More than half a century ago, on Yom Kippur, Israel was taken by surprise. Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked, an intelligence conception that had seemed solid collapsed within hours, and a country that entered the holiday with a sense of security emerged from it into war. Since then, Yom Kippur 1973 has become more than a date. It has become the name for a particular kind of failure: a conception, warnings that were not properly understood, a leadership too confident in what it thought it already knew.

After October 7, it was almost impossible not to think of it. Once again, a holiday. Once again, a border believed to be secure. Once again, information existed but failed to become an understanding of what was about to happen. Once again, an entire system woke up inside a reality its assumptions could not explain.

The comparison is necessarily imperfect. The Yom Kippur War was a war between armies. October 7 involved the deliberate massacre of civilians, kidnappings, and attacks on communities. The political, military, and technological circumstances were entirely different. But one similarity is difficult to miss: in both cases, the failure did not begin when the enemy crossed the border. It began earlier, in the way Israel interpreted reality.

There is another difference between the two events, however, and it may matter more now.

After the Yom Kippur War, Israelis fought bitterly over........

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