
Eighteen Days in October
The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Todd Ross
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By:
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Uri Kaufman
About this listen
October 2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that shaped the modern Middle East. The War was a trauma for Israel, a dangerous superpower showdown, and, following the oil embargo, a pivotal reordering of the global economic order. The Jewish State came shockingly close to defeat. A panicky cabinet meeting debated the use of nuclear weapons. After the war, Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned in disgrace, and a 9/11-style commission investigated the "debacle."
But, argues Uri Kaufman, from the perspective of a half century, the War can be seen as a pivotal victory for Israel. After nearly being routed, the Israeli Defense Force clawed its way back to threaten Cairo and Damascus. In the war's aftermath both sides had to accept unwelcome truths: Israel could no longer take military superiority for granted—but the Arabs could no longer hope to wipe Israel off the map. A straight line leads from the battlefields of 1973 to the Camp David Accords of 1978 and all the treaties since. Like Michael Oren's Six Days of War, this is the definitive account of a critical moment in history.
©2023 Uri Kaufman (P)2023 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
In spring 1936, the Holy Land erupted in a rebellion that targeted both the local Jewish community and the British Mandate authorities. The Great Arab Revolt would last three years, cost thousands of lives, and cast the trajectory for the Middle East conflict. The revolt was the crucible in which Palestinian identity coalesced, uniting all in a single struggle for independence. Yet the rebellion would ultimately turn on itself. British forces' aggressive counterinsurgency took care of the rest, finally quashing the uprising on the eve of World War II.
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Who is this narrator?
- By Rachel S. on 09-23-24
By: Oren Kessler
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The Six-Day War
- The Breaking of the Middle East
- By: Guy Laron
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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One fateful week in June 1967 redrew the map of the Middle East. Many scholars have documented how the Six-Day War unfolded, but little has been done to explain why the conflict happened at all. As we approach its 50th anniversary, Guy Laron refutes the widely accepted belief that the war was merely the result of regional friction, revealing the crucial roles played by American and Soviet policies in the face of an encroaching global economic crisis and restoring Syria's often overlooked centrality to events leading up to the hostilities.
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Laron isn't near as impartial as he thinks he is.
- By Elijah Rose on 11-27-17
By: Guy Laron
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Lioness
- Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel
- By: Francine Klagsbrun
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 32 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Golda Meir was a world figure unlike any other. Born in tsarist Russia in 1898, she immigrated to America in 1906 and grew up in Milwaukee, where from her earliest years she displayed the political consciousness and organizational skills that would eventually catapult her into the inner circles of Israel's founding generation. Moving to mandatory Palestine in 1921 with her husband, the passionate socialist joined a kibbutz but soon left and was hired at a public works office by the man who would become the great love of her life.
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The persistent mispronunciations of Hebrew and Yiddish words ruined this performance
- By YH-O on 12-30-18
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The Price of Glory
- Verdun 1916
- By: Alistair Horne
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there. It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War.
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Epic Account, Masterful in Its Scope, Power and Resonance
- By Ted Shealy on 05-01-24
By: Alistair Horne
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A Peace to End All Peace
- The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
- By: David Fromkin
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 23 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions. All of these conflicts are rooted in the region's political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies after the First World War. Author David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies drew lines on an empty map that remade the geography and politics of the Middle East. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when all seemed possible, he delivers in this sweeping and magisterial book the definitive account of this defining time.
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Still A Great Book On The Topic
- By Nostromo on 02-03-19
By: David Fromkin
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Like Dreamers
- The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation
- By: Yossi Klein Halevi
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 23 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In Like Dreamers, acclaimed journalist Yossi Klein Halevi interweaves the stories of a group of 1967 paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem, tracing the history of Israel and the divergent ideologies shaping it from the Six-Day War to the present. Following the lives of seven young members from the 55th Paratroopers Reserve Brigade, the unit responsible for restoring Jewish sovereignty to Jerusalem, Halevi reveals how this band of brothers played pivotal roles in shaping Israel's destiny long after their historic victory.
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A Clearer Understanding of the Israel
- By deborah on 06-07-14
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Spies of No Country
- Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel
- By: Matti Friedman
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The four spies at the center of this story were part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities. In 1948, with Israel's existence in the balance during the War of Independence, our spies went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a kiosk....
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Absolutely brilliant
- By David Mane on 06-23-19
By: Matti Friedman
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Rise and Kill First
- The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations
- By: Ronen Bergman
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 25 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small....
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Eye Opening
- By Ari Safari on 02-09-18
By: Ronen Bergman
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The Yom Kippur War
- The History and Legacy of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and Its Impact on the Middle East Peace Process
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Bill Hare
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the Middle East conflict, a conflict that is technically 63 years old and counting but has its roots in over 2,000 years of history. With so much time and history, the peace process has become laden with unique, politically sensitive concepts, like the right of return, contiguous borders, secure borders, demilitarized zones, and security requirements, with players like the Quartet, Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, the Arab League, and Israel. Over time, it has become exceedingly difficult for even sophisticated political pundits and followers to keep track of it all.
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A solid, succinct history of the war
- By Nancy on 05-09-25
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Power, Faith, and Fantasy
- America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present
- By: Michael B. Oren
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 27 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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From the first cannonballs fired by American warships at North African pirates to the conquest of Falluja by the Marines, and from the early American explorers who probed the sources of the Nile to the diplomats who strove for Arab-Israeli peace, the United States has been dramatically involved in the Middle East. For well over two centuries, American statesmen, merchants, and missionaries, both men and women, have had a profound impact on the shaping of this crucial region.
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Very pleasantly surprised...
- By Judy on 05-30-07
By: Michael B. Oren
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The Mossad Amazons
- The Amazing Women in the Israeli Secret Service
- By: Michael Bar-Zohar, Nissim Mishal
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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This book describes the turbulent lives, loves, and perilous missions of the greatest Mossad lohamot, the female warriors of the Israeli Secret Service. The stunning feats of these strong, bold women prove that they are equal to men, and often even better. Beside the nation's enemies, they had to fight a painful solitude, an awkward attitude of their male colleagues, and often give up their dream of marriage and children. And still, they brilliantly carried out their missions.
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Boring
- By Marcell Bar-On on 02-06-25
By: Michael Bar-Zohar, and others
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Death of the Wehrmacht
- The German Campaigns of 1942
- By: Robert M. Citino
- Narrated by: Tom Beyer
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions.
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Lucidity!
- By Anonymous User on 08-02-24
By: Robert M. Citino
Mr. Kaufman's always crisp prose occasionally soars to poetic heights, giving striking images of war's terrible beauty. He also has an admirable sense of humor, and his wit is enhanced by the narrator's excellent timing. Another of Mr. Kaufman's gifts is his ability to relate an anecdote that captures a historical figure in a few strokes.
This book is exceptional, a great work of scholarship that is also a page turner. it is worth your time.
I would add that, at the war's end, both Syria and Egypt were not only beaten but vulnerable to further devastating blows. In the fifty years since the war, neither nation has shown any interest in a sequel. Perhaps there is a lesson here for American policymakers who want to see quiet (peace is too tall an order) in the Middle East, that roughest of neighborhoods.
gripping history
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The whitewashing of history with the spin from the politicians and top figures [Meir, Arafat, Assad, Breznev, Nixon/Haig/Kissinger, whose leadership failures were the primary cause of the war, in the first place] is something that can only be detailed with release of the insights like in this book, long after the fact.
In general a very simple truth always holds, "NEVER, EVER, EVER waste any time consuming pol statements or experts working for newsorgs at the time ... the ONLY thing that pols and experts know how to do is to LIE and spin the story ... the cureent news is ALWAYS worse than useless, because it is necessarily going to be a collection of toxic garbage from soothing liars, spun for misleading the public and misleadingly countering the spin of the misleaders.
Insights From Declassified Material
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Thought provoking and entertaining
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Was this a lesson learned?
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Ongoing regional issue
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Great book, boring audio
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It sheds light on the capabilities of Israeli defenses and should serve as a cautionary tale to those who want to engage in hostilities.
An extraordinary telling
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I can't believe it has so few ratings.
First, it is obviously very well researched, and includes facts that emerged only recently. It changed my perception of the Yom Kippur war. I thought of it as a disaster, but now I think of it differently. It also changed my perception of Golda Meir and many others.
Second, it is a well written book. I found it hard to stop listening when I had to get back to work. There are well written history books; and there are well written books, period. This one is of the latter category. Witty, engaging, informative, and with a point of view. Again great writing.
Third, very good descriptions of battles, you can follow along easily; and of personalities, the main characters in this drama. Hard to find both in the same book.
Lastly, I had been listening to this because of the 50 year anniversary of the Yom Kippur war,,, and then October 7 2023 happened. Listening to this helped me both appreciate the magnitude of what just happened by contrasting with 1973 (I learned from this book that in 18 days of war in 1973, 2,222 Israelis died, almost all soldiers; compared to about 1,300 in a single day, a large proportion of them civilian, in 2023) and it was somehow therapeutic, as Israel has been in bad spots before.
Gem of a book - highly recommended!
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Enlightening and Dynamic Read
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Brilliant , filled with facts!
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