I was not surprised when I learned that two Israeli security analysts had presented a plan detailing exactly how Hamas was preparing to attack Israel to a top official in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) long before the October 7 attack occurred.
What did surprise me was the suggestion that Israel, a country with the most advanced intelligence gathering and monitoring systems in the world, had been oblivious to what Hamas was planning to do on October 7.
A few months before the attack, I read the book Pegasus. It is a detailed account of the invasive data collection software an Israeli company developed and sold to multiple governments, specifically to fight terrorism.
So when Israel insisted that no one in the Israeli military expected an attack like the one Hamas executed in October, I didn’t believe it. From the start, I was convinced that the Israelis knew about Hamas’s plan and chose to ignore it (for reasons that will become apparent shortly).
Why would a military official ignore a war plan?
The Hamas plan, known by the IDF as “The Jericho Wall,” was not an outline for a minor event designed to instigate a situation that might lead to negotiations — no, this was clearly a war plan — and it was presented to the military as such by two separate women at two different times.
The first was when the plan was discovered a year ago. The second was three months before October 7. Both times, the warnings they presented were ignored. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two analysts whose warnings were dismissed were both women.
I doubt it was intentional or even conscious — that’s the problem. Men regularly dismiss women when they present information they don’t wish to hear. (The same phenomenon has been documented when white doctors treat Black patients — the person they view as the “other” isn’t heard.)
Arrogant men who believe they are superior to women typically tune out information when it’s presented by women. I’ve watched this happen countless times in business meetings and social situations. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all men. But they are out there in droves if you look in the right places — and everything about this situation screams to me that the Israeli military is one of those places.
So, while you may want to believe that Hamas’s plan would also have been ignored if a man had presented it, I don’t buy it. However, sexism isn’t the only likely culprit — arrogance played a part as well.
Was it sexism or hubris — or both?
Why did the Israeli military officials receiving these warnings automatically assume the plan was entirely aspirational and, therefore, did not represent a realistic threat? Did they think Hamas was too stupid to carry out such a complex and detailed attack? Or did they believe in their own strengths and capabilities to such an extent that nothing could have convinced them of the Israeli military’s vulnerability?
In what universe does a detailed plan of attack outlining the horrors we saw on October 7 warrant a yawn? And what about the second warning? Surely, that should have motivated some action on the part of the IDF. But no.
The first woman was over-reacting. The second woman was seeing things.
What could and should have happened
If the Israeli military had taken the warnings seriously— as military intelligence critical to Israel’s power to potentially prevent, or at least mitigate, a national security disaster — and had passed it on to the right people, imagine what might have happened.
Someone would have prioritized assessing their readiness to deal with such an attack or might even have designed a plan to prevent it.
Instead, the Israeli military refused to believe that they were vulnerable and that Hamas had the capacity to outsmart them.
The Jericho Wall document lays bare a yearslong cascade of missteps that culminated in what officials now regard as the worst Israeli intelligence failure since the surprise attack that led to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.
Underpinning all these failures was a single, fatally inaccurate belief that Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so. That belief was so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary. — The New York Times
The similarity to 9/11 is not accidental
We see in the unfolding of events in Israel a similarity to 9/11 in the United States. Before the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration was eager to invade Iraq and turn it into a corporate bonanza for Western financial interests. The PNAC Report made this very clear. All they needed was a “Pearl Harbor” event — something on U.S. soil that would give the country a reason to invade a sovereign nation.
When reports of a possible attack on U.S. soil using planes as weapons were provided to the administration, they did nothing to follow up on it. They were similarly unmoved when it was reported that certain men with ties to Osama bin Ladin were receiving flight training in the United States. We know about this because the reports were made public after the attacks — but they were ignored beforehand.
In Israel, Netanyahu and his far-right cronies are just as determined to destroy the possibility of a two-state solution as the Bush administration was to invade Iraq, and they are working hand-in-hand with Hamas to do it.
Despite the gruesome nature of the Hamas attack, Hamas and Netanyahu are not that different. Netanyahu wants all the Palestinians dead, and Hamas wants all the Jews dead. Neither is willing to compromise and work towards a peaceful solution.
Netanyahu’s failure may destroy Gaza entirely
Netanyahu was supposed to be the protector of Israel — the strong man who would ensure the safety of the Israeli people. Yet under his watch, we witnessed an attack so brutal, so lacking in humanity that it shocked and horrified the world. And what is the Israeli military doing now? They are destroying Gaza. They are murdering Palestinian civilians by the thousands. They say the goal is to destroy Hamas, but where is Hamas?
THEY DON’T KNOW.
Therefore, the only way to destroy Hamas is to destroy all of Gaza. So far, it has been reported that ~15k Palestinians have been killed — many of them children. Most of their hospitals are destroyed, and no place in Gaza is safe. Israelis drop fliers telling Palestinians to relocate, but how do they do that when the entire area is being bombed? And where do they go?
Millions have already been displaced. And when the dust settles, who will rebuild, and what will the Palestinian people come home to? The answer is nothing. That seems to be the point now. Netanyahu doesn’t want them to come home. He doesn’t want there to be a Palestinian state at all — he’s finally admitted it. And it’s the one thing that makes sense, given everything that’s happened.
This war is not just what Hamas wanted; it’s what Netanyahu wanted.
How many dead Palestinians is enough?
How many Palestinians must die to vindicate Israel for the brutality of October 7? Twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? No matter how many innocent civilians are killed in this continued fighting, there is no way to undo what happened. Killing Palestinian children won’t bring back dead Israelis any more than bombing Gaza brought the release of the hostages, despite what the IDF tells us.
It was only after a ceasefire was declared that some of the hostages were freed. Without a ceasefire negotiated by non-Israelis, none of the hostages would be free now.
Hamas wanted a war. They started this to lure Israel into this war. Their goal is to wipe out Israel, and they’ve made no secret of this.
By destroying Gaza and killing thousands of civilians, Israel is playing directly into Hamas’s hands. What’s more, the Israeli government is sacrificing the hostages they should be trying to save. How do we know the remaining hostages haven’t already been killed in the bombings Israel continues to justify in the guise of rooting out Hamas? How do we know how many are even left?
Netanyahu’s days are numbered
Netanyahu, now relying on the outrage over the October 7 attacks to fuel his country’s war efforts, is claiming he is “the only one” who can prevent a Palestinian State in Gaza. In Trump-like fashion, he is using the attacks his administration failed to prevent as justification for a final and public denunciation of any consideration of the two-state solution the United States has been advocating for decades.
The complexity of the situation is outlined in Medium writer Egberto Willies’s excellent article “Netanyahu Defies Biden.”
At the heart of this issue lies Netanyahu’s vehement opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, a position that starkly contrasts with Biden’s advocacy for a two-state solution. This divergence is not merely a difference in diplomatic approaches but signifies a deeper ideological rift between the U.S. and Israeli leadership. Netanyahu’s alleged claim of being the only one capable of preventing a Palestinian state, and his efforts to strengthen Hamas as a means to this end, reflect a strategic maneuver in his attempt to remain in power after his failure to keep Israeli citizens safe. This approach, however, undermines the U.S. vision of a negotiated peace process aimed at achieving mutual security and dignity for both Israelis and Palestinians.
What now?
The United States must continue to support the Jewish people and make clear that we do not believe Hamas should be allowed to continue to rule Gaza. But we cannot continue to support Netanyahu’s war effort.
The longer this goes on, the more animosity toward Israel this creates. Already, we are seeing a rise in anti-semitism. This is not the answer. None of this should be used as justification for targeting the Jewish people. But it is a reason to get rid of Netanyahu.
Israel needs a leader who is a statesman, not a bully. They need a leader who can represent them in securing a two-state solution, not one committed to ensuring that solution never materializes.
When the rubble is removed and Gaza is rebuilt, we need to remember that this is what happens when extremists take power. There is no compromise. There is only death and destruction. How many more wars will we need to fight before we learn this lesson?