Israeli Security Failure, It Ignored Repeated Egyptian Warnings of Hamas Attack US intelligence confirm Egyptians warned Israeli intelligence 18 months before Attack

URGENT: Gaza is burning. The MSM is not just missing the story, it’s a propaganda arm of Israel as it prepared a genocide.  I break stories that Israel doesn’t want anyone to know, including its own citizens.

UPDATE: 13 progressive House Democrats have signed a call for an immediate Gaza ceasefire.  This is the first sign that Congress is awaking from its somnolence in the face of imminent genocide. Let’s encourage them to do more. Get more signatories. We need more to join them. Work your representative. Call, write, tweet, etc.

US intelligence has now confirmed the controversial story that Israel’s security agencies massively failed to detect and prepare for the Hamas attack on October 7th.  A senior GOP leader recently exited an intelligence briefing and told journalists that Israel had been warned:

“We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen,” Mr McCaul told reporters following a closed-door intelligence briefing on Wednesday for lawmakers about the Middle East crisis, according to AFP news agency.

“I don’t want to get too much into classified, but a warning was given,” the Texas Republican added. “I think the question was at what level.”

The Guardian adds further comments from McCaul:

McCaul appeared confident that some sort of warning was passed on, and indicated he had been told that attack planning may have been going on for as long as year – without Israel or its allies noticing.

“We’re not quite sure how we missed it. We’re not quite sure how Israel missed it,” he told reporters, acknowledging that US and western intelligence had also failed to foresee an attack…

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Former Shin Bet officer Avner Barnea also marshals evidence to support this claim.   He discusses the numerous ways in which intelligence failed its security apparatus.

Bibi Netanyahu, of course, denied the report and claimed there had been no communication from Egyptian officials regarding a Hamas build-up.  But Netanyahu’s denials of bad news (as with his boasts of good news) must be taken not just with a grain of salt, but with an entire salt-shaker worth.  I consulted with an Israeli security source who provides many of the breaking stories I report.  He said his unit had no such warning.  He did not say that no other Israeli security-intelligence unit had such intelligence.

It’s conceivable that his unit did not have such data, though I would expect it would if there was any.  But at this point, I’ll have to take his word for it considering he is always an accurate source.  Security officials know they will be blamed as it is.  But if they received such warnings and misinterpreted the data or ignored it, their culpability is even more devastating. It would be natural to protect one’s own instead of admitting failure.

The Guardian offers detailed account of the Egyptian interactions with their Israeli counterparts:

Netanyahu said such claims were “fake news” in an address to the Israeli people on Monday. Earlier that day his office said “no early message came from Egypt” and denied that the prime minister had recently met with the head of Egyptian intelligence to discuss any such warning.

That had followed the first reports of a warning from Egypt. An Egyptian official told the Associated Press that Egypt,,,had spoken repeatedly with the Israelis about “something big”.

The unnamed official claimed Israeli officials were focused on the West Bank and had played down the threat from Gaza. “We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Guardian also quotes a former MI6 director who discussed the systemic intelligence failures that contributed to the failure:

…Younger said he believed one issue was a structural problem, Israel’s “overreliance on a set of technology systems” to defend itself, including sensors to detect hostile activity near its border with Gaza. “Technology is good at revealing capabilities and actions, it’s not good at revealing intentions,” he said.

…Israel’s failure to pre-empt the attack also stemmed from a wider “failure of imagination” – and drew a parallel with the misjudgment in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks.

“9/11 classically was that. The assumption was not that we were vulnerable to anything in terms of this type of attack. The assumption was that it essentially wasn’t possible,” Younger said.

“…There will have been data breaking through which probably could have been interpreted differently and certainly would be, with hindsight, but people were just not looking at it in that way.”

Lost in all the media geshrei about Hamas atrocities, and its celebration of IDF daring and heroism, is the audacity and even brilliance of the Hamas operation. Aside from the impenetrable veil of operational secrecy maintained, it made the most of limited resources. Where the IDF relies on sheer firepower to devastate an enemy, Hamas has many fewer tools.  But it marshaled them in a comprehensive land, sea and air assault.  It achieved this impact with 1,000 fighters. 1/250,00th of the size of the Israeli army.  It did all this stealthily, despite the fact that Gaza is the most surveilled territory in the world via Israeli listening devices, satellite and drone surveillance, and communication intercepts,  not to mention human informants.

In fact, I would say that the Hamas attack will be studied in many military academies and by experts in asymmetrical warfare.  Probably even in Israeli officer training.  Any professional military wants to study its mistakes and learn from them in order to better protect itself and its citizens.

There may be those who chafe at any discussion of Hamas and its attack in terms other than opprobrium (“monsters,” rapists,” “animals,” “terrorists,” etc).  While I have sympathy for the pain of victims and survivors, it’s important that everyone look at these events with an unblinking eye.  It does no one any good, including the dead, to see things from only one perspective, that of the Israeli victim. There are many victims here. The Palestinians have more than twice the number of victims as Israel.

Journalists have an obligation to report the truth, not necessarily what your audience wants to hear. You do no one a service by peddling propaganda or one-sided journalism, which characterizes much of world reporting.