Israel’s disaster of October 7th – and its aftermath
JVL Introduction
Eight months or so after October 7th, Jesse Rosenfeld and Matan Cohen investigate Israel’s worst security failure in the country’s history.
In the process they talked to a former Israeli prime minister, a serving senior Israeli military official, a former Mossad chief, two former national security advisers and a former senior officer with the Israel Security Agency, Shin Bet.
There seems to be agreement that it was Israel’s “ culture of arrogance” towards the Palestinians that allowed the disaster to happen.
The mentality of Netanyahu and others was that Israel could keep the Palestinians under control in perpetuity though an elaborate system of segregating them off from each other and from Israelis with walls, fences and checkpoints, rather than seeking a political resolution with them.
Almost everyone, from right to left, was complicit in this – the Palestinian “problem” was not high on anyone’s agenda.
Whatever the failings that led to October 7th, the far right was quick to take advantage of the situation. Simple vengeance without end in Gaza has been accompanied by a surge of increasingly violent pressure against West Bank Palestinians.
There is no end in sight.
RK
This article was originally published by the Daily Beast on Fri 14 Jun 2024. Read the original here.
‘Arrogance’ & ‘Bullshit:’ Top Insiders on Netanyahu’s Catastrophic Oct. 7 and Gaza War
Ex-PM and former Mossad chief among security officials telling The Daily Beast how Netanyahu’s struggle rule led to the greatest disaster in Israel’s history—and carnage in Gaza.
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I believe that the 7 October 2023 raid into Israel was allowed to happen in order to justify the subsequent genocide of the indigenous people. There is plenty of evidence to support this.
Here are some of my observations of circumstances around the 7 October 2023 Hamas reprisal raid into Israel.
A veteran BBC reporter commented at the time that the Israeli authorities must have known that it was coming. That was in itself an obvious thing to say. It was what I thought.
It is what open-minded intelligent people pieced together in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 reprisal raid into Israel.
The BBC News website reported that there had been unusual and suggestive activities inside the Gaza strip, all of which were documented and passed up the line within Israel. In the days before the 7 October raid, Israeli soldiers observed various military practicing going on inside the Gaza strip. The Israeli soldiers on duty in observation posts were puzzled by the strange lack of interest in their reports from above.
The State of Israel has sophisticated spying equipment, which it has developed and seIls internationally, set up around the Gaza enclave, which would have detected the Here are some of my observations of circumstances around the 7 October 2023 Hamas reprisal raid into Israel.
A veteran BBC reporter commented at the time that the Israeli authorities must have known that it was coming. That was in itself an obvious thing to say. It was what I thought.
It is what open-minded intelligent people pieced together in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 reprisal raid into Israel.
The BBC News website reported that there had been unusual and suggestive activities inside the Gaza strip, all of which were documented and passed up the line within Israel. In the days before the 7 October raid, Israeli soldiers observed various military practicing going on inside the Gaza strip. The Israeli soldiers on duty in observation posts were puzzled by the strange lack of interest in their reports from above.
The State of Israel has sophisticated spying equipment, which it has developed and seIls internationally, set up around the Gaza enclave, which would have detected the intended raid.
I have also read on the BBC website that share traders acted as if they knew of the 7 October 2023 Hamas raid several days before it happened and made themselves lots of money by gambling on its effect on particular shares as a certainty.
The information is out there, inclusive of being on the BBC. It is submerged beneath biased headlines and masses of trivia.
The promoted theory for Israeli army intelligence failing to perceive the information that it had as forecasting imminent attack assumes gross incompetence at too many levels.
I reject the implausible theory that the Israeli military was incompetent as being contradictory to the IDF’s consistently high performance. The IDF is brutal, murderous and indeed genocidal in what it does, but it is undoubtedly excellent at it. (cut at 300 words)
My last lot of comments have been a typographical cock-up, to some extent, as seen by everyone who has struggled to read through them. They were intended as back-up to my contention that the Israeli authorities knew of the 7 October raid in advance and let it happen to justify the subsequent genocide of the indigenous people. I recycled my comments from a previous email which I had written which I edited for my JVL post. Only subsequently could I see that somehow there was hidden stuff within the email text which messed up the layout and a bit more. Well, I have now learned my lesson about this risk and I will not again recycle text from an email. I apologise to everyone who contended with my jumbled wording. I will not go back any further over this now. The subject will probably come up again.