We were never freed from that war, the one that touched the terror of Jewish existence, as the poet Haim Gori said. Everyone who lived then remembers that alarm, which at two o'clock in the afternoon pierced the silence of Yom Kippur and shocked an entire country. Everything changed after that war, which began with a terrible surprise and ended against all odds with a crushing victory on both fronts - Egypt and Syria.
On the 50th anniversary of the war that shook Israel, we chose to focus on its chronological documentation from the distance of time. With the help of documents, protocols, intelligence reports, IDF investigations, testimonies from the battlefields, recordings from the command rooms, diaries, archives, government and cabinet meetings, we sought to return to that war that everyone who lived during its time still carries with them its memories.
The war claimed more than 2,500 dead, more than 7,000 wounded, about 300 prisoners, 16 who are still defined as missing and tens of thousands of families whose lives have changed forever.
The State of Israel has never returned to being the same state it was on the eve of the Yom Kippur War. Although it ended in an Israeli victory, it left behind a national trauma and a painful scar. A 50-year-old scar.
