October 7 revisited: When terror came knocking and Israeli intelligence was caught unawares

Tel Aviv [Israel]: 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.

At 3 am (local time) on October 7, the head of Israel’s domestic security service, Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, couldn’t make much sense of an unexpected buzz of activity in the middle of the night in the otherwise deathly quiet Gaza Strip, the New York Times reported.

As the NYT put it, Bar dismissed it as just another Hamas military exercise.

The apparent failure to gauge the impending threat could be attributed to a series of failures and misjudgements that had preceded it.

Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, had stopped listening in to the ‘hand-held’ radios of Hamas terrorists a year earlier, believing it to be a ‘waste of effort’.

The prevailing sense, though one would question if it was informed, was
that Hamas had no interest in launching an attack from Gaza, and any perceived threats on Israel at the time, if at all there were any, were from Iran and Hezbollah.

However, as the night wore on, the creases on Bar’s forehead increased and he grew concerned that Hamas might launch a small-scale assault, according to the NYT report.
After sharing his thoughts and anxiety with Israel’s top generals, the head of the country’s domestic security ordered the deployment of the ‘Tequila’ team–a unit of the country’s elite counterterrorism force–to the southern border.

Until minutes before the attack, nobody felt that the situation warranted “waking up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”, the NYT reported, citing three Israeli defence officials.

However, barely hours into its deployment, the Tequila team found itself waging a war that it had scarcely anticipated or prepared for. They were outflanked and outnumbered by thousands of Hamas gunmen, who breached the country’s formidable border fencing, swiftly rolling into southern Israel in two-wheelers and pick-up trucks and launching a vicious and murderous assault on sleepy villages and military bases.
As the NYT put it, the most powerful military force in the entire Middle East, which has long been accused of asymmetric warfare in the region with its superior ground forces and air power, not only underestimated the scale of the attack but also failed in intelligence gathering due to hubris and the misguided belief that Hamas posed a threat that could be contained and nipped in the bud.

As the report detailed exhaustively, citing top Israeli officials and sources, Hamas had been preparing for this day under the radar for at least a year, taking its militants through exhaustive and rigorous training, seemingly keeping their rival’s superior tech and espionage capabilities at bay.

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.
The scenes that unravelled as the hours ticked by threatened to strip Israel off its aura of unassailable strength and invincibility.

The terror, in its wake, left nearly 1,200 casualties, mostly civilians including women, children, and the elderly. Still more were taken hostage or were reported missing.
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.

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.

Israeli officials, according to reports, have also promised to conduct a thorough probe and pinpoint the lapses that literally opened the doors for Hamas and let their fighters into its southern kibbutzes.
An investigative report by The New York Times, drawing on numerous interviews with Israeli, Arab, European, and American officials, coupled with a review of Israeli government documents and evidence gathered since the October 7 raid, has revealed that months before the attacks, Israeli security officials had tried to warn Netanyahu about the weakening security caused by domestic policies.
However, these warnings, as the report notes, were largely ignored.

The political turmoil within Israel fueled the perception of vulnerability among its enemies, including Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. On one day, in July, he even refused to meet a senior general who came to deliver a threat warning based on classified intelligence, the NYT reported, citing Israeli officials.

The report states further that despite ‘rising tensions’ in Israel’s northern border, the government downplayed the warnings from its own military intelligence and the National Security Council.
The report notes further that in, perhaps, focussing too much on the perceived threats from Iran and Hezbollah, Israeli intelligence might have shifted its gaze from Hamas and its growing threat.
American spy agencies had also largely stopped collecting intelligence on Hamas, considering it a regional threat managed by Israel, the NYT notes, adding that the coordinated attacks of October 7 exposed a critical failure in the country’s intelligence-gathering efforts.

The warnings — from Israeli security officials, intelligence agencies, and even neighbouring Jordan — were ignored, perhaps, in the misplaced belief that Hamas, as a threat, could be contained. Israel’s superior technical prowess, especially with regard to its intelligence gathering, may also have lulled into a false sense of complacency, the report critiques.

Largely, arrogance among Israeli political and security officials convinced them that the country’s military and technological superiority to Hamas would keep a tight rein on the terrorist group, the report notes.
“They were able to trick our collection, our analysis, our conclusions and our strategic understanding,” Eyal Hulata, Israel’s national security adviser from 2021 until early this year, was quoted by the NYT as saying during a discussion in September in Washington sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank.

“I don’t think there was anyone who was involved with affairs with Gaza that shouldn’t ask themselves how and where they were also part of this massive failure,” he added.
While several senior officials have owned up to their share of the responsibility for the horrific attacks of October 7, Netanyahu hasn’t.

“Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas,” read a post by Prime Minister’s Office in Hebrew on X, adding, “On the contrary, the assessment of the entire security echelon, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet, was that Hamas was deterred and was seeking an arrangement.”

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.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is facing a fresh wave of civilian protests after the much-debated and derided judicial reforms, over the killing of some Jewish hostages mistaken for terrorists, shifted blame for the October 7 attacks to the military and intelligence services, denying that he had any warning about Hamas’ intentions, according to a report.

However, the ‘public rebukes’ and apologies are of little significance now as the damage has been done.
A deadly cocktail of arrogance and a misplaced assessment of the enemy and the threat it poses, combined with a shifting of focus from the immediate threat to perceived ones, put a severe dent in Israel’s formidable armour of intelligence.

The aftermath of Israel’s worst terror attack not only calls for deep introspection but also carries an underlying message — underestimating the enemy could be fraught with devastating consequences.