Wednesday, December 13, 2023

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


14 comments:

  1. Please be careful Peter.

    If you question any action of the IDF or notice any failure of the Israeli or US intelligence regarding this or any past action, even if the subject you are referencing is in the Israeli news media and well documented, you will smeared as an a young punk Alt-Right Nazi conspiracy theorist by the knee jerk brigade.

    Let's just ignore any fuss about any borders and get back to watching our sports ball, drinking beer, getting our vaccinations and vote for the red team. We don't have time to go down any rabbit holes chasing fairy farts or researching subjects that don't concern us, there's work to do.

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  2. Hey Peter,

    As I read somewhere else, Government bashing is a national pastime in israel, As far as the UN goes, they support Hamas so that is why they didn't say anything. And the CIA is soo riddled with corruption and remember a large part of the CIA recruits from the same places all these Hamas supporters come from are demonstrating from here in the United States. and they of course know that there are terrorist are coming across our southern borders, and they don't care, it is an FBI problem to them, and the FBI is too busy going after supporters of the 45th President of the United States and anybody else that doesn't toe the line with the goals of the Xiden administration. so yes, I have no warm and fuzzies with none of the federal agencies.

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  3. I've read a few days after the attack that Netanyahu permitted it to happen, to have Israel's "Pearl Harbor". It would then serve to unite the population behind him, and shore up his gov't.

    I took that with a large grain of salt at the time, but reading the top paragraphs of your post sure makes it sound like it's true.

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  4. Quite possible that Yes, Israel got lax pre Oct 7. But to me, the elephant in the room is Islam as religion/ideology. W was very wrong, Islam is NOT religion of peace. Have a look at this short interview from 16 years ago:

    https://youtu.be/08EYqwyns-k?si=aFNTQnOJuBAwev70&t=156

    When you educate kids from kindergarten that a certain group of people have to be killed because they're "descendants of apes and pigs", of course you gonna have problems. But wait, there's more: Islam/Sharia is considered #1 set of laws/Criminal Code in all Muslim world. That's very bad for these countries, it does not promote progress. It maintains a large group of nations in a 6th century mentality.

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  5. I had read about the female IDF observers threatened with court martial if they kept reporting on hamas' practice activities. Somebody wanted the attack to happen. Gosh, it sounds a lot like Pearl Harbor and 911...

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  6. You only see what you want to see. My suspicion is that American intelligence agencies have been distracted from their real mission over the last six years (maybe 14) by their focus on imaginary enemies within.

    100% agree on your "if true" analysis.

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  7. Peter for the same reason so many other wars and police actions happened.

    Pearl Harbor wasn't a surprise but a high level "Let's get Americans in the WAR" action.

    Gulf of Tonkin anybody? Never happened but the US leadership wanted the support of Americans for Vietnam.

    The Ukraine situation seems resolved, and the West got a second-place award, just like Afghanistan, Korea and Vietnam (shared by France and USA).

    I suspect the financial house of cards is falling and a major blame XXX for the Greater Depression and or destroy Iran is in the plan.

    Seems Hemmingway had it right:

    “The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
    Ernest Hemingway

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  8. Was it known and ignored? Almost certainly. The more important question is why - and unfortunately I wouldn't be surprised if Israeli liberals are copying their American brethren in deliberately allowing deaths to further their lust for power.

    I can see this having been deliberately allowed in hopes the backlash would take down Netanyahu.
    If it wasn't deliberate, it could easily have been incompetence, which we have seen plenty of in the US as well.

    I am certain that the testimonies of low ranking people as mentioned here are accurate - such testimonies usually are, and in this case document substantial sacrifice as well. You don't make that up.
    Jonathan

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  9. Need to also take into account how many similar reports in last several years have not culminated in an attack. At some point, people ignore the boy crying wolf. Nit defending malfeasance but cannot take the claims in isolation.

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  10. On the one hand, this sounds like all the tin-foil-hat brigade claiming that 9/11 was faked so we could have a war in the middle east, and every large mass shooting was faked for gun control purposes. On the other hand, certain segments of the IDF have been chomping at the bit for an excuse to destroy Hamas, which is what makes this believable.

    That said, what Hamas did was still abhorrent, the only solution is to get rid of Hamas, and as long as Hamas uses civilian shields, there will be civilian casualties in this war.

    Just because a government is reprehensible doesn't mean that the people deserve annihilation.

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  11. Based on all sources, I don't think this was incompetence, though they'd rather appear as bumbling than expediently unprincipled.

    I think the Israeli govt. had tired of the endless war-footing with and minor provocations by Hamas, and decided to get it on for real once and for all, which they seem to be undertaking with gusto, given the deliberate provocation attack of October, towards which preparations they turned a deliberate blind eye.

    When things get inconvenient for them, they cheerfully shoot the messenger.

    That was why they bombed, napalmed, torpedoed, and strafed the USS Liberty in 1967; it was getting too much intel for the U.S. about how they conducted the war, and they didn't like that, and couldn't do anything else about it but try and end it.

    Anyone viewing Israel through rosy glasses, rather than as utterly ruthless pragmatists acting in their own interests alone, even at the expense of however many of their own civilian or military lives, will be sorely disappointed.

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  12. As Haliva and all his subordinates are still sucking o2, one can guess that his program is a continuing success with the people. That, or there is no one there left with the intestinal fortitude of the country's founders. Shame, that.

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  13. >It'll be months, if not years, before all the facts are known
    I remember when Rush would tell us all of the details of the latest scandal, usually within days, and then we'd watch the years roll by, filled with counter-charges and denials, before it all became official. The "Steele dossier" was only one of countless examples.

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  14. 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.

    Just like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds and 9/11. Just like Movietone film crews and Pearl harbor. Government allowed and wanted the attack, to subsequently empower government.

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