peninsula with treaty guarantees of the freedom of the Gulf of Aqaba. Syria regains the Golan Heights, which are to be demilitarised, although the Israelis are allowed to maintain armed forces on their border. The West Bank is given to Jordan and the Gaza Strip either given to Egypt at a later date or integrated into Israel.

So no absolute destruction of Israel; in fact, I'd consider those options optimistic for the Arabs.
 
* Israel was not exactly caught by surprise. There were many warnings and red lights, but Israel was skeptical that the Arabs would invade after their crushing defeat in 1967. However, right before the war, there were various signs detected, including a warning from Ashraf Marwan (Mossad mole in Egypt) and Soviet advisors and their families leaving. Hours before the war, the Israeli cabinet met to debate the issue. Reservists were being called up a few hours before the actual attack began.

By this standard the USSR wasn't caught by surprise on 22 June 1941, either. :rolleyes:
 
I know the PLO and Hamas have bad records on killing innocent civilians (like The Zionist State is blameless on this) but national Arab armies with formal structures carrying out mass rapes?:eek:
 
The Israeli perception, and IMHO very much the reality, is that any Arab "victory" would result in the destruction of Israel, the death of many, many Jews, and the forced expulsion of those still alive (without most of their property) to say nothing of the rape of many women (some who die and some who live). The "sympathy" of the world won't prevent that, bring anyone back to life etc - and any bets on how "unwilling" the "sympathetic" world will be about accepting Jewish refugees expelled from "Palestine". Under those circumstances spreading instant sunshine has ZERO downside. At best it stops the attack and allows Israel to survive, at worst it inflicts pain on those who attacked (see Samson in the temple or Masada).

The reality is that an Israel that survives can deal with the diplomatic fallout. A destroyed Israel has no use for sympathy.

The massacre of civilians I see. The mass rapes? Why and how would this be a corollary of Arab victories? Rape is the kind of discipline breakdown Arab armies that have what it takes to actually defeat Israel in a war will not permit. Undisciplined Arab armies will be shitcanned by Israel back over the border.
 
I know the PLO and Hamas have bad records on killing innocent civilians (like The Zionist State is blameless on this) but national Arab armies with formal structures carrying out mass rapes?:eek:

History showed that other national armies with formal structures did similar things to innocent civilians.

Besides that, we currently see that national Arab armies with formal structures have no problem in killing their very own civilians. In particular a certain national Arab army from a neighbouring country of Israel which most likely will be the first to enter Israeli soil...
 
History showed that other national armies with formal structures did similar things to innocent civilians.

Besides that, we currently see that national Arab armies with formal structures have no problem in killing their very own civilians. In particular a certain national Arab army from a neighbouring country of Israel which most likely will be the first to enter Israeli soil...

Mass slaughters, yes. How many did the mass RAPES? The r-word in particular is what he's objecting to. Arab armies were bad, yes, but they weren't the IJA or Wehrmacht in this regard.
 

Yonatan

Banned
So mass murder is ok, mass rape is a no-no? :p

Seriusly now, I have to wonder, why do you think rape specificaly, wont happen on a mass scale? im not saying it would, im just genuinly intrigued as to why the Israeli-arab conflict is rather rape-free. off the top of my head I can think of only 1 possible rape of an Israeli on palestinian, and im not sure about it, and a handfull of palestinian on Israeli, but nowhere is it mass rapes. why is that?
 
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So mass murder is ok, mass rape is a no-no? :p

Seriusly now, I have to wonder, why do you think rape specificaly, wont happen on z mass scale? im not saying it would, im just genuinly intrigued as to why the Israeli-arab conflict is rather rape-free. off the top of my head I can think of only 1 possible rape of an Israeli on palestinian, and im not sure about it, and a handfull of palestinian on Israeli, but nowhere is it mass rapes. why is that?

Because Arab armies cannot defeat Israel with undisciplined armies? They kept trying from 1948 onward and it never worked. To defeat Israel means repairing certain defects in their military structure of the sort where rape would represent precisely the kind of discipline collapses that they need to avoid? Not all armies are the Wehrmacht and encourage people to engage in rape abroad so they don't do it at home.
 

Yonatan

Banned
I ment as far back as 1948, and also the lack of rape committed by Israelis on arab populations. I mention this because I have met plenty of people who are convinced there are mass rapes all the time simply because "that's how occupations work". that is, of course, complete bullshit, but people just dont buy it for some reason.
 
Seriusly now, I have to wonder, why do you think rape specificaly, wont happen on z mass scale? im not saying it would, im just genuinly intrigued as to why the Israeli-arab conflict is rather rape-free. off the top of my head I can think of only 1 possible rape of an Israeli on palestinian, and im not sure about it, and a handfull of palestinian on Israeli, but nowhere is it mass rapes. why is that?

I think that mass rape is less common in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict due to how ethnicity and the conflict are conceptualized. Unlike other conflicts where mass rape has been a factor (the Yugoslav wars and WW2 Eastern Front come to mind) the "conquest" of the other people has never been the point. The racialized conflict of the Eastern Front and former Yugoslavia made rape a way of asserting racial dominance and (especially in ex-Yugoslavia) "conquering" the other side's women and making sure their children would be Croat/Serb/Bosnian.

By contrast, in the Israel-Palestine conflict, both sides are ethnic groups who perceive themselves to be under existential racial threat, sent into (or just returned from) exile, and seeking a return to their homeland. Maintaining purity and identity as an ethnic group- not mixing- is the whole point. The Israel-Palestine conflict is, as I see it, all about conquering the land, if at all possible without the other sides's people. For this reason I can't see mass rape playing a large role in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

If Arab armies enter into Israel in 1973, you might see a lot of Der Yassin in reverse, but I don't think it would resemble 1945 Berlin.
 
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