As the Israeli Army IDF resumes ground operations in Gaza after Hamas violted the ceasefire just before it was due to expire, more and more information has emerged on the Israeli intelligence failures leading up to Oct. 7. Journalist Caroline Glick called for Intel head Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva and Southern Command head Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman to step down or be fired.
Israeli officials had intelligence that Palestinian terror group Hamas was preparing a wide-ranging attack before its October 7 assault but dismissed the information, The New York Times reported Thursday. A document obtained by Israeli authorities at least a year before the attack “outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.”
“The 40-page document, which was reviewed by the newspaper, did not specify when the attack might happen. But it provided a blueprint that Hamas appears to have followed: an initial rocket barrage, efforts to knock out surveillance, and waves of gunmen crossing into Israel by land and air,” the Times of Israel wrote.
The NYT said the document “included sensitive security information about Israeli military capacity and locations” and “circulated widely among the country’s military and intelligence leaders, though it was not clear if it was reviewed by senior politicians including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Apparently the Israeli intel and security leaders dismissed the warnings because they believed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar did not want war.
A junior officer in the IDF’s signal intelligence detachment Unit 8200, had “warned her superiors over the past year about the possibility of a mass infiltration event from the Gaza Strip of the kind that occurred on October 7, but her warnings were dismissed, Channel 12 News reported. When presented with her warnings, the officer’s commanders did nothing and told her: “You’re imagining it,” Arutz Sheva wrote.
The SigInt officer had “warned her direct superior, who cancelled her vacation to warn the head of the Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, when he visited the unit’s base. Haliva disregarded the report and did not pass the information to the head of the ISA or the Chief of Staff,” Arutz Sheva reported. “According to journalist Nir Dvori, an additional junior officer in Unit 8200 also strongly cautioned that Hamas was training for an attack, and that the attack was indeed planned and not simply a training exercise. The two specified planned points of entry through Israel’s border wall, the different communications being sent, and the conclusion that a massive attack was planned. They presented the findings to a senior officer from outside their unit, who dismissed it as “fantasy.”
Journalist Caroline called for IDF Intel head Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva and Southern Command head Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman to resign.
“In the weeks since Oct. 7, more and more information has come out about why Hamas was able to pull it off,” Glick wrote on JNS. “All of the information points to Haliva and his close subordinates. The Field Observers unit at Nahal Oz base suffered the greatest losses there during Hamas’s assault. The unit, comprising female soldiers, is responsible for monitoring the footage from security cameras along the Gaza border around the clock and alerting forces on the ground and in the intelligence community to anything suspicious.”
“Seventeen observers were killed on Oct. 7. Seven were taken hostage. One, Naama Levy, was videoed barefoot, being dragged from the trunk of a vehicle by her hair and pushed into the back seat. Her hands were zip-tied behind her back. The seat of her sweatpants was stained with blood, indicating she had been raped violently. One observer, Ori Megidish, was rescued by the IDF in early November. Another, Noa Marciano, was filmed in a hostage video, first alive, and then dead. Her body was later recovered by IDF forces”, Glick wrote.
“Days after their friends were slaughtered, raped and kidnapped, the two surviving members of the unit and a number of former members started coming forward to tell their story. In interviews with Channel 11, two women related that in the months before the invasion, they were warning it was in the works. The women saw Hamas terrorists training to take over kibbutzim and IDF bases. They watched terrorists practicing taking hostages and blowing up tanks. They saw terror commanders watching the drills. They saw spies probing the fence for weaknesses. They saw it all and reported it all. Rather than giving them medals, unnamed top-level officers in the intelligence corps ordered them to stop. When they continued reporting, the observers were warned that they would be disciplined and removed from the unit if they kept raising their concerns.”
The SigInt officers of Unit 8200 weren’t the only ones who saw what was happening, Glick writes: “As Channel 11 reported on Tuesday, in May 2023, the Gaza Division’s intelligence officer created a slide presentation titled, “The Walls of Jericho,” setting out in detail how Hamas intended to bring down the security fence and invade Israel at up to 60 separate points, invade the division’s bases and enter civilian communities to commit mass murder and seize hostages. In a follow-up report from August, the intelligence officer even explained that Hamas intended to carry out its plan either on Shabbat or on a holiday when only a small cadre of soldiers would be on duty. His work was dismissed as unrealistic and out of line with Hamas’s true intentions by senior intelligence officers at Tel Aviv headquarters.”
“At 4 a.m. on Oct. 7, due to warnings of increased Hamas movement near the border fence, the senior security leadership, including IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevy, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar, Southern Command Commander Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman and Haliva’s assistant (Haliva was apparently asleep), discussed the movements and decided to go back to bed,” according to Glick. “Bar sent a small team of fighters to the border area, but that was all. The group didn’t inform the Gaza division commander, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Instead, they agreed to speak again at 8 a.m. Hamas invaded at 6:30.”
“Since at least 2022, Haliva and his colleagues in the Intelligence Directorate and the top echelons of the IDF and the Shin Bet were convinced that Hamas was deterred,” Glick wrote. “Hamas, they insisted both in public statements and in intelligence briefings to political leaders, was interested in providing economic prosperity to Gaza.”
Maj. Gen. Haliva was a leader of the 10-month insurgency within the security apparatus against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Glick claimed. “His ex-wife and the mother of his children, Shira Margalit, is married to Ilan Shiloah, a senior advertising executive. Margalit and Shiloah stood behind much of the political unrest that Israel has experienced since last year. Haliva’s daughter spoke at anti-government protests. His son’s twitter feed is filled with anti-Netanyahu invective.”
On the eve of the ground invasion, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the public, she wrote. “He explained that the war is Israel’s “second war of independence,” and that it presents Israel with an “existential challenge.” In other words, Israel has no choice but to win. Netanyahu defined victory as rescuing the hostages, destroying Hamas as a military and political entity and preventing it or any other terror group from rising in Gaza ever again.”
Three days later, Maj. Gen. Haliva “rejected Netanyahu’s description of the war as an existential conflict,” Glick wrote. Speaking to graduates of the Intelligence Corps officer training course, Haliva insisted, “It’s a war we have no choice but to fight. It isn’t an existential war.”
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