40 Years ago

I'm pretty sure that any geopolitical power, anywhere, would find themselves battered and bloody should they try to attack Israel.
Their nuclear armed submarines are sitting on the bottom of the sea, and can do as much damage as any US or Russian counterpart.
Bullies beware!

The only real triumph the arabs attained was surprise....

The Soviets orchestrated the disinformation campaign, the gypo's very publicly had expelled the Soviet advisors and appeared to be refusing to supply weapons....

The Soviets had been training and equiping the Eygpt/Syrian axis for years. The surprise attack, and sophisticated assault crossing of the Suez, the profusion of Saggers and Sam's caught the IDF by surprise. Many IDF had been given leave for the holiday. Mossad was embarrassed big time.....

The gypo's claim to victory involves their reacquisition of the Sinai....the result of making peace not conquest....which they woulda had without a war.

And they failed the test miserably. The United States proved in 1973 that when the chips were down they weren't worth a wet fart to Israel. Israel proved she put more faith in the Americans than in her God.

1. Henry Kissinger managed to talk Golda Meir out of launching a pre-emptive strike of the sort to which Israel owed its victory in 1967.

2. When the Arabs attacked, the generals in charge of the IDF, who had vanquished Nasser's army in 1967, outdid Nasser in his incompetence, and Israel came within a hair's breadth of being driven into the sea. That, if anything was, was their cue to use their nuclear arsenal to destroy Amalek once and for all before he destroyed Israel.

Of course, they did nothing of the kind. Kissinger promised Israel military aid if she would agree to kowtow to Amalek and accept "peace with honour" on Arab terms, which, like the coward she was, Meir agreed to do.

It is to the credit of the wit of the Israeli people that they demanded the IDF's leadership accept responsibility for Israel's humiliation, and Meir and her pack of incompetent ministers along with them. Meir resigned in disgrace early in 1974 and four years later she was dead, never darkening the door of the Knesset again.

At least Meir paid with her career and reputation for nearly going down in history as the woman who signed Israel's death warrant. Nobody in the United States ever did in any meaningful way.

(Meir was replaced by Yitzhak Rabin, who much later would also atone for appeasing Yasir Arafat at Oslo, but that's another story.)

Hopefully they learned a permanent lesson from that, and are prepared to clobber Iran when the time is necessary.

"Nobody in the United States ever did in any meaningful way."

I disagree, Mr. Slater. President Nixon, against the advice of Henry Kissinger, ordered a massive airlift of ammunition and supplies to Israel. He also had USAF F-4 Phantoms and USN A-4 Skyhawks aircraft flown directly to Israel from US bases to replace IAF losses that ocurred during the first few days of combat. Many of these aircraft flew combat missions in American paint with Israeli national ingignia hastily painted over the US "Stars and Bars."

It was because of this airlift that Nixon had the leverage to stop the Israelis from storming farther into Egypt and Syria after 6 days. We now know that the Russians were screaming bloody murder to the US and threatening to step in and prevent the complete destruction of Egypt and Syria.

The challenges to Israel will multiply if Syria falls to the rebels or the Muslim brotherhood were to gain control of Egypt. The only certainty is that Israel can not count on the USA for more than lip service from Obama. If it feels Iran is closing in on a date to parade its first nuclear missile it will do what it has to do and make phone calls afterwards. When you have 7 million Christians surrounded by 125 million Arabs you just do what you have to do. Or die trying.

cgh;

You are being too hard on Dickhead Slater. He knows "stuff" that we peons can only wonder about. I'm waiting for him to release his breathtaking news/intelligence that the Pope was advising Golda to toss the nukes. The guy is really a wonder.