Why did Mossad, other Israeli intel agencies miss the October 7 Hamas attack?
DENIERS of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which has now lasted more than a year, can very easily be debunked by pointing out just one number: 42,000.
That’s the number — an underestimate, in fact — of mostly unarmed Palestinians, about half of whom were women, children and infants killed by the almost daily bombing of the Gaza Strip by US-financed, US-produced warplanes and ordnance. How could these deceivers claim that Israel is merely defending itself when it has massacred such huge numbers of innocent people to avenge the 1,200 Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7?
Just a day after I wrote a piece on that, the Israeli ambassador to the Philippines, Ian Fluss, had the gall to write a column (“Remembering Oct. 7”) in the Philippine Star, which went on exactly the same lying propaganda tack. In his 800-word piece, he mentions “1,200 innocent lives taken by the Hamas, 240 individuals brutally abducted with 101 Israeli hostages still in captivity, 10 women, two toddlers, and at least 40 murdered.”
But nowhere in his piece does he mention the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defense Force in its merciless bombing of civilian buildings: 42,000. The number of casualties is even estimated to reach 186,000 if those buried under the rubble of countless buildings the Israelis bombed and children dying because of disease and starvation can be counted.
Colossal lie
I used that Israeli colossal lie as an example of how falsehood is spread by the mere omission of facts, in this case, the number of Palestinians killed. I had planned to use as a second example of how fake news or analysis is constructed the false narrative being spread on our disputes with China by President Marcos himself, and such figures as retired justice Antonio Carpio. However, I will have to expound on that case on Friday, as the first anniversary of the October 7 raid that started the war has raised the very serious question around the world:
Why or how could the vaunted (and feared) Israeli intelligence agencies — Mossad (the spy agency), Aman (military intelligence) and Shin Bet (internal security) — not have unearthed the Hamas operation?
The Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas involved an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 fighters. These militants executed a coordinated assault that included breaching the heavily fortified Gaza-Israel border, launching rocket barrages, and attacking Israeli towns and military installations. The attack wasn’t just by a small team of fighters that could have easily evaded Israeli intel. It was a mass movement.
Reports suggest that Hamas had been preparing for this large-scale operation for months, possibly even up to two years. The extensive preparation included gathering weapons, training fighters, constructing tunnels for infiltration, and devising strategies to evade Israeli intelligence and defense systems.
While there may be valid reasons why the Israelis were caught unawares by the attack — Hamas’ sophisticated security measures that included their total radio silence, Israeli overconfidence in Gaza’s containment because of a $1 billion fence, with Gaza militants’ deception and misinformation operations — there is a growing suspicion that Israeli leaders, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ignored or underestimated its intelligence community’s warnings of an imminent attack.
Netanyahu
The kindest claim was that Netanyahu estimated that the attack would have easily been repulsed with very minimum Israeli casualties. But it would have given Netanyahu — whose political star was plummeting because of corruption charges — the reason to undertake a massive operation to finally rid Gaza of its Hamas fighters and to even turn it, as Israel, in fact, has been doing, into an uninhabitable place. The State of Israel would be forever cleansed of Palestinians, the Jews’ dream for centuries,
Instead of a disgraceful fall from office because of the corruption charges that the Israeli police had, in fact, already filed in 2019, the Netanyahu leadership’s tack to wipe out Hamas could instead make him a national hero who defended, as he often says, Israel from an “existential threat.”
Indeed, about 260 of the Israelis killed were inadvertently participants in the “Supernova Sukkot Gathering,” a music festival on a field near the Gaza Strip. Hamas was able to easily shoot down such a huge number because the young people were packed in an open space and couldn’t find shelter to shield them from the Hamas bullets.
The Qatar-based media outfit Al-Jazeera reported in November 2023:
“Hamas fighters who attacked a music festival in Israel on October 7, killing hundreds, likely did not know in advance about the event and decided to target it on the spot, Israeli media has reported, citing police and security sources.
According to a copy of the first Israeli police report into the attack, obtained this week by Israel’s Channel 12, Palestinian fighters had originally intended to attack nearby kibbutz Re’im as well as other villages near the Gaza border. They found out about the music festival with drones and from the air as they parachuted into Israel.
Some 4,400 people had reportedly been at the event that Saturday when Hamas broke through Israel’s high-security barrier — which includes radar system and underground sensors — and attacked military posts and villages in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
This Saturday, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the ‘growing assessment in Israel’s security establishment,’ based on the police investigation and on interrogations of captured Hamas members, is that the group had not planned to target the event.
In addition, the event had originally been scheduled to take place on Thursday and Friday, with Saturday added to the program only on Tuesday that week.
Investigation
An investigation into the incident revealed an [Israeli military] combat helicopter that arrived at the scene from the Ramat David base fired at the terrorists and apparently also hit some of the revelers there, the news report cited an unnamed police official as saying.
That attack, however, produced images of young people killed and fleeing in terror that roused Israel’s and the world’s outrage — and were used to justify Israeli genocide. Mossad operatives even churned out horrible tales of Hamas fighters raping Israeli women and killing infants, initially reported by the New York Times but which the paper itself debunked a few months later.
Netanyahu and his officials had refused to comment on the accusations why the Israelis did not see the attack coming, saying to this day that an investigation would be made in the future, and not while the war is going on.”
Are there indications that the Israeli military ignored the warnings of an impending attack? Yes.
The Washington Post, among other publications, in an article on October 5 titled “The female soldiers who predicted Oct. 7 say they are still being silenced,” reported such attitude. Excerpts:
“Across the border from the Gaza Strip, field observers near Gaza were among the first to sound the alarm about Hamas’ preparations for a large-scale attack, and among the first to be killed and kidnapped during what turned out to be the deadliest day — and largest intelligence failure — in Israel’s history.
Post
The Washington Post spoke to seven current and former field observers and their parents, and to five Israeli military experts and intelligence officials past and present, about the unit’s behind-the-scenes role — and the assertions of its members that they have been silenced and sidelined. Many field observers attribute this partly to ingrained misogyny in the Israel Defense Forces, where men dominate the decision-making ranks. More broadly, the observers point to a top-heavy, unwieldy bureaucracy that prioritized technology over field intelligence in Gaza and that remains resistant to structural change and accountability.
In the weeks after the attack, as a broken country searched for answers, it became clear that the observers in Nahal Oz had been warning of something unprecedented — and were disregarded.
For months they had logged reports about Hamas ramping up its military activities: training several times a week, then several times a day; hoisting Palestinian and Hamas flags as they drove in convoys up and down the length of the Gaza Strip. These were not routine drills, the observers told a civilian commission of inquiry in August, but complex military exercises that would soon be put in motion to devastate more than 20 Israeli communities.”
I certainly don’t agree that it was sheer misogyny that led the Israeli military to ignore the female-dominated field observers that alerted an imminent Hamas attack. The Post article was written by a female reporter, Shira Rubin, based on her name, a Jew. Like a good Israeli patriot but a feminist, could it be she was more willing to blame misogyny rather than the Netanyahu government?
Even the best journalists often can’t take out of their system their deep biases.
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
X: @bobitiglao
Website: www.rigobertotiglao.com
The post Why did Mossad, other Israeli intel agencies miss the October 7 Hamas attack? first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.
Why did Mossad, other Israeli intel agencies miss the October 7 Hamas attack?
Source: Breaking News PH
No comments: