Fifty years on, divided Israel remembers the war for its survival

Israel marks the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war that brought the country to the verge of catastrophic defeat, but the wartime unity that helped it survive seems a distant memory to a generation increasingly at odds over the country they inherited. The war began with a surprise attack on two fronts by Syrian tank columns and Egyptian brigades that caught Israeli forces off guard at the start of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Completely unprepared and with many soldiers on leave, Israel's army buckled initially before regaining the initiative and repelling its enemies in a series of decisive encounters on the northern Golan Heights and in the southern Sinai desert.