The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Lessons of October 7th One Year Later

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

For the last year October 7th has been described as a major intelligence failure by the Israelis and this proves it in very hard detail.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. The lessons of October 7th, one year later. That's Janice Stein coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Monday, the beginning of a new week. And as you've probably heard a lot already this day, a lot of reflections on the one year that's passed since the October 7th attack in Israel by Hamas and everything that's happened as a result of that and continues to happen in this moment.

But what we're going to do today is we're going to go back to October 7th, try and understand the lessons of October 7th from this regard, from the intelligence regard. Because, as we all agreed, there was a massive intelligence failure on the part of the Israelis for that Hamas attack to happen. But what specifically happened in the days, weeks, months, years before October 7th that should have signaled to the Israelis that something was in the works? Dr. Janice Stein has just finished writing a remarkable article on this very subject, and it's being released today. And we're going to talk to her about that article when she joins us in a couple of minutes' time. But first of all, as we say, a little bit of work to do

in prepping you for the week ahead. Tomorrow, Tuesday, as promised, Keith Bogue is back. We will deal with where we are on the U.S. election with less than a month now to go until the U.S. election. So Keith will be back. He's been a regular commentator for us throughout this year on the U.S. election with less than a month now to go until the U.S. election. So Keith will be back. He's been a regular commentator for us throughout this year on the U.S. politics. And he has a great take on the story,

on the political element of the story, on the media angle to the story. It's all there. Wednesday is our encore Wednesday, so of course, Thursday's is your turn, and this week's question, I want to get it to you early so you can be thinking about it, and this is an interesting one to think about. Here's the question.

What Canadian in history would you like to have a long conversation with? Okay. What Canadian in history? Could have been last week, last year, last century, two centuries ago. Anywhere through our history. And our history didn't start on July 1st, 1867. It started before that. So you can call up a Canadian from any time in our history. And who is it that you'd want to have a long conversation with?

And why would you want to have that conversation with them? Okay? So think about that one. You've got a couple of days to think about it. Here are the rules. They're the usual rules. Include your name and your location. The place you're writing from.

Get your answer in before 6pm Eastern Time on Wednesday. Write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com As we like to say, we're not looking for an essay here. We're looking for an answer and a reason why. So the question again is, what Canadian in history would you like to sit down and have a long conversation with?

And why would you want to have that conversation with them? Okay. I'll repeat the question and the rules again at the end of today's program. But those are your basics. Okay. Time for today's program. It's a heavy one, so we want to deal with it properly. Let's get started.

Here she is, from the Munk School, the University of Toronto, Dr. Janice Stein. Janice, this is an amazing article that you've written. So before we get into it, first of all, tell listeners who you wrote it for, and I will explain later how they can access it themselves. But who did you write it for? For the Texas National Security Review, Peter, which is an academic journal, believe it or not, but that publishes in real time. It's extraordinary. And it's written for a broader audience, not only for the wonks. We try to write it in English rather than what we normally do.

Well, there's no doubt that there are parts of this report that really stand out, and nobody's going to have trouble reading and understanding it because you're right, it's not just written for wonks, it's written for like us normal people as well. Okay, here's how I'd like to start. You know, we have spent the last year saying many times over that the situation in Israel after October 7th was convincing. It didn't take much to convince people that there had been a massive failure in intelligence on the part of the Israeli security forces. So what this article does is kind of takes it back and walks us through what that massive security failure was.

Here's how you describe the sort of pre-October 7th feeling among Israel's leaders. I'm just going to read a sentence or two here. By 2023, Israel's leaders also believed that Hamas did not have the capacity to mount a large-scale attack across a broad front. Israel's military and intelligence leaders tended to think of Hamas in comparison to Hezbollah in Lebanon as a second-tier paramilitary organization that was incapable of mounting a large-scale attack. Now, how did they get comfortable, Israel's leaders, in believing that? It's so interesting how this happened, Peter, because there's only two ways you develop a strategic understanding. You focus on their capabilities. That's what we've

always done through history. And you focus on their intentions. So they looked at Hamas, and they see, you know, a militia, for sure, well organized with battalions and brigades. But if you compare it to Hezbollah, without the kind of manufacturing missile capability and advanced rockets that Hezbollah had, 150,000 until a few weeks ago in the north and in the south, a fraction of that really. Not the kind of bases and training that Hezbollah had. So when you count beans, as military people do, they count tanks, aircraft, missiles. Hamas comes up, relatively speaking, very junior. The really important thing, though, is never the capabilities only.

It's the intentions. What do they want to do? And that's how I think where the fundamental error comes. Israel and Hamas fought a war, 2021. They were short, relatively speaking. That's why what's happening now is so unprecedented, 30 days. And at the end of that war, you first begin to get the assessment that,

oh, that was punishing for Hamas. What really seals the deal? Two skirmishes broke out between Palestine, Islamic Jihad, the smaller partner in Gaza and Israel. One a year later, May 2022. Another year later, May 2023. Hamas did not join the fighting. So here's the way you construct the puzzle.

You say, oh, they didn't intervene. They're deterred. So you build this argument that was in place, as you just read, by May 2023, based on what Hamas did not do. And also, strangely enough, through that period, Israel, through Qatar, and you talk about this in the report, was basically funding Hamas to the tune of tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. Billions, billions of dollars, Peter, went in. And the idea came from the intelligence community in Israel. Netanyahu signed off on it. And this was really 2018, five years before. And here's an argument.

And you've heard this one. I've heard this one. You know, if you raise the standard of living, that will decrease the incentives people have to support more radical organizations. So it's Qatar that sends the money in. Allegedly, it goes for development and construction and employment opportunities, all the things that keep every development agency you and I both know busy. Of course, Hamas siphons off because it's in control and is able to use that to buy and smuggle in military equipment that it needs. But here's the great irony, Peter, by 2023, just before Hamas attack, standard of living had gone up in Gaza. Employment had gone up in Gaza because part of this not only was money sent by Qatar with the knowledge of both the Prime Minister Netanyahu and the

intelligence agencies, thousands of workers from Gaza crossed over and worked in those border communities inside Israel. So if you're a Gazan, 2023 was probably the best it had been. Okay. I want to get to a couple of the examples that you use about what Israel knew beforehand and didn't act on. Yeah. The first one I'm going to isolate is April 2022, 18 months before the attack. Okay. We got like 18 months

before October 7th, 2023. In April 2022, unit 8200 in Israel's military intelligence. Okay. This is like some of their top people obtained Hamas's attack plans that were written in October of 2021. They call them Jericho walls. The plans call for a barrage of rockets at the outset, drones to knock out security cameras, and automated machine guns along the fence, and gunmen on paragliders and on motorcycles to capture military outposts and villages and to take hostages. That's in the document, April 2022. It sounds like the script that was used on October 7th, a year and a half later. The document did not specify a date for the attack, but intelligence officers understood that Hamas was planning to launch its forces

on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, or on a Jewish holiday, when fewer soldiers would be guarding the border. Forty pages long, this document. Yeah. So, like, how does that get passed? That's, you know, when you go back and you read this, and you do the research and you read this, you know, I was stunned when you get to that. Now, if you're an agent or an agency doing the analysis, there was no date attached to this, right? So it didn't have a day. And they're always looking for actionable intelligence.

What can they do but there is strategic intelligence peter and this is was the script so what was the analysis that and that came out and didn't move up the chain of command the prime minister and the minister of defense were never told about this argument. They were only told about it after the attack when somebody said, we had this document all along. So we know they weren't told. What did they say? This is way too ambitious.

This paramilitary organization could never pull off a plan like this and coordinate a plan like this. We would see it. We would know there's no way that they have the capability to do this. On top of that, and this happens quite a bit. They built a high-tech fence, Israel, at the cost also of a billion dollars along that border. And it had guns, but it had video cameras installed all along the border.

So when he was pushed, one of the commanding generals said, there's no chance, no chance is the words he used, that they could do this because we would see and we would know they can't tunnel under the fence and we would see them coming toward the fence and we would defend. There's no chance of this. You know, I, I, I hear you when you say, um, you believe that it did not go all the way up to the prime minister or even the defense minister. No, I, I find that shocking. Like this is pretty serious stuff. It did go as high as the idf intelligence chief

yeah and yet it didn't take the next level up i mean it makes no sense did not send it up he did not send it up and that that was such a huge mistake, that it did not go up. Because how do you interpret what you see on the ground, right? If a militia or an army is training and you see these repeated patterns happening, which, you know, these young female soldiers, and I make a big deal of the fact that these were young women all along that border. They saw that.

They knew about that plan. Peter, some of them, had some of the reports we have. They said what we're seeing Hamas do is completely consistent with this plan. You interpret what you see in a larger strategic context because you have a plan. Even the Minister of Defense did not see that plan. And the only way you can describe this, and that's why I put those words, no chance, in ital tout. When you're convinced that something can't happen, you dismiss the evidence that you then see. You know, you mentioned these female spotters.

We're routinely deployed in the military bases as sort of eyes of the border. You mentioned the reports that they wrote up. Here's one of them. Let me just read it. After observing differences in Hamas training beyond the fence and sent this message shortly before October 7th to her superior officer. The training shows us that the Jericho Walls plan,

remember that's the original name that Hamas had for this attack, is realistic and rehearsed. And Hamas already has forces practicing these scenarios and knows how to execute them when ordered. It is likely that we will not be able to give warning in advance sufficient to prevent the incident. This is the time for formulating strategies to minimize the damage when the event happens. The other side is determined to execute the plan. If the plan is activated, we are expected to fight a bitter and hard battle. The exercise resembles the plan that appeared in Jericho Walls to destroy the Gaza Division's defense system. The raid training into the country's territory indicates

that the Jericho Walls plan is no longer just on paper. This email is like the horn sounding because the sword is coming. The time to warn people is now. This is from a female spotter on the line. You know, you don't get better than that, Peter. She put the pieces together. She connected what she was seeing with the bigger picture. She was probably somewhere from 18 to 20 years old.

That's all. So these women, young women soldiers, they were the ones on the border outposts watching on computers what these feeds from the cameras. And they could see with their own eyes, frankly, because they were higher up. And they filed these reports over and over and then pushed the men saying, you're not paying attention, you're not paying attention. And the more senior men said, you don't know what you're talking about, frankly.

You can't put the bigger picture together. We can because we have all the intelligence from everywhere. Go back to your job and just watch. You're the eyes, not the heads. You look at this, I have to say, you know, as a woman scholar, you look at this, you read this, and you say, and why were these women in this one unit, Peter? Because there's always a backstory.

They were in this unit because there had been a push for women to be combat soldiers. The men would not have it, but they had to deal with this demand somehow. It got louder and louder over the years. So they formed a special unit in which there were only women. And when you look back at all the warnings they had, these were the most valuable. They were the most timely. They were the most urgent. And they were consistently dismissed by the men.

Now, these women, I think 11 were killed. There were about 18, 11 were killed that morning. Five are hostages. We're taking a hostage. And the stories of it actually only came from other members

who were on duty that morning and could talk about what had gone on for the months before. There's more. In the weeks immediately preceding the attack, Egyptian intelligence warned Netanyahu directly that Hamas was planning something big. In one of the warnings,

Egypt's intelligence minister, General Abbas Kamal, personally called Netanyahu only 10 days before the attack and warned that Hamas was likely to do something unusual, a terrible operation. The Egyptian official claimed that Netanyahu displayed little interest in the warning and was preoccupied with the West Bank. Netanyahu strongly denied receiving any such warning. No early message came from Egypt,

and the Prime Minister did not speak or meet with the intelligence chief since the establishment of the government, not indirectly or directly, his office said in a statement. Well. You know, there's, you know, he denied it, so I put the denial in the story, because that's what you have to do when you get an official denial. But there are very good relationships between Egyptian and Israeli intelligence. That's probably the strongest relationship there is.

The army, the chiefs of the army and the intelligence, they share information all the time. And for the Egyptians to actually put in writing the name, it's overwhelmingly lucky that there was a call. Because Netanyahu has said, well, there was, in describing other warnings that he got from his own intelligence agency. Well, it wasn't specific enough. It never said Hamas. It didn't say Gaza.

But the real point of this article was not only did the military fail and the intelligence fail, the prime minister failed because he had no interest, Peter, in asking hard questions. This status quo suited him. And, you know, I guess, you know, both you and I have studied Nanyahu for a long time. But I find it almost remarkable that he would know and do nothing and that's the only reason i kind of pause on this stuff where where people say yeah you know it didn't go up to him and he he never got this intelligence because i had oh i would have assumed that if netanyahu if bb netanyahu got this kind of intelligence he would bang bang, like, act on it immediately.

That's the shocker to me. Well, I don't, you know, it's not clear he did know in this granular detail. Just don't forget, he never saw the plan that we talked about, that detailed plan that reads like a script. And in the article I described, warnings, never mind that came from Egyptian intelligence, but warnings that summer that came from Israeli intelligence that war was coming. And why was this? War was coming because the country was in turmoil. Half the country was in the streets over that plan for judicial reform and there were three and the letters from the from israeli intelligence to the prime minister were actually published because you know how it leaks and That was on purpose. So we actually have those letters. And the warning said, we, our enemies, are reading our division as weak.

So in the morning, Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. War could break out on all three fronts at once. And there were three of them that came. There was one in March. There were two in July. And not only did, so he dismissed them, right? He said, and after, when he was asked about this, he said, well, they never said directly,

Hamas will attack in Gaza. It wasn't specific. That was his answer. The bigger picture was he thought that the intelligence agencies, when they issued these warnings to him, had a political agenda. He thought they were liberals, secularists. They had a political agenda. They wanted to stop that judicial reform in its tracks.

And if he had done that, his government would have fallen because those two extreme right parties would have left the government. So you may remember in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, a lot of work done afterwards on how the administration, the Bush administration, politicized intelligence.

This was the other way. She thought intelligence was politicizing their warnings. And so he dismissed them. He thought intelligence was politicizing their warnings. And so he dismissed them. But, you know, and he had every reason, Peter, because, again, and this is the story of the last year in Israel, too. And we've talked about it so many times.

He had every reason not to listen too hard because he needed to preserve that government, which was fragile, which had just those two extreme right-wing parties. He wasn't motivated to ask any hard questions. I hear you. I still have trouble buying into it simply because, I don't know, I mean, if you believe that the Egyptians did talk directly to him, if you believe that, and it's hard not to believe it. He hasn't personally denied it. He's had his office put out a statement denying it.

Right. So if you believe it, you would think the first thing he'd do at least would call in his military intelligence chiefs and the massad and say what the hell he didn't do it he didn't do it didn't do it he didn't do it and in those warnings that came in march and july the director of research and military intelligence, attached the raw intelligence reports, right? He pushed the information, the hard information forward because the prime minister wasn't asking. So he pushed the

information forward to Netanyahu and Netanyahu dismissed it. Now I just came across, just yesterday, a piece of information that shows you those reports were probably more correct than even the intelligence people knows. They uncovered a letter that Senoir wrote as people know, they uncovered a letter that Zinwar wrote in January of 2023, nine months before the attack, in which he told a commander

that he had a commitment from Iran, that Iran would join the fight once he attacked. So that's certainly what Zinwar believed. And that's what the argument was. In fact, they see us as weak. They see us as divided. They see this as a moment to attack. You're putting the whole country at risk with this.

And one of them used the words, this is a war warning. Here's the last example. And it comes right down to the last minute. So late on the evening of October 6th, and in the early mornings, hours of October 7th, additional information arrived and prompted two urgent consultations. After 11 p.m., this was the night before, a young officer from military intelligence reported that a well-known Hamas commander, Ali Ali Qadi, appeared to be preparing for a raid with his men. That information did move up the chain of command to the intelligence officer of the Gaza division

who dismissed the information. Business as usual, this is just a routine Hamas training. So that was your last moment of being made aware of what was about to happen. But the same thing. Yeah. Every time. They can't do this, right?

So what happens that night? And that one goes to the chief of staff at 3 o'clock in the morning, and somebody from the prime minister's office is on the line on that phone call. There is somebody from his office. And what was the argument? Well, they might be preparing some kind of attempt to take a border outpost, and they might be preparing an attempt to take a few hostages. But what they said over and over and over was they can't do this. They can't mount a large

scale attack. That was the analysis again and again and again. Trusted the technology, underestimated their adversary, and had a prime minister who had no incentive. And I'm being the most charitable, Peter. When I say this, he had no incentive to push and ask a hard question, never questioned why they reached these conclusions.

In fact, went to that border fence when it was finally completed in 2021, celebrated this high-tech fence. So he believed in himself. It wasn't that this was something the military thought and he resisted. They were so enmeshed that he believed in himself that they had found the solution. The technology would solve what is deeply a political problem. Okay. We're going to take a quick break and then come back and try and come up with some sense of what this all means. All this data that you've got, which is a remarkable, what, 30-page long report.

So you know there's a lot more than just the excerpts I've read. We'll be back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Monday episode of The Bridge for this week. Our guest, as always on Mondays, Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. Janice has just written a detailed report on some of the events that led to October 7th on the intelligence side. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Glad to have you with us.

So what does this all mean? What does this tell us? Biggest picture of all, Peter, this is a political failure. And we're, everybody, the Gosses, the Palestinians, the Gosses are living with this. And they're living a nightmare, frankly. Israel is traumatized. It is the anniversary.

And you have, in fact, a country that has never, hasn't had the chance to mourn because the bodies are not back of a hundred hostages. So continuous. The worst, I think the worst psychological defeat that Israel ever experienced throughout its whole history, escalating now in precisely the way Ersanwar hoped it would escalate, escalating in Lebanon.

And we are standing before what could be a very large retaliation by Israel against Iran, which would take us into territory that we have not been in, in this part of the world. And the reason I make the point that it's political, yes, we look at military people and we look at intelligence people. And by the way, many of them have said, have either resigned or said they will resign. This chief of staff is still there because these wars are going on. Netanyahu has never taken responsibility for this.

So at the political level, it's a failure at the highest level of accountable leaders to ask hard questions. But beyond that, if you look at the way the war was fought, the same motivation that stopped him from asking hard questions, no independent Palestinian state, which has been his strategy, how many years? That was his overarching goal. They led him to fight a war without a political objective. It doesn't matter what tactical victories you achieve on the ground. If there's not a political objective, if there's not a path out of the war, if there's not a political solution to this, there's no way the army ever gets out and the war continues.

So I wrote this piece not only to explain what happens and intelligence agencies will look at this over and over and over again, but to put it in the bigger picture here, there's one great strategist that we all talk about. He wrote a German, you know, von Clausewitz. We all love to read him and love to talk about him.

But he said, war is politics by other means. He was right. He was right in 2023 as he was when he wrote this what's the political solution in Gaza

still no answer to that question right you go into Lebanon and you have to because you're you're you've displaced

100,000 people but what's the political solution where's the political solution? Where's the path to an arrangement, to a security arrangement? If you can't answer those questions, it's endless war, Peter. Well, I guess there are a lot of lessons in this, and that's one of them. It's going to be interesting to see the way this is received and what others say about it.

Some of this stuff, as you concede, was known, but when you read it all together like this, and you look at the bigger picture, you put the wide angle lens on it. It's really devastating. I expect Peter, there's going to be a lot of controversy. There will be a lot of pushback. I am fully prepared. I am fully prepared. Well, there won't be the first time that you've had to deal with horseback,

and you're in your element when you do. Janice, thanks so much for this. Thank you. Single focus today, and for good reason. And on a day where you want to look back and try to understand what happened a year ago today. You know, Peter, you look back, it's the anniversary, and it's a tragedy for everyone, right?

Yeah. Everyone. Everyone involved in this tragedy. Okay. We'll leave it at that for this week. And, well, well, actually next week, this is another holiday. It's Thanksgiving next Monday. Um, so we will, uh,

we'll regroup and determine when we're going to, when we're going to catch up in the following week. But, uh, for today, Janice, thanks so much. Thank you, Peter. Well, there you have it. Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. Talking about her article, which is out today, which really looks at the intelligence failures on the part of Israel

that led to October 7th. Now, as I said earlier, I was going to let you know, I would let you know how to get this article yourself. You want to read the full thing. It's 30 pages long. It's quite detailed. Here's the easiest way to do that because it's one of these really long links and reading it out over the air here is not going to help. What you need is just to see it and click on it. So this is the way you're going to do that. You can go to my Twitter feed, X, call it whatever you want.

It's today's post, the only post I have today, which is a promotion for today's podcast. And it will include the link to Janice's article. Okay? That's the link to Janice's article. Okay? That's the way to get it. And if you don't follow Twitter or X, just go on there once to find out and you'll see it, okay? So that's that.

A couple of other notes, as I promised. The question of the week this week, you have to have your answer in by Wednesday at 6 p.m. Eastern time. Include your name, the location you're writing from, and your answer. Keep it relatively brief. A paragraph, no more. Okay?

Here's the question. If you could sit down with any Canadian from our history, what would you want to have a long conversation with that person about? Him or her, doesn't matter what their past is, what was the conversation you'd want to have with that one person from our history? Anywhere in our history, okay? Going back a couple hundred years. Okay?

Here's your question. If you could sit down with anyone in our history, Canadian history, any Canadian, okay? There's got to be a Canadian in our history. Who would it be, and why would you want to talk to them? Alright? Tomorrow, Keith Bowe joins us. Expert in US politics. He's been our guide through this year and he's been really good. And I'm sure he'll

be good again tomorrow. So don't miss it. That's on the bridge tomorrow. I'm Peter Ransbridge. Thanks so much for listening on this day. Talk to you again in about 24 hours.