I have expected The Military Channel to deliver factual, historically-accurate programming. But the program in question betrayed that expectation.

The program had as its subject the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and, ostensibly, its desperate tank battles. Yet it was plain that the real objective was to re-mold history to fit an agenda. The producers and writers of this piece selectively omitted or glossed over relevant facts in the hot pursuit of delivering two misconceptions as truths: (1) that the war was Israel's fault and (2) that Egypt and Syria won it.

Depicting Israel in the most negative light possible was a constant theme. Overlooking the negatives of the Arab side was another.

The end product was a falsehood, despite its inclusion of many true facts.

Some observations of historical inaccuracies and oversights in the presentation:

1. The program barely mentioned that the attack was scheduled for the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, preferring instead to call it the "October War of 1973" that started on "the seventh day of Ramadan".

2. Israel was said to have had only a "half-hearted" interest in peace with its Arab neighbors following its crushing victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. To the contrary, Israel immediately offered to negotiate a return of the captured territories in exchange for peace and diplomatic recognition by the Arabs, and there was nothing to prevent those territories from becoming an absorption point for the Palestinian refugees (that the Arab states steadfastly refused to absorb and resettle, one must add) or indeed nothing to prevent it from even becoming the locus of a Palestinian state. The answer to the Israeli offer was delivered at a meeting of all the Arab states in Khartoum in August 1967 and it was in plain language. It was the famous "Three No's": no peace, no recognition, no negotiations.

So in reality, who was adamant and intransigent?

The truth is that the Israelis have stood ready to talk peace all along, with anybody -- no matter how untrustworthy and no matter that the party's recorded objectives have been to use negotiations to ultimately destroy Israel. Witness the Oslo Accords with Yasir Arafat as proof. (Arafat continued to make statements to the Arabic press that the accords were just a new strategy toward the immutable goal of eliminating Israel.) And the offer made by Ehud Barak to the same Arafat in October 2000 to grant almost all of Arafat's demands and create a sovereign Palestinian nation -- asking only in return that Israel receive a complementary guarantee of recognition and peace. Tellingly, Arafat refused and stormed out of Camp David claiming the offer was an insult and the cause for renewed war.

3. Speaking of the 1967 war, the program described it solely as a *surprise attack by Israel* !! The lowest levels of intellectual honesty require the following additional facts:
a) Egypt, Jordan and Syria were, on that very day, going to launch an unprovoked surprise attack on Israel from every direction.
b) Israel's pre-emptive attack just hours before the Arabs' planned invasion was eminently sensible, justified and necessary.
c) In short, Israel fought a *defensive* war in June 1967.

4. The program dwelt at length on the successful surprise attack by Egypt across the Suez Canal, overwhelming the Israeli defenders. Only barely mentioned at all was the fact that half of the Israeli positions were unmanned. Never mentioned was the fact that the Egyptians attacked with 100,000 men against 10,000 Israeli defenders. That a 10:1 ratio in men and tanks would produce a victory is in no way remarkable, but the program fairly crowed about how the success was due to the Egyptian army's prowess in battle.

In the Golan Heights the Syrians attacked with five divisions against two Israeli armored brigades -- less than a single division. Yet in ferocious fighting those brigades -- outnumbered more than 5-to-1 -- stopped the Syrians cold. As the program did mention blandly, an Israeli relief force of just 13 fresh tanks was all that was needed to rout the remaining Syrians at that point.

And though the program could not help but report that the Israelis did finally "regain the initiative" it left unremarked that the Israeli Defense Force did so by meeting the Egyptian army on equal footing in the middle of the Sinai penninsula with a stunning result: the IDF sliced through the Egyptian front decisively and drove all the way to, and across, the Suez.

5. No maps were displayed to show the movement of forces or the distances involved. Israel conceded fully *half* of the Sinai Penninsula to the Egyptian army before its decisive counterattack. Its drive to and across the Suez Canal was no short hop. Its envelopment of the Egyptian Third Army in Suez City was a stupendous achievement.

6. Likewise unmentioned by the program was the fact that the IDF drove a wedge through the air-defense shield of SAM sites defending Cairo and the whole western side of the Suez Canal. The Israeli Air Force gained complete superiority of the battle space at that point and could have bombed Cairo. But, of course, the Israeli government again showed restraint in exploiting its victories.

7. The Egyptian forces left in the Sinai Penninsula were stopped cold and their supply lines across the Suez Canal were cut by the IAF. The complete retreat or reduction of those forces was just a matter of time.

8. A retired Egyptian general opined that the war was of course a victory for Egypt. If otherwise, he asked, why didn't the IDF enter Cairo? This was, at best, an argument from silence.

But it sounded much like the general in WWI who tried to put a positive spin on his performance by reporting that "the offensive did not lose any ground".

Perhaps to avoid factual distractions from its flawed premises, the program left unreported the involvement of the superpowers in the backroom battles of the war.

When the Arabs were enjoying their initial successes the US asked the Soviet Union to pressure them into ceasing offensive operations. The Soviets falsely replied that they had no say in their clients' decisions. When the fortunes of war reversed two weeks later and the Israelis were across the Suez, it was the Soviets' turn to demand that the US bring Israel to a stop. When the US demurred using the same language the Soviets had used two weeks earlier, the Soviets threatened to deploy a Russian paratroop division to aid the Egyptians. In response, the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division was put on alert. Those soldiers were fully loaded and ready to go. They spent several hours on the tarmac awaiting the final order to take off. Ultimately, the US and Russia agreed to pressure all the belligerents into a ceasefire. And the 82nd stood down.

*That* is why the Israelis did not destroy the Egyptian army in detail and did not move on Cairo.

9. Finally, the program misunderstood the aftermath of the war.

Egypt never did recapture the Suez Canal. Their war was a failure. Months later Israel disengaged under pressures (and guarantees) from the superpowers and withdrew all the way back to the middle of the Sinai Penninsula, *giving* the Canal back to Egypt. In 1975 the Canal reopened and Egypt again began receiving desperately-needed revenues from it.

The war was a double failure for Egypt because it never had the effect of forcing Israel to the negotiating table. In fact, it had the opposite effect: it forced Sadat to the negotiating table. With a defeated army, a ruined reputation, a devasted economy, and Soviet sponsors unwilling to fund another military debacle, he found he had no choice. In 1978 he travelled to Israel and essentially sued for peace. And Israel gladly accepted.

They returned the whole of the Sinai to Egypt in return for peace -- as they had always said they would.

The war and all its deaths had been for naught. Egypt could have achieved all its aims via negotiations at any time. It was Egypt that was wedded to the idea of war with Israel -- never the other way around.

With all these blatant omissions, the program was fatally flawed and should never have been aired. It wasn't history. It was propaganda. Is that what The Military Channel wanted to present?