 stop both the Egyptian and Syrian armies in their tracks, and start their own advance almost immediately.
The war ended with Israeli forces 70 miles from Cairo, and less than 20 miles from Damascus. As for the Israeli air force, its strength over the battlefields was certainly blunted by concentrated anti-aircraft missiles and guns, but its air-combat supremacy prevented almost all attacks by the large Egyptian and Syrian air forces, while allowing it to bomb heavily almost at will. That was the real military balance of the 1973 war, which was obscured at the time by an over-reaction to Israel being taken by surprise and the usual fog of war.
The situation today, with the Lebanon war just ended, is the same. Future historians will no doubt see things much more clearly, but some gross misperceptions are perfectly obvious even now. That even the heaviest and best protected of tanks are sometimes penetrated by the latest anti-tank missiles should really not surprise anyone - they cannot be invulnerable, but still did well |
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| Future historians will see things much more clearly, but gross misperceptions of this Lebanon war are perfectly obvious even now |
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enough in limiting Israeli casualties. Likewise, the lack of defences against short-range rockets with small warheads is unsurprising. Such weapons are just not powerful enough to justify the expenditure of many billions of dollars for laser weapon systems the size of football fields.
Many commentators repeated and endorsed Nasrallah's claim that his Hezbollah fighters fought much more bravely than the regular soldiers of Arab states in previous wars with Israel. In 1973 after crossing the Suez Canal, Egyptian infantrymen by the thousand stood their ground unflinchingly against advancing 50-ton Israeli tanks, attacking them successfully with their puny hand-held weapons. They were in the open, flat desert, with none of the cover and protection that the Hezbollah had in their stone-built villages in Lebanon's rugged terrain. Later, within the few square miles of the so-called "Chinese farm" near the Suez Canal, the Israelis lost more soldiers against the Egyptians in a single day and night than the 116 - including the victims of accidents and friendly fire - 
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