Business Innovation from Israel's Masters of Espionage

Chapter 7. Genius Corps

Hebrew University, Jerusalem, circa 1974…

The nation was reeling. The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 had been a terrible shock, putting Israel perilously close to disaster. An inflated sense of military invincibility in tandem with an arrogantly held conviction, known as Haconzeptzia (the concept), was at fault. This concept stemmed from the belief that the humiliating blow the Arabs suffered in 1967 would prevent them from engaging in an all-out war they could not win. It did not take into consideration that despite their huge losses, the Arabs could regain their composure and in fact execute a coordinated, motivated attack. Holding fast to this theory had prevented the Israelis from correctly assessing the pileup of ...