Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Where was the IDF on Oct 7? - with Ronen Bergman

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

*** Share on X: https://tinyurl.com/yvesakat *** One of the questions we repeatedly get from you, our listeners, is - "Where was the IDF on October 7th?" It's a topic that we have strenuously avoided. After the war, there will be a formal commission of inquiry that attempts to understand all that went wrong and why. There will be a time and a place for that. And yet, as the war in Gaza winds down, and as Israel prepares for another possible war, this question re-emerges. What lessons can be learned? More and more journalists in Israel are exploring the topic. So, we are going to dedicate an episode from time to time in the weeks ahead to try to understand what these journalists are learning. Our only caveat is that this is a difficult topic to explore - for all the obvious reasons. The information is uneven... there is still an element of fog of war. When I was in Israel last week, I visited Ronen Bergman in his home in Ramat HaSharon, to have a long conversation about what he has pieced together. Ronen is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and Senior Correspondent for Military and Intelligence Affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily. Ronen recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this war and the pre-war intelligence failures. He has published numerous books, including: “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations” - https://tinyurl.com/mwbmchaj And also, “The Secret War with Iran" - https://tinyurl.com/2p8sh9u Ronen is also a member of the Israeli bar (he clerked in the Attorney General’s Office), and has a master’s degree in international relations, as well as a Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University. Read Ronen's piece in The New York Times here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html

The intelligence achievement that turned to be an intelligence disaster, the Jericho Wall, which was a codename for a top-secret Israeli operation, in May 22, when Israeli intelligence was able to obtain the Hamas detailed war plan, how to initiate the attack, to breach the fence in 60 places, and to destroy Israeli defenses and conquer much of the Gaza division that is stretched throughout the border. If you look at the plan and you look at what actually happened, the fence on October 7 was breached in 58 places. So the invasion was an exact materialization of the Jericho wall, and it was in the hands of the Israelis in May 22.

It's 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 26, in New York City. It's 3 o'clock a.m. on Thursday, June 27th in Israel. One of the questions we repeatedly get from you, our listeners, when you're making suggestions for episodes is, where was the IDF on October 7th. It's a topic that I have strenuously avoided since, well, I figure there'll be a formal commission of inquiry that attempts to understand all that went wrong and why. And there'll be a time and a place for that. Israel, after all, has a long history of these ruthless commissions of inquiry after wars. And yet, as this war in Gaza winds down, and as Israel prepares for another possible war, the question just keeps re-emerging. Where was the IDF on October 7th? What lessons can be learned from the failures, from the breakdowns? More and more

Israeli journalists I know are exploring the topic. So we have decided to dedicate an episode from time to time in the weeks ahead to try to understand what these journalists are learning and how the lessons from their reporting could apply to future wars and future security decisions. My only caveat in exploring this topic is it is a difficult topic for all the obvious reasons, and the information is still uneven. There's still an element of fog of war. So to get all the details and all the facts will take a long time. That said, when I was in Israel last week, I visited Dr. Ronen Bergman one evening in his home. We sat, had tea and a long conversation about what he has been piecing together.

Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, and he's a senior correspondent for military and intelligence affairs for Yediot Ahronot, Israel's largest daily newspaper. Ronan also won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this war and the pre-war intelligence failures. Ronan is regarded as one of the most well-sourced journalists in Israel when it comes to Israel's intelligence community. He's also published numerous books, including Rise and Kill First, The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations, which was a New York Times bestseller, and also The Secret War with Iran. Ronen is also a member of the Israeli Bar. He clerked in the Attorney General's office, and he has a master's degree in international relations and a PhD in history from Cambridge University in England.

Ronen Bergman on Where Was the IDF on October 7th. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time my friend Ronen Bergman. We are here somewhere in Tel Aviv, the Tel Aviv area. Thanks for taking the time. Thanks for the invite. So many very good things about the podcast. Happy to be here in person.

Ronan, the reason I wanted to touch base with you while I was in town, what we spent a lot of time on this podcast doing is usually trying to understand what's happening in the war. We've spent less time trying to figure out how Israel got to October 7th, how October 7th happened. And there's a lot of confusing signals. There's a lot of noise. We try to separate the signal from the noise. There's a lot of agendas, a lot of people who have various equities and trying to explain how Israel got to October 7th. And a lot of guilt and responsibility that people are happy to share with others. Right. And as our listeners know, I have been steadfast in trying to

push off serious discussions of how Israel got to October 7th, because my view is there's so many political agendas embedded in that, and there's so much finger pointing. And the most important thing is Israel's got to figure out what it's doing, how it's going to fight this war, how it's going to win this war. And there'll be a time for figuring out how October 7th happened. There'll be a commission of inquiry and all these various processes. And I want to let those play out. That said, I think increasingly what I'm finding in discussions I have with Israelis

is understanding how Israel got to October 7th is not only important for purposes of responsibility and understanding what went wrong, it also informs what Israel does in this war. Understanding what it got wrong should inform what Israel does now in this war, how Israel defines success ultimately, how Israel deals with other threats in the region, how Israel can have confidence in its intelligence capabilities. So there are a lot of real-time issues that we're dealing with, which is why I wanted to get into some of this with you. And by my lights, there are two parts to this question. The first part is the decade, decade plus long policy that was government policy that was undergirded by a series of assumptions about Gaza and Hamas and the threat that it seems like Israel got wrong. And then there's operationally at a very practical level what happened on October 7th.

The failure for Israel, A, to maintain security at the border and B, to respond to the situation more rapidly than it did. But before that, you've been covering Israel's intelligence services for decades. How would you compare the role that intelligence and the intelligence community plays in Israel compared with other countries. On the 2nd of June, 1948, in the midst of this horrible war of independence, two weeks after Israel was established, two weeks after the IDF was established, the situation was dire. David Ben-Gurion found the time

to get some people secretly to his new office in a shack in Kiryat, Tel Aviv, and establish the Israeli intelligence community. He was like a prophet. He realized he was one of the only who truly believed that Israel will win that war. The CIA thought that, you know, the Arabs will slaughter the Jews in two weeks. He said we will win. But he also realized that the IDF, that is mostly reservist, cannot be stationed on the border of Israel throughout the year

because there will be no state, no prosperity, no economy. And that this needs to be bartered, replaced with intelligence, top intelligence from inside enemy ranks that would bring a sufficient alert in order to recruit the reservist and what the enemy is planning what are his weapon and his tactics and later what the terrorist organization are doing the intelligence is taking i think the most decisive and critical role in the history of israel more than any other country, at least in the Western world. Dictatorship is different because it's part of preserving the regime. But in Israel, there is no historical important decision making, no historical turn. Nothing important that happened without the significant imprint of the intelligence.

Not all of it was good. Sometimes the Israeli James Bond looks more like Inspector Clouseau, but it was always there and very, very important. And also always the overarching thought of necessity. I once had a conversation with someone who was holding the Iranian file, the Iranian operations of the CIA. We thought, what is the difference between CIA and Israeli intelligence? In general, it's that additional thought with which the employees of Israeli intelligence are going to work every morning. Like everybody, they want to feel happy. They want to fulfill themselves. They want to fulfill their selves.

They want to earn some money, but they have an additional thought. This is necessity. And if an operation, CIA operation in Malaysia goes wrong, it's bad. But most cases, I know September 11th is exceptional.

Most cases would not affect US citizens. Here, I once met in the cyber lab of Shin Bet, a person that left Motorola with second degree from the Technion, leaving Motorola. Her salary was cut into half the day she went to work for Shin Bet. And I asked her, like being the devil's eye,

I said, why? You leave a good job with the prosperity, with the prospect of a lot of money for this, with many shifts, you don't see your family now. She said, yes, and I'm very happy. I said, why? She said, first of all, it's only action here. And I'm one of the few to see this.

Second, if I invent something that works, it will be implemented immediately in In Motorola, maybe, maybe not. And third, the flip side of the first one, the dark side of that coin, is that if I don't prefer oil, then tomorrow someone might get killed. Maybe even someone I know. Maybe even my family. The necessity. It was always there, but something went really wrong in the month, in the days and month and years before October 7th.

It's not about bad intention. It's not about nonchalance or some kind of apathy towards that. And it's not about a certain person that needed to, you know know put the needle somewhere else it's a total collapse of the intelligence community and the military of israel complacency self-confidence over self-confidence vanity vanity vanity it's the thought that those are just a bunch of some Gazans. Maybe Iran, like they are considered to be sophisticated. Hezbollah, they were seen as the main threat. But those Gazans, what can they do?

And this is the price of vanity. Israeli intelligence believed in something they called intelligence supremacy. And again, it's unbelievable the similarities between things that happened in the Yom Kippur War and were never researched and understood in what happened on October 7. On April 1973, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Eliezer Ira, promised the cabinet that he is able to give them 24 to 48 hours alert before an Egyptian attack. Why was he able? Because he had something he called the policy, the insurance policy. The insurance policy were, in that time, sophisticated devices attached to main encrypted communication line of the Egyptian military. And it was, the Israelis were certain that if an attack is coming, that they will speak over those lines.

And the Israelis were able to hear. But they didn't. A year before, they captured a telephone pole by one of the main highways. It looked like a regular one, but they hid a bugging device intercepting their communication. So they realized, even if they didn't find the others, they realized the capabilities. In 2018, Hamas suspected a group of NGO health workers, Arabs, but something in their story didn't fit. And it turned out that they are undercover,

top secret platoon of Israeli intelligence. And they had to run away, firing their way out. And one Israeli fighter was killed in the fire and some others were wounded, but they left behind and all the others were able to flee under heavy fire, massive fire from the IDF that came to help. But they left behind a lot of equipment. And the IDF tried to bomb the equipment, but did not destroy enough.

And soon after, Hamas was deducting the obvious, what they were doing. They were trying to hook into a Hamas encrypted communication. And so the belief in Israel was of intelligence supremacy, like what Eliezer told the cabinet in April 1973, that if Hamas is planning something, they will do that over channels that Israel censors monitor. And if the censors do not monitor,

it means that they will not attack. Guess what? They either used, this is yet to be investigated, but they either use the channel for deception, meaning feeding the channel with false information, or they just didn't speak. Remember, I said that-

They did it all analog. Analog. They had people meeting among themselves. Maybe just set the table by explaining to me what were the basic assumptions embedded in the Israeli security establishment and the Israeli political establishment's approach to Hamas, Gaza, the threat from Hamas in the years, the decade plus before October 7th?

This is one of the, of course, the main questions. And in the intelligence world, this will be the question of intentions. What is the mindset? What are the plans? What are the intentions of the enemy? Or in this case, the enemy can be concise to the gap between the right and the left ear of Yechia Sinuah. Because since 2015-16, Yechia Sinuor is almost the only important voice in Hamas. And this is in spite of some of his rivals there trying to diminish his power. But it was clear to Israel that it's all about Sinuor. And that's beginning when?

When did they know it's all about Sinuor? Soon after his release from prison? No, but soon after his release from prison, he and another person named Mushta, that is one of his closest associates that was released with him from prison at the Shalit deal, they were starting an offense inside Hamas in order to gain more and more power. And then came defensive edge of 2014. So just for our listeners, so that's the 2014 Gaza-Hamas-Israel war lasted about 50 days. It was the last major IDF operation in Gaza

before the war of October 7th. And Sinoar was not the leader of Hamas in Gaza. It was Haniyeh. During a protective edge. Yes. And then the military commander of Hamas that did not perform as they expected, Mohammed Def, he sent an apology to Qasem Soleimani, the head of Quds Force.

In Iran. In Iran. And said, it's not us, the Qasem Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, that are to be blamed. It's the politicians. So they believe they failed with protective edge in 2014. And Mohammed Def had what role at the time? The same role, the military commander of Hamas.

He was the military commander of Hamas. The head of Qassam Brigade. And he sends a message to. Soleimani. Soleimani in Iran saying, we failed, but it's not our fault. It was the political decision maker. Yeah. Which is Haniyeh.

Which is Haniyeh. Now, of course, he apologized because iranians were supplying them with massive aid in all fields and military build-up so he said this is why we didn't perform and we didn't perform he said because they did not allow us the politicians to attack first to come in an imminent surprise strategic attack against israel just for our listeners muhammad def and Yechid Sinua are, to this day, close associates, basically co-heads of Hamas. So in spite of two years after Sinua elected to be the political leader of Hamas in Gaza, he remained part of the military infrastructure

and very close to the leaders of the military leader. And basically, and now we know this from protocols and notes from meetings that were taking place before October 7th and were now captured in Gaza, Hamas records, that he was the military commander and the political leader. He was leading everything. And those two conclusions that Hamas needs to attack in a total surprise and Hamas needs to disregard the politicians were totally implemented on October 7. But all of that was happening outside the eyesight of Israeli intelligence. And let me just jump to the end,

which is the clearest point, I think, that gives an understanding to this blindness. And this is in a meeting with the Israeli prime minister of all the leaders of the intelligence and the military. And on October 2nd, it's a Monday, and they have a unanimous reading of Hamas. The prime minister, the national security advisor, and all the leaders of Israeli intelligence. This is what date?

October 2nd. Five days before the war. And they all, with no dispute, with no one standing and saying, well, maybe it's different. They all say, Hamas is deterred weekend. In Hebrew, it sounds better. It's Sholet Mukhlesh Murta. And after that, this was a secret meeting, of course, but the National Security Advisor of Israel,

Zahi Anegbi, went on radio that day and gave publicity to this assessment. He said Hamas are deterred and will be deterred for many years after the previous war, the previous round, which is in May 21. So the conception, as they call it today in Israel. The conceptia.

The conceptia, which is a derogatory term that was borrowed from the investigation of the Yom Kippur War. Now, to have a conception is not a bad thing. What is bad is not to see that it changed. The conception was Israel has been facing more or less one kind of enemy in the last three decades. They call themselves Jabal al-Mukawama, the resistant front.

Israel calls them the jihadist front or the radical front. So Iran, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and all the other militias that they support. By nature, they are jihadist. But one of the main pillars of Israeli defense strategy was that all the component of that front, even if they are calling for suicide bombers, even if they are nonchalant to the death of thousands,

even from their own people. They are not suicidal themselves. This was the belief. Once they get an organization or a territory or a country they rule, they will not risk the destruction of that area and therefore the destruction of the achievement they already have in an all-out war with Israel. And this is at what level of the organization of Hamas,

that the theory of the Israeli security intelligence establishment was, at what level is that view that they're practical, they're survivalists, and they're practical, and they're not messianic, they actually want to build hang on to territory quote-unquote govern preserve they're not reckless and suicidal so that's up and down the organization up and down of course but this is a totalitarian organization totalitarian rule of small country the gaza still, after, according to this reading, after doing so much and taking, seizing control in 2007 of a small country, but still like a state that they control,

they wouldn't risk an Israeli invasion, an all-out war with a mighty enemy and losing everything they achieved. And there was a belief now, if you look at what is happening now in Lebanon, though Nasrallah, Hezbollah are fighting Israel, but they are also keeping the threshold of not going to an all-out war. So this theory that Iran also kept some kind of boundaries. So this theory works. But sometimes, as it turned out in October 7, it doesn't and while israel felt that it is able

to find some kind of solution some kind of settlement some kind of ways to stabilize the horrible relations with the gazans and haas, the Hamas was planning something else. Now, here's the, if you want to have a more colorful way to describe it. On October 1st, 2018, five years before the war, Sinoir gave an interview to Yediot Ahonot. It was Francesca, an Italian reporter. Right, it was a joint interview for yadio.com and the republic in italy he knew that this is for your deal so by itself this was a step and then you read the text

you know he's speaking about he doesn't he says we don't need more wars i am keen to have all gazans and gazan child children go to swim at the beach, there are Palestinian children in Gaza that never went to the beach. It's not normal. You hear a much moderate than you expect. Now, here's the question. Was he lying in that interview and was planning this all along?

Or he changed through time because whatever happened, you know, the Saudi deal that he wanted to disrupt or he wanted to free the prisoners and couldn't do that with this is one of the main questions that is deeply occupying israeli intelligence now but in that interview in that article did israeli intelligence believe at the time oh he's he's thinking more practically he's thinking more like a like a leader like a mayor who's responsible for running a town or a city than he is a jihadist some did and it looked reasonable also it coincided with the policy initiated by prime minister netanyahu who was asking qatar to help fund the gazan government, which is, as we know, is controlled by Hamas.

And in many occasions, he spoke about Hamas. He says Hamas is an asset. Like Netanyahu, some political analysts believe because he didn't want to have the Palestinian authority as one representative for the Palestinian people, he thought that having those two divided rule would be better. This policy, bringing the money from Qatar, was defended and pushed and trusted by most parts of Israeli intelligence, because they believed what Sinoir said. This policy policy meaning of getting funds to impoverish Palestinians, to those Palestinians in Gaza who were impoverished, they needed to get funding to them,

and Qatar was a vehicle through which to do it. Yeah, but of course, even if Hamas was not stealing the money, which soon they found it is doing, at least partly, money is fungible. When Hamas doesn't need to pay those $100 a month to a teacher, and Qatar is doing at least partly money is fungible when Hamas doesn't need to pay those 100 a month to a teacher and Qatar is doing that then Hamas can take the 100 but what is interesting is that the Qatari funding was not secret everybody saw it and when Prime Minister Bennett came to

be the Prime Minister he wanted to cut that. The military and the intelligence, parts of the intelligence, didn't want because they were fearing escalation. Because it was clear that now the sort of the strip is sort of addicted to the money. And if you cut that, you will end up with riots that Hamas will, of course, inflate. And so they had some kind of a compromise and they stopped the cash, but they continued to send the money over. In retrospect, I think that there's no one that does not regret. And Yossi Cohen, the chief of Mossad, before he left office, he who was mediating the connection with Qatar, he said it's getting out of control and we should stop. And his successor,

Dadi Barnea, in the meetings with the new elected government, so the Bennett government, and then the Lapid government, and then the Netanyahu government, he objected. But he was overruled. And as late as Yom Kippur,

28th of September, he meets in Qatar with the ambassador for Gaza, El Ahmadi, and he gives him the okay, which he objected, but of course, a civil servant, he takes the Israeli policy and the orders he got from Netanyahu, from Prime Minister Netanyahu, he said, we are continuing. They need to renew this after, like, periodically. And one of the assumptions, yet to be fully proved, but already in the intelligence collected from Gaza, there are more than just hints, that Sinoa was playing on that card.

He was making sure that Israel will be fed all the time with good signs, hope, some ceasefire. Now, the Qataris, who were also misled, they gave Israel the same signs. And more than that, the political bureau of Hamas that is based in Qatar, they were convinced that this is going this way because Sinoar realized that if he wants to make this a total surprise, that the condition for the success of this operation is a total surprise, that if he wants to have total surprise, he needs to keep the secret among few associates in Gaza

and not communicate that in any way to anyone else because Israel, maybe it's ironic or absurd, Israel has a much better intelligence on far away enemies than on Hamas. If they would be updating Nasrallah or Iran, there's a strong chance that Israel would know. But he kept that. And also, he knew that the political bureau would stop him. Because there was a clash, and Israel understood there was a clash of what is Hamas Hamas is it a governing organization or is it a jihadist and he he decided what is the outcome of

this debate or dispute between him and the politicians he just forgot to send the email that he decided and he just decided for them now so this is about intentions well everything i said now everything we discussed is about the intention the total misreading of sinwar's attentions whether he was telling the truth on that interview and changed through time or whether it was a fake that only tells you whether or not he'd been going back for, say, a decade, or he had been planning this since sometime after 2018. But you can explain a mistake in reading someone's mind. You don't have the bugging device to attach to his mind.

Not yet, yeah. And if you keep a secret among five or six people, then you can understand why this was not picked up. But then there's the second biggest failure, which is a total misunderstanding, misreading of Hamas capabilities. And this is where the intelligence achievement that turned to be an intelligence disaster, the Jericho Wall, which was a codename for a top secret Israeli operation in May 22, when Israeli intelligence was able to obtain the Hamas war plan, the detailed war plan, how to initiate the attack, to breach defense in 60 places, and to destroy Israeli defenses and conquer much of the Gaza division that is

stretched throughout the border. If you look at the plan and you look at what actually happened, the fence on October 7 was breached in 58 places. So the invasion was an exact materialization of the Jericho wall and it was in the hands of the Israelis in May 22. Now, so what happened? What happened was that Israel considered Jericho Wall, they called it a compass for the building of force. So not an attacking plan for something they can do, but a plan for something they want to do one day.

It was aspirational, but it wasn't, by the analysis of the Israeli leadership, it wasn't an operational plan to be implemented anytime in the near future. So while they, the plan is about to bridge defense in 60 places with 24 Dukhba platoons spread all over and more forces from other parts of Hamas. Israel believed that they could breach defense maximum in two places

with maybe 70 Nuhba terrorists. So 3,000 people in 60 places in the plan, and Israel says maximum two with 70 people. It's not the same universe. And why did Israel believe that Hamas cannot execute Jericho? This is one of the key questions. Generally, it's again, a great Israeli achievement turned into a disaster. After 2014, the defensive edge war, the Israeli intelligence and military realized that there is a disaster. After 2014, the defensive edge war, the Israeli intelligence and military realized that there is a problem. The problem is Hamas is planning a massive attack using tunnels going

from Gaza into Israel. During 2014, the extent, the depths of the problem became clear because suddenly some terrorists popped up by the road and killed soldiers. And thanks to some Israeli troops, they were stopped. But it was clear that intelligence would not be enough to supply a full information about all the tunnels. There needs to be some other solution. And then when seeing the cross-border tunnels as the main threat,

the Israeli defense establishment recruited itself and they came with a solution. The solution was a subterranean fence going, they call it the salaric fence, with sensors, with massive concrete, enforced concrete, enforced concrete, going from the ground until minus 70, 70 meters. And that was concluded in 2020. And soon after, the Israeli intelligence...

Covering the entire... The entire... Border. Hemisphere of the border. Massive, massive operation. Now, Hamas must have known Israel was doing this. They could see it. They could see the border. Massive, massive operation. Now, Hamas must have known Israel was doing this. They could see it.

They could see the construction. And soon after, Israel realized, Israeli intelligence learned, that Hamas just realized that they cannot cross it, that it's not reachable. So from the Israeli point of view,

they were enchanted, too enchanted, by this achievement. They said, okay, Hamas was planning an invasion the invasion was planned to be with tunnels dug into the territory of Israel now they cannot do that so the only thing they can do one is to try and invade Israel above ground but then of course Israel will see them And defense had seven different mechanisms of detection and kill.

Automatic guns and scouts and computers and robots and all sorts of... So if they come above ground, Israel will stop them. So they cannot. They can only send two platoons of 70 people in two places. That's it. And they call it in Hebrew pshita, which means a raid. The danger, the risk was defined as pshita, as raid, and not plisha, invasion. And even this small euphemism, the small unit in the Gaza brigade, the Gaza division, in the intelligence cell that was

supposed to track Hamas plans for an invasion was called raid cell. Meaning that the outfit within Israeli intelligence that was assigned to monitor this possible operation, the cell was, the nomenclature was referring to it as a raid rather than an invasion. Because nobody thought that an invasion can happen. And this comes back to your point about the mindset. The mindset was invasion can't happen and that they probably didn't want it to happen. They didn't want. And so they, maybe they have plans on the paper of some kind of a desired, so Jericho, desired capability one day, but they don't want and they cannot. And if they try, defense will stop them. You know, on the second day of the Yom Kippur War, Moshe Dayan, the Israeli Minister of Defense, at noon came to see Golda Meir. The disaster was not yet fully known, but it was clear that it's not going the way that Israel wanted.

And he said, Mrs. Prime Minister, I was wrong. I thought that the Egyptians don't have a chance to cross the Suez Canal. There are papers of Israeli intelligence written before this current war that are using the same language of intelligence documents that were written before October 73. It's like some kind of a devilish, hideous angel came and make those people write the same words. You know, 10 minutes past 3 o'clock a.m., the night between 6 and 7, the Shin Bet, so the Israeli Domestic Secret Service,

is initiating a, is sending a telegram to some of the units of the military in the Shin Bet. It says, we have some worrying or concerning signs that Hamas is going to emergency status, meaning attack. But it is our assessment that SINUAR does not want escalation. If you look at what the intelligence produced on the morning of the 7th, it's exactly the same, the same language.

And so what Israel didn't do was to seek and check whether Hamas was able to close the gap and reach the capability to execute Jericho Wall. There were some people on a lower level of the intelligence who said, we are monitoring this exercise, this drill. We see that they are improving. We see that they are improving, we see that they are closing the gap. But at the end, there was no one to challenge both, no one like a serious alert with intelligence to challenge both the assessment on the intentions of Sinan and the assessment on the capabilities of Hamas. Can we just say on the capabilities? Because there's two aspects to the tunnel system. There's the tunnel system, the part of the tunnel system that's able to penetrate

Israel. And then there's the tunnel system that we've learned all too much about since October 7th, which is this 350 miles underground in Gaza, this labyrinth where Hamas can command a war from, hide hostages in, store weapons in. How aware was Israel of the depth and breadth of this tunnel system before October 7th? Not the part that penetrates Israel, but just the city of tunnels inside Gaza. So I think looking at this reflects the quantity and quality of intelligence in general that Israel had about Hamas. I once wrote that the unsuccessful attempt to understand where is Gilad Shalit should be used, should have been used by Israel as a sign of warning. Now, Gilad Shalit, a live soldier, was kept in Gaza for five and a half years. During that time, Israel didn't know where he is.

And the extent of unsuccessful attempts, not even to arrest him, but even know where he is, was so deep that they felt, they were sure that he's not in Gaza anymore. Because if he was in Gaza, they would pick up something. Because someone alive creates noise, you need to feed him, to guard him, to change his bed sheets, etc. Even when he was back to Israel and debriefed about everything he remembered, even now they don't

know where he was kept for most of the time. This is just one small example. Gaza is near Israel. Israel has been monitoring that with all the different sensors, humid and singing. But you can't build all that infrastructure without military equipment and cement and supplies and experts and construction workers and engineers. And like I said, it's like building a subway system. So in a certain point, when Israel realized that the crossing tunnels are no longer problem, they were still very much worried about the tunnels from Egypt, but this is not something Israel could do something militarily against. It can, you know, try to negotiate with Egypt with small success. But all the rest seemed to the

Israeli leadership, political and military and intelligence as not very important. Because if they want to continue dug, dig tunnels because, I don't know, they are bored or they just want to continue. What's the meaning of that? And nobody thought that maybe the explanation is not just because they are bored or because they work on the orders or they need to be busy, but because those are not attacking, not offensive tunnels, but defensive tunnels, to maintain redundancy of Hamas in case of Israeli invasion. Now, if Hamas knows Israel,

understands Israel as much as they say, then the conclusion of that would be that Hamas understands, that Sinoa understands, that Israel would invade Gaza only in a very, very, very extreme case, that Hamas does something very, very bad to Israel. The most obvious example or conclusion would be that they are preparing for that moment. So they knew these tunnels were being built. They just didn't make military sense to Israel in terms of them being used in an offensive way. Yeah, they didn't know enough. In fact, when Israel entered the Gaza Strip, a story my colleague at the time, Patrick Kingsley and myself published, when Israel entered the Gaza Strip, you made the calculation to miles, they thought the assessment was that there was 150 kilometers of tunnels.

It turned out that there are at least 750. So the extent of the mistake, there are 157 kilometers just under Khan Yunus, this small outskirt of refugee camps. And when you see what the IDF has said, not just publicly for PR, but among the IDF, among the leaders, among the chief of staff, about the results of the bombing of the tunnels in the last war with Hamas, in Guardians of the Wall in May 21, one of the leaders of Israeli defense establishment said as late as January 23, Sinoar doesn't want to attack Israel, not because there's a stick or carrot, no carrot, but he knows, Sinoar, after what we did to him in Guardians of the Wall in May 21,

that he will not have the subterranean network in the next war. Now, I'm sure that that person did not say that just because he invented that or he reflected some wishful thinking. This was based on a realm of reports of Israeli intelligence after that war. Now, it's still time will tell us, and hopefully more documents, if Israel was just poor with the collection of intelligence, or someone in the military lied, or make the reports better than they were. But it's clear that Sinoar, from the same bombing, the same operation, the same raid, deducted the opposite conclusions.

The detainees sustained. They made some clear and fast deduction of conclusions. They added more zigzags to the tunnels, more blast doors. And what Israel discovered was not just longer, but vast and stronger and, and smarter than anything. They didn't know that there was a Chinese machine that can build a tunnel as wide as a truck. I visited that tunnel. They found a video of Ahmed Sinua, the brother of who was running the whole campaign of the tunnels,

the whole project, in his private car, going through the tunnel. And there's so much more. And because Israel thought this is not a problem, they did not prepare the necessary gear and methods. And it turned out to be very, even when you discover a tunnel, even when you declare it free from booby traps,

it just turned out to be very, very difficult to destroy them. You need to use special means, and it's very slow. And the idea of prediction now that even if Israel controls the Gaza Strip, it could take like up to three years to destroy everything. You published an op-ed the day before October 7th on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Retired Major General Aharon Farkas, former head of military intelligence, also published a piece, both pieces in Yediot Aharonot, about lessons learned, legacy of... Lessons not learned. Lessons not learned from the Yom Kippur War and their relevance for today.

This was published the day before October 7th. What were those lessons, learned or not learned? And to what extent did they rear their head, their ugly head, 24 hours after these pieces were published? published. So both of us ended our stories, our op-eds, with a warning that Israel is exposed to another strategic surprise attack by one or more than one of its enemies. When 24 hours later, Hamas attacked, people called me and called our major general, Farkash, and said, how did you know? How did you predict you were the only ones? Now, with respect to the credit, we didn't know anything. Nobody knew.

What we did know is that the lessons from the Yom Kippur War, this war was not investigated right. One day we'll tell the story of the cover-up of the investigation. Of the Yom Kippur War? Of the Yom Kippur War. Of the Yom Kippur War. But there was a whole, there was the commission of inquiry. There was no investigation into the intelligence blunder, which is the main component there, as now. The investigation panel, headed by former Chief Justice Aghanat,

they came to the conclusion that few people made the very wrong decisions, that the head of military intelligence, head of the assessment for military intelligence, that they had to make other decisions. And therefore, part of the responsibility lies on their social shoulders. But what they did not investigate, they did something that many journalists are doing and are doing it about october october 7 as well personification of history he is to be blamed if that person on a that minute would do something different if you would be able to get into the time machine and go back and force his hand to do this or that, then it's all going to be okay.

That prevented a real investigation of the war. Not the fact that they made the wrong call, that's clear. But what led those high-ranked, smart, and patriotic, of course, they didn't want Israel to be attacked. What what made them and what made them was a very i think the most sophisticated deception plan in the history of intelligence maybe until october 7 led by president sadat because the sin of vanity because israel israelis the defense establishment their ego their, their military, their political, they didn't believe that Sadat and Egypt can perform. There was an investigation in 1974 in Mossad

asking the question of whether this was a deception, smart deception. And they came to the surprising conclusion that the Mossad did not follow any deception. Why? Because the Egyptians are not capable of executing deception. So I explain why I was not bluffed because I say that the other side cannot bluff me. It's like a logic circle that collapsed into itself.

Right. And because this was never investigated never and one day we will publish how the whole thing was covered up but the interim conclusion of both major general Farkash one of the most experienced intelligence officers in Israel and myself, that the sin of vanity, because Israel did not investigate and deduct the real reason and made the real conclusion, it's almost doomed to fall again into the same pit. And 24 hours later, it happened. So we spoke about intentions. We spoke about capabilities, which sort of mixed together when they were supposed to be totally separate.

And the third part of the failure is a total misunderstanding of the decision and the steps to execute October 7th, the specific day. But of course, the specific day was, this was planned long ago and there was a road taken. Of course, we did speak in the last night. When do you think they settled on, we're definitely going to do this and this is the approximate date we'll do it? Based on your sources. There were ideas of SINWA to execute that much before.

There were ideas of SINWA to execute the much before. There were ideas of Sinhwa to execute the plan. The plan. Earlier. Much earlier. And they were delayed from different reasons. It's clear that they went to do that on a holiday and on Shabbat. Do you recall another surprise that started on Shabbat in a holiday? Right.

For our listeners, that's the Yom Kippur War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Yom Kippur War. And because they knew that the shifts are reducted, the shift in the military, that people are going, that the whole week is a week of vacation, there are still secret teams in the military reading documents. They captured something like two and a half million

pages. It will take some time to read. But what I understand is that there were a few dates. And then in the last month, there was fixation on October 7. And there were many steps that were taken, and none of them was interpreted right. But the unbelievable thing happened. There were like maybe 10,000 Hamas members that were involved in the preparation that night, 10,000. So 10,000 people are taken from their homes in the middle of the night. Most of them are being told that this is a drill.

They are being told just much later that it's not. But 10,000 people plucked away from their homes means that multiply that by five or seven people per person. They see that the guy is gone. So that's like 60,000 to 70,000 people know something's going on. Yeah. There's even an intercept. Chinbet had an intercept of someone from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad calling his buddy from Hamas and said, what the hell is going on?

Why is everybody? He said, no, no, it's just a drill. Maybe he believed in that. But we also know now that there were a lot, there was a lot of intelligence. And again, I don't want to be seen as the wisdom of retrospect. It always happens

in intelligence blunders that you take all the material, all the intelligence, and you found this group of Middle Eastern training for flights in that place that was pissed. Trust me, I worked in the Bush administration. And I mean, at least as far as Iraq is concerned, which is the part I worked on.

In retrospect, you have all this data and you have all these memos that if they were all examined and believed to be 100% accurate in the moment, they would have told you a lot. Of course, that's not the way intelligence analysis and collection and evaluation works. And there's something in the Israeli intelligence called an alert model, which basically trying to put this crucial need to get alert in some kind of perimeter, some kind of framework, which basically says, here are signs that something might be happening. You know, preparation of hospitals, someone of Hamas going underground, some vehicles moving from here to there. And for this reason or the other, and I think the main reason was vanity, was because nobody thought that it could happen. There was no such model vis-a-vis Hamas. There was a model with Hezbollah, but there was no model with Hamas.

So even when some signs were picked on that night, even when they saw that there is a Hamas commander going underground, even when some communication that is reserved for emergency network for Hamas started operating, they still saw this as yet another exercise. Because in an exercise, they also operated the same thing. Let me tell you a story. Israeli intelligence believed for the first weeks that the recruitment of the Nuhba through the night was done by foot from door to door. The commanders knocked on the door, said, wake up, take your gear and come. We have an exercise, a night exercise.

But when Israeli intelligence briefed the CIA about UNRWA employees that were involved in the attack on October 7, and the CIA came to meet with the current hand of military intelligence, Major General Aaron Khalifa. They asked and they were given with some of the facts, of the proofs. And one day I met with the source and he gave me that briefing

that was given to the CIA. And I'm reading it. And in that, I'm reading that one of the UNRWA teachers, who is also a Hamas militant, a NUHPA member, he's getting an SMS at 11 p.m. NUHPA is the elite military. It's the front raiding force of Hamas. Those 3,000 that are raiding 24 platoons.

So he's getting an SMS saying, you come to the place where it's agreed to come before the raid, and don't forget to bring the RPG that you kept in your house. I read this, and I look at the source. He says, why are you looking at me? I said, you know why I'm looking at you. And then, of course, we are on audio, so people cannot see. He does this sort of emoji.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hands up. What can I do? Because I was looking at him. Because apparently, at least some of the Nuhma got their alerts through text messages. Not just from people knocking. It's very hard to intercept people knocking at doors. But in any case, 10,000 people are involved.

At least 100,000 know that their relative is out of the house. There's a lot of movement. And Israel almost doesn't know anything. And the little signs that were picked up are either interpreted as another drill, so imitating war, but not war. And the most was to say, well, maybe there's going to be a raid,

a Nuchma breach of defense in two places, 70 people. Okay, it's horrible if they succeed. And so we can handle it. We can handle it, but it's not. Israel didn't have a real war plan in case of invasion. David Ben-Gurion, who appointed himself as the first Israeli, not just prime minister, but also minister of defense, he created the Israeli defense strategy or Israeli military strategy.

It is based on three pillars. It sounds much better in Hebrew. Hartaa, hatraaa, achraaa, which means deterrence, alert, and total swift victory. The whole of what Israel was about was getting the intelligence. If the deterrent didn't work and the enemy is about to launch an attack, to get the intelligence. And whatever happens, an immediate shift of the battlefield to enemy territory. And so the Gaza border was not prepared. Nobody thought this is happening. This could be happening you know when I was sitting here

and I saw the first social media clips that Hamas was sending from inside Israel, it was like 8.30 in the morning I think, so two hours after, and when I first saw it, I thought this is a I told the person, this is just a fabrication, it's

not true, because nobody like, nobody could believe and this is this also this third part the disbelief in the capability and the almost zero knowing of what is happening that also led to very poor preparations of the idf that was enchanted by the this this wall this this fence that was supposed to stop everything. There were high-rank officials, high-rank officers in the southern command who said, nobody, nothing can cross the fence. It's invincible. If Israel's theory of the case, if Israel's theory of Hamas had not been their practical, their survivalist, they are not willing to risk at all,

they're not willing, they're not messianic, they're into preservation, preservation of their lives, they're not jihadist. If the theory had not been that, if their theory had been, no, no, no, no, they're jihadist, that mindset is pervasive up and down the ranks, it is what we know it is today. The quotes you saw from Sinoir recently saying he's willing to sacrifice enormous Palestinian bloodshed to advance their goals. If Israel had known all that, then the reasonable conclusion would be that Israel cannot wait. Of course, a reasonable conclusion would be that someday Hamas can't surprise Israel. If someone would change the whole strategy and believe that Hamas might actually do that,

meaning their intention is to continue with jihad, even with performing a suicide attack against themselves, even with risking their own rule, their own lives, but the achievement of getting control over this land. Then, of course, Israel could not have waited. To believe that Hamas is deterred was the very comfortable conclusion for all the different actors in Israel. It was comfortable for Prime Minister Netanyahu, who could say, well, why should I negotiate with the Palestinian authority? That's not the only representative of the Palestinian people. And of course,

nobody asked him to negotiate with Hamas. But it was also comfortable for the military, the intelligence, because another conclusion would force them to act. And this is not easy. In retrospect, of course, everybody is wise, but let's take Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been stockpiling hundreds of thousands of rockets and missiles. Israel knows about that. So the conclusion is what? To launch war, even if it's not necessary, like if it's not forced on Israel? And there was one person, then the Minister of Defense, Vigdo Lieberman, who wrote in 2016, wrote a detailed top secret memo

with a very precise prediction of what will happen. And he demanded to switch the priorities and put Gaza first, Lebanon second, and invade Gaza and destroy Hamas. Preemptively. Preemptively. Because he had been concerned

that there was a version of what we now know to be October 7th, governing the mindset of the House. And he demanded to do that before they get two-stroke. And, you know, when you look at this document for 2016, which now we have, you know, he's like a prophet. And I asked him with another colleague, Mark Mazzetti, from the DC Bureau of the New York Times. We went to see him in one of the enterprises that we wrote last year. And I said, how come you were different? Because he saw something that nobody else.

So he banged on the table and says, Russian conspiracy. I understand what conspiracy is. He laughed a bit. This is for our listeners. He's the leader. Avigdor Lieberman is the He laughed a bit. But this was, of course... This is for our listeners. He's the leader. Avigdor Lieberman is the leader of a political party in Israel that has its roots Russian immigrants. He was born in Moldova.

He's very popular with the Russian immigrants. Now, of course, none of this conversation was laughable because he was right, apparently. Nobody listened. And he even resigned from his post as a minister of defense two years after, after two years of attempts to convince the military and the prime minister to change their priority and go first against Hamas and only then against Hezbollah. So there was one voice.

But if he was winning and Israel would invade Gaza or preemptively strike Hamas and start the war, there would be a massive opposition that would say that this is all about these crazy Russian immigrants that is fed by conspiracies and he's a warmonger and forced a war that Israel didn't need and didn't want and would not be forced to go through. This is very hard. And of course, this will call for a total change of Israeli mindset and Israeli defense strategy, not just against Hamas, but against everybody.

There's a tendency to have a very binary view. It was a series of bad decisions by the political leadership, by the government. That's one perspective. And then the government and the political leaders point their fingers at bad intelligence and bad intelligence analysis and not necessarily sharing all the relevant information with the political decision makers that would have been necessary to change the policy. I think what you're saying is it's all of the above. It's all of the above. There's something else which I didn't mention yet, but this is the five letters of warnings from the intelligence community to Prime Minister Netanyahu saying that the differentiation of Israeli society following the so-called judicial overall is weakening the military, but much worse,

it's seen by the front of, the axis of resistance, the Jabha al-Mukamal, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, as an opportunity to attack Israel because it is weak. And if that continues, one of the members of the resistant front,

of the radical front, might go and grasp the opportunity. And Netanyahu refused to listen. He even refused to meet the chief of staff. He accused the chief of staff in some kind of a conspiracy against him. Of course, the media and the chief of staff, the front that he usually sees as foes. And it all materialized, those warnings. And to what extent was the momentum behind normalization with Saudi Arabia a catalyst for,

in other words, I try to understand the sequencing, because we knew in fall of 23 that the Saudi-Israeli normalization was moving along at a pretty fast clip, faster, I think, than many people realized, certainly many in the press in the West realized. Did the Hamas know it was moving quickly and they wanted to upend it? Did they make this decision before Saudi normalization was getting momentum? And then how did Saudi normalization fit into there, to the extent that Israeli, your sources now know? Well, this still needs to be much thoroughly investigated from the documents, from the interrogations with some of the Hamas members that were captured on October 7, or then captured in Gaza, those who were not killed. But there is some intelligence suggesting,

first of all, not even intelligence, in the interview that the Hamas leadership in Doha and in Istanbul gave to my colleagues at the New York Times, Ben Hubbard, if the Saudi deal is executed, then the Palestinian issue will be off the world agenda forever. And they said in that interview, which is, by the way, an amazing interview, because Ben is asking them, what do you say about the war? This is like a month into the war. They said, everything goes according to plan. He says, according to plan, like, you know, they were like, I don't know, maybe reported 10,000 Gazans dead and a lot of ruins. They said, yes, this was part of the calculation.

So not a wrong risk assessment. This was part of the calculation for what they wanted. They wanted to have a permanent status of war of Israel with all of its neighbors. And they said, look, now nobody, not just Israel, but nobody in the Middle East can sleep quietly. And about the Gazans, Khalil al-Khaya, the deputy of Sinoir, gave the most amazing answer, unbelievable answer. He says, we are Kasam military brigade. We are jihad. We are not here

to keep the health services or the electricity or the sewage for the Gazans. We are here to perform jihad. Now, if I was a Gazan, I would read that. I think I would be a little bit angry. Like, he took the decision

for the Gazansettes they didn't vote for war or for you know everything that they suffered because of the war run and we're very focused on what israel should learn from the lead up to october 7th but if we turned to hamas's perspective given where the war is right now from Sinoir's perspective, what conclusion, and I know this is, you're not in the head of Sinoir, but you are talking to a lot of people who study Sinoir and are trying to make sense of his decisions, his moves and his thinking.

What conclusion do your sources think Sinoir is drawing from how the war is going so far? So, of course, this is a very long war. And if it continues, it's going to be the longest war in the history of Israel, approaching to longer of the War of Independence. And there were many developments. And so there's no one clear conclusion that he could have drawn. But starting from the end, and this is also supported by intelligence picked up by Israel,

Sinovac feels that now he's in the best minute, in his best minute since the beginning of the war. Right now. Right now. June of 2024. Because Israel is under tremendous international pressure, because there is an internal dispute in Israel where the war is going, because the military supports shifting the attention to the north, because the prime minister is giving promises that he's not able to fulfill, and because of other reasons,

and because Israel, for reasons I'm not going to get into now because then we'll sit for another night. Israel relieved itself from most of the cards that it could use in exchange of the hostages. Meaning that Netanyahu refused to speak about the day after because of coalition considerations. And he wanted to satisfy the U..s government that became more and more concerned about the humanitarian issue with something and instead of negotiating the humanitarian issue which was the main card and for reasons again complicated to explain now but for some reasons very important to sinuar israel just gave it away with no real sort of reward or no real exchange. So Israel made major concessions on the humanitarian side and didn't get anything in return, except perhaps goodwill with the Biden administration.

Of course. But if Netanyahu was negotiating the day after with Saudi, with Egypt, with the Palestinian Authority, maybe losing his coalition along that way, then there could be a settlement or there could be some kind of arrangement that would bring forces to the strip and making a third alternative. So it's not just Hamas or Israel, which is the alternative that any Gazans see now,

but there will be a third one. And then Hamas would lose the one thing they're trying to keep, which is the Hamas rule of Gaza. And now Israel understands if it goes out, then the vacuum will be immediately fulfilled by Hamas, because there's no one else. And Hamas is still in a much, much diminished way and bandwidth, but Hamas is still there. So from Sinawa's point of view, he was successful. Maybe he miscalculated on the dimension of the Israeli response. Maybe he thought it's going to be much limited. Maybe he thought that his success on October 7 would be much reduced.

He was surprised from how successful they were. Now, for the last six months, we have been studying the videos that were created by the NUHBA in their phones and in their GoPros, most of them never seen by anyone outside the Israeli intelligence community. And what you see, you see a lot of things, but in the chatter among the Nuchba, they are surprised that they said, here we are for two hours, no airplane. There's no Israeli. You sort of accompany,

you're embedded with their GoPro along the way, along road 232, and there's no one. So they were surprised. In a way, they were over-successful because they got sort of stuck with too many hostages. And the Qataris were very, very mindful of the women and children and were going tough on Hamas. And Sinawa was maybe surprised. But at the end, his plan for the tunnels succeeded. Redundancy, survival. The tunnels were developed for three reasons.

One is the ability to maneuver forces from side to side underground. Second is to be able to hit Israeli forces or Israeli civilians and, you know, pop up and go underneath, maybe firing a rocket or firing an RPG. And the third most important is defense, defense of the forces. There were two assumptions. That if Israel invades, Hamas doesn't have the capability, not even close, to stop an Israeli tank maneuver. Like when you have an Israeli brigade of tanks going into and maneuvering,

Hamas, maybe it can hit a tank or two, but it will not be able to stop them. What it can do is to gain time and hope that international pressure at a certain point would force Israel out. It's not easy for me as an Israeli to say, but if I were Sinovac, I see the materialization of this plan. We only have a few minutes left. And I want to ask you about this question that I hear all the time from Israelis, which was where was the IDF on October 7th? So we talked about the failures that led to October 7th. We talked about some of the missed signals or the failure to interpret signals, perhaps appropriately, right up to the night between October 6th and October 7th. But then there's the day of. The war starts. The invasion happens. It's not a raid. It's an

invasion. It's a war. It's not 70 people at two points on the border, on the barrier, on the fence. It's, you know, 70, as you said. It's war. Where's the IDF? You know, a few yards from where we are sitting here, the kitchen, in the living room. In the kitchen and the living room of Ronan's home. Of Yana's and Ronan's home. And Zofi's home. And Zofi. Zofi, who you may have heard meowing.

My colleague Adam Goldman and myself sat with a high-ranked officer of the reserves, very, very trained and experienced, very critical with the military, who didn't think for one minute. And when he heard what is happening, he took his gun and went to the front. And, of course, a gun was no good against what they had, but he took a rifle from, unfortunately, a body of a dead policeman or a dead soldier. Then he fought. He killed two Nuhba on his way, and from that moment on was in the front for many, many months.

And he said to us, to Adam Golon and himself, he said, if in a battle you have many heroes, that means that the battle went very bad. And in October 17th, there were many heroes. So maybe looking at this from sort of positive, I'll say that it could have been much worse. How can that be? It could have been much worse if it wasn't for those heroes, those brave officers or soldiers that just came and fought and arranged more than. because Jericho war plan was aimed at blinding and paralyzing the defenses throughout the border and then raiding the different main base, the army base throughout the border. Now, the whole strategy of the south of the Gaza border was to have a military facility

next to each of the kibbutzim and the communities. So if they are attacked, let's say that there's a raid, there's like a platoon of 70 nuchba who are coming. So the immediate force that would be launched to help this kibbutz or the other would be from the military base. But once they were all attacked at the same time,

and the military bases, they were fighting for their lives. They had nothing they could do to help the kibbutzim, because nobody thought it's going to be across the border. Now, the defense strategy, the defense plan, as much as there was one, was about defending from tunnels. It was the old one. Like, they were, it called for stationing this the forces like not across the wall but much backwards but the main thing was this the attack and the paralyzation

of the cameras and the sensors and some of the cell phone towers and the communication put the whole the gaza brigade first the gaza brigade in the idf the idf gaza brigade is in charge of the defense of the first line of defense on the israeli side and its headquarters in reim base was also attacked and so they had not just the the commanders that had needed not just to run the whole defense, but also defend themselves. And for hours, it put the whole Israeli military into a total blindness, confusion, to the extent that one under-hiring officer who just, again, took, he lives in Tel Aviv, he took his gun, took his rifle and went to fight. And he ended up fighting in Sderot by the police station that was conquered by the Nuhba.

And he said to himself, when we were done with the fighting over there, and, you know, there were no more policemen in siege there, and all the Nuhba terrorists were basically trapped inside the police station, he said, okay, I thought that we are the event. And once this is over, it's over. We didn't know that we are the event and once this is over it's over we didn't know that there are like 80 others and each of those 80 the israeli forces that fought there as much as there were israeli forces the photo thought that this is the story and the gaza brigade was not able to address one of the commanders of the Israeli military said,

let's assume that you have a hospital emergency room that is fully equipped with physicians, with blood, with medicine, with nurses for 10 people, it can function. Suddenly, you have a thousand. Now, of course, this will fail. So once the brigade was ready for a raid

of maybe two places, even skeptical about that, and they have 60, they collapsed. But then what didn't happen was that other command groups of the IDF in the southern command in Be'er Sheva or in the subterranean bunker in Tel Aviv, they also were not able to understand the situation and maneuver the forces for a very long time.

Jericho Wall is a smart plan because they send forces to be on the main junctions. And so everyone tried to cross that junction. I know a guy who lives in Maay, Domem, in West Bank. They went, he's religious, they went to the synagogue. Suddenly they hear the sirens. And after a short while, they understand this is bad. He's a reservist in the counterterrorism unit.

They went to the base. It's an Adam facility, not far away from Jerusalem. They took equipment. There were no cars. They went to the base. It's in Adam facility, not far away from Jerusalem. They took equipment. There were no cars. So they start in the Okan just driving. And during the way, during while in the way, they were given to go to a specific kibbutz.

But then he says, suddenly in Shaara Negev junction, I see someone standing with an RPG firing at us. And then I realized that, at the beginning they thought maybe a friendly fire, but then they realized that Hamas are in control of the junctions. And so everyone trying to get into Road 232, the main road of the border, close to the border, connecting all the different Kibbutzim communities,

was under direct threat of being killed. The forces that were on alert that night, as each night since 1974, 1974, a group of terrorists killed pupils in Maalot. So from then, the conclusion was that there needs to be few elite forces on alert every night, ready for something that was codenamed the Army of the Sky, Tzvash HaMayim, which basically said there's a group of terrorists taking hostages, and the special force needs to come there as soon as possible, probably by helicopters, and get ready, first of all, all like isolate the scene and then maybe start

negotiating it was also a special negotiating team that was established afterwards so when those special forces were rushing to help the the disky boots or the other they thought that they need to get to the scene they didn't understand they're already in the scene. And many of them were killed in their car. And it took a lot of time. There will be more to come and published about what happened. And why did forces that were on spot were waiting for an order to get in? And why they were even waiting? Why they just didn't thrive for start fighting this is

about the military the military itself and there will be a hard and painful conclusions for the military until 20 minutes past six in the morning of that October 7th, that Sabbath, but also 620 onwards. Ronan, we will leave it there. Thank you for hosting me here in your home. And I hope you'll come back because I feel like we only scratched the surface. And this was incredibly illuminating,

but there's still a lot more to get to. So thank you. And I hope to see you again soon. Thank you. And first of all, thank you for coming. Jan and I are happy to have you all here. And I do hope that next time we meet, we'll have more optimist assessment towards the future. I'll take that anytime. Anytime you got a dollop of optimism, you know, call me back. That's what we're here for. We need it. Thanks. That's our show for today.

To keep up with Ronan Bergman, you can find him on X at Ronan Bergman. And you can also find his work at Yediot Ahrenot and at the New York Times. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.