“Intelligence Failures”: Can Israel Restore Its Security Prestige After the October Attack?

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Israeli intelligence has long been regarded as a legendary system in the world of national security, and its operations have even been depicted in Hollywood films.

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However, this reputation suffered a major blow after the surprise attack carried out by Hamas on Israeli towns near Gaza last year, and Israeli intelligence leaders are now working to rebuild it.

Have Israel’s strikes against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon corrected the “failures” that resulted from the October 7, 2023, attack?

According to the American magazine Foreign Policy, while “spectacular intelligence operations make for captivating headlines, it is unclear whether Israel’s spies are also providing the best support for diplomacy or strategy.”

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Two Moments of Failure

The magazine notes that before the Hamas attack, Israeli intelligence “had a culture of accountability when inevitable intelligence failures occurred, but seemed to be at the peak of its power.”

In September 2023, on the 50th anniversary of the October 1973 War, Israeli army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi reflected on what was then considered the country’s greatest intelligence failure — missing the Egyptian attack that started the war — and the lessons learned from it.

At that time, Foreign Policy explains, the deeply ingrained but completely wrong belief that Arab nations would only launch another war against Israel under very specific circumstances led the Israeli government to repeatedly ignore evidence of an impending conflict.

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Israeli intelligence believed it had learned from these mistakes, which led to many resignations and firings after the war. However, Israel’s hard-earned reputation, as well as its sense of security, was about to collapse.

According to Foreign Policy, Israeli intelligence’s failure on October 7 to predict and thwart the Hamas attack was “so shocking that it overshadowed the failures of 1973.”

The lack of organization, missed signals, and ignored warnings dwarfed even the American intelligence failure during the September 11 attacks, where intelligence agencies had warned of an imminent al-Qaeda attack.

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Just like their American counterparts in 2001, Israeli intelligence had ignored what members of these hostile organizations had been saying.

With the country unprepared, it took the Israeli army several long hours to react to Hamas’s attack.

A Shared “Misjudgment”

Between the intelligence failures of 2023 and 1973, Foreign Policy highlights “significant similarities,” chief among them that political and military leaders were “prisoners of a misjudgment of the enemy’s intentions and an underestimation of its capabilities.”

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In this case, Israeli leadership believed that Hamas, despite all its bloodthirsty rhetoric, was essentially comfortable with the status quo of its control over Gaza.

Once again, as in 1973, lower-ranking intelligence officers tried to warn their dismissive superiors.

Israeli military intelligence did not believe that anything new was about to happen, despite numerous warnings from female military monitors at the southern border and an Israeli citizen who had been eavesdropping on Hamas communications. The Ministry of Communications had confiscated his equipment because “top security officials were tired of his warnings,” according to journalist Efrat Fenigson.

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“Rebuilding”

Despite these weaknesses, last year’s and this year’s operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon have given Israeli intelligence “the opportunity to rebuild their reputation from before October 7.”

In this regard, Foreign Policy emphasizes that Hezbollah and its Iranian backers have been at the heart of Israeli intelligence concerns for years. Israeli intelligence succeeded in “stealing Iran’s nuclear archives, assassinating several nuclear scientists to delay enrichment programs, and repeatedly hitting Iranian arms shipments transiting through Syria.”

They have also been able to target leaders of both Hamas and Hezbollah, including at the highest command levels.

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In February, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah became increasingly concerned with operational security and warned party members about Israel’s ability to exploit their mobile phones. The group then switched to pagers.

On September 17, at 3:30 p.m. local time, pagers used by thousands of Hezbollah members across Lebanon and Syria exploded simultaneously.

The next day, another wave of explosions destroyed the remaining Hezbollah communications capabilities, causing both deaths and injuries.

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Although Israeli intelligence did not explicitly claim responsibility, it appears that the Mossad and Aman planned and executed the operation, demonstrating great patience in carrying out a plan that may have been years in the making, according to Foreign Policy.

Iran’s fear of Israel’s mastery of their communication tools forced the Revolutionary Guards to stop using all electronic devices.

This blow, in addition to the psychological fear it sowed around such devices, severely affected Hezbollah’s communications capabilities, forcing thousands of its agents to revert to more primitive communication methods.

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While Nasrallah promised a “severe response” to Israel following the pager and radio explosions, he was caught off guard by an Israeli airstrike that targeted an underground command center during a meeting with senior officials.