The Supreme Court declined today to tell the army how to go about assimilating the lessons of the Yom Kippur War. Justice Meir Shamgar ruled that the matter was not one in which the court could intervene since it was not qualified to say what was or was not a reasonable and acceptable way for the army to approach a military problem.
The court’s intervention was sought by Capt Mordechai Ashkenazi. a prominent critic of the conduct of the October, 1973 war. Capt. Ashkenazi commanded the only position on the Barlev line that did not fall to the Egyptian assault across the Suez Canal on the first day of the war. He applied to the court to order the army to conduct a study of the war’s operations and errors. Ashkenazi, as a leader of the post-war protest movement over how the war was conducted, is credited with having had a role in prompting the resignations of Premier Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.
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