“If you know your enemy and you know yourself, your victory will not be in doubt.” ~ Sun Tzu
There seems to be widespread agreement that the horrific attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 could only have taken place after a catastrophic intelligence failure. The attacks were so numerous and varied that they required months of planning, the involvement of many people, and the procurement of significant quantities of weapons and equipment – the coordination of which would have required extensive communication and funding. The consensus is that much of this should have been noticed by Israeli intelligence, enough to provide sufficient warning to the country’s military and policymakers.
The fact that Israel appears to have been taken unaware surprised many who had long seen Israel’s intelligence capabilities as among the best in the world. This assessment of failure comes from many experts in the field, perhaps none more qualified to comment than Major General Aharon Haliva, head of the Israeli Defense Force’s Military Intelligence Directorate, also known as Aman. “The beginning of the war was an intelligence failure,” Maj. Gen. Haliva said in a communication with subordinates. “The Military Intelligence Directorate, under my command, failed to warn of the terror attack carried out by Hamas. We failed in our most important mission, and as the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, I bear full responsibility for the failure.”
Ronen Bar, director of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, expressed a similar opinion. “Despite a series of actions we undertook, regrettably, on Saturday, we failed to provide a sufficient warning that would have allowed us to thwart the attack. As the head of the organization, the responsibility for this falls on me," Bar said.
That is not to claim that intelligence alone was to blame for the country’s failure to stop the attacks. Some pundits have argued, for instance, that the root of the country’s vulnerability was the belief that Hamas had evolved, at least partly, beyond its terrorist roots and into an organization that is more interested in governance and the well-being of the people it governs.
Nevertheless, in the months and years to come, experts and analysts will surely be conducting in-depth, multi-faceted investigations into the nature of this intelligence failure. They will try to discern what went wrong, what could have been done to prevent it, and what should be done to improve Israel’s intelligence capabilities.
Intelligence agencies in other countries, including the United States, will also likely consider what lessons can be learned from Israel’s failure to provide adequate actionable warning of Hamas’s plans. Was not enough intelligence gathered? Was the intelligence gathered not given the attention it deserved, or somehow interpreted incorrectly? As Amy Zegart, a noted intelligence expert, put it, “Answering these questions will also be essential for the United States. In today’s complex and uncertain threat landscape, American intelligence has never been more important. Washington must study Israel’s failures so that it does not repeat them.”
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