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The lecture discusses the events leading up to the October 7 attack, emphasizing the intelligence failures and the apparent underestimation of Hamas's capabilities by Israeli officials. It highlights the strengthening of Hamas's ties with the Shia axis and the warning signs that were overlooked by Israeli intelligence. The speaker reflects on personal insights and discussions with journalists, suggesting that many within the intelligence community might have sensed impending conflict but failed to act appropriately.
Transcript
0:00 Back to October 7 itself. Yeah. Sure. So
0:04 that was well, you you said you thought it was probably,
0:08 in the planning phases for at least a year. It would've had to have been just given its scale, I would think.
0:14 I think if you also look in, you know, October 2022, this is the Israelis say. I think they found some kind of binder on the border Yeah. October 2022 on it.
0:21 But that was the year in which Hamas repaired their relations with the Shia axis. Yeah. That's the year in which suddenly you had, I think, Hania going to Moscow. Right. They repaired relations with Syria,
0:31 and that was kind of, I think, the key into getting them back into the fold with people like Nasrallah.
0:36 Right. Suddenly, have Islamic Jihad and Hamas are meeting with Nasrallah on a regular basis. I think they were they were invited to Iran also at a certain point. And I think so those are some pretty serious indications of some of Israeli intelligence,
0:50 being, you know, as effective as it is
0:53 clearly must have picked up signals this was going on.
0:57 That's already been released. Yeah. So explain, if you would.
1:02 I mean, there are people who probably know this better than I, but there there's there's a document that circulated within Israeli intelligence called, I think, Jericho Wall. There's an intelligence analyst, I believe she was a female,
1:13 who
1:14 sort of saw what was happening in Gaza, that there were certain military drills,
1:19 certain speeches,
1:20 and there was an indication that they were planning something really serious. And, the story goes that her higher ups I think Berlin Bergman reported on this, if I'm not mistaken. The story goes that her higher ups basically said, like, yeah. Yeah.
1:32 That's cute.
1:33 But no.
1:35 We don't. It's, inadmissible trash.
1:38 You had also soldiers at the observation posts along the border
1:42 who, I don't know
1:44 when exactly. I don't if this was in the weeks or the months leading up to October 7, but that were reporting to their higher ups that, like, there are some strange little movements.
1:55 It commences
1:57 and much has been written about and even more speculated about,
2:01 so called stand down order or the Israeli government response to it. What what's your belief about what happened?
2:08 Are you asking whether or not I think
2:10 the Israeli higher ups wanted
2:13 this to get out of control?
2:16 No. I'm asking, like, what did happen. What do you think actually happened?
2:21 Like, why why from an outsider perspective, it seems like the response was inadequate.
2:28 It it was certainly inadequate. Right. Why?
2:32 Look. I don't know. But the what's strange to me is that
2:35 I think it was in the week or two after Zahia Nagibi, who was, like, the equivalent to the head of homeland security, I guess, or the National Security Council, something like that, in Israel.
2:44 He came out and admitted that, I think, three to four hours before the attack, there, you know, certain intelligence officials, and I think the general like, they convened. There was a discussion.
2:54 It's not like they woke up at 06:30AM.
2:58 So there was certainly something that happened among the highest echelons.
3:02 One question I've had is why
3:04 wait. Do we know what they talked about? No. But there's a quote that circulated in Israeli media that apparently the general at the time
3:11 got out of bed,
3:13 and, his wife was sort like, what? What's going on? And he just apparently turned around and said, Gaza's gonna be destroyed.
3:20 That's a quote that circulated around, Israeli media.
3:23 I don't know at what time this happens. Could have been at, you know, 06:29.
3:27 I doubt it, though, because apparently, the people were convened before. I don't know.
3:32 I know what I saw on October 7. I know where I was.
3:37 So what did you see, and what's your conclusion?
3:44 One thing I'll say is that three weeks before October 7,
3:48 I met with a journalist. He's a British journalist,
3:51 and, we've been he'd come, like, a year and a half before,
3:55 and he's starting out fresh. I don't think he knew Israel Palestine super well. So and I wanted to become a mainstream journalist at the time, so I thought he could help me scratch each other's backs. And we would talk a lot about what was going on. And for about a year and a half, I was telling him that something's gonna happen. Like, there's something weird that's going on.
4:13 And he'd listened to me, and he'd help me out. And about three weeks before October 7, we met for a beer in Jerusalem, and that was the same day in which the Palestinians,
4:21 I believe it was three weeks before, were doing these marches of return. Know when they flood the borders? Yep. They throw incendiary balloons, burn some fields, and wait for the Israelis to come back and be like, okay. What what will it take you? What's your price? What will it take you to shut the fuck up?
4:35 And he asked me. He's like, what why do you think this is happening? And I remember distinctly looking at him and saying, I don't know.
4:42 Because after 2021 or 2022, I believe,
4:46 Bennett, Naftali Bennett
4:49 lifted
4:50 the permit,
4:52 What do you call it? The permit ceiling as it were, like, the quota. It's like some twenty, twenty two thousand Gazans received permits
4:58 to come to Israel
5:01 after years of them not having any.
5:04 And
5:04 so, usually, they would do these sorts of antics to get something. We want construction materials. We want work permits. We want something. But there was nothing really to ask for.
5:13 And
5:14 so he when we said goodbye that day, I remember I'll never forget this. He looked at me and he said, you know, Ari, I think you're a really smart guy.
5:23 And I appreciate you've taught me a lot,
5:25 but I just think you've misunderstood this place.
5:29 I think you're a bit apocalyptic.
5:32 I looked at it, I said, Tom, I think you've spent a little too much time with the Israelis.
5:38 And so if I could have come to those conclusions with the limited amounts of information I had,
5:44 I'm sure there are many people within the intelligence establishment that had some idea. Do I think that BB allowed 3,000
5:51 or 2,000 Hamas
5:53 militants to enter the country and kill people?
5:56 I'm a little little doubtful,
5:59 but I don't know.
6:00 From an American perspective or the perspective of anyone who's visited that border, which I have,
6:06 pretty secure border looks like,
6:08 the southern border. So, like, how
6:11 how did that does anyone
6:13 me rephrase. Has there been
6:16 what you consider an honest and reliable accounting of how it happened? Like, how did these guys get in here?
6:24 I think it's known what do you mean by how? I think physically speaking, people know how they got in. I mean, the border was largely I mean, you know, people were in their bunks sleeping. It was also a Jewish holiday. Right. There was no increased level of alertness as far as I've heard. You certainly didn't have drones or anything in the air, which could have solved this entire problem, of course, in about, like, fifteen minutes.
6:44 So you have enough guys with enough RPGs, enough explosives, you break through concrete.
6:49 Oh, I know that. But you just imagine that the border with Gaza,
6:54 when there are, you know, credible intelligence reports, something weird is going on. Maybe we don't know what it is, but they would be on, you know, sufficient alert to have stopped this at the line.
7:03 Why something didn't happen between
7:06 that meeting, which I've heard was between certain members of intelligence at maybe three in the morning, why there weren't drones that were put in the air Yeah. Or a helicopter
7:14 or
7:15 heightened alertness, like significantly heightened alertness, I don't know. But what I have learned over many, many years in Israel is that you would be surprised by what people can get away with. I know people in the West Bank who have fake Israeli IDs, who slip in illegally and stolen Israeli cars to smoke hash with their friends on the other side, and then go back.
7:34 You'd be surprised.
7:36 So the myth of Israeli government efficiency is a myth?
7:40 Yeah. I don't yeah.
7:43 So it's not,
7:45 it's the secure security is not as competent as people imagine it is. That's But it wants to be competent. It's very competent. Yeah. I mean, if you ask yourself, for example, in Lebanon and Iran right now, how is it that they have thousands upon thousands of targets that are readily available? Exactly right. It's because they wanted to have them.
8:03 They set their sights on Iran and Lebanon, and they neglected Gaza.
8:08 Yeah. And that's the central question is why. And
8:14 so once it's in progress, there is a stand down order. What what was that?
8:20 Like, why did they do that?
8:22 Well, you can't flood the area with IDF because, look, you're talking about a lot of troops, especially for the holidays, maybe in the North, it might be two, three hours away. Yeah. So I think it's a bit unreasonable to expect that they would have flooded the whole place
8:34 with troops. It's hard. They get people have to get their guns to get equipment. It's like it's logistic it's logistical mayhem. Mhmm. There were soldiers in the first two weeks of the war that didn't even have helmets. You had Jewish communities that were sending, like, basic equipment
8:45 because there were there were massive shortages.
8:47 The real question, in my opinion, is why if there was some kind of indication around 3AM,
8:53 why the Air Force wasn't involved, why helicopters,
8:56 drones, or fighter jets
8:58 weren't involved because that doesn't take a whole lot of time as far as I'm concerned.
9:03 And we don't know the answer?
9:05 No. I mean, no. I don't expect to know the answer, at least for a very, very long time.
9:12 Once that happened, once those attacks happened, was it always inevitable the response?
9:16 Was Gaza always gonna get leveled once that happened?
9:21 If that operation,
9:22 if that attack were to be successful, and I think if we follow Sinwar's thread,
9:28 I think it's fair to assume that he knew. What do you mean by, you know, that this war will take with it or burn with it all the green and all the dry?
9:36 It's called scorched earth. Yeah.
9:38 I think, yeah, I think there was an assumption that something of this nature would happen. The exact extent,
9:45 no one can predict. Right. Of course not. No.
9:48 But that there would be massive change potentially even of borders
9:52 long term. Potentially.
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