2023-11-25 11:57:43
Published on Nov. 25, 2023 at 12:57 p.m.
“I don’t want to hear any more regarding these idiots, if you continue to talk to me regarding them, you will be court-martialed”: this is how a commander reprimanded an officer of an elite unit who had alerted to the preparations for a major operation that Hamas was preparing months before October 7.
Better yet: Israeli public television revealed that the army’s intelligence services got their hands on a Hamas manual a few months before October 7. This detailed in detail the tactics to be used to take control of Israeli army posts around the Gaza Strip, planned to kill civilians and capture hostages, gave instructions on how to use vans, motorcycles, tractors to break through the security fence, as well as how to use anti-tank rockets and mortar shells, as well as paragliders.
So many directives which were scrupulously followed by the Hamas commandos. The Islamists also engaged in a psychological intoxication operation by provoking skirmishes at the border in order to make people believe that they would be content with this type of limited operation.
Multiple alerts ignored
Security guards, who monitored the images from surveillance cameras scattered around the border line, had nevertheless reported suspicious signs. They even warned of the fact that Hamas commandos were repeating hostage-taking under the direction of a senior official identified using facial recognition. But their superiors had judged that they tended to let their “imaginations” run wild.
An officer from Unit 8200, specializing in signals intelligence and code breaking, had also spotted training exercises unusual in their scale near the border three months before October 7. Her superiors preferred not to listen to her, advising her to calm down otherwise she would be punished.
Remembering the Yom Kippur War
Army officials ignored all this information, believing that Hamas did not have the forces necessary to carry out a major offensive once morest Israel’s deterrent force.
This deafness did not fail to remind many Israelis of a previous failure of the IDF. During the Yom Kippur War in October 1973 the Israeli army was taken by surprise by the Egyptian and Syrian forces although the Israeli military had information on the imminence of this attack thanks in particular to a highly placed spy, in occurrence the son-in-law of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president. The IDF then took the upper hand, but at the cost of very heavy losses.
When questioned, the army spokesperson preferred to play for time, explaining that the priority was to eradicate Hamas. “After the war,” he assured, “there will be a detailed and in-depth investigation.” The heads of the Shin Beth general staff, the security service responsible for the fight once morest terrorism, have already admitted their responsibility, which has not yet been the case for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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