News Feed Editorials Mission
logo


News Feed Mission Editorials

Create Account Donate & Support Follow on 𝕏 Join our Telegram follow us on Telegram
WorldPolitics
Intel Report Confirms Israel Knew of Planned Oct. 7 Attack

Intel Report Confirms Israel Knew of Planned Oct. 7 Attack

Responsive image

By: Arnold Bernini 𝕏 | 06/25/2024

Consider to support AF Post
Reports issued within the IDF's Gaza Division less than three weeks before Hamas' October 7 attacks have shown that Israeli officials were aware of the imminent attacks before they happened.

The document titled "Detailed raid training from end to end" was made public through Israeli broadcaster Kan. The broadcaster claimed the intel documents were in circulation as early as Sept. 19 and provided information to senior Israeli intelligence officials that Hamas was training for a large-scale invasion of Israel, including the taking of up to 200 to 250 hostages. During the invasion on Oct. 7, 251 hostages were taken, and 1,189 Israelis were killed in southern Israel.

"[At] 11 a.m., several companies were observed gathering for prayer and lunch before the start of training. At noon, equipment and weapons are distributed to the fighters, after which a company headquarters drill takes place. At 2:00 p.m. the raid practice begins," detailed a section of the document observing Hamas training patterns in the weeks before the attacks.

Israelis knew the manner of the attacks, the timing of the attacks, and what Hamas was conspiring against the Jewish state, but failed to prevent an event "worse than 9/11," with world leaders describing the day as being comparable to "fifteen 9/11's."

The report, too, comes months after a February analysis determined that Israeli officials knew that terror operatives in the Gaza Strip had activated Israeli SIM cards in their phones hours before the Oct. 7 raid. Around 1,000 SIM cards were activated around midnight the day of.

In addition, in the months preceding the attacks, Israeli prevalence soldiers were reported to have repeatedly attempted to notify their superiors regarding suspicious Hamas activity on their border. The soldiers reported that Hamas operatives were conducting training sessions multiple times a day, digging holes, and placing explosives along the border. According to the soldiers, the reports were received, but no action was taken.

Israel, meanwhile, has one of the world's highest-funded intelligence agencies; Mossad employs roughly 7,000 people and has an annual budget of around $2.7 billion. Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, for example, employs only 6,500 people on half of Israel's budget.

The Israeli border is also said to be one of the most secure in the entire world, as the nation spends billions maintaining tight security with overwhelming bi-partisan funding from the U.S. and other Western countries. Given all the evidence that an attack was coming, the question remains: Why did Israel not defend itself from an alarmingly apparent attack on the world's most secure, technologically surveilled, and highest-funded, smallest border?

Rallying around the flag

The seemingly obvious mismanagement of Oct. 7 intelligence leads to questions concerning the motives for Israeli negligence — especially when taking into account Israel's response to the Hamas raid.

Oct. 7 was to be Israel's 9/11, and it successfully has been since being named so by President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he specifically claimed Oct. 7 to be equivalent to over 50,000 Americans being murdered in one day.

The blaring comparisons being made in the early days of the attack to America's 9/11 serve only one purpose — to call Jews to rally around their flag and support the aims of their state against Arabs in Gaza and the Middle East. If Americans can be rallied around their flag to engage in over two decades of foreign wars, why can't Israelis do the same thing, and even better, have their greatest allies support and fund their mission at the same time?

Netanyahu correctly saw that a crisis was needed to embark on his war against the Palestinians in Gaza and to perhaps justify further future wars against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the IRGC in Iran. A crisis, when correctly leveraged, can suspend the status quo of political rules and allow for extremes when deemed necessary.

Immediately following the attack, Israel launched its counter-attack, which so far has seen more than 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza killed, of which the UN estimates at least 56% to be women and children. Ten thousand others are missing and presumed trapped under rubble, and nearly all of the strip's 2.3 million Palestinian population has been forcibly displaced.

Netanyahu seems to have benefited from the war as an opportunity to garner public support from Jews across the world for his counter-offense as well.

In November 2019, Netanyahu was officially indicted for breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud. The trial proceeds Netanyahu's recent unpopular attempts to enact drastic judicial reform in Israel, which sparked protests from January to October 2023.

In January 2023, the proposed reform aimed to change the makeup of the Judicial Selection Committee so that the government effectively controls the appointment of judges. It would also prohibit the court from using "unreasonableness" as grounds for reviewing administrative decisions and change the system for selecting judges so that the governing coalition would gain the power to appoint judges. So far, the Israeli Knesset has passed the law to abolish the Supreme Court's ability to review government actions on the grounds of reasonableness.

It is worth noting that Netanyahu's control of the Israeli Knesset through his Likud membership coalition would have transitively given him control over the Supreme Court, allowing him to quash any investigations relating to his misconduct.

In response to the decision, Israel's defense minister, Yoav Gallant, called for a delay in the judicial reform, citing the increasing social divide as a "clear, immediate, and tangible threat to Israel's security." The following day, Netanyahu announced his plan to dismiss Gallant, fueling the fire of ever-growing protests in March of 2023, where protesters marched towards Netanyahu's residence.

It must, therefore, certainly be a coincidence that after Netanyahu's rapid decline in popularity, a perfect storm came along to diminish the Israeli left in favor of a hyper-nationalist right-wing Israel in which the left wing cannot manifest.

The storm happened to come in the form of a surprise attack to rally Israelis and their greatest allies, the Americans, to myopically support Netanyahu's right-wing, Israel-first Likud agenda at the expense of the American taxpayer and Palestinians in Gaza.