NYT: Israel Knew Hamas Attack Plan Over a Year Ago
These snatches of Prophetic Vision sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with each other. For not even prophetic vision can adequately express the Infinite ways to seek deep healing and justice inherent in the Breath of life.
Israel Knew Hamas Attack Plan Over a Year Ago
This article appeared on p.1 of the NY Times on
Dec 01, 2023 12:24 AM
By Ronen Bergman
Dear chevra,
The NY Times reports: “Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.”
That was the first paragraph of an amazing, revealing NY Times p.1 story on a truth hidden from public view for eight weeks since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
Once the attack took place, dozens of Israeli “security” officials who had known about the Hamas plan but had thought it was a wishful dream, not a real plan, understood that ignoring it was an abysmal failure of their “intelligence.” Why did none of them for many weeks tell the Times reporter in Tel Aviv how the most ultra-right-wing government in Israel’s history had betrayed the nation? Why did the whole “security” apparatus prefer killing about 10,000 Palestinian children and women to digging out the Israelis who had failed to defend their country against an atrocious attack?
Was it — as Times reporter Ronen assumes — not wanting to admit their own racist contempt for the Palestinians that led them to think these “stupid Arabs” could never pull off such a daring plan?
Was it not wanting to admit that since the truthful and accurate assessments came mostly from women “spotters” in the Intelligence organization, that their own contempt for women led them to ignore their warnings? Or could it have been even worse — a desire from higher “security” officials to protect a corrupt leader who was facing prison if he were forced out of office, and preferred letting an atrocious attack happen, setting up a total war that he could ”lead”?
We have reprinted only excerpts. We strongly recommend reading the whole story. Every paragraph is a revelation. For the whole article, click https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html
For Rabbi Sharon Brous’ stirring sermon/ report on the Israeli government’s and the Hamas government’s contempt for women — the women spotters and others in both nations, before and during this war, click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYEftCR95Fk
We return below to the NY Times article — AW, ed.
The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.
The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.
Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.
The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear. “It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.
But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.
“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”
“It is a plan designed to start a war,” she added. “It’s not just a raid on a village.”
Officials privately concede that, had the military taken these warnings seriously and redirected significant reinforcements to the south, where Hamas attacked, Israel could have blunted the attacks or possibly even prevented them.
. . .
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 Israeli military and the Israeli Security Agency, which is in charge of counterterrorism in Gaza, declined to comment.
. . .
Last year, after Israel obtained the Jericho Wall document, the military’s Gaza division drafted its own intelligence assessment of this latest invasion plan.
Hamas had “decided to plan a new raid, unprecedented in its scope,” analysts wrote in the assessment reviewed by The Times. It said that Hamas intended to carry out a deception operation followed by a “large-scale maneuver” with the aim of overwhelming the division.
But the Gaza division referred to the plan as a “compass.” In other words, the division determined that Hamas knew where it wanted to go but had not arrived there yet.
On July 6, 2023, the veteran Unit 8200 analyst wrote to a group of other intelligence experts that dozens of Hamas commandos had recently conducted training exercises, with senior Hamas commanders observing.
The training included a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft and taking over a kibbutz and a military training base, killing all the cadets. During the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan, she wrote in the email exchanges viewed by The Times. The analyst warned that the drill closely followed the Jericho Wall plan, and that Hamas was building the capacity to carry it out.
The colonel in the Gaza division applauded the analysis but said the exercise was part of a “totally imaginative” scenario, not an indication of Hamas’s ability to pull it off. “In short, let’s wait patiently,” the colonel wrote.
. . . .
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Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, based in Tel Aviv. His latest book is “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” published by Random House.
With blessings of inner shalom — peace and harmony — for the anonymous woman who did report the Truth to Ronen, and inner shalom for all our companions in the seeking of shalom among all Israel, all Ishmael, and all the life of Earth.
— Arthur