The globally renowned Shin Bet and Mossad, the two unshakeable pillars of Israeli intelligence or espionage operations, were made to look criminally fallible, for once.
In, perhaps, its biggest intelligence failure since the infamous Black September strike on Munich’s Olympic village where the Jewish contingent for the 1972 Summer Games was anchored, Hamas terrorists, armed with automatic weapons, raided Israel by land, air and sea on the morning of October 7 this year, unleashing cold terror of the kind that would have put even ISIS to shame.
From chasing and remorselessly gunning down civilians on the streets, breaking into kibbutzes when most families were either asleep or had woken up to another laidback and uneventful Saturday to slashing the throats of infants sleeping in their cots; Hamas perpetrated its worst and most heinous act of terror on Jews that the hawks in the top echelons of Israeli intelligence didn’t see coming.
The agencies that hunted down each and every perpetrator of the Munich massacre were literally caught napping as the Hamas gunmen bruised and bloodied Israel and inflicted, arguably, the most number of casualties on the country since the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Even as the country counted and mourned its dead among whom were many who were attending an open-air music fest, celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot near Kibbutz Re’im, the much-vaunted Mossad and Shin Bet, with an untarnished track record both home and away, were left searching for answers.
While most didn’t know what had hit them, many, including those occupying top public offices in the country, had no clue how Hamas had breached the iron curtain of Israeli defence and intelligence. In fact, Mossad’s impeccable strike rate in terms of pre-empting threats and thwarting attacks made its failure to anticipate the Hamas mayhem of October 7 all the more unbelievable.
The Hamas fighters, organised into different units with specific objectives as the NYT reported, had Israel’s military bases and kibbutzim (kibbutzes) in bare-boned detail drilled into their heads.
Licking its wounds, Israel vowed total annihilation of Hamas, with the country’s top leader, PM Netanyahu, saying in a televised address to the nation that by the time the war is over, the face of Gaza will have changed.
In a fierce aerial assault, Israeli fighters carpet-bombed Gaza, leaving thousands dead and injured and reducing the city, which has often drawn parallels with an open sewer because of the filth and litter all around and the general pitiable state of living of Gazans, into a pile of rubble.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza pegged the toll from the Israeli bombardment and the subsequent ground invasion at over 20,000, with thousands more injured.
Even as the war in Gaza rages on, the theatre of conflict expanded to Hezbollah strongholds in neighbouring Lebanon from where rocket fires were sporadically directed at Israel amid the assault on Hamas.
ISIS
Regardless of voices calling for an immediate end to hostilities and UN resolutions, Israel continues its operations in Gaza following a brief spell when its guns and heavy artillery stopped booming to facilitate the release of some of the hostages, including foreigners.
Defying calls for a ceasefire, “Bibi” Netanyahu has vowed to carry on the offensive till all the operational goals are achieved and Hamas is no longer a threat to Israel and its people.
However, acknowledging his failures, the Chief of Staff of Israel Defence Forces, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, was quoted in a report as saying, “The IDF is responsible for the security of the country and its citizens, and on Saturday morning in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, we did not handle it.”
“We will learn, we will investigate, but now is the time for war,” he added.
The perceived failure in reading the threats correctly has echoes of the errors made during Yom Kippur in 1973. The intelligence failure then was attributed to a feedback loop reinforcing prejudices and blinding decision-makers to changes in the threat environment, according to a report.