{"id":478665,"date":"2026-06-06T02:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T02:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/478665\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T02:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T02:08:12","slug":"how-israel-can-prevent-the-next-october-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/478665\/","title":{"rendered":"How Israel Can Prevent the Next October 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East<\/a>, by Yaakov Katz & Amir Bohbot\u00ad (St. Martin\u2019s Press, 336 pp., $31)<\/p>\n

The Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, was an assault about 15 times as large, on a per capita basis, than the 9\/11 attacks. When it was over, more Jews had been murdered than on any single day since the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

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How did it happen? While Israel Slept, the account of two veteran Israeli national security reporters, Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot, should be required reading for those seeking to understand why the nation\u2019s security failed and how to prevent another deadly incursion. This detailed exploration of the collapse of Israel\u2019s vaunted intelligence, military, and political institutions prior to October 7 provides a depressing, often shocking explanation for how Hamas, the militant Islamist group that continues to rule Gaza, was able to murder more than 1,200 people, injure some 10,000, and take some 251 people hostage in a single day.<\/p>\n

Katz and Bohbot interviewed hundreds of people who agreed to share their own stories and insights into the tragedy. The authors claim, counterintuitively, that Israel\u2019s national security apparatus and political leadership failed not by overreacting to the October 7 slaughter but by failing to respond to compelling evidence, much of it public, that Hamas was planning a massive invasion. The government\u2019s major strategic miscalculation, they write, was conceptual: Israel\u2019s leaders continued to believe that Hamas was \u201ccontained”; that preemptive action was both unnecessary and unwise, since it might provoke a wider war; and that the Israeli-encouraged $1 billion Qatari infusion of cash to Gaza had successfully bought off Hamas. Israeli leaders believed that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas\u2019s de facto leader and the main architect of October 7, was satisfied with ruling the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s policy of \u201ccontainment,\u201d the journalists argue, produced a \u201cdangerous complacency\u201d about its enemies\u2014and not just Hamas. Consecutive Israeli governments watched as Syria amassed vast quantities of chemical weapons throughout the 1980s and 1990s but took no action. They stood by as Hezbollah amassed weapons in Lebanon, \u201cgoing from just 20,000 rockets during the Second Lebanon War in 2006 to over 150,000 by 2023, many of which were unleashed when the Lebanese terrorist group also began attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas following October 7.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s other major failures included an under reliance on human intelligence (Humint)\u2014Israel did not have a single intelligence agent in Gaza on the night of the attack, the authors maintain\u2014and a dangerous overreliance on technology for its defense. Hamas had no trouble neutralizing Israel\u2019s supposedly impenetrable $1 billion \u201ciron wall\u201d along the Gaza border. \u201c[T]he military was certain that the only way Hamas could cross the border was by tunnel,\u201d they write. But on October 7, not a single terrorist who killed, raped, and burned Israelis crossed into Israel by tunnel. \u201cEverything and everyone were just wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli officials\u00a0made another conceptual error: they overestimated the damage the IDF had inflicted on Hamas\u2019s rocket launchers and tunnel entrances during the limited military campaigns in 2009, 2014, 2017, and 2021\u2014\u201cmowing the lawn,\u201d as Israelis called it. Israel did little to stop Hamas from digging an \u201cunderground city\u201d of 300 miles of tunnels beneath Gaza\u2014which would become a \u201cterror dungeon for 251 hostages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though most Israeli officials assumed that Hamas had been neutralized, there were dissenters. A 2016 \u201ctop secret\u201d paper<\/a>\u00a0by then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a hardline right-wing politician, warned that Hamas was determined to bring the next conflict onto Israeli soil and, if possible, take hostages. The prescient document asserted that Hamas was also determined to increase its military force from 27,000 to 40,000 by 2020, which it did, and to launch a multifront campaign against Israel that would include Hezbollah. This also occurred.<\/p>\n

Though the authors do not use this word, the October 7 slaughter was also the result of Israeli hubris\u2014its unwillingness to believe that Hamas militants could inflict such devastation on the technologically sophisticated, militarily dominant Jews. This reminded me of the years after the Six-Day War in 1967, in which Israel\u2019s leaders repeatedly underestimated Egypt\u2019s and its Arab neighbors\u2019 determination to reclaim the Sinai and reverse Israel\u2019s impressive military victory. Israeli disdain toward the Arabs led to similar complacency, which, in turn, prompted the devastating 1973 Yom Kippur War, which Israel came close to losing.<\/p>\n

While Israel Slept\u00a0is especially critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Katz and Bohbot claim that he repeatedly refused to act preemptively against Hamas and helped orchestrate Qatar\u2019s financial aid to Gaza, despite warnings by some security officials that Sinwar and other top Hamas leaders remained intent on destroying the Jewish state. Shin Bet director Ronen Bar, who repeatedly pressed for a more aggressive policy toward Hamas and a preemptive strike to kill its senior leaders, warned Netanyahu that Sinwar was driven by \u201copportunity and not fear.\u201d Alerts of Hamas-directed attacks in the West Bank, for instance, increased from 60 a day in 2022 to 200 daily in 2023. Hamas leaders openly called for Israel\u2019s destruction. Intelligence officials knew that Hamas\u2019s military wing had been holding training raids on mock IDF posts and Israeli towns, recording themselves as they kidnapped men dressed as Israeli soldiers. But before October 7, such warnings fell on \u201cdeaf Israeli ears,\u201d the authors maintain.<\/p>\n

Some ominous reports\u2014such as the doubling of Hamas phone calls and messaging in the days leading up to October 7\u2014never reached senior intelligence officials, note Katz and Bohbot. Documents found after the invasion showed that Hamas had been preparing for such an assault for over a year<\/a>: Israelis found detailed maps of the kibbutzim<\/a>\u00a0and nearby IDF bases as well as the precise locations of IDF commanders<\/a>\u00a0within the bases, weapons depots and medical clinics, and different squadrons of the Tel Nof Airbase. The terrorists had even identified dining rooms<\/a>\u00a0in which they intended to gather residents whom they would transfer to Gaza. Some of the roughly 20,000 Palestinians permitted to work in Israel<\/a>\u00a0had helped Hamas map out where Israelis lived in several kibbutzim, where they dined, and even which houses had pets. Hamas battalion commanders received authority to write fatwas<\/a>, or religious rulings, \u201cto justify rapes and the abuse of bodies and more that were inflicted on Israeli civilians and soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scale and depth of Israel\u2019s intelligence and policy failures are stunning. Ten months before October 7, IDF chief of staff Aviv Kohavi confidently declared at an internal Aman conference that Israel\u2019s \u201cstrategy of deterrence\u201d had resulted in the \u201cquietest and most stable<\/a>\u201d years in Gaza. Despite the exceptional heroism of many soldiers who rushed to the Gaza border on October 7 to try to save endangered Israelis, such misjudgments intensified Israelis\u2019 sense of anguish and trauma, increased doubts about their government\u2019s ability to protect them, and strengthened their desire for revenge and retribution in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s inevitable counteroffensive was also troubled, the authors report. Just as Hamas and other terrorist factions in Gaza had painstakingly prepared for their pogrom, they had also meticulously rehearsed for Israel\u2019s ground incursion, \u201cfortifying themselves with an extensive network of tunnels, anti-tank missile units, snipers, and a substantial arsenal of mortar shells.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katz and Bohbot assert that Netanyahu, who prides himself as Israel\u2019s \u201cMr. Security,\u201d had to be forced to send ground troops into Gaza, even after October 7. The authors blame him for the disastrous decision to encourage Qatar to provide \u201caid\u201d to Hamas. Israel\u2019s intelligence agencies \u201cpaid little attention\u201d\u2014under both prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Netanyahu\u2014to where the estimated $360 million a year<\/a>\u00a0in Qatari aid was going in Gaza. Israel learned only too late that Qatar\u2019s cash bought not deterrence but the construction and reinforcement of over 300 miles of tunnels<\/a>, some three levels and 40 to 65 yards deep.<\/p>\n

For Netanyahu, Hamas was both a threat and a solution, the authors maintain: \u201cIts existence and control of Gaza provided him with a constant excuse for explaining why it was impossible to advance toward a two-state solution, by which an independent Palestinian state would rule over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.\u201d Far-right politician Bezalel Smotrich, Israel\u2019s Finance Minister since 2022, was blunter about the political value of this strategy. \u201cHamas is an asset and the [Palestinian Authority] is a burden,\u201d he tweeted<\/a>\u00a0in 2015. As long as\u00a0Hamas ruled Gaza, the world would not pressure Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians. \u201cTime and again,\u201d the authors conclude, Netanyahu placed political survival above national interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite their bitter criticism of Netanyahu and his government, Katz and Bohbot defend Israel against international criticism of its counteroffensive in Gaza. While Israel has been accused of \u201cgenocide\u201d for its massive bombing and battles at schools, hospitals, and other civilian facilities, the authors say that Hamas deliberately built its most elaborate, heavily fortified \u201cluxury\u201d tunnels under such places and stationed the bulk of its fighters there. At Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, for instance, Israeli troops found more than 1,000 operatives at a Hamas base. While international organizations claimed<\/a>\u00a0that Israel has destroyed almost 70 percent of Gaza\u2019s homes and buildings, the United Nations\u2019 own satellite agency\u2019s images show that the number is half that\u201435 percent<\/a>\u2014less than the percentage of structures destroyed or damaged during the U.S.-led operation against the Islamic State in Mosul (65 percent<\/a>) or in Raqqa (70 percent<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The authors clearly doubt that Israeli-Palestinian\u00a0peace is possible any time soon. They argue that, in the meantime, Israel must adopt a new defense strategy to prevent Hamas, Hezbollah, and its other enemies from reconstituting their military capabilities. \u201cThe next time the IDF sees a truck loaded with rockets driving into Gaza City, it needs to attack. The next time Hamas fighters are drilling assaults on Israel, the IDF need to attack; and the next time it sees people digging a tunnel, it need to destroy it,\u201d they conclude. \u201cPreemptive action\u201d must become Israel\u2019s new \u201cpillar of defense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East, by Yaakov Katz &…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-478665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}