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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/20496/full/20496/surprises-questions-arise-over-yom-kippur-war-transcripts/ <br /><br /> <b>Surprises, questions arise over Yom Kippur War transcripts</b> <br /> Friday, September 5, 2003 | by <p>GIL SEDAN </p> <br /><br /><p>JERUSALEM—Almost 30 years after the Yom Kippur War, the ghosts of wars past threaten to haunt Israeli society.</p> <p> Previously undisclosed documents from the battles that cost Israel 2,587 lives in October 1973 were published recently by two Israeli newspapers, reviving the old debate about who was responsible for the tragedies that befell Israel in the early, gloomy days of the war.</p> <p> The release of the information also has breathed new life into the question of whether Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, then a military commander, was the war's real hero.</p> <p> Ma'ariv and Yediot Achronot published transcripts from recordings of communication systems under the aegis of Shmuel Gonen, head of the Israeli army's Southern Command.</p> <p> Gonen, who died several years ago, had entrusted the tapes to two of his wireless operators during the war, Amir Porat and Yitzhak Rubinstein. The two released the tapes to the competing newspapers before the weekend, and each devoted large segments of its weekend edition to the recordings.</p> <p> Despite the thousands of words they generated, the tapes contained few new revelations.</p> <p> Gonen was singled out by the Agranat Inquiry Commission, which was appointed to investigate the war, as one of the officers responsible for the fact that Israel was caught unprepared by the invading Egyptian army.</p> <p> Top political leaders, including Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, came out clean in the inquiry.</p> <p> Their lack of culpability left Gonen bitter and angry.</p> <p> Among the more notable revelations in the articles was Porat's statement that Gonen had told him he wanted to assassinate Dayan for avoiding responsibility for the war and allowing military commanders—like Gonen and the Israel Defense Forces' chief of staff, Gen. David "Dado" Elazar—to take the fall.</p> <p> Gonen reportedly dropped his assassination plan after he saw that Dayan received bad press in connection with the war.</p> <p> Though the tapes don't contain much new information, their release is fueling public pressure on the Israel Defense Forces to release the army's official history of the Yom Kippur War.</p> <p> The military document was completed nearly a decade ago, but was made top secret. Five years ago, the document was downgraded to classified, but the army still has refrained from publishing it. </p> <p> </p>

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