Was the carnage of October 7th due to a colossal failure of Israeli intelligence?

 

The Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7th have led to all sorts of soul-searching and drama within Israel.  How could they have happened without being detected?  Why was the initial response so limited, and why were so many innocent people murdered, raped and tortured almost without opposition until Israeli forces could mobilize and respond?  Were many of the victims actually killed by Israeli counterfire, particularly missiles launched by helicopters, rather than Hamas terrorists?  All these questions are swirling around in the ether, and there are few authoritative answers to be had.

Nevertheless, one thing almost everyone is agreed upon is that Israeli intelligence should have foreseen and warned about preparations for these attacks - but failed to do so.  Jewish News Service pins the blame on Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Directorate Chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva.  I don't know whether its claims about him are true or false, but if true (and that's a big "if" - see below), they paint a bleak picture.

In the weeks since Oct. 7, more and more information has come out about why Hamas was able to pull it off. All of the information points to Haliva and his close subordinates.

The Field Observers unit at Nahal Oz base suffered the greatest losses there during Hamas’s assault. The unit, comprising female soldiers, is responsible for monitoring the footage from security cameras along the Gaza border around the clock and alerting forces on the ground and in the intelligence community to anything suspicious ... the two surviving members of the unit and a number of former members started coming forward to tell their story. In interviews with Channel 11, two women related that in the months before the invasion, they were warning it was in the works. The women saw Hamas terrorists training to take over kibbutzim and IDF bases. They watched terrorists practicing taking hostages and blowing up tanks. They saw terror commanders watching the drills. They saw spies probing the fence for weaknesses. They saw it all and reported it all. 

Rather than giving them medals, unnamed top-level officers in the intelligence corps ordered them to stop. When they continued reporting, the observers were warned that they would be disciplined and removed from the unit if they kept raising their concerns.

. . .

The observers weren’t the only ones silenced. Rafael Hayun, a civilian hacker who monitors open intelligence networks, worked for the IDF for years. The IDF provided Hayun with equipment to monitor Hamas’s internal communications. In late 2019, Hayun began reporting on Hamas training exercises involving invading Israel, penetrating the security fence at multiple points, taking over communities, committing mass murder and kidnapping. Over time, the training became more intense and detailed. Hayun alerted the units he was working with about Hamas’s activities in real time.

Five months before the assault, his colleagues in the IDF were ordered to seize all of his equipment and stop working with him. Around the same time, the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit also stopped monitoring Hamas’s communications.

. . .

In a series of three, increasingly detailed and urgent reports over succeeding months, [an] NCO set out in granular detail how Hamas was preparing a broad invasion of Israel that included the invasion of IDF bases, border towns and kibbutzim. Her reports included all aspects of the invasion that took place on Oct. 7, including Hamas’s use of paragliders, pick-up trucks and motorcycles. She detailed Hamas’s plans to massacre and kidnap civilians and soldiers. She warned that their intention was to use provocations along the security fence in the weeks leading up to the operation to get the IDF used to breaches and so lull its commanders into complacency. She even secured Hamas’s own training manual for the operation. She was able to get the information in front of Unit 8200’s commander and a top officer in the Southern Command. They apparently did nothing.

Convinced by his subordinate’s reporting, her commander, an NCO with 30 years’ experience, canceled a family vacation because he heard Haliva would be visiting their base. He waylaid Haliva, and he and his subordinate presented her reports. Haliva dismissed their warnings and detailed information as hot air. Hamas, he insisted, was just pretending, to make an impression on its followers. He did not communicate her report to either the head of Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) or the IDF Chief of General Staff.

. . .

Since at least 2022, Haliva and his colleagues in the Intelligence Directorate and the top echelons of the IDF and the Shin Bet were convinced that Hamas was deterred. Hamas, they insisted both in public statements and in intelligence briefings to political leaders, was interested in providing economic prosperity to Gaza. In one speech, Haliva spoke derisively of an unnamed political leader (between the lines it was apparent he was referring to Netanyahu) who had questioned his judgment.

. . .

What Haliva failed to mention was his habit of ignoring everything the professionals told him and not sharing their information with his superiors. 

All of this would be bad enough. But it becomes even worse when seen in the framework of the 10-month insurgency the Israeli left waged against the Netanyahu government. That insurgency was led by Haliva’s family.

There's more at the link.

Sounds damning, doesn't it?  Unfortunately, given the heated nature of Israeli politics over the past few years, and the feverish war mentality that's (understandably) prevailed there since October 7th, one can't just take such reports at face value.  Where is the evidence for its claims?  I haven't seen any authoritative documentation of them yet.  Is the blame attached to Major-General Haliva motivated by opposition to his political views?  Is this report an attempt by pro-Netanyahu sources to discredit his opponents and deflect blame from him?  Right now, it's almost impossible to say.  It'll be months, if not years, before all the facts are known - and we may never know all of them, because I'm sure there will be those who want to cover up as much of the blame as possible.

We just don't know.  All we can say is that, if the events described in this report are true, heads need to roll - and possibly not just figuratively, either.  Anyone who ignored such reports is directly implicated in the consequences of that decision, and the blood of those murdered, tortured and raped on October 7th is on his or her hands.  Punishment needs to follow.

There are more questions.  If Hamas was so blatant, so open, in its preparations for the attack, why did no other major intelligence agency (here's looking at you, CIA) see what was coming and warn of it?  Why did United Nations personnel working in Gaza not report it up the line, so that their superiors were aware of it - and if they were aware of it, why was no warning published?  Is this yet another example of UN collaboration with those whose politics they support, while working against the interests of those the organization opposes?  If so, why should the UN ever again be permitted to operate in such areas?

Peter