Agranat Commission - The Commission

The Commission

The commission was an official National Commission of Inquiry appointed by the Israeli government to investigate the circumstances leading to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. The Committee was headed by Shimon Agranat, Chief Justice of Israel's Supreme Court. Its other members were Justice Moshe Landau, State Comptroller Yitzchak Nebenzahl, and former Chiefs of Staff Yigael Yadin and Chaim Laskov. The Committee sat for 140 sessions, during which they listened to the testimony of 58 witnesses. It was established on 21 November 1973 with a remit to investigate:

1. The intelligence information for the days preceding the Yom Kippur War on the enemy's moves and intentions to launch the war, the evaluation of this information, and the decisions taken by the responsible military and civil authorities in response thereto.
2. The general deployment of the IDF in case of war, its state of readiness during the days preceding the Yom Kippur War, and its operations up to the containment of the enemy.

It did not examine the later stages of the war when the IDF went on the offensive.

On 31 December 1973 elections which had been delayed by the war took place. Likud a new political party won 39 seats in the Knesset. Newly elected Member of Knesset and one of the Likud founders, Reserve General Arik Sharon gave a newspaper interview in which he was quoted as saying that he would disobey orders that he felt were against the interests of the State or his subordinates. This caused so much public concern that Sharon was asked to appear before the Commission which accepted his testimony that the quote was in the context of a specific event which occurred under very exceptional circumstances.