Intelligence Scoop: Could Netanyahu Have Prevented October 7?

0:00For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books. Join the declassified club at therestisclassified.com. The events of October 7, 2023 totally reshaped the Middle East. But could what happened on that fateful day and everything that has come after have been prevented? Well welcome to therestisclassified, I'm David McCloskey, and I'm Gordon Carrera. And we are about to reach the third anniversary of the October 7th attacks. Now we're not going to tell the full story of October 7th here, it is a grim tale of a horrendous terror attack and an absolutely devastating war in Gaza. But we want to zero in on one particular question. Was there an intelligence failure?

1:00That's right, because it is a question, David, that's been asked ever since the attack itself in the immediate aftermath, but it's actually grown and been particularly in the news recently. Because of a, I think quite a stunning report from the Israeli newspaper, Harretz, which we're going to analyze, which suggested a specific warning to Israel's Prime Minister. And it's hugely political this question. And important because there is an election campaign going on with polling on October 27th and it's finally balanced. And the issue of whether Benjamin Netanyahu received a warning and what responsibility he might bear for that intelligence failure, if there was one, is clearly a massive issue in that election campaign. But before we get into that, here's a brief word from our sponsors, HP. This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence, you quickly learn that you are only as strong as the network around you. It's rarely a single major event that undermines an operation.

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4:05Especially when you consider how much of our lives exist on screens. David, how much of your life do you reckon you've spent online? Or just the best parts with you, Gordon? Well David, NordVPN has actually mapped this out and in the UK, we spend just over a third of our lives online. That is 27 years. That's a whole parallel life that needs protecting. And that's where NordVPN comes in. Much more than just a VPN, their built in next-gen antivirus acts as your first line of defense to get our exclusive discount on your NordVPN plan. Go to nordvpn.com slash rest is classified. It's risk free with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee that's nordvpn.com slash rest is classified and the link is in the episode description. So October 7th, to start I think it's worth setting up what actually happened on that

5:07day. Considering it to life, I think it's important to set the scene of Gaza itself. Gaza is a narrow 25-mile strip of land with Israel on the north and east side, the Mediterranean on the west and Egypt on the south west. It's got a population of just over 2 million Palestinians and has been run by Hamas since 2007. I visited Gaza and I stayed there before the Hamas takeover. So quite a while ago, it's a densely packed place with the border crossings very tightly controlled by Israel. Now Israel thought it had built a high-tech wall around Gaza as we get to October 7th. There'd been a 20-foot high barrier put up this part of a billion dollar upgrade which they'd finished in 2021. And as well as this fence, there's also concrete under the fence underground which is to block tunneling. There are surveillance towers and intervals. There's cameras, even remote controlled guns. And yet on October 7th, 2023, at 6.30am, Hamas takes Israel and its security forces by

6:16surprise. Hamas begins by firing rockets from inside Gaza out into Israel. That's in a sense cover for what they're about to do. It's not necessarily that unusual. But then Hamas fighters target the cameras, the sensors, the remote controlled weapons on the fence. They use drones which drop explosives. Then they use explosives and anti-tank mines to blow holes in the fence. And then thousands of Hamas led gunmen head out from Gaza in vehicles and on foot on motorbikes from about 30 different breaches in that fence. And then they go on to attack nearby Israeli communities, military bases and a large music festival. On that day, about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages. And of course, Israel at that point then responds by soon afterwards launching a military campaign in Gaza during which it's estimated that at least 73,000 people have been killed

7:18according to Gaza's own health ministry. And I guess it's probably also worth saying, although it won't be the subject of our conversation. Today that includes over 70,000 children and 90% or so of Gaza's population has been displaced. So that day and the events of that day and everything that has come after have completely shaken and changed the Middle East and the world. And Israel had been convinced, before hand we'll talk more about this, that it's intelligence and in particular that technical intelligence that it collected on Gaza through those cameras, the sensors, the just blanket of coverage that the Israeli state had over Gaza would be good enough to provide warning of major attacks. But on October 7 itself, I think most of us could remember the day is just an absolute

8:18movie of confusion and destruction and chaos as those Hamas troops and God-made stream into Israel through those breaches and attack kibbutz and attack the music festival and attack military bases. And there have been real questions about the intelligence failure since the day itself. And there have been some reports by some of the organizations in Israel like the military which will come to. But it's worth saying there's been no national state commission of inquiry, a kind of independent inquiry into what happened and what went wrong. Now some of the senior military figures, the head of Shinbet which is Israel's domestic security service have resigned or been pushed out by the government since the attack for a variety of reasons but not the man in charge of the country at the time, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and he has delayed an independent commission taking place. He says he doesn't want that or believe it's the right time. So lots of other people taking the blame not him and he's tended to always

9:23blame the security officials for what had happened. I mean, he's even suggested they didn't wake him up early enough on the morning. And so this question of where responsibility might lie has in the last few weeks become very intense due to a new story. It is a new story broken by Haretz which is a leftish liberal Israeli newspaper that is quite critical of Netanyahu. But it drops this bombshell report a couple of weeks ago about a warning that has issued to Benjamin Netanyahu in advance of October 7. And this report says that in late September 2023, so about a week and a half before October 7th, the leader of the UAE Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayet calls Benjamin Netanyahu and he calls him from his presidential palace in Abu Dhabi and they speak for 45 minutes. He would often speak directly with Netanyahu because relations between Israel and the UAE had been normalized as part of the Abraham Accords back in 2020. So there were frequent discussions including about security between them.

10:28I think it's worth saying the Abraham Accords series essentially of bilateral agreements that are broken by the US, happens of 2020 and the intent is basically to normalize relations between Israel and as many states of the Arab world as possible. So that included the UAE but also Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan even places like Kazakhstan. So it's this kind of effort to make the bilateral relationships between these states normal and to open embassies for example in each other's countries. And so the contacts were there but normally when they spoke by phone are representative from the Emirati embassy in Israel would come to the Prime Minister's office in Israel and they bring a special phone device, a kind of encrypted phone. Now, Harret the newspaper claims that when this call took place in late September 2023, bin Zayet warned that Hamas's leader in Gaza, Yakhya Sunwa was planning a major operation against Israel, one big enough that it could destabilize

11:29the region and undermine the Abraham Accords. Now from the article you can get a sense that this was from Palestinian sources who have been talking with Sinroir and there'd been this phrase which was if there's not progress or change with Israel then to expect an earthquake. This is the kind of conversation that had been passed on and then goes to a Palestinian contact close to the ruler of the UAE. So that seems to have been the source of this quite specific warning which is then passed to Netanyahu. We should say that these types of warnings I mean to get the ruler of the UAE on the phone with Netanyahu even at an environment where relations are normalized between the UAE and Israel. This is an abnormal thing. This isn't happening every week and the information I suppose that the Eberradi's believed was credible enough and sufficiently explosive that it had to be passed along to the Israeli. So this is not a adorable thing for... No, Mahabud bin Zayet to

12:34call up Netanyahu and say you should be aware of this. That's right. I mean I think there are questions about why was Sinroir telling someone else that something should be expected by Israel? I think there's raised some questions about what Israel and what the UAE thought was behind the message but the claim is that this call takes place and bin Zayet tells Netanyahu to take the situation seriously. Now according to Harret's their account, Israel's Prime Minister is not worried by the warning. He says the West Bank which is seeing a bit of an uptick in violence at that time is more of an issue and Israel is prepared for any scenario and Harret goes on to say that Netanyahu doesn't brief the head of Shinbet, Israel's domestic security service or the head of Mossad, the foreign service or the Israeli defense forces or the chief of staff. It's worth saying also that the warning from Ahabud bin Zayet is not particularly specific. No. And it seems reasonable,

13:35give it that Hamas frequently, I mean the past had attacked Israel with rockets coming from Gaza that Netanyahu, I'm not you know, excuse me the fact that Netanyahu did pass this information along to his pretty chiefs allegedly, but it is plausible that in Netanyahu's mind, this is a warning about another rocket attack which is perhaps not as big of a deal. I mean it's something to be concerned about but it's not something it's not October the 7th right? It's not saying specifically this is happening on this day and this is what it will look like. I think that's right. Now it's interesting because it's also emerged or being claimed we should say that a similar warning reaches Netanyahu this time from the Egyptian intelligence chief who also supposedly has a phone call with him warning of something unusual, a terrifying operation about to be launched by Hamas. There's a very good recent piece in the Atlantic magazine from the US which says that the Egyptian intelligence chief flies into Israel on September the 26th. So same kind of time frame we

14:40can have before October the 7th. He flies in on a Cessna jet, a private jet lands at an isolated area of Ben Gurion airport in Israel and he carries within this warning that if Israel doesn't change course over Gaza where the border crossings have just been closed and pressure is rising that Hamas seems to be planning something that it's mobilizing for something it's getting not specific and it's not clear who he beats on this visit but his private jet according to flight tracking sites he's only on the ground for 67 minutes before the Egyptian intelligence chief goes back to Cairo. This warning or I guess this kind of the sense that something might be about to happen has filtered into the US intelligence community at the time. I think the Atlantic article also covers this that on September the 28th the CIA issues an internal report it's not specific what sort of report that is but issues report about a possible Hamas escalation in Gaza which was reportedly based in part on information from foreign intelligence services so it could have been

15:42the the Egyptians or the Abaradi's actually telling the Americans passing along to the Americans the same information that they passed to the Israelis and so you have this sense that something is about to happen it's not exactly clear what but that the warnings are credible enough and the the sense that the operation that's coming as big enough that you have for an intelligence chiefs directly warning the Israeli political leadership about this that is the claim now we should get to Benjamin Netanyah his response because he has denied these claims absolutely he has been absolutely adamant that he did not receive a warning from Egypt he's not accepting blame for no he is most definitely not so we should go through his denials because he says no conversation took place with the president of the UAE between the beginning of September until October 7th he says there's no mention it is call log of a conversation or anyone coming to his office with an encrypted phone he says that

16:48report from her ex is an absolute lie it's part of a sinister plot to interfere in the upcoming election he's told lawyers to begin defamation proceedings against her ex and he's done the same with the allegations about the Egyptian contacts it's interesting the UAE foreign ministry has said it doesn't comment sources over there in the UAE have said security matters are not normally discussed with leaders but that's not really a denial and it some people have noted that Netanyah who actually paid an unannounced very short four hour visit to UAE just this last Sunday September the 27th now it looks like it was a broader security meeting about the Middle East but the associated press have claimed that he also wanted to ask the ruler of the UAE to deny the heret's reports of the warning now again he said even that claim of this conversation took place is not true and herets meanwhile stands by its reporting says has three foreign senior sources familiar with the

17:48conversation between the ruler of the UAE and Netanyahu and that it's based on extensive research for a book so they are certainly standing by their story and then at the times New York Times I should say on September the 25th kind of appears to also back up the story saying that there had been a call between the two leaders between how they've been cited Netanyahu and a warning of a major attack and that that warning never reached leaders inside Israel's security establishment and the New York Times report sources that back to five former senior Israeli officials says there is a big meeting of Tom Israeli officials on October the first but that Netanyahu's line in that meeting was to not take any action against him awesome Gaza because and this you know I think the political climate at the time is important because that could prevent what was then seen as an imminent political diplomatic deal with Saudi Arabia to move closer to actually normalizing relations

18:49between Israel and Saudi which is a big diplomatic goal that Netanyahu had so you get the sense that what does Netanyahu actually think of these alleged warnings hard to say but he doesn't really treat them seriously in part because he's worried about the political knock on effects that it could have for his reach out policy I mean what do we make of this I mean it's obviously disputed there've been claims there've been denials but there is a lot of reporting now Netanyahu has been keen all along to avoid any responsibility for what happened I mean he's been very clear these try to shift the blame onto his security establishment and to some extent he's been quite successful than doing that because you know head of Shimbabit has has left head of the military is left he's been successful at deflecting this by just basically all out denials and that seems to be his strategy it feels to me like the really critical piece of this reporting is that it directly implicates Netanyahu so for example I mean Shin Bet has done the internal domestic security

19:51agency in Israel has come out with a massive internal report of the various failures that led up to October the 7th the military has done something similar but there hasn't been like an all-out state level national commission on it in the same way that these rallies did after the 73 war in the same way that America did after 9-11 and I think that all of this to me it sort of it makes me think it's quite plausible I'm inclined to believe it because as we'll see as we go into the nature of the failure there were a lot of different types of warnings bubbling up through the Israeli system around this time and in the run up to October the 7th and it makes sense that foreign partners the Egyptians the embarrades would pick up similar kind of little bits and pieces and because the Egyptians and embarrades have close security relationships the Israelis they would pass those along so I'm I'm inclined to believe it not not least because when you look at

20:56the Horets report what do you look at the Times reporting these aren't like single-sourced pieces I mean you know there's a there's a multitude of Israeli security officials who are providing the information to corroborate the stories and to build these stories so I'm inclined to believe it and I mean I think we know Benjamin Netanyahu is a political street fighter who has made his career on being the defender of the security of Israel and so to have missed warnings or have not taken them seriously enough would be devastating to him politically and he is a very very county political operator I mean I think it's also interesting because there are echoes here I think you know we just did this series a few months ago on 9-11 it's not the same but I think some of the issues are similar where after 9-11 you had this question had the politicians been warned had you know President Bush had warnings in his presidential daily brief that an attack was coming had he not taken it seriously enough these become very very political the questions of

21:57was something missed and it was a huge story for a number of years but in the US you did have a 9-11 commission which eventually was able to answer those questions and I think the absence of that just leaves you you know with kind of political street fighting over it I think this is me the reason that Netanyahu has blocked any effort to to create a national commission is because it is going to unearth exactly these types of facts and it's going to make it clear that there were warnings of all sorts bubbling up from within the Israeli system that made it to Netanyahu's desk not all of them but some of them and that he received warning in advance from foreign partners like the Aborates of the Egyptians and probably others that just haven't been reported to suggest that something is coming this is again David McCloskey talking I think he does bear real blame for the not only the intelligence failure but the policy failure in advance of October the 7th and it makes

22:58sense politically why he would want to just continue to kind of stiff farm that I mean the other the other thing is that you know I think we should note the warnings are not particularly specific no I think that is important bit like 9-11 a bit like 9-11 so that you could also plausibly say well okay what am I supposed to do with this now I think we'll come to this I actually do think there are things that could have been done that would have maybe not prevented October the 7th but would have made it much less of a tragedy than than it was all that to say we're seeing that this wasn't just a internal Israeli military and security issue I mean this is a political issue at the Netanyahu level and he didn't do anything about it I think that's absolutely right and in some ways though the issue of this phone call is only part of that wider question what's there an intelligence failure and if so what kind of intelligence failure so after the break we'll be investigating that question are you looking for support in your weight management journey zet bound to zet betide may be able to help zet bound is a prescription medicine used with a

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26:07your doctor if you have an infection flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine explore what's possible ask your doctor about trinfia today call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trinfiaradio.com this episode is brought to you by petivity cat parents are basically meal time detectives who actually ate did they finish was that less than yesterday the new petivity smart feeder for cats turns everyday meals into meaningful health insights helping you identify changes in your cats habits and be more proactive about their health plus you can feed them from anywhere take the mystery out of meal time visit petivity.com p-e-t-i-v-i-t-y.com slash cat feeder to learn more welcome back let's step back I think for a minute to have a look at the very specific reports about the nature of the warning that the Israelis received prior to october 7th and what kind of

27:11intelligence failure might have taken place on that day that's right because I think it is a much bigger question than just this report of a phone call um whether it's the Egyptian one or whether the UAE one from the start the question has been how did Israel miss this massive attack I mean Israel as we've talked about many times on this podcast has one of the most adept technologically advanced and aggressive intelligence and security services in the world so to have missed something this big involving thousands of Hamas fighters engaging in a long-term plan is certainly an intelligence failure and I think the interesting question is what kind of failure was it and why did it happen it is worth setting up the different types of failures and what sort of constitutes an intelligence failure versus something else and just the tour gets thrown around a lot and it's not as analytically useful as it could be if we just give it a bit more specificity

28:15so I think about it this way I think you can have a failure to predict you did not see something coming and that could be driven by a collection failure we talked about this in our 9-11 series you actually don't have the information in your hands to predict it could be driven by an analytic failure maybe you had enough of the information but it's scattered throughout your system and it's not pulled together in a way that could be used you also can have organizational failures where that information it exists but it's kind of stove piped in different security agencies or in different parts of security agencies and so the whole picture doesn't come up to the policy makers who actually need to make the decisions I think you could also have different types of analytic failure particularly when you're dealing with the prospects for a terrorist attack so we've just finished talking about this with the Haretz reporting is that you can have strategic warning that something is coming and that could be correct yeah but if you don't have the tactical who what where

29:22when the granular yeah you're not inside the plot the the prospects for disrupting it go waitout although put a pit in that because I think actually at this case the Israelis didn't need tactical information to disrupt the plot or to potentially kind of mitigate its effects but you could also have this is important is I think Netanyahu has wanted to make this an intelligence failure in the purist form this is a failure of the security and military apparatus to see this coming and to stop it but you can also have policy failures meeting the political leadership receives enough information to make policy changes and they don't so they don't act on the intelligence that they receive so it's I think it's important to kind of lay out a bit of that construct because I think as we'll see October 7 probably ticks all of the boxes to be quite honest I think that's

30:22right I think it's a really useful framework because as we get into what the failures were you can you can align them with your set of different failures and see how many are actually matching up against those and it is I think very interesting to compare it to 9-11 where we've looked at and done a whole episode on the intelligence failures there and we've got quite a few details from news reporting there isn't Israeli military report there's one from Shin Bet the security service and I think one aspect which gets to your framework is that there was certainly an intelligence collection failure wasn't there and I think this is a really interesting one because they had loads of technical intelligence didn't they they have amazing penetration of mobile phones they have drones and have all these cameras and sensors on the border but I think there's some evidence that they came to actually over rely on that to assume that that was enough when actually what they needed was old-fashioned human intelligence as well again I then I don't know if parallels are interesting because when the intelligence target is a terrorist organization that means that they're highly

31:24secretive these kind of plots are very compartmentalized inside the organization so in other words you could have a source that kind of prior to 9-11 or you could have a source inside Hamas if that source isn't inside the plot you don't know about the plot these organizations are also extremely paranoid and so it makes it difficult just you know by virtue of the essence of the organization to recruit human sources inside them I also think that the the Shin Bet report that came out this kind of after action on what went wrong the Shin Bet report found that the Israelis had a relatively poor network of human assets spies inside Gaza prior to October 7 because there was a there was a botched intelligence operation that Shin Bet had run inside Gaza Hamas uncovers it in 2018 rolls up a bunch of Israeli assets so you get the sense that on the back of that the kind of human penetration that Israel had of Hamas was perhaps not what it should have been and not what it had been

32:31a few years before that's right so that's I think one failure the next one I think is a again making the parallel to some extent with 9-11 we had a lot about connecting the dots the failure to join the dots where you have intelligence but you don't understand what it means you don't put it together I think that's interesting it's slightly different with the Israeli case the October 7th case but there are lots of possible warning signs which frankly seem to have been overlooked there's a very good BBC report by my friend and colleague Alice Cuddy which is about young female conscripts they sit on surveillance bases right by the border in these rooms for hours looking at the live surveillance footage captured by the cameras on the high tech fence all to they got balloons that are hovering over guards it's I mean it's a hugely intensely watched place and it's watched by these units often of young women in their late teens and early 20s who log what they see on computers and with their commanders and in the months leading up to the attacks they start to see things they

33:34start to see practice raids mock hostage taking farmers behaving strangely on the other side of the fence I mean they see them actually doing things which are going to be what they do on October 7th the practicing effectively the raid I mean they have a model tank they practice how to take over they have practicing of the explosives on the fence and how to coordinate moving through it and kidnapping people they do pass these warnings up and they say that the military basically don't connect the dots and some of those surveillance soldiers themselves end up being killed or taken hostage because they're right by the border on October 7th what I think is more astonishing as well is it actually had details of the Hamas plan I mean this is this is fascinating reporting I think which comes a lot of it comes from the New York Times where it says that they've actually got hold of a 40 page document and it's code named Jericho wall initially conceived in 2016 discussing how to do a methodical in a sort to overwhelm border defenses and storm key

34:39military bases including a local division headquarters again all the things they end up doing are in a plan which these raids have got hold of this is where I think it's important to separate out the analytical failure from the collection failure because the fact that these raids get their hands on a 40 page document that essentially lays out what happened on October 7th might suggest that it was less of a collection failure than one might think because you've actually got the plan now this is the important distinction and why I think collection failure still is part of the story you you have a plan but you you may not have the intentions around that plan of what it's going to be executed when is it actually going to happen is it going to happen because you know Hamas probably has a lot of plans on the shelf that it may or may not use and some maybe aspirational or just kind of blue sky exercises and so if you're the Israelis how do you

35:40wait this plan is this is this a real thing and what I think is interesting though and what kind of gets to the analytical failure is that when you pair that plan with what a lot of these female conscripts were seeing at these surveillance installations on the border when you kind of pair the two together it looks like Hamas is rehearsing aspects of this plan but but yet the dots aren't really connected I mean I do think it's interesting that this this document though this Jericho wall document is circulated pretty widely in Israeli military and intelligence circles I mean it's seen by the IDF's intelligence chief it's seen by the unit 8200 commanders at the head of their singles intelligence directorate it's seen by the Gaza division commander inside the IDF it's seen by the leadership and IDF Southern command which is responsible for Gaza what isn't clear though is if that report was shared with the political leadership and in particular with Netanyahu so you have this case where you get the plan or an outline of the plan does it does it make it up

36:43to the political leadership it's it's it's not clear it did no I mean Hamas we should say another some of the other groups involved in the attacks actually rehearsed storming mock Israeli military and published some of this on their social media channels there's a lot of indications because you also get some of these other warning signs in the run up just before and there's an analyst from unit 8200 which is Israel's signals intelligence agencies the equivalent of GCHQ in the UK NSA in the US and a non-commissioned officer warns in an email sent to several officers up the chain in the days leading up to the assault that something is coming and to warn people while this still time I mean these analysts at 8200 are put together a document on September 19th so about three weeks before October the 7th that warned Hamas was training for a large scale invasion so again it's that specificity of what kind of thing and this seems to be ignored and this one particular female

37:45analysts warns in an email that the training they'd seen shows us that the Jericho wall plan the one we've been talking about is an operative practiced plan meaning that Hamas already has the forces who've practiced how to carry it out and implement it when the order comes now of course you're right that is not the same as knowing when the order's coming but I think that you know that analyst is pushing up that warning saying something could be coming and it goes up to an electronic kernel intelligence officer of the Garza division who's responsible for the border and he dismisses it and it's only I mean I was really about this in the Israeli press recently only nearly three years later very recently that that officer the intelligence officer who received the warning is dismissed after they fight against you know being fired for basically missing a warning the military report says overall that quote information was generally misinterpreted as an unrealistic or unfeasible plan and that is a key point because it leads to what you could I guess call a failure

38:50of imagination although listeners to our died eleven series will know that I despise that term I think I think what this really is is a set of underlying assumptions about what Hamas was capable of or intended to do that turned out to be totally wrong it is a mistaken belief that Hamas wouldn't be able to pull something like this off and that it perhaps didn't even want to which we can talk more about you know I do take your point about failure of imagination is a strange phrase and I think it's use in 911 is an odd one I think in some ways in this case it's actually more relevant because I think it is a underestimation of have asked of what it yeah what it's capable of and what it wants to do and the idea that it might want to do something strategically different from what it's done in the past and if you have that mental framework for Hamas then you're going to disregard intelligence which challenges that framework and suggest they're doing something else and that this is Rayleigh military report from February 2025

39:53says it was assumed that Hamas was neither interested in nor preparing for a large scale war it's also I think reinforced by Hamas his own deception tactics isn't it yeah the deception tactics are are interesting because it does seem like Hamas communicated that they had no intention of attacking the Israelis on channels that they do the Israelis were listening to and monitoring right so you could you get this these rallies could be getting this intelligence to suggest in fact the nothing is coming in retrospect this assumption that Hamas didn't want to attack Israel in this way and wasn't able to pull it off in the first place seems insane but up to October the 7th 2023 the deadliest Hamas attack ever on Israel was a suicide bombing at the park hotel in Netanya back in 2002 it had killed 30 people so Hamas is killing Israelis with kind of one-off suicide

40:54attacks there was an IDF operational concept that I think was published in 2019 that referred to Hamas as a kind of rocket-based terror army so further there's this thought that well if something big happens it's probably a massive rocket attack and we'll be able to deal with that with our you know surface-to-air missile defenses iron dome and and the like there's also an interesting twist to this from an intelligence historian named Michael Handel who talks about the risk paradox and he he writes that the riskier a surprise attack appears to be and I think that Jericho wall plan what happens on October the 7th certainly looks to many in the Israeli security establishment like a crazy risky idea I mean like a frontal assault on Israel from Gaza what in the world would they why would they do that that's crazy Handel says that the riskier and attack appears to be the quicker it will be dismissed as unlikely to occur which is exactly what the Israeli security

41:56establishment does thus in fact becoming less risky and likely or to succeed right because it's been collected seen dismissed and therefore that crazy plan is much likelier to actually succeed yeah and I think the Israeli military report definitely gives this sense of flawed assumptions it's interesting they also talk about what some officials call an addiction to precise intelligence which was lacking I think that's an interesting idea is that they're so used in Israel to having very very very good granular precise intelligence and acting upon it if you don't have it and you're so used to having it then you assume you're you're not missing anything the report says there was no deep discussion of the question what if we are wrong it's the ability to kind of red team to to have someone go what if we're wrong what if actually all our assumptions about Hamas are wrong that that was missing and the outgoing chief of staff of the Israeli defense forces at the time took responsibility for those failures said I embrace responsibility it's mine talks about how

43:01Gaza was seen at the time as a secondary security threat because the priority was on Iran it was on his burlok it was on the West Bank and the military had chosen this conflict management approach to dealing with Gaza to kind of keeping a lid on it what that military report doesn't address was one of the other failures which you talked about the start which was the policy failure the decision making failure in the run up to the attack and I think that is the one which is crucial and which gets back to the prime minister himself of Israel yeah exactly I think again it ties back into Netanyahu's I think political calculation that he doesn't want there to be a national commission because a commission is going to shed light on exactly this which is yes it's an intelligence failure but it's also a massive policy and political failure and that that political failure I think is undergirded by many of the same assumptions about Hamas that we just talked about which is that it's not capable of this kind of attack it's deterred it has no interest in fighting

44:02with us right now and frankly seen from Netanyahu's perspective he's got much bigger fish to fry in the region right I think that is that is an absolutely critical component of this I mean it's also worth noting that there had been fighting between Israel and another Palestinian terror group Palestinian Islamic jihad pitch that had occurred in the spring I believe of 2023 and Hamas had sat it out and so I think you have this sense that it's seen you know again from Netanyahu's mind that well Hamas is kind of deterred the other the other angle we haven't talked about is the fact that Hamas was getting a lot of money from the cutteries which was being sent into Gaza the Israelis were allowing it to be sent into Gaza which we can talk more about but I think Netanyahu's calculation was that well Hamas's consolidated its rule in Gaza we're helping to you know

45:02facilitate funding for that they wouldn't want to disrupt that by conducting a massive attack yeah and I think I think that goes to this point about the policy failure and the strategic failure which is I think an assumption at the political level that Hamas was in a box in Gaza that they had it contained that you could have this strategy of keeping it in a box and you know there's the awful kind of phrase they use of mowing the lawn which is just every now and again you go and take out some of the militant leadership but basically you don't have to do anything differently Netanyahu himself I mean we know has always been obsessed with Iran that's always been his particular focus we talked about that in previous podcasts Iran is his focused his followers his focus they are at the time a bit more worried about the West Bank I mean Netanyahu himself is also distracted by his own domestic reforms the judiciary which he's trying to push through which are leading to protests so I do think there is a policy failure which is to think that the situation in Gaza was

46:03sustainable and contained and to not be focused on it and not to think about it and not to think about the implications and instead to be following other paths and other kind of avenues and Netanyahu of course has been Prime Minister of Israel for the 13 of the 15 years before the attack so if you look if if anyone bears responsibility for for that policy failure there's no doubt that it's him I mean no doubt about it but it's not like he can blame it on a previous government those wider strategic questions I think go to him don't they they absolutely do and you know I think it brings us to a question which is a little different from the intelligence failure question which is if could it have been prevented or could the impact of the attack have been mitigated and you know when we did our 9-11 series I made the point it it's impossible to know right because it's account or factual I made the point that I didn't think ultimately that 9-11 could have been prevented even if there had been you know better intelligence sharing between the FBI and CIA on

47:05and on I think in this case because Israel essentially controls all of the borders to Gaza with the exception of that southwest quarter to Egypt the Israelis have more tools to use to prevent these kind of attacks and you know when you for example if if in response to any of the information that had bubbled up from inside Shinbet or Besad or the IDF anywhere if in response to the information that had bubbled up or in response to the information that Netanyahu allegedly received from the Egyptian intelligence chief and the embarrades of the weeks before if you had done things like raised to the military alert level for example or I think more practically if there had been any kind of military redeployment prior to October the 7th you'd probably have far fewer people killed because 32 32 IDF battalions were stationed around the West Bank prior to October 7th

48:122 were around Gaza which gives you a sense of how how dismissed all of this reporting had been I mean also we talked about unit 8200 the the signals intelligence director right their coverage on Gaza had been scaled down a few years before and was largely inactive on weekends so you may not again you may not hear yeah yeah Sidwar describing the plot you know on a cell phone but you might pick up more bits and pieces of the preparation if you had had more of a blanket kind of SIG and coverage because when you look at the the defense of these kibbutes of these Israeli communities that end up being overrun I mean some of them have as few as like five standby security members so if you had had more IDF presence in the area because of all these warnings you may not have had the kind of the severity the awfulness of the attack that that ends up happening so I think the Israelis all that to say like my view is that maybe it couldn't have been prevented from

49:17starting but you could have significantly limited the severity if net yahoo or if some of these security chiefs had said we should take this seriously and do something about it even if we don't think it's likely it's plausible and we should we should we should hedge our our bets and there was certainly enough signs that could have led them to do that I think that's what's so interesting that when you look at it in detail you know you can see multiple failures you can see the collection failure to penetrate the plot you can see the analytical failures in not listening to some of the warning signs that people were trying to pass up the change you can see the wider mindset failures in in terms of the assumptions you can see the policy and strategic failures which is all to say that the specific warning that net and yahoo gets you know this heretics report I think is is important but actually it isn't the whole story because I think you have to see it in totality the fact net and yahoo doesn't doesn't listen to it allegedly and of course he denies it goes to a mindset he

50:19has an a wider set of assumptions and a wider kind of policy that he's pursuing and I do think you know there are levels of accountability in this which are important but I do think they go to the top in this case I absolutely do think it rises to the top and in previous intelligence failures you do see in some cases prime ministers take responsibility for when something like this has happened in Israel's past and I think in this case you see someone who is trying not to why do you think he ignored the the warnings that's a good question I think it may be he just dismissed them as more of the same and it goes back to the kind of failure of imagination point I think he is distracted personally and politically by his own survival by domestic reforms he also has a mindset which says the real threat is if it's from the Palestinians at the West Bank but really the threat is he's bullet really the threat is Iran you know people are telling me this stuff but I just it's not his priority it's not the way his mind is formed which is I think why it goes back to him

51:19I mean I do accept it may not have been a specific warning if of course he says there wasn't one at all but but I also think it goes to his his mindset that the reasons why he didn't act on it or see it as important I also think it's something we an angle to kind of Netanyahu mindset that we haven't talked about which is I think he saw a Hamas run Gaza that was kind of fenced in occasionally creating problems but to use their terminology you could mode along occasionally this being propped up by funds that are being you know sent in by the Qataris that are you know the Israelis are allowing in I think he saw that as a good thing right because it created divisions in the Palestinian community and the political leadership between the West Bank and Gaza makes a two-state solution less likely exactly which he doesn't which he doesn't want and so everything you just said is correct that that there's a massive sort of underestimation of what Hamas would

52:22be able to pull off but I also think he's he's living with this kind of underlying logic that Hamas is a threat but it's a contained threat and in that contained capacity it's actually good for me Benjamin Netanyahu politically because it means that I don't have to deal with the unified Palestinian front that's going to you know be able to push in a more effective way for for statehood yeah so I guess what where we end up is you know there is an intelligence failure but there's also a policy failure and a strategic failure which leads to this devastating war and its consequences what do you think is the more dominant do you think it's more an intelligence failure or more a policy failure I think if you had intelligence collection which really said this is coming on this day then it would be hard to ignore so I think I think there is a specific point of an intelligence collection failure which might have made the difference but I do think more broadly the failure for instance to listen to the alleged UAE another warnings and take them seriously and do the

53:25some of the kind of remedial steps you talked about bad is a political failure so I don't know it's quite hard to separate what do you think I think it is hard to separate because they're they're knitted together by the same underlying set of assumptions about Hamas's intentions and capabilities that I do think we're largely shared by the upper echelons of the security and military community and by the political leadership even though obviously we've seen those two communities no fallout since I think I think they they shared many of the same kind of assumptions about Hamas so I think I think it is hard to separate them I think that in my view it is primarily a political failure it's a policy failure because I actually think that these rallies had strategic warning and they were in a position given the fact that Hamas isn't a group hiding out in a bunch of camps in Afghanistan thousands of miles away the Israelis actually had levers to pull to mitigate that risk and those were policy levers that Netanyahu chose not to pull so if I had

54:31to pick one I would say it's a policy failure yeah well the Israeli public will get their chance to vote on Benjamin Netanyahu's future I think elections are October 27th so coming up soon I think you know given the Horex report some of the other reporting that's come out this is certainly going to be one of the issues which is going to be at the heart of that campaign so we will see how that unfolds but meanwhile for us next week we go to a bit of a corner turn isn't it we go back Monday to Kim Philby go back in time to a slightly different question of intelligence failures and why the Brits managed to miss the biggest Soviet mole within MI6 back to that on Monday and sitting alongside it we have a great series on mole hunts don't we that's right we have gone deep into the literary impact of Kim Philby the after effects of his his espionage on both the US and UK

55:31intelligence communities and we've had a conversation with a real life CIA mole hunter who is involved in uncovering a Soviet and Russian spy in the 1990s so great great bonus content for our beloved declassified club members and just to remind her to everybody that you can join the declassified club right now by going to the rest is classified dot com and signing up we will see you next time see you next time Mr. President my company told me the explosion on our react today causing massive water displacement and triggering the tsunami they all heat the blame on me Tom Cruise is digger don't listen to this mess and digger is gonna dig a top something director of bird man and the revenant what would happen if I stop you storm you freeze to death that's what with great power comes great deniability i'm not the earth then digger see the tree long on now playing only feeder

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