The Dark Side of Mossad: Intelligence

The events of October 7^th, 2023. (Paragraph 1)

October 7^th, is considered the bloodiest day in Isarel’s history and the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust[1]. About 1200 people were killed, both Israelis and foreigners. Among them 859 civilians about 278 soldiers, 57 policemen and 10 members of Shin Bet, one of the three Israeli Intelligence agencies. 3400 were wounded and 247 soldiers and civilians were taken hostage. All of this was the consequence of a series of coordinated attacks led by Hamas from the Gaza strip into Israel. The attacks began with the launch of 3000 rockets against Israel and powered paraglider incursions into Israeli territory[2]. At the same time Hamas issued a called to arms for Muslims everywhere to launch an attack. These attacks were the results of events occurring over the course of 2023. 247 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces and 39 Israelis had been killed by Palestinians. Israeli settlers had displaced large numbers of Palestinians, and this led to clashes around the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Tensions between Israel and Palestine were at an all-time high[3].

Surveillance in the Gaza Strip (paragraph 2)

The Gaza strip is one of the most heavily locked-down, surveilled and suppressed areas in the world. Israel’s digital espionage industry is highly developed and extremely aggressive[4]. All electronic communications are monitored; every phone call is monitored; readers detect movement; there are remote control machine guns everywhere. Israelites also used facial recognition and spyware to monitor anyone who could be connected to Hamas and to restrict the movements of Palestinians in general. And yet on October the 7^th, Hamas fighters crossed the border into Israel without any difficulty whatsoever, rampaged through Israeli communities, abducted woman, and children, taking control of eight Israeli military bases, capturing, and killing Israeli soldiers and finally returning over the border with their hostages and meeting absolutely no resistance. The whole event was documented by the fighters themselves using smartphones[5].

What went wrong? (Paragraph 3)

There are three major theories[6]:

1. that massed failed;
2. that it was a LIHOP operation;
3. that it was a MIHOP operation

The first theory is that the October 7^th attacks indicate an enormous intelligence failure by Mossad, the IDF and Shin Bet. This is the theory put forward by Israeli herself. Israel believes that so much intelligence is coming in from so many different sources that it is practically impossible to organize and process the information. After all, Hamas members are always talking about plans to attack Israel, so Israel cannot respond using force to every threat. That would mean that Israel would always be at war or in a constant state of alert. According to this theory Israel was distracted by domestic issues and by relations with Saudi Arabia and was simply not prepared for this type of complex attack, prepared over many months. There is evidence that Hamas is not as low-tech as Israel believed. For example, Hamas operatives have used fake Facebook accounts to persuade Israeli soldiers to download data-stealing apps and have also used fake dating apps to install spyware. It is very possible that some of the information used to plan these attacks came from these sources. If we add to all of this the fact that the IDF has recently been suffering a brain drain with potential employees, such as software engineers and semiconductor engineers, deciding that they can earn more money working in the civilian market for companies such as Intel and Apple, then you have a recipe for disaster. Many, however, are not convinced; Israel, they say, has had such vast experience of terror threats that they simply refuse to entertain the idea that her intelligence forces were caught off guard;

The second theory is the Let It Happen On Purpose (LIHOP) theory. According to this theory Israel knew full well that an attack of this type was imminent. In July of 2023, a member of the Israel Signals Intelligence Unit informed her bosses that Hamas was making preparations for a massive attack. Israeli officials were in possession of an approximately forty-page document code – named “Jericho Wall”, which described, in great detail, exactly the kind of attack which happened on October 7^th. It is clear from this document that Hamas knew the location and size of Israel military forces and communications hubs. Many Israeli military intelligence leaders read Jericho Wall but rejected it. In addition to this, the US Intelligence community also warned of an increased risk of attack. On September 28, streams of intelligence suggested that Hamas was preparing to escalate rocket attacks across the border. On October 5 the CIA warned of an increased possibility of violence by Hamas. Finally, on October 6, the day before the attack, US officials claimed that an attack was imminent. Israel was also allegedly warned[7] by Egypt three days before the attack that something big was being planned from Gaza but Netanyahu has denied this.

Why would Israel ignore such warnings (paragraph 4)

This is the so – called LIHOP theory. According to this theory, the Israelis lost patience with the Palestinian hostility to the two-state solution. We must remember that the hostility stretches back over one hundred years. Throughout the twentieth century, two powerful movements gained strength. The first was Palestinian nationalism; the second was Zionism which was taking hold in Europe. Unfortunately, the British and French promised the same land to both groups of people, in return for military support during World War I. The solution, after the collapse of the Ottoman empire, was to divide the land into two states, Palestine and Israel. Jerusalem would be an international zone. The Jews accepted this solution but the Arabs saw it as colonisation and the stealing of land. They declared war on Israel in 1948 but Israel won, taking control of West Jerusalem and a lot of Palestine. Since then, the area has been in a constant state of turmoil (agitation), aggravated by the mass immigration of Jews during and following World War II, with few periods of relative peace. In 1967, Israel seized (appropriate) the Golan Heights, the West Bank, Gaza and all of Jerusalem after the Six Day War. No accord has had a permanent positive effect, as all solutions are rejected by extremist groups on both sides. Anwar Sadat was assassinated by his own military following the Camp David Accords, while Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Zionists extremist following the Oslo Accord in 1993. It became clear to all that the two-state approach was dead in the water. Negotiation did not work and, even if (anche se) the PLO had become more compromise-minded, a breakaway group had formed. It was called Hamas and was dedicated to the destruction of Israel. More and more Israelis started to believe that the only solution was to wipe (cancellare) Palestine and the Palestinians off the face of the planet. But, in order to do this, they need an excuse and, according to the proponents of the LIHOP theory, October 7^th gave them the excuse they needed. This is why Israeli intelligence and defence forces stood down (do no react) and let it happen.

According to the Washington Post, Hamas exists because of Israeli funding. Israel considered Hamas to be a lesser evil (il male minore) compared to the “PLO”. For this reason, they funded Hamas in an attempt to divide Palestinians. Brig General Yitzhak Segev, the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped to finance Hamas as a counterweight (balance) to the PLO and that he used Israeli taxpayers’ money (tasse degli israeliani) to do so.

The MIHOP theory claims (sostiene) that, because Hamas is, in part, an Israeli creation, Israel is behind the October 7^th attacks and the terrorists were acting on Israeli orders. It must be said, however, that there is precious little evidence to back up this theory.

Where do we go from here? (Paragraph 5)

It is difficult to envisage a solution to the problem of the Israel-Palestine conflict because it is an ideological problem to which any political solution is certain to fail.

On one hand, the Palestinians and their supporters believe that the land belongs (appartiene) to them, given that they have lived there for many centuries.

On the other hand, the Israelis and Zionists Christians, generally Protestants, use the Bible and, specifically, Chapter 11 of the book of Isaiah, to claim that the “Chosen People” have the right to settle in and occupy the Holy Land. The traditional view of the Catholic Church is that Isaiah 11 is not to be taken literally but rather (piuttosto) refers to the Jews becoming believers in Christ in the so-called “End Times”. The Vatican is, however, not taking sides in the conflict. These ideologies are irreconcilable (non si possono riconciliare) and a diplomatic solution will be enormously difficult and perhaps (forse) impossible to find. Given that the US and Western Europe generally espouse (adopted) the Zionist view, while other superpowers with nuclear capabilities are coming down on the side of the Palestinians, the world finds itself in perhaps the most critical crisis of its history.   

[1] Wired: Israel’s failure to stop the Hamas Attack Shows the danger of too much surveillance.

[2] Id

[3] Id

[4] Id

[5] Id

[6] Wired: Israel’s failure to stop the Hamas Attack Shows the danger of too much surveillance.

[7] Si dice che hanno ammonito