In the eyes of the Israeli generation of the Yom Kippur War, the possibility of such a failure happening again was unthinkable. Yet there is a significant difference between the events of 1973 and the events of last October 7. In 1973 the intelligence failed, but the IDF reacted quickly and acted efficiently. This time, in the first two days of the conflict the IDF was confused and acted without direction, in the apparent absence of relevant action plans for what to do in the event of a massive invasion. The IDF was clearly not ready for such a scenario.

Recently, another important piece of information about the intelligence failure of October 7 was revealed. It was reported that, two months before the surprise attack by Hamas, information was received from an agent handled by the Israel Security Agency (ISA) in Gaza, with a “very high” reliability level. The agent allegedly reported that Hamas was planning “a major move in the week after Yom Kippur”. Yet that warning was not marked as significant; the assumption was that, if the warning materialized, it would be corroborated with additional intelligence. It was thus kept from higher levels of command and from Israeli Military Intelligence (IMI). The ISA did not deny the report, saying instead in a statement: “Focusing on one specific piece of news or another does not reflect the intelligence picture at the time”.

Given the high number of casualties and the horrendous destruction that resulted from the October 7 attack, many Israelis, including some in the security establishment, feel that it is far too long to wait until a commission of inquiry is established and publishes its conclusions. It will likely take at least two years for those conclusions to become public. What is to be done in the meantime? There is public pressure to launch the inquiry soon.

Recently the State Comptroller of Israel, Matanyahu Engelman, announced that he has begun to investigate the intelligence failure. This is an appropriate move. However, with all due respect to the state comptroller’s inquiries, we know from previous experience that his findings have no teeth. For instance, in the context of Hamas, the state comptroller’s review of Operation TZUK EITAN (the 2014 Gaza War) was published in early 2017. It revealed serious instances of misconduct in the intelligence community dating several years prior to the operation. Yet this severe criticism passed below the public’s radar and was practically ignored, while no actions were taken against IDF and ISA security personnel that were shown to have acted irresponsibly.

I would like to point to a number of stronger factors that led to the tragic complacency of October 7, drawn from the field of psychology. It relates to how a country (mainly through its intelligence analysts) perceives its enemies and how this affects the evaluations of said enemies. We know that there was a conception on the Israeli side that Hamas had no interest in attacking Israel at this stage. It seems that the State of Israel underestimated Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, based on the available evidence of Hamas and Sinwar.

When one perceives an enemy like Hamas simply as a ‘terrorist’ and refers to its forces as ‘nochva terrorists’, the inference is that the enemy is a low-level actor, acts sporadically and is unable to act in an organized fashion. It follows that the threat posed by this enemy is low-level and can be easily dealt with. If we add to the equation one’s self-perception, we have Israel, which perceives itself as a highly advanced technological power with the best available intelligence and an excellent army. It follows that, due to the overestimation of Israel’s own military power, its intelligence analysts believed there was no possibility that a ‘terrorist’ organization would succeed in surprising its defenses.

At that point it is difficult to imagine that an enemy such as Hamas —as one perceives it, and not as it really is— could carry out an attack of any significant magnitude. However, if one perceives the military wing of Hamas as a sophisticated commando organization that regularly trains for an attack on Israel, and possesses elaborate capabilities for strategic deception, the concluding inference may be completely different. That is perhaps why Israel ignored the warnings before it, until it was too late.

The Israeli government expected that its security shield, namely its intelligence community, would provide a timely warning. Even if it did not, the threat from Hamas was rendered insignificant by Israel’s own  strength, which was a clear overestimation of its military capabilities. In practice, underestimating one’s enemy combined with overestimating one’s own strength, will almost inevitably lead one to fall victim to a successful strategic surprise. In 1973, Israel misperceived the strength of the Egyptian army, which it had deemed backward since 1967. This perception contrasted with its self-image as an invincible force, and had a predictable outcome. In situations where cognitive biases prevail over rational assessments, the advantage often shifts to the attacker, making it challenging to foresee and prevent surprises, as was the case on October 7.

***Dr. Avner Barnea is research fellow at the National Security Studies Center of the University of Haifa in Israel. He served as a senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is the author of We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books, 2021).

https://intelnews.org/2024/01/10/01-3328/#more-22502