Opinion
The terrorist attack on Israel at the beginning of October took the world by surprise and had everyone frozen in horror at the barbarism of the Hamas monsters who raped and murdered men, women, and children. Posters of those who had not been murdered outright but kidnapped could be seen in major cities and posted online with appeals to Hamas to let them go.
Right off the bat, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced scrutiny on how his military and intelligence divisions were caught off guard. It didn’t take long for word to come out that Israel was warned about a possible attack leading up to October 7th.
But recent revelations courtesy of The New York Times show that Israel didn’t just ignore warnings they received soon before the attacks; they had the full-blown blueprints for the attack more than a year prior. So what happened?
The Walls of Jericho
The New York Times reported evidence it had received that Israel knew about the Hamas terrorist attack more than a year before its execution. The battle plan that Israeli intelligence received was code-named “Jericho Wall” and was nearly to the letter the exact attack carried out on October 7th.
While the 40-page document didn’t include the date of the planned attack, it did include the details of an attack eerily similar, if not precisely the same, as on October 7th. Additionally, the plan had sensitive information about the location and size of Israeli military forces and communication hubs, leading many to wonder if there is or at least was a leak within the Israeli government.
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At the time, Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as too “aspirational,” with a military assessment stating:
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested.”
However, not everyone was convinced that the plan was just a pie-in-the-sky dream for Hamas. A veteran analyst with Israel’s signals intelligence agency warned that a Hamas training exercise that was conducted three months before the event “fully matched the content of Jericho Wall.”
She would go on to warn that the plan is:
“…designed to start a war. It’s not just a raid on a village.”
Nobody heeded her calls.
Warning signs
Since the attacks, many intelligence strategists pointed out that what helped Hamas execute such a large-scale event was their reliance on some old-school methods. By relying on wired phone lines and underground face-to-face meetings, Hamas was able to evade the advanced technological tools the world’s finest intelligence organizations employ today.
Except for the training video they posted on social media a month out showing how Hamas fighters would blast through a replica of the border gate.
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In the weeks leading up to the attack, Egypt also issued warnings to Israel, stating that something big was going to happen in the Gaza Strip area. Congressman Michael McCaul echoed this fact after a secure briefing days after the attacks:
“We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen.”
So why ignore these warnings? Some argue that this is Israel’s 9/11, harkening back to repetitive intelligence indicators that warned of terrorist attacks utilizing aircraft as the conduit of terror.
Was it just national hubris that caused the glaring national security oversight? It’s hard to say, but evidence indicates someone knew about the attacks and used it to their advantage.
Money as a weapons system
The answer to most mysteries is generally found by tracking money. Two professors did just that with the Israeli stock exchange.
Research done by Robert Jackson Jr. of New York University and Joshua Mitts of Columbia University has uncovered suspicious short-selling of shares on the Israeli market leading up to the attacks.
Mr. Jackson and Mr. Mitts wrote:
“Days before the attack, traders appeared to anticipate the events to come.”
They go on to drop this chilling nugget:
“Our findings suggest that traders informed about the coming attacks profited from these tragic events…”
Word either got out about the attacks, and someone influential enough and corrupt enough profited off of terror, or Hamas-connected entities leveraged the Israeli market themselves. Either is pretty disgusting and also embarrassing for the current Israeli government.
The wrong order
To their credit, Israeli officials acknowledge that “mistakes” were made, with an Israeli Defense Forces spokesman promising follow-up:
“After the war, the IDF will conduct an in-depth, incisive and uncompromising investigation and release its findings to the public.”
The Biden administration acknowledges Israel clearly made mistakes but still stands by unfettered support as White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby expressed:
“They’ll do the forensics. They’ll do that, and they’ll do it thoroughly. But right now, certainly on intelligence, the focus has got to be on making sure that Israel has what it needs to go after Hamas leadership.”
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