Initial stipulations:
First, while there are no bad leaders without bad followers this post will focus on the former.
Second, I am not expert on the Israeli military. For my information I relied on remarkable reporting in the New York Times.
Third, this piece is about the military but for years Israel’s public leaders have been bad – as in ineffectual and in some cases unethical – across the board. Now its political leaders, intelligence leaders, and military leaders bear joint responsibility for a series of failures of previously unimaginable magnitude. Assigning direct blame for this or that gone wrong is therefore impossible – for instance distinguishing mistakes made by the Israeli military from those made by Israeli intelligence. Or distinguising the mistakes of the Israeli military from those of political elites who have contributed mightily to what became deep cleavages in Israeli society. But complexities notwithstanding, each of these institutions is responsible for making its own decisions and for their implementations.
Fourth, the mistakes that culminated in Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, which are the focus of this piece, were wide ranging and far reaching. We now know, to take a single example, that for years the Israeli government failed diligently and intelligently to follow the money. Money that was flowing to Hamas and ultimately made it possible for the organization to fund a major military operation.
Finally, while all nations who experience a significant surprise attack are traumatized, Hamas’s assault on Israel triggered a trauma greater even than most. For Israel it signified not just a threat but an existential one. And it destroyed Israeli’s self-image. For decades they had seen themselves, and been seen by others, as singularly well prepared to defend themselves against any military threat. Their intelligence apparatus and their fighting forces were widely perceived as among the best in the world – until now.
The failures of the Israeli military leading up to October 7th fall into two groups: those that occurred before and those that occurred during.
Failures Before
Above all this was a failure of imagination so great it boggles the mind. By every account (the Times is just one), the Israeli military had, literally, dismissed the possibility that its sworn enemy, Hamas, would attack, could attack, from Gaza. To reiterate, this was a failure on two counts: not believing that Hamas would attack; and not believing that Hamas could attack, certainly not in a way that would instantly rain down murder and mayhem. This failure, this failure of the imagination, was the most important – impossible to plan for an attack if you are persuaded there will be no attack. The terrifying truth nevertheless is this: Israel’s military had come to believe that “Hamas was neither interested in or capable of launching a massive invasion.” This despite the Israeli’s having obtained plans indicating this was precisely what Hamas intended to do. In other words, this failure was not a matter of poor intelligence. It was a failure to believe or at least seriously to consider the intelligence that was in hand.
Every other failure that preceded the attack was a consequence of this first one. Why prepare for an armed invasion if you think it inconceivable that an armed invasion will occur? Why even have a battle plan? And, if you did somehow have a battle plan why bother deciding how to execute it when the need to do so will never arise?
Why for that matter waste time collecting information about something that will never happen? Might as well do what Israel’s military did – it cut back eavesdropping on Hamas radio traffic. As a former national security advisor to the prime minister put it, “The army does not prepare itself for things it thinks are impossible.”
Failures During
Precisely because the Israeli military did not prepare itself for what it considered impossible it could not defend its citizens when the impossible came to pass. It is this that explains why hundreds of Israeli hostages were taken and why more Jews died on October 7th than on any other single day since the Holocaust.
It took over an hour to elicit any Israeli military response at all to the Hamas attack which was both sudden and substantial. Initially it consisted of rockets raining down while thousands of Hamas fighters broke through what obviously were wholly inadaquate barriers and stormed into Israel. Israeli reservists, meantime, were initially as hapless as helpless: on the assumption they would be warned well in advance of any attack they had never been trained rapidly to mobilize and deploy. Moreover, Israel’s military failed for a time fully to grasp what had just happened – Hamas had breached the border fence in more than 30 locations! In those early hours Hamas even had an enormous advantage in firepower. The unwitting and unprepared Israelis went into battle equipped with pistols and rifles while Hamas had “heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and landmines and more.” Compounding the situation was the fact that just two days before the attack Israel’s military had moved two commando companies away from the Gaza border to the West Bank. And… because October 7 was a Jewish holiday, and, again, because an attack by Hamas was simply not on anyone’s radar, not literally or figuratively, about half the 1500 soldiers normally stationed along Israel’s border with Gaza were away. They had gone home for the holiday.
The failures of the Israeli military leading up to October 7th were so all-encompassing and deeply mortifying they will for the indefinite future stain the state. So… now what? Not good enough for the government to say, as it repeatedly does, that there will be investigations but only when the war is over. Not good enough at all. It should not be good enough for Israelis. Nor should it be good enough for Americans who are Israel’s most important allies by far.
Israel’s top political leaders, its top intelligence leaders, and its top miliary leaders should be held directly and promptly responsible for the incalculable catastrophe that befell their people – and now the Palestinian people as well. I know, easy for me to say. But, if we have learned nothing over the course of human history, bad leaders should, they must, be stopped sooner not later by those who refuse any longer to put up with them. I’m not saying that pushing people from their perch is easy. I am saying it’s better, far better, than that putting up with the alternative. Than letting bad linger and finally fester.