Elazar: ‘an Injustice Has Been Done to Me. I Do Not Accept Some of the Main Findings….’

Gen, David Elazar strongly defended his actions as Chief of Staff on the eve of the Yom Kippur War last night against the partial report of the Agranat Committee which found him responsible for the Israeli army’s lack of preparedness. “An injustice has been done to me. I do not accept some of the main findings of the committee against me.” Elazar declared in his letter of resignation, submitted to the Cabinet after the report was made public late last night and which he subsequently read to his fellow officers before taking leave of his office.

Elazar charged that the committee had gone astray by confusing the definition of authority of the Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff. The Defense Minister, he said, had full operative authority, and all plans and decisions were brought to him prior to the war. It was only during the actual combat that the responsibility was entirely in the hands of the Chief of Staff, he said.

Elazar received a telegram of support from Yitzhak Ben Aharon, one of the Labor Party’s most outspoken dissidents who agreed that the Agranat Committee had been misled into directing its criticism against the army and not against those with parliamentary responsibility for the mishaps.

In his letter. Flazar said: “The committee found that according to information in his hands, the Chief of Staff should have called for a partial mobilization of reserve forces at the beginning of the week preceding the war in order to maintain the proper balance between enemy forces deployed against as and our forces. I submit that both during the time that I have been Chief of Staff and before then, the Israel Defense Forces did not maintain the proper balance because of a series of basic reasons well-known to all the responsible parties concerned. Among these there was a reliance on warnings by our intelligence. This time there was no such warning and the committee has not established that the lack of such warning was my fault.”

DENIES LACK OF PROPER DEFENSE PLAN

Elazar continued. “I deny the findings of the committee that a proper defense plan in detail was not prepared in case regular forces would have to fight alone to stop the enemy simultaneously on the northern and Egyptian fronts. The truth is that there was such a plan for both fronts. The plan was well known and rehearsed even by lower command levels.”

Elazar denied the report’s assertion that no clear instructions were given to the southern and northern commands on how to meet enemy attacks. He also challenged the committee’s contention that on the eve of the war he had asked for only a partial mobilization for defenses and that he had overestimated the regular army’s ability to repel a two-front attack without support from the reserves. He said that he had in fact demanded full mobilization based on “my evaluation of the need for forces in case of war for which purpose counter-attacks would be an integral part of an efficient defense.”

Elazar concluded: “It is beyond my understanding why the committee is of the opinion that I should have reached the conclusion that the reserve forces should have been mobilized on Oct.? while the Defense Minister could not come to the same conclusion when we both had the same information and when no one in the General Headquarters thought or suggested the call up of the reserves. There is no other way but to assume that the committee did not treat the two of us by the same yardstick.”

Elazar’s resignation ended a distinguished military career that began in the early 1940s when the Yugoslav-born officer came to Palestine and joined the Palmach, the striking arm of the Jewish community’s underground defense force. Haganah. Choosing to make the military his career, he joined the Israeli army when the State was established in 1948 and rose steadily in rank. In the 1967 Six-Day War. Elazar was commander of the Syrian front and led the attack which captured the Golan Heights. He was named Chief of Staff on the retirement of Lt Gen. Haim Barley in Jan. 1972.