ON MARCH 23, CHANNEL 12 of Israeli television aired a remarkable interview with Sassi Elya, the former director of technology at the Israel Security Agency (ISA). Better known by the acronyms Shin Bet or Shabak, the ISA is Israel’s domestic security service. The interview had initially been scheduled for broadcast as part of the evening news on October 7, 2023. However, its airing was canceled due to the attack on Israel by Hamas, which occurred that morning.
But on
March 23, after about 5 months, Channel 12 aired the original interview with
Elya. The retired official spoke with glee about the advanced technological
capabilities developed by the ISA in order to prevent terrorist attacks against
Israel. Elya said Israeli intelligence had built a unique system, known as “the
Tool”, which allegedly provided intimate knowledge about the life of every
Palestinian living in the West Bank and Gaza. This technologically advanced
surveillance system allegedly monitored every move of its targets, all for the
purpose of preventing potential terrorist attacks against the Jewish state.
Elya claimed that, as a result of this advanced technological system, there was
no chance that Israel would be surprised by Palestinian militants. This system
was so advanced, he said, that intelligence agencies from all over the world
were coming to Israel to learn about it.
Thanks to
Channel 12, we can now examine Elya’s interview retrospectively, and especially
in light of the ISA’s poor performance on October 7, as well as its failure to
warn Israeli authorities about Hamas’ preparations for the attack. Notably,
Elya was interviewed again for the same television program. Predictably, he
admitted that his prior assessment had been wrong and regretted being so overly
confident about the technology.
This case
demonstrates the overestimation by Israeli intelligence of its own
capabilities, because of arrogance and over-confidence. This approach refutes
the basic premise of intelligence work: be skeptical and be modest.
Furthermore, this case highlights that Israeli intelligence agencies overly
relied on technology (SIGINT) in the lead-up to October 7, while seemingly
neglecting the low-tech activity of gathering information through human
intelligence (HUMINT).
The system
that Elya described in his initial interview as the ultimate
counterintelligence tool was reportedly criticized internally by some in the
ISA for gathering huge amounts of information without offering sufficient
analytical capability. This imbalance between collection and analysis can
render an entire surveillance system practically useless. The bottom line is
that, almost by accident, we are now aware of the state of mind that the ISA
was in before the sudden attack by Hamas on October 7, which cost so many lives
as a result of the ISA’s complacency.
****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).
