A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.
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.
I've always had the feeling like this is something Netanyahu and his cabinet wanted. It seems to me that they thought in their screwed up minds it would benefit them somehow.
To read this article use archive.ph. I can't post direct link as it's against this instances rules.
It's well established that Netanyahu undermines moderate Palestinian leadership through legitimizing radical Palestinian leadership, aka Hamas. Netanyahu engaging in diplomatic relations with Hamas in Gaza while ignoring good faith overtures from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is par for the course. As long as he can keep Hamas in power, he thinks he can more effectively justify Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people
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.
Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision.
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 suspect this is damage control - that Israel can no longer pretend that they didn't know in advance, so they have to pretend that the failure to act to prevent the attack was a mistake, rather than a considered decision made specifically so that Hamas would provide them with an excuse to invade and occupy Gaza.
They said 'never again' about genocides as well, and yet they sent weapons to Azerbaijan to move Armenians off their land, and now they're doing the same to Palestinians.
In the latest election polls, Netanyahu is being absolutely destroyed by Benny Gantz. Public trust in Netanyahu is currently sitting at 4%. I can't see battle cries mattering when 96% of the population want him to shut the fuck up.
Gantz is a moderate on Palestine and backs both strengthening the PA and a two state solution. None of this sounds like victory for Netanyahu. His career is over, his legacy is irreparably tarnished, and his political enemies are going to come to power.
Ugh... the "Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor" types are going to go crazy about this - I suppose it's simply too much to understand that the Israelis aren't the supersoldiers their propaganda makes them out to be.
What were they supposed to do with the knowledge Hamas has lots of plans to attack them? Build a wall with a highly advanced defensive systems to try and stop them? Oh, right...
If I told you a year ago that I plan to punch you in the face then is it your fault when I do it?
Hamas loudly say they plan to kill all Jewish people in Israel, when Israel takes measures to prevent that everyone says they're the bad guy - now people are blaming them for not taking enough measures? It makes only one sense, that is if you assume the people saying it don't care about anything beside hating Israel.
Uh.. they acquired detailed plans about this attack that they just declared impossible then they received info from veteran intelligence officers that Hamas was actively preparing for the attack they said was impossible. After receiving those warnings, and also the previously disclosed warnings from Egypt, they left the area the plan said was the point of attack completely undefended. There doesn't seem to have been any contingency plan in place to deal with this if this if it turned out to be true. It doesn't seem unfair to say that this was an enormous intelligence and security failure.
They only have limited resources and were using those to defend areas where Hamas were actively attacking. If they'd put all their troops to defend mostly empty desert then the weakspot would have been somewhere else and they'd have targeted their attack at that weakspot instead.
War isn't easy, certainly not against well funded terrorist organisations. I'm sure the IDF knew of hundreds of potential attacks and plans that Hamas wanted to carry out, knowing what they'll actually do and when is an impossible feat - I bet they're weren't many in Hamas itself that had any idea what was going to happen, even Iran who trains and funds them appeared surprised.
I doubt it. More likely they would rather portray themselves as careless than ignorant.
If they're just careless then the settler-colonial occupation is still viable, they just need to be more attentive and serious.
If they're ignorant, however, the whole thing was always impossible and it always will be.
They would rather be thought of as incompetent than discredit the project itself. Incompetent people can be replaced. Zionism can't.
EDIT Think about this! Zionists don't want the world to know that they were outsmarted or outmatched. They'd rather portray themselves as allowing the attack to happen through carelessness or maliciousness because they can not allow their invincibility to be questioned.
The truth is, their project has always been doomed. No amount of surveillance and brutality and security can ever contain a people forever. The colonized either need to be exterminated or they will always find ways to resist.
They want to deminish Hamas's accomplishment. That's it.
They’d rather portray themselves as allowing the attack to happen through carelessness or maliciousness because they can not allow their invincibility to be questioned.
I feel like their invincibility is questioned every time Hamas fires a rocket in their direction.
It usually takes more effort to defend something than to attack.
Their invincibility is affirmed every time the Iron Dome repells a rocket attack. They get to trumpet their invincibility and sell their image as godlike and untouchable.
The incursion ruined that image and made Israel look weak. That's why Israel is responding with genocide.