A former Muslim’s analysis of Israel’s “intelligence failure” behind the OCtober 7th attack

This is research done by a former Muslim and sincere friend of the Jewish people and Israel. I worked, lived and have visited Israel since Oslo and I agree with her that there has been a failure in reading the Islamic world by the Israeli top intelligence and military brass, who have adopted the politically correct “Washington consensus” on the world that Trump has now energetically rejected.

It is enough to make you cry.

Herzi Halevi, the top brass and the “Palestinian state” agenda, Part 1
Herzi Halevi, the top brass and the “Palestinian state” agenda, Part 2

Opening and concluding paragraphs. Read it all.

In an interview published on 26 Nov 2024, Yishai Fleischer asked Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Jonathan Conricus:

How do you answer the question about how did Israel get caught with its pants down and got attacked on a holy day in Israel? Our army, seemingly, did not catch this terrorist attack, which had been planned for a long time and [by] which we were duped. We fell for it. A lot of people were killed, murdered and raped, and all the bad stuff. How do you answer that question?

Yishai Fleischer had zeroed in on what Colonel Conricus had left out of his answer to the previous question. The honest part of Conricus’s answer is:

There’s still no official Israeli Board of Inquiry. It hasn’t been investigated at the military level, at a sufficient level. This hasn’t been presented to Israeli decision makers and the Israeli government hasn’t come clean yet on all of those years of Israeli policy towards Gaza.

But then we descend into some revealing obfuscation, starting with the claim:

The most important thing, is that we underestimated our enemy and we totally misinterpreted their strategic intentions. …We didn’t watch the different signs that we saw of actually Hamas preparing to do what they did on October the 7th and it all goes back to our misunderstanding of what we thought their intentions were and what we thought was what Hamas was about. . . .

For the past year, especially, the Biden Administration’s antics will have filled the rear-view mirrors of many social critics in the United States. It is perhaps understandable if, in such critics’ assessment of Israel, the role of the Biden Administration appears larger than it actually was, relative to factors not necessarily that prominent in the United States. Caroline Glick and American social critic, Victor Davis Hanson, agree on the Biden Administration’s role in the Israel-Gaza War. Hanson says:

The war continues despite all of the incredible achievements that IDF forces have accomplished over the past fifteen months the war continues. Our toll of war dead keeps rising despite all of our accomplishments in Gaza, because Hamas is still in power and they’re still able to recruit, thanks to the United States government under the Biden Administration.

Unlike Hanson, Glick, from her vantage point in Israel, is better able to consider other factors beside the Biden Administration’s negative interference. Yet, despite seeing things that Hanson does not, and sometimes being right on the money, there is not much that Glick can do with it. Hence:

The second reason that they’re able to continue to maintain power and to kill our forces is because IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, according to many, many ground forces commanders, both currently serving in Gaza who have been talking to reporters on condition of anonymity and also many former retired IDF generals who are looking at the situation from outside with their mouths just agape and shock over the incompetence that Herzi Halevi, the Chief of Staff has been demonstrating in his leadership of it. He came from one of the commando units from Sayeret Matkal and he is constitutionally incapable of seizing and controlling territory. The commandos come in, they do the job, they leave, and that’s what he keeps getting IDF ground forces to do in Gaza. . .

[With Donald Trump assuming office], we can finally secure our victory. We can annihilate Hamas even as it rebuilds its strength. We have the ability to do that. We have the soldiers to do that. We have the will to do that and and we will do it.

So, in fact, it is not just that the Biden Administration had tied Israel’s hands behind her back. With that administration now gone, those hands are supposedly free. Yet they still cannot act. They need another administration that must now allow them to act. It was never really about an administration tying Israel’s hands behind her back; it was about Israelis tying their own hands behind their backs. They will not do anything without Donald trump’s prior approval, and then only on his terms. For Israel to not presume her sovereignty in action is to presume her nation a subject people, a colonised people. Neither Panama, nor Greenland has a military force, yet both of their governments are telling Donald Trump how it’s going to be. But it gets worse:

And, you know, and President Trump has promised he’s going to end the arms embargo.

No! Wrong! Dead wrong! This is sliding right back into the pathetic helplessness of the Jew kicked around in the old Yishuv. Cling to the hope that a great, benevolent outside lord will keep his promise to take pity on us. This is dire. The lesson since 1973, brought home at catastrophic cost since 7 October, is that we must assume that the arms embargo will continue, even be intensified. Start from there, rather than fall right back on a foreign president’s promise. Here Caroline Glick shows herself as not only trailing behind the Israeli people, but behind the government as well. Times of Israel reports on the awarding of contracts to the Israeli military industry to achieve sovereign independence in future military procurement, quoting Defense Ministry Director General Eyal Zamir as saying, “We initiated this historic move before the war but accelerated it during it. Under both agreements, initial capabilities will soon gradually expand until we achieve full independence in both areas.”

Of course, this does not mean that the Israeli government will show such fortitude in the face of Trump, or even that it will respect and uphold Israel’s sovereignty internationally. They might want to prove to Trump what good Jews they are by first asking his permission before taking sovereign actions, which of course means that those are not sovereign actions, but the actions of a timid, subject nation, and Donald Trump despises timidity in leaders.