ABSTRACT
On 27 February 1967, the senior command of the IDF (from the rank of colonel upwards) convened in Tel Aviv in the presence of the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence. As usual, the Chief of Intelligence and the Chief of Staff surveyed the security situation and the IDF’s deployment. Underlying their remarks was the Intelligence appraisal that no war was to be anticipated until at least 1970. In his address to the senior officers, Eshkol deviated from his prepared text and questioned the categorical nature of this appraisal. He employed the Yiddish expresion ‘Tomer efsher’, in other words, ‘Is it perhaps possible that you are wrong?’1
