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Israel takes offensive, bitter battles raging. Syrian armored units bid to counter-attack TEL AVIV — The Chief of Staff, Rav Aluf David Elazar, last night confirmed that the tides of war had turned: that the IDF were now on the offensive on all fronts and that they "would continue to attack and destroy the enemy wherever and whenever he can be found…" Speaking to foreign and local military correspondents at Beit Sokolov, the Chief of Staff indicated that the army would not feel itself bound by any existing boundaries. "The cease-fire line is not marked on the terrain where the fighting is taking place. We are now engaged in battle in that area and will fight wherever necessary in order to destroy the enemy.‘ In reply to an earlier question as to whether he could confirm that Israeli troops had crossed the Suez Canal in pursuit of the Egyptians, the Chief of Staff replied with a laconic, ’Not yet." In his opening statement, Elezar lauded the outstanding fighting qualities of Israel’s regular army which, he said, had blunted the advance of the two enemy armies. "All units fought in an exemplary manner. I think that the soldiers of 1973 are even better than those of 1967, who were better than those on 1956, who were better than those of 1948…‘ He added that reporters would yet ’sing the praises of their exploits for a long time to come…" Elazar said that he could not, for the time being, disclose the number of Israeli casualties. "The quicker we advance and the stronger we attack, the fewer casualties we will suffer and the more the enemy will suffer." Asked about the positions of the forces, Elezar remarked that the fighting was still in progress. But he said that the Syrians had been completely ousted from the sector north of Kuneitra in the Golan. In the Hushniya region in central Golan, where the Syrians had made what he termed as a "very deep penetration,‘ Israel had destroyed part of the invading force and ousted most of the others ’although a few units may be a few hundred meters inside our lines." The same applied to the southern sector of the Heights where some Syrian units were still in the Rafid enclave region. As to the Suez Canal, the Egyptians, still held three bridgeheads (minus bridges) but are surrounded and they have retreated from some of the areas held by them earlier. To hit out General Elezar would not go into any details concerning operational plans but said: "Our aim is to hit out at the enemy — to cause them as many casualties as possible — to teach them a lesson and to win a decisive and significant victory — in short, to break all their bones." Queried on an explanation for the belated mobilization orders given to the reservists, the Chief of Staff remarked that the Premier and the Defense Minister had already explained the dominant considerations. But he stressed that the attack had not come as a surprise and that the frontline forces had been ready and braced for the onslaught and did everything within their means when it came. Asked to compare the Arab and Israeli armies, Elazar remarked that the Arabs had more modern, better, and larger quantities of armor and other weapons that they had before. "But under actual battle conditions, it was the Arabs who broke and were defeated, showing that the quality gap between the soldiers of the Israeli and Arab armies remained as wide as ever." Elazar said "many hundreds" of Egyptian and Syrian tanks had been destroyed. He said that he could not give the exact figure. A foreign correspondent mentioned a remark attributed to Rav Aluf Yitzhak Rabin that he had "forgotten" to capture the triangle on the east bank of the canal north of Kantara, extending to Port Fuad. Elezar raised a laugh when he said he would ask Rabin what he had forgotten and would try to put it right. Another correspondent mentioned that the press had begun calling current hostilities the "Yom Kippur War‘ and asked the Chief of Staff what he would call it. His reply: ’The War of the Day of Judgment."
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