Thoughts on the Intelligence Failure behind Hamas' Murder Raid
An intelligence officer's thoughts on what drives complacency
A quote from a recent New York Times story discussing the Hamas attack noted,
“Two (Israeli) officials said that the Israeli border surveillance system was almost entirely reliant on cameras, sensors, and machine guns that were operated remotely.”
This short-form audio discussed why that kind of over-reliance on tech can create massive intelligence failures.
One reason the hand of Iran is suspected in the Hamas attack is that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the Iranian version of the CIA, are formidable foes. They practice the kind of operational security that Hamas must have practiced to keep the months of planning that went into the murder raid secret. Odds are Hamas was trained in how to maintain this high level of operational security by their Iranian partners (and the Wall Street Journal has put out at least one report that Hamas had Iranian support from this raid).
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You didn't pay particularly close attention to anything about the article. My name is on it, I have openly identified myself as a former CIA officer in my Substack bio, and identified myself that way twice within the audio, there was nothing anonymous about it.
The Palestinian leadership (not people...they never got a vote) have repeatedly rejected offers of a two State solution multiple times over a span of close to 70 years.
At a certain point of time, the Israelis decided to stop offering a solution that was so clearly and repeatedly treated with contempt.
This is a self-inflicted wound by Hamas. The Palestinians could have had their own state 70 years ago. Their corrupt leadership decided they were more interested in Israel not existing at all than in Palestinians getting most of what they wanted in a compromised deal.
I find myself remarkably unaffected at the prospect that you no longer have interest in reading this magazine. We very rarely stray into the realm of politics, but when we do, we try to bring moral clarity that things like murdering babies and grandmothers are bad and deserve to be opposed with force. If you can't see that, good day to you, but please show yourself out.
It is true that there are a lot of local sources of water in Gaza because there are many small scale desalinization plants. But without the fuel/power to run the plants, which will run out sooner rather than later, those desalinization facilities will grind to a halt. A lot of Gaza actually still has power because they get a large amount from small generators, but those will soon burn up their stocks of gas or diesel and don't have a good avenue to replenish fuel once it is gone.
Yet, I can understand the Israelis not wanting to give a Hamas-controlled region any fuel, as fuel is central to military operations. If you allow an area controlled by Hamas access to fuel, Hamas will take two gallons for every one gallon they allow for civilian use...assuming Hamas doesn't simply take all of it, and then blame "the Jews" yet again for not solving the disaster Hamas triggered.
There is no easy answer.