bEnyamin Netanyahu has led the Israeli government for more than seventeen years combined (from 1996 to 1999, then from 2009 to 2021, and finally for almost two years).
This exceptional longevity is explained by extraordinary political talents, served by the refusal to assume the slightest responsibility for the failures that, however, have been numerous to mark such a long career.
This is particularly the case with the collapse of security on October 7, 2023, which left part of the Israeli population defenseless in the face of the terror campaign launched from Gaza by Hamas and its allied militias. That is why the Prime Minister will do everything possible to delay, or even prevent, the establishment of a commission of inquiry into such a “security fiasco” and, when the time comes, obstruct its work.
However, the Counterterrorism Center (CTC) of the prestigious West Point military academy in the United States has just published a well-documented study that reveals the main reasons for an even more resounding bankruptcy than it boasts. Israel. having developed intelligence services among the best in the world.
The ideological bias
According to the CTC, Israel lacked less information to anticipate the October 7, 2023 attack than the ability to interpret said information. In fact, the political and military hierarchy of the Jewish State was convinced, with rare exceptions, that the Palestinian question had been buried once and for all, in the fall of 2020, by the Abraham Accords of normalization between Israel, by a one side, and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, on the other.
This Israeli conviction of an irreversible marginalization of the Palestinian question had led intelligence, in its various components, to give absolute priority to the threat from Iran and its regional successors, first of all, Hezbollah. Therefore, it is in this Lebanese militia where most of the resources were concentrated (this excess investment just allowed Israel to deal terrible blows to Hezbollah and its leaders from September 17 to 27, while the leader of Hamas was It took more than a year, Yahya Sinouar, will be assassinated in Gaza, at the cost of the merciless destruction of the entire Palestinian enclave).
Such a compelling ideological bias led Israeli intelligence to underestimate Hamas’ determination to go on the offensive. The parallel is evident in this regard with the Israeli refusal, half a century earlier, to take seriously the preparations, although proven, for a coordinated offensive between Egypt and Syria, hence the shock that was the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, on October 6, 2015. 1973. Israeli leaders, intoxicated by the triumph of the Six-Day War in June 1967, could not imagine the Arab armies challenging them with such an offensive.
You have 49.39% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
