The Night of the Ducks (Hebrew: ליל הברווזים) was the civilian fiasco by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that occurred on April 1, 1959.
By the late 1950s, however, tensions had been increasing along Israel's frontiers, not least because of the perceived threat posed by the political unification of the country's two major adversaries, Egypt and Syria, as the United Arab Republic on January 31, 1958.
In the Knesset, members received the news during a vote on the state budget, and quickly abandoned the proceedings and ran to their cars to listen to the radio.
Similarly, the neighboring Arab states, which monitored Israeli radio, believed that Israel was preparing to launch a surprise attack on them, and began to ready their own troops.
For example, Soviet media claimed that the mobilization was possibly "to divert the workers' attention and to allow the government to insert into the defense clause of the budget IL420 million, more than the previous year".