Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.The article is "gifted", so feel free to click on the link and read it.
The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.
...
Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.
But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.
“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”
I don't know how the leadership survives when there is clear evidence that the plan was known, there was evidence that Hamas was rehearsing the plan and those in authority did absolutely nothing. I don't believe, at this juncture, that the Israeli failure to stop or prepare for the attack was deliberate, because of the old maxim "never ascribe to cupidity that which can be blamed on stupidity.
Unlike 9-11, this was not a "failure to connect the dots". The Israeli analysts had connected the dots; this was a failure of leadership to see the picture conecting the dots portrayed. Not only were over a thousand Israelis murdered by a well-planned terrorist attack, over ten thousand Palestinians were killed in the war that followed. It's not very probable that if Israel had disrupted or broken the intial attack, that would have been justification/provocation to turn Gaza City into a wasteland.
At the very minimum, those involved should never get a decent night's sleep.
It seems like a toxic combination of underestimating an enemy, over-confidence in defensive preparations, technology and personnel, and just perhaps a willingness to accept a “small” surprise in order to have justification. The plan then turned out to succeed beyond Hamas wildest dreams…as you note, surely Bibi cannot survive this one.
ReplyDeletehague+ netanyahu= happy dan.
ReplyDeletePretty shocking. Reminds me of the ignored PDB's for Geo Bush the lesser about the terrorist attack plans. George survived that. This seems worse.
ReplyDeleteBy "cupidity" you mean "malice" (or something), right?
Sounds like Hanlon's razor. "Never ascribe something to malice that can adequately be explained by incompetence."
Sarah, yes. The word more speaks to greed, but I like the saying my way because it rhymes,
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering about the detailed intelligence Hamas had about the Israeli military's dispositions, and Trump, and Russia.
ReplyDeleteShould it turn out that there is definite proof of what many of us may now suspect, I wonder what the response of Mossad might be, to a Trump that somehow managed to avoid prison.
Mossad wouldn’t risk killing Trump, but they would likely ransack his electronic records and anything interesting might show up on some desks.
ReplyDeleteJust a conspiracy theory kind of thought, but maybe those in charge in Israel and the Bush administration had the same kind of thought. Ignore the warnings since the damage to the people would be minimal but the outcry would work greatly in their political favor. But then those plans ended up blowing up with catastrophic results in loss of life. It is well known that G W Bush and his war mongering buddies had already laid out plans to invade Iraq and were just looking for an excuse. Nobody on the outside ever really knows what goes on behind closed doors, just make educated (hopefully) guesses.
ReplyDelete