Shocking Hamas Assault on Israel Echoes 1973 Yom Kippur Intelligence Failure
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Shocking Hamas Assault on Israel Echoes 1973 Yom Kippur Intelligence Failure
Questions raised on how Israel missed months of Hamas battle preparations
UPDATED
The massive surprise attack from the Gaza Strip by Iranian-backed Hamas on Israeli cities and towns Saturday represents Israel’s biggest intelligence failure since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In an unprecedented pre-dawn attack, Hamas militants launched at least 2,500 rockets into southern Israel as its fighters invaded towns nearby the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air—via paragliders—killing at least 600 Israelis, wounding another 2,400 and kidnapping dozens of others, making it the deadliest and most audacious attack on Israel in years. In Gaza on Sunday, at least 370 Palestinians died and another 2,200 were wounded by Israeli airstrikes, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The scope, complexity and timing of the attack stunned Israelis, who were marking the joyous Simchat Torah holiday. For many it resurrected bitter memories of the combined Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack that caught Israel off guard in 1973 on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. It also echoed a late-1980s assault by Palestinian militants who crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel on hang-gliders and killed six Israeli soldiers.
As Israelis huddled in bomb shelters under intense rocket barrages, Israel television broadcast images of Hamas gunmen dragging an Israeli soldier out of tank near the Gaza Strip, of the militants ferrying captured Israeli soldiers and civilians into Gaza on motorcycles and parading seized Israeli military vehicles through the streets of the densely crowded coastal enclave.
The Associated Press reported videos on social media showing what appeared to be at least one dead Israeli soldier being dragged through a Gaza street as an angry Palestinian crowd trampled his corpse and chanted “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is great!”) Hamas said it was holding “dozens” of prisoners.
“The capture of soldiers and civilians is beyond imagination and unbearable,” Roberta Fahn Schoffman, a Jerusalem resident, told SpyTalk in a hurried text from a bomb shelter in the city. “They are reporting 100 dead, but bodies in the street not counted. It’s terrible.”
She added: “A shitshow like this has not been seen here, not even in the Yom Kippur war. Nightmare.”
‘War’ Declared
As Israeli warplanes retaliated with air strikes on Hamas targets inside the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called up the reserves and declared Israel was now in a state of war with Hamas.
“We are at war,” Netanyahu said in a televised address, declaring the mass military mobilization “Not an ‘operation,’ not a ‘round,’ but at war.”
“The enemy will pay an unprecedented price,” he added, promising that Israel would “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.”
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, the Israeli strikes so far had killed at least 198 people in the Gaza Strip and wounded at least 1,610.
But Netanyhu’s vows to punish Hamas could not dispel the reality that Israel once again had been caught off-guard, just as it had been in 1973.
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israel military spokesman, would not comment on how Hamas, widely viewed as a rag-tag militia, had managed to surprise Israel’s vaunted intelligence services and far superior armed forces.
“That’s a good question,” he told reporters.
If the Israelis had an inkling of the highly coordinated Hamas assaults, they did not share it with the U.S.
“We were not tracking this,” one senior U.S. military official told NBC News.
While the fighting, which is still underway, is certain to exact a heavy toll on Hamas and the Gaza Strip, the surprise attack may prove a major political blow to Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners. Political commentators have already begun castigating the government and its intelligence services for failing to see signs of a sophisticated attack that must have taken months to plan and coordinate.
Amos Harel, a columnist for the left-of-center Haaretz newspaper, called the attacks “a huge systemic failure on the part of the entire political and security leadership. However,” he added, “these things will have to be clarified in depth only after the war ends.”
After the Yom Kippur war, an independent commission of inquiry blamed the Israeli military for the intelligence failure that led to the country’s forces being taken by surprise. In a controversial ruling, the commission exonerated then-Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, but many Israelis to this day also hold them responsible for the intelligence failure.
It’s too early to say what the political repercussions of the Hamas attack will be, but it comes during a time of deep divisions within Israel over the Netanyahu government’s plan to weaken the country’s independent judiciary. For the past ten months, tens of thousands of Israelis have held massive street demonstrations against the plan, and dozens of reservists, including members of the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence branches, have refused to report for duty in protest.
It’s possible a beleaguered Netanyahu could blame the protesting reservists for the intelligence failure—a response that almost certainly would divide Israelis even further.
Allies Rally
Diplomatically, Israel’s U.S. and European allies have rallied to its defense, condemning the Hamas attack and supporting Israel’s right to defend itself.
“The U.S. unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians,” said Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council. “We stand firmly with the government and people of Israel and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks.”
But the attack comes as the Biden administration appears close to brokering a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iran, which restored relations with Saudi Arabia in March after years of proxy warfare but remains an implacable foe of Israel, has made no secret of its opposition to Saudi recognition of Israel, and the attack by Hamas, an Iranian proxy, makes it harder for Riyadh to take such a step.
In a statement, Saudi Arabia urged both Israel and Hamas to exercise restraint. But the fighting underscored the difficulties Riyadh faces if it moves forward with normalization without winning meaningful concessions from Israel regarding an end to its 56-year occupation of Palestinian territories and recognition of Palestinian political rights.
Saudi Arabia said it had repeatedly warned about “the dangers of the situation exploding as a result of the continued occupation (and) the Palestinian people being deprived of their legitimate rights.”
If the Israeli response proves excessively disproportionate, there is the possibility that Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, could join in the fighting, opening a second front on Israel’s northern border. Iran has armed Hezbollah with more than 150,000 rockets, some of which are precision-guided and capable of hitting Israel’s military bases, its oil refineries in Haifa and its nuclear reactor in Dimona. The last time Israel and Hezbollah went to war was in 2006.
“The big worry is what Hezbollah takes away from the Hamas success,” said Ze'ev Chafets, a former Israeli government official. “We need to dissuade (Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan) Nasrallah by turning Gaza into Dresden.”
The reference to Dresden, shorthand for the controversial 1945 U.S.-British air raid that killed up to 25,000 German civilians, reflects the extreme emotions among Israel hardliners triggered by the Hamas attacks. Whether Netanyahu acts on those emotions is an open question.
“We are in the midst of an unfolding, extremely complex and grave situation,” Alan Freeman, a Jerusalem resident and senior civil society figure, told SpyTalk. “Nothing good will come out of this, just tears and blood.”
Shocking Hamas Assault on Israel Echoes 1973 Yom Kippur Intelligence Failure
Initial US intelligence suggests Iran was surprised by the Hamas attack on Israel
The United States has collected specific intelligence that suggests senior Iranian government officials were caught by surprise by Saturday’s bloody attack on Israel by Hamas, according to multiple sources familiar with the intelligence.
The existence of the intelligence has cast doubt on the idea that Iran was directly involved in the planning, resourcing or approving of the operation, sources said.
The sources stressed that the US intelligence community is not ready to reach a full conclusion about whether Tehran was directly involved in the run-up to the attack. They continue to look for evidence of Iranian involvement, which caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.
And since the attack, government officials have noted that Iran has provided longstanding and significant support for Hamas, including weapons and financing, that unquestionably contributed to Hamas’s ability to pull off such a massive operation.
But the sources said that this intelligence – which has been briefed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill – has led US analysts to lean toward an initial assessment that the government of Iran did not play a direct role in the attack.
The sources did not disclose any details about the nature of the intelligence, which one source briefed on the information said is extremely sensitive.
For some US and congressional officials, the hunt for direct evidence of Iranian involvement is a distinction without a difference.
“I know the administration is woe to peg Iran as responsible, but I think that all roads lead to Iran,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, a Texas Republican, told reporters following a briefing Wednesday. “We certainly don’t want to see this escalate, but Iran is already in this.”
Tehran doesn’t have advisers on the ground in blockaded Gaza, according to former security officials and other regional analysts, and it doesn’t command the group’s activities. But Iran has for years been Hamas’ chief benefactor, providing it with tens of millions of dollars, weapons and components smuggled into Gaza, as well as broad technical and ideological support.
One source familiar with the intelligence noted that while the group maintains operational independence from Iran – making it plausible that the Iranian government may not have known about the attack in advance – without Iranian support, Hamas could not exist as it does now. In other words, this person suggested, why would Tehran be any less culpable if they didn’t know about the specifics of the attack in advance, given that they enable the activities of the group that carried it out?
“That’s why you can speak out of both sides of your mouth on this,” this person said.
For days, senior US officials have said publicly that they have seen no indication that Iran was directly involved in the attack, even as they have condemned Tehran as broadly “complicit” because of its historic support for Hamas.
“We’re looking to acquire further intelligence,” national security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “But as I stand here today, while Iran plays this broad role – sustained, deep and dark role in providing all of this support and capabilities to Hamas – in terms of this particular gruesome attack on October 7, we don’t currently have that information.”
https://cnn.it/3LXMHOe
Comment: A relatively high number of clues (behaviors, moves, debates inside Iran -but I gave little importance to statements) led me to similar views, hence my advice to members of my group on Linked in not to jump to conclusions as to Iran's role. Today's conclusion of US intelligence are however preliminary.
Again an attack during a holy day and a perception of weakness due to the protests. Israel must learn a lesson here, after the Hamas is defeated and destroyed, there is no turning back. Gaza was given to the Palestinians as a trade of land for peace. There has been no peace. Israel must now take back the land or forever be a victim of Hamas. Israel must also be on alert during every holy day and expect to be attacked by someone. And Israel must do a security review of those that led the protests to look for a fifth column of those working to destroy the country.