The jurisprudential correctness of Israel's resort to anticipatory self-defense is well-established in longstanding customary international law. The Law of Nations is not a suicide pact. Israel could not have been expected to wait patiently for its own annihilation. Indeed, when the Government of Golda Meir decided not to exercise the lawful option of anticipatory self-defense in October 1973, when Egypt and Syria were preparing to launch yet another war of aggression against the Jewish State, her country almost paid for it with collective disappearance. And although Israel eventually prevailed against the Arab aggressors, it did so at a staggering cost in human life. The Yom Kippur War produced 2326 deaths of Israeli soldiers, nearly ten thousand injuries and hundreds of prisoners. These costs to Israel were the direct results of A'man's (Military Intelligence Branch) failure to predict the Arab attack, a failure known in Israel's intelligence community as the Mechdal, a Hebrew term meaning "omission", "nonperformance" or "neglect".

- Louis Rene Beres