There comes a point, where a reasonable person has to ask, was the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his extreme right coalition partners guilty of gross negligence or willful blindness as he and his team ignored or discounted an avalanche of timely, detailed intelligence from multiple allied and internal sources regarding the October 7, 2023 Hamas’s planned attack in Israel from Gaza, resulting in the brutal killings of about 1,200 Israelis and 240 being kidnapped.
Frankly, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been protesting too much that he has never been in possession of any specific intelligence warning him about the imminent attack planned by the Iranian backed terrorist governing group, Hamas in Gaza. He’s been using the US ex-president’s favorite term “fake news” regarding any suggestions that he had prior notice.
Below are excerpts from articles detailing only some of the ample intelligence data that was shared with Israeli officials. With all the warnings, it simply begs credulity to buy into the prime minister’s denials. This is why an investigation should be done NOW instead of post Israel’s war on Gaza, at his insistence.
The last article by BBC tells how young girls at the Gazan border were acting as lookouts for unusual Hamas activity. They provided crucial intelligence which never bore fruit, and this lack of action on Israel’s part cost the lives of some of them while some were taken as hostages. The grieving families of those killed or kidnapped are struggling to come to terms with what happened. And they shouldn’t have to wait for answers.
As per the October 9, 2023 Times of Israel article, “Egypt intelligence official says Israel ignored repeated warnings of ‘something big:”
“It has reported that “Egypt’s Intelligence Minister General Abbas Kamel personally called Netanyahu only 10 days before the massive attack that Gazans were likely to do “something unusual, a terrible operation,” according to the Ynet news site.”
“Mounting questions over Israel’s massive intelligence failure to anticipate and prepare for a surprise Hamas assault were compounded Monday (October 9, 2023) when an Egyptian intelligence official said that Jerusalem had ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza-based terror group was planning “something big” — which included an apparent direct notice from Cairo’s intelligence minister to the prime minister.”
“Unnamed Egyptian officials told the site they were shocked by Netanyahu’s indifference to the news and said the premier told the minister the military was “submerged” in troubles in the West Bank.”
As per the below BBC report, “According to a report in the New York Times, a lengthy blueprint detailing Hamas’s plans had been in the hands of Israeli officials for more than a year before 7 October but was dismissed as aspirational.”
“A veteran analyst in Israel’s intelligence agency Unit 8200 warned three months before the attacks that Hamas had conducted an intense training exercise that appeared similar to that outlined in the blueprint, but her concerns were brushed off, the newspaper reports.”
“The drills conducted by Hamas and other armed groups had also been posted publicly on social media, as seen in this BBC investigation.”
As per a January 14, 2024 BBC article, “They were Israel’s ‘eyes on the border’ – but their Hamas warnings went unheard” by Alice Cuddy:
Excerpts:
“For years, units of young female conscripts had one job here. It was to sit in surveillance bases for hours, looking for signs of anything suspicious.”
“In the months leading up to the 7 October attacks by Hamas, they did begin to see things: practice raids, mock hostage-taking, and farmers behaving strangely on the other side of the fence.”
“Noa, not her real name, says they would pass information about what they were seeing to intelligence and higher-ranking officers, but were powerless to do more. “We were just the eyes,” she says.”
“It was clear to some of these women that Hamas was planning something big – that there was, in Noa’s words, a “balloon that was going to burst”.
“The BBC has now spoken to these young women about the escalation in suspicious activity they observed, the reports they filed, and what they saw as a lack of response from senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers.”
“We have also seen WhatsApp messages the women sent in the months before 7 October, talking about incidents at the border. To some of them it became a dark joke: who would be on duty when the inevitable attack came?”
“These women were not the only ones raising the alarm, and as more testimony is gathered, anger at the Israeli state – and questions over its response – are mounting.”
“The BBC has spoken also to the grieving families who have now lost their daughters, and to experts who see the IDF’s response to these women as part of a broader intelligence failure. The IDF said it was “currently focused on eliminating the threat from the terrorist organization Hamas” and declined to answer the BBC’s questions.”
“The problem is that they [the military] didn’t connect the dots,” a former commander at one of the border units tells the BBC.”
“Shai Ashram, 19, was one of the women on duty on 7 October. In a call with her family, where they could hear gunshots ringing in the background, she said there were “terrorists in the base and that there was going to be a really big event”.
“She was one of more than a dozen surveillance soldiers killed. Others were taken hostage.”
As Hamas attacked, the women at Nahal Oz, a base about a kilometre from the Gaza border, began to say goodbye to one another on their shared WhatsApp group.
“Noa, who was not on duty and was reading the messages from home, remembers thinking “this is it”. The attack they had long feared was now actually happening.”
“Because of the locations of their bases, the women of this military unit – known as tatzpitaniyot in Hebrew – were among the first Israelis that Hamas reached after rampaging out of Gaza.”
‘Our job is to protect all residents’
“The women sit inside rooms close to the border, staring for hours every day at live surveillance footage captured by cameras along the high-tech fence, and balloons that hover over Gaza.”
“There are several of these units next to the Gaza fence, and others at different positions along Israel’s borders. They are all made up of young women, aged in their late teens to early 20s. They do not carry guns.”
“For many, their time in the military was their first time living away from their families, and they describe forming sisterly bonds.”
“But they say they took their responsibilities seriously. “Our job is to protect all residents. We have a very hard job – you sit on shift and you are not allowed to squint or move your eyes even a little. You must always be focused,” Noa says.”
“An article published by the IDF in late September lists the tatzpitaniyot alongside Israel’s elite intelligence units as those that “know everything about the enemy”.
“When the women see something suspicious they log it with their commander and on a computer system to be assessed by more senior officials.”
“Retired IDF Maj Gen Eitan Dangot says the tatzpitaniyot play a major role in “pushing the button that says something is wrong”, and that concerns they raise should be passed up the chain “to create an intelligence picture”.
“He says the look-outs provide key “pieces of the puzzle” in understanding any threats.”
“In the months leading up to the Hamas attacks, Israeli officials gave public statements suggesting that the threat posed by Hamas had been contained.”
“But there were many signs along the border that something was very wrong.”
“In late September, an observer at Nahal Oz writes in a WhatsApp group of friends in the unit: “What, there is another event?”
“A reply quickly follows by voicenote: “Girl, where’ve you been? We’ve had one every day for the past two weeks.”
“The look-outs we speak to describe a range of incidents they observed in real-time in the months before 7 October, leading some to have concerns that an attack was coming.”
“We would see them practicing every day what the raid would look like,” Noa, who is still serving in the military, tells the BBC. “They even had a model tank that they were practicing how to take over.”
“They also had a model of weapons on the fence and they would also show how they would blow it up, and co-ordinate how to take over the forces and kill and kidnap.”
“Eden Hadar, another observer from the base, remembers that at the start of her service, Hamas fighters were doing mainly fitness training in the section she looked over. But in the months before she left the military in August, she noticed a shift to “actual military training”.
“At a different base along the border, Gal (not her real name), says she was also watching as the training increased.”
“She watched, via surveillance balloon, as a replica model of an automated Israeli weapon on the border was built “in the heart of Gaza”, she says.”
“Several women also describe bombs being planted and detonated near the fence – known as Israel’s Iron Wall – seemingly to test its strength. Footage from 7 October would later show large explosions before Hamas fighters race through on motorbikes.”
“She remembers the men “talking, pointing at the cameras and the fence, taking pictures”.
“She says she was able to identify them as being from Hamas’ elite Nukhba Force because of their clothing. Israel has said this was one of the “leading forces” behind the October attacks.”
“Roni’s account matches that of another woman at the base who spoke to BBC.”
“Several watchwomen who did fear a major attack was coming have told the BBC they felt their concerns were not being listened to.”
“When she noticed the vans on the border, Roni says the protocol was to alert her commander and then to keep watching until the vehicles were no longer in her section. She would then file it in a computer system where it would be “passed on”.
“But, she says, she has “no idea” where these reports actually went.”
Noa says she couldn’t count how many times she had filed reports. Within the unit, everyone “took it seriously and would pass it on but in the end they [people outside of the unit] didn’t do anything about it”.
Why are we here if no-one’s listening?
“As a commander at her unit, Gal says observers would pass information to her which she then passed to her supervisor.”
“But she says that while this was included in “situation assessments” – when higher-ups at the base would discuss the reports filed by the observers – nothing seemed to be done beyond that.”
“In the last months she said again and agai there will be a war, you will see. And we laughed at her for exaggerating,” Ilana recalls, taking deep breaths between words.”
“Shahaf Nissani was among the first people to be killed on 7 October, when Hamas overran Nahal Oz.”
“It would come to be the deadliest day in Israel’s history.”
Gronda Morin 
Half a Million Gazans Are Suffering From Acute Hunger. Let That Sink In
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Hi,
I’m believing that if most Israelis were confronted with the reality of what’s happening in Gaza, they would no longer be as supportive of Israel’s use of current scorched earth war tactics against Hamas in Gaza. Unfortunately, the local media outlets have voluntarily agreed to shelter Israelis from videos and news reports regarding the devastation that Israel has imposed on Palestinians in Gaza. In addition, the Israeli military has been actively discouraging Palestinian journalists/ any journalist from reporting news from within Gaza.
Hugs, Gronda
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