The origins of Israel’s intelligence failure on the Hamas attacks can be traced to the decision to rely on AI instead of the contrarian analysis born of the earlier intelligence failure of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Recording and transcription of the Agranat Commission. (Lkahan, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News
As the scope and scale of the Hamas surprise attack on Israel becomes clearer, one question emerges more than any other from the detritus of the battlefield: How did such a massive, complex undertaking escape the notice of Israel’s vaunted intelligence service?
An equally important question is why wasn’t this attack detected by the U.S. intelligence community as well, given the massive expenditures made in countering terrorism since the terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland of September 11, 2001?
The answers lie in the history of success Israel has enjoyed in identifying and responding to Hamas operations in the past, success which manifested itself into a culture of complacency, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Israeli citizens — the very people the intelligence services were dedicated to protect.
The fact that this attack took place 50 years and a day from when Israel suffered what had been — up until this moment — Israel’s greatest intelligence failure, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, only reinforces the depth of the failure that transpired.
Findings of the Agranat Commission
In the weeks following the end of the Yom Kippur War, the government of Prime Minister Golda Meir formed a commission of inquiry headed by Shimon Agranat, the chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. The Agranat Commission, as it was subsequently called, focused on the flawed analysis conducted by Israeli military intelligence directorate (AMAN), with particular attention being placed on Eli Zeira, the head of AMAN’s Research and Analysis Department, or RAD.
Eli Zeira, head of Aman, undated. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Zeira was the principal architect of what became known as “the concept”, a dogmatic adherence to an analytical paradigm which had, until October 1973, proven itself reliable in the years that followed Israel’s victory in the six-day war of 1967.
The “concept” held that the Arab armies, while possessing a limited ability to initiate a war with Israel, were not ready for an all-out war, and as such would avoid engaging in actions which logically would lead to such an all-out war with Israel.
The analysts of RAD were criticized for an over reliance on inductive reasoning and intuition and failing to use structured deductive methodology. One of the conclusions reached by the Agranat Commission was the need for so-called structured analytical techniques, in particular what is known as “Analysis of Competing Hypotheses.”
This manifested itself in the development within AMAN of a culture of contrarian thinking, built around critical thinking designed to challenge unitary assessments and groupthink.
The United States also examined the root causes of its intelligence failures regarding the Yom Kippur War. A multi-agency assessment of the October 1973 intelligence failure published by the U.S. in December of that year concluded that the issue at that time wasn’t the inability to collect or even accurately assess intelligence data — in fact, the report stated, evidence of an a surprise attack by the armies of Egypt and Syria had been “plentiful, ominous, and often accurate” and that U.S. intelligence analysts debated and wrote about this evidence.
In the end, the December 1979 report said however, that the U.S. analysts — like their Israeli counterparts — had concluded there would be no attack, conclusions which, as the post-mortem noted, “were—quite simply, obviously, and starkly—wrong.”
Some of the critical issues which emerged from this assessment included the over-reliance by U.S. analysts on Israel to know its own security posture; analysts being married to preconceived notions about Arab military capabilities; a tendency for plausible interpretation of the same evidence; and a failure by analysts to challenge the “rational actor” fallacy.
Israel & US at Odds
March 1, 1973: U.S. President Richard Nixon, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office. (Oliver Atkins, Nixon’s photographer, via Wikimedia Commons, CC by SA 4.0)
In the years that followed the Yom Kippur War, the intelligence communities of Israel and the U.S. established their own gravitational “pull,” with Israel employing a methodology of threat predictions and assessments that underpinned decisions to intervene militarily in Lebanon, often putting it at odds with U.S. policy makers.
Policy in Washington was made based on briefings by U.S. intelligence analysts who had developed a culture of downplaying Israeli intelligence in favor of their own. The resulting gap in analytical approaches and conclusions led to the intelligence crisis of 1990-1991 surrounding the threat posed by Iraqi SCUD missiles.
This crisis was predicated on the differences of priorities placed on the SCUD threat, both in the lead up to, and execution (regardless of the military objectives) of Operation Desert Storm, the U.S.-led campaign to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait conducted in January-February 1991.
These differences only became exacerbated in the years that followed the end of that conflict, when both the U.S. and Israel struggled with how best to respond to the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, including its SCUD missiles.
I was at the center of the U.S.-Israeli intelligence controversy during this time, having been brought into the United Nations to create an independent intelligence capability to support the inspection-based effort to disarm Iraq.
From 1991 until 1998, I conducted sensitive liaison with both the C.I.A. and AMAN, and often found myself caught in the middle of the clash of cultures that had developed between the two.
This clash sometimes took the form of vaudeville comedy, such as the time I had to be ushered out the back door of an AMAN building to avoid being seen by the C.I.A.’s chief of station, who had arrived for the purpose of finding out what intelligence the Israelis were sharing with me.
On another occasion, I had run into a team of C.I.A. analysts on the streets of Tel Aviv who had been advising me on a particular inspection that was being planned. They were critical of the Israeli intelligence I was using to support this mission.
The purpose of their visit was to put pressure on Israel to stop the flow of information to the U.N. through me, arguing that, as a U.S. citizen, I should be getting my information from U.S. sources, and therefore Israel should flow all intelligence to me through them. Our meeting, it turned out, was no “chance” encounter, but rather set up by the Israelis, without my knowledge, so that I would be aware of the duplicity of my U.S. counterparts.
Such duplicity led to interactions of a more ominous character, with the C.I.A. green-lighting an F.B.I. investigation into allegations that I was spying on behalf of Israel. The U.S. actions had nothing to do with genuine concerns of espionage on my part, but rather were part of a larger campaign designed to minimize the influence of Israeli intelligence upon a U.N. inspection effort that the U.S. believed should instead be marching to the beat of a drum dictated by U.S. intelligence.
CIA vs. Israeli Intelligence
The animus that existed within the C.I.A. regarding Israeli intelligence was real and was grounded in the differing policy approaches taken by the two nations regarding the role of weapons inspectors and Iraqi WMD.
The U.S. was engaged in a policy of regime change in Iraq and was using weapons inspections as a vehicle to continue economic sanctions designed to contain the government of Saddam Hussein, and as a source of unique intelligence that could enable the U.S. to carry out operations designed to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
May 26, 1992: U.S. military examine remains of a Scud tail assembly during the Gulf War. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
The Israelis were singularly focused on the security of Israel. While the Israelis had entertained a regime change option in the first two years following the end of Desert Storm, by 1994 they had determined that the best way forward was to work with the U.N. inspectors to achieve the verifiable elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, including the SCUD missiles.
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One of the starker manifestations of the difference in approaches taken by the C.I.A. and Israel dealt with the effort I had led in accounting for Iraq’s SCUD missile arsenal.
In November 1993, I was summoned to the White House to brief a C.I.A. team, headed by Martin Indyk and Bruce Reidel, on my investigation, which had concluded that all of Iraq’s missiles had been accounted for.
The C.I.A. rejected my findings, declaring that their assessment of Iraqi SCUD missile capability was that Iraq maintained a force of 12-20 missiles along with several launchers, and this assessment would never change, irrespective of my work as an inspector.
By contrast, when I visited Israel for the first time, in October 1994, I had been approached by the head of AMAN, Uri Saguy, about my assessment regarding the accounting of Iraq’s SCUD missiles. I gave the AMAN director the same briefing as I gave the C.I.A.
Saguy, accompanied by the head of RAD at that time, Yaakov Amidror, accepted my conclusions in their entirety, and used them to brief the Israeli prime minister.
My experience with Israeli intelligence is far more revealing than my contemporaneous experience with the C.I.A., if for no other reason than the Israelis were trying to solve an intelligence problem (what was the real status of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction), while the U.S. was trying to implement a political decision regarding regime change in Iraq.
Between 1994 and 1998, I conducted 14 trips to Israel where I worked closely with AMAN, personally briefing two directors (Saguy and, from 1995, Moshe Ya’alon), two chiefs of RAD (Yaakov Amidror and Amos Gilad), and developed a close working relationship with intelligence analysts and operators from several Israeli intelligence organizations, including the legendary Unit 8200 — Israel’s signals intelligence unit.
A Rational Actor
Egyptian forces cross a bridge laid over the Suez Canal on Oct. 7, 1973, during the Yom Kippur War/October War. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
The Israelis briefed me extensively on their post-Yom Kippur War methodology, especially their new contrarian approach to analysis. One of the more interesting aspects of this approach was the creation of a post, known within AMAN as “the doubting Thomas” (derived from the New Testament of the Bible, when Thomas — one of the 12 apostles of Jesus— would not believe that Jesus had come back from the dead until he saw him.)
I was introduced to the colonel who had this thankless task, explaining to me how he would receive every briefing before it was given to the director and proceeded to question conclusions and assertions. His queries had to be answered to his satisfaction before the briefing could be sent forward.
It was this colonel who helped formulate the Israeli conclusion that Saddam Hussein was a rational actor who would not seek a larger conflict with Israel that could result in the destruction of his nation — ironically embracing the same “rational actor” conclusions that had been erroneously reached in the lead up to the Yom Kippur War. On this occasion, the analysis was correct.
Israeli soldiers during Yom Kippur War. (Haramati, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
The analysis produced by “the doubting Thomas” allowed the Israelis to consider the possibility of a change in approach regarding Saddam Hussein. It did not, however, reduce the vigilance of Israeli intelligence in making sure that this assessment was, and remained, accurate.
I worked closely with AMAN and Unit 8200 to put together an intelligence collection plan which used imagery, technical, human, and signals intelligence to ascertain Iraqi capabilities and intent. I personally witnessed the diligence with which the Israeli analysts and collectors pursued their mission. Literally no stone was left unturned, no thesis left unexplored.
In the end, the Israelis were able to back up Uri Saguy’s embrace of my 1994 conclusion regarding the accounting of Iraqi SCUD missiles with their own detailed analysis derived from intelligence collected through their own means, as well as that collected through collaboration with myself and other U.N. inspectors.
This success proved to be fatal to Israel and contributed to the failure of both U.S. and Israeli intelligence to predict the 2023 Yom Kippur-like attacks by Hamas.
In 1998 Yaakov Amidror was replaced as the head of RAD by Amos Gilad. Where Amidror fully embraced the contrarian approach taken by RAD and AMAN when it came to producing intelligence analysis, Gilad was of a different mind, believing that the Agranat Commission report had constrained Israeli intelligence from adapting to new challenges.
He believed that the trauma of Yom Kippur had resulted in AMAN adopting a conservative and minimalist, analytical approach, focusing on analyzing capabilities while neglecting intentions, resulting in over-cautious conclusions.
Not a Rational Actor
Smoke from the site of the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. (U.S. National Archives)
Gilad was more inclined to embrace the C.I.A. assessments of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and worked with the C.I.A. to dismantle the collaboration between the U.N. inspectors and AMAN.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Gilad had thrown out the previous conclusion that Saddam was a rational actor and, as such, had posed no threat to Israel (an assessment backed up by the conclusion reached through the extensive cooperation between the U.N. inspectors and AMAN that Iraq did not possess viable quantities of weapons of mass destruction, and that there was no effort by Iraq to meaningfully reconstitute the industrial capability to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.)
Instead, Gilad painted a fact-free picture that postulated Saddam as a threat worthy of military intervention, thereby helping underpin the U.S. intelligence that justified a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The fact that the intelligence regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction capabilities that was used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq was subsequently proven to be wrong did not undermine the newfound ardor between U.S. and Israeli intelligence.
The political goal of regime change had been accomplished, and as such it did not matter that the analytical product that had been relied upon for the flawed assessments was wrong.
In the lead-up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, AMAN had disregarded a plethora of intelligence reporting predicting the Arab attacks. Because the consequences of this failure had resulted in an Israeli political embarrassment, it was called out and remediation undertaken.
No Embarrassment, Unlike Yom Kippur
Amos Gilad in 2010. (Hanay, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq was different. AMAN had disregarded its own considerable body of evidence, accumulated through years of close cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors that showed Iraq did not possess meaningful quantities of weapons of mass destruction, nor the desire to reconstitute the production capabilities necessary for their reacquisition.
But because the consequences of this failure did not manifest in political embarrassment in Israel, unlike with Yom Kippur, this failure was ignored.
Indeed, the principal culprit for this failure, Amos Gilad, was elevated in 2003 to head the powerful Political-Military Affairs Bureau, a position he held until 2017. During his tenure, Gilad was said to enjoy more influence over policy than anyone else. He helped strengthen ties between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities and returned Israel to the pre-Yom Kippur War practice of over reliance on inductive reasoning and intuition void of structured deductive methodology.
One of the major consequences of Gilad’s long tenure as head of the Political Military Affairs Bureau was the re-subordination of the U.S. intelligence community to Israeli analytical judgements on the grounds that Israel knew best the threats it faced.
This reality was manifest in the words of U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking at The Atlantic Festival a week before the Hamas attacks, when he optimistically concluded that, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” adding that “the amount of time I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East today, compared to any of my predecessors going back to 9/11, is significantly reduced.”
The foundation of Sullivan’s errant optimism seemed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli policy that sought the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world, first and foremost with Saudi Arabia.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who for more than three decades has been the poster child for Israeli security, had bought into the idea of normalization with the Saudis as the key component of a strategic realignment of power in the Middle East away from Iran, and toward Israel.
This faith in the imperative of normalization was a vivid demonstration of how Israel’s new emphasis on intention over capabilities blinded it to the reality of the threats emanating out of Gaza.
Likewise, the fact that the U.S. had once again subordinated its threat analysis to Israeli conclusions —especially in circumstances where Israel saw no immediate danger — meant the U.S. did not spend too much time looking for indications that might contradict the Israeli conclusions.
Outsmarting AI
But perhaps the largest source of the Israeli intelligence failure regarding Hamas was the over reliance Israel put on intelligence collection and analysis itself. Gaza and Hamas have been a thorn in the side of Israel for years, and as such have attracted the overwhelming attention of the Israeli intelligence and security services.
Israel has perfected the art of human intelligence against the Hamas target, with a proven track record of placing agents deep inside the Hamas decision-making hierarchy.
Unit 8200 likewise has spent billions of dollars creating intelligence collection capabilities which vacuum up every piece of digital data coming out of Gaza — cell phone calls, e-mails, and SMS texting. Gaza is the most photographed place on the planet, and between satellite imagery, drones, and CCTV, every square meter of Gaza is estimated to be imaged every 10 minutes.
This amount of data is overwhelming for standard analysis techniques relying on the human mind. To compensate for this, Israel developed a huge artificial intelligence (AI) capability which it then weaponized against Hamas in the short but deadly 11-day conflict with Hamas in 2021, named Guardian of the Walls.
Unit 8200 developed several unique algorithms which used immense databases derived from years of raw intelligence data collected from every possible source of information.
Building upon concepts of machine learning and algorithm-driven warfare that have been at the forefront of Israeli military research and development for decades, Israeli intelligence was able to use AI to not only select targets, but also to anticipate Hamas actions.
This ability to predict the future, so to speak, helped shape Israeli assessments about Hamas’s intent in the lead up to the 2023 Yom Kippur attacks.
Celebrating Hamas anniversary, Dec. 14, 2009. (DYKT Mohigan, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Israel’s fatal mistake was to openly brag about the role AI played in Operation Guardian of the Walls. Hamas was apparently able to take control of the flow of information being collected by Israel.
There has been much speculation about Hamas “going dark” regarding cell phone and computer usage to deny Israel the data that is contained in those means of communication. But “going dark” would have, by itself, been an intelligence indicator, one that AI would have certainly picked up.
Instead, it’s highly probable that Hamas maintained an elaborate communications deception plan, maintaining a level of communications sufficient in quantity and quality to avoid being singled out by AI — and by Israeli analysts deviating from the norm.
In the same way, Hamas would likely have maintained its physical profile of movement and activity to keep the Israeli AI algorithms satisfied that nothing strange was afoot.
This also meant any activity — such as training related to paragliding or amphibious operations — that might be detected and flagged by Israeli AI was done to avoid detection.
The Israelis had become prisoners of their own successes in intelligence collection.
By producing more data than standard human-based analytical methodologies could handle, the Israelis turned to AI for assistance and, because of the success of AI during the 2021 operations against Gaza, developed an over reliance upon the computer-based algorithms for operational and analytical purposes.
Turning from the Contrarian
The origins of Israel’s massive intelligence failure regarding the 2023 Hamas Yom Kippur attacks can be traced to the decision by Amod Gilad to divorce Israel from the legacy of contrarian analysis born of the intelligence failure of the 1973 Yom Kippur War that produced the same over-reliance on inductive reasoning and intuition, which led to the failure to begin with.
AI is only as good as the data and algorithms used to produce the reports. If the human component of AI — those who program the algorithms —are corrupted by flawed analytical methodologies, then so, too, will the AI product, which replicates these methodologies on a larger scale.
In Volume 1 of The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill’s comprehensive history of the Second World, the British World War II leader quips, “It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war.”
Human nature being what it is, the same quip can be tragically applied to the Israeli military and intelligence services in the lead up to the 2023 Yom Kippur attacks by Hamas. It appears that the Israelis were singularly focused on the successes they enjoyed in the 2021 Operation Guardian Walls, and the role played by AI in bringing about that success.
Denied the benefit of the contrarian approach to analysis put in place in the aftermath of the Agranat Commission, Israel set itself up for failure by not imagining a scenario where Hamas would capitalize upon the Israeli over-reliance on AI, corrupting the algorithms in a way that blinded the computers, and their human programmers, to Hamas’ true intention and capability.
Hamas was able to generate a veritable Ghost in the Machine, corrupting Israeli AI and setting up the Israeli people and military for one of the most tragic chapters in the history of the Israeli nation.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Funny how all these people talk about “Israeli intelligence failure” but never “Palestinian intelligence success”.
There is the racist assumption that Israelis are naturally smarter & superior to the Arabs, so if they ever fail it is due to their own mistake not anything the Arabs did.
How about just: “Israeli intelligence worked fine, just that the Palestinians outsmarted it”?
Dear Scott,
I have been following your analyses since the US- Russia war started in 2022.
The analysis in this article is outstanding.
The part missing is why did it take the Israeli military (media and gvt) 6 hrs to respond and perhaps twice that time to send any aircraft to the Gaza perimeter?
Thinking about some of the discussion.
There is no ‘AI’. AI stands for artificial intelligence. Nothing has shown any sign of intelligence. What does happen in today’s world is Big Data. Government and Corporations all want to surveil everyone and collect everything on everyone. This is then processed by powerful computers. The goal is is prediction. Prediction has to precede control. How do you control if you can not predict? If you don’t know what someone is going to do next, how do you steer them? But if you know they go to the corporate coffee shop for a mid-morning break every day, they can try to steer you into the corporate restaurant chain across the street to buy lunch, with some well-timed and place ads powered by the predictions from Big Data. The see the restaurant across the street. They see ads while they drink their coffee in the office. The goal is to steer them into that corporate chain to buy lunch.
But ultimately, the AI has zero control, because you can make up your own mind about where you will eat lunch. If an attractive person of ‘your type’ pulls you to each lunch in a different establishment, then that steering by your phone will have been powerless to control you. But if you both use your credit cards eating lunch together, it might start trying to steer you to more romantic ideas. Suddenly ads about buying flowers appear on your phone. But ultimately, its power to control is rather weak, and depends on your willing submission.
Deep fakes AI are just mass data-processing manipulating the pixels of a video such that it looks like its the Queen of England is speaking the script. Its just making the lips move on the dummy. But there is no ‘intelligence’ in this. Just high powered data processing.
What is called AI today is really just a lot of processing power. The notion that there is ‘intelligence’ is a myth. This of course reveals as well that if the ‘intelligence’ is not really ‘intelligent’, then it is likely easier to fool than advertised.
Anything to deny it data for its data processing can lead to such ‘intelligence failures’ in the future. It predicts from the data it collects on you, thus its predictions for you become weaker when you deny it data. If you and your new flame buy lunch with cash, you won’t receive the ads to buy flowers later on your phone. If you don’t take your phone with you over to their place tonight, they may not know you were there. The chances of you getting ads for wedding chapels will go down. Overall, their ability to predict you declines, and what ability they had to steer you declines even faster.
“depends on your willing submission.”
Happy to say Issac i have no willing submission to any of their attempts to predict what i might do next. (Even i don’t know what i might do next.) Having said that, i am equally sure they are keeping track, even though i endevour to evade any unecessary given information. I question everything i can. And nine times out of ten, there is no obligation to give the requested information. People in general though are too compliant and resist explanations.
All good points. Just clever software programming,not “artificial intelligence”.
When did they stop being “Palestinian Refugees in Gaza?” IIRC, that’s how they used to be referred to.
I saw another ‘opposition’ writer writing about ‘Paletsinians in Gaza’ and asking ‘where will they go?’
When they are just Palestinians in Gaza, they have no where to go.
But, when they were Palestinian Refugees in Gaza, they had a Right to Return.
If you ask them ‘where will they go’, you might find that some of them still keep the keys to their homes. They’ve held onto them for decades. People who pull out the keys to their home and show them to you are not wondering ‘where will we go?’
This change in language that Orwell would surely have noticed is of course, is the ‘opposition’ internalizing the Trump-Biden, Pompeo-Blinken Middle East Peace Plan, which says these are right-less people with no place to go.
When did they stop being Palestinian Refugees? Even to the opponents of Trump-Biden?
I always read everything I can find and listen to as many interviews as I can by Scott Ritter.
To me he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject of war and intelligence which he explains in language even I can understand.
It is not fun to read. There is not much I can do about the United States’ gross abuses in foreign affairs committed by those
fools that have been appointed by a feckless geriatric puppet, most of which fools – at least 15 as far as I know – have 2 passports, one of which is Israeli.
Maybe you are over-thinking this one, Scott. Maybe all is going to plan for Israel, the US and Nato. Think of this operation as a potential false flag, a 911 Jr if you will. In fact, both the military and intelligence capabilities of the Palestinians so pale in comparison with the Israeli’s that I suspect the latter as having to give major assistance to the former in order to pull this thing off–or at least to make it appear pulled off.
I mostly find myself scratching my head and repeatedly asking the question, “Why would Hamas even initiate such an action basically guaranteed to result in the Israeli’s handing them their own heads? For that will be the ultimate result, which Israel could well have planned and desired from the get go.
The United States is strongly suspect in my book of being at least complicit, if not instigative, as co-producers along with the Israelis of this performance. What, you ask, do we Yanks get out of this whole subterfuge? Well, at the least we get to slink away relatively unnoticed from the Ukraine fiasco of our own making as all eyes of the world turn to Israel, Palestine and other potential combatants, such as Syria and Iran, in this fresh new war right off the CIA assembly line. Shiny new wars always attract more attention than those boring old ones. Besides, Sleepy Joe does not want to be embarrassed again like he was in Afghanistan during that American retreat.
Moreover, despite all the crocodile tears about depleting our stockpile of armaments due to those profligate trigger-happy Ukies, this becomes a convenient new excuse for cranking up the old war machine several notches to make more MONEY for our most excellent profiteers from that golden goose that Ike called the Military Industrial Complex. All the resulting dead Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians and sundry other Muslims from one sect or another will be just as Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham described the Ukies–a mountain of dead freebies for the American juggernaut, doing all the dying in place of Americans as we opportunistically exorcise our God-given right of a hegemon enforcing our “will to power.” What a deal! Nietzsche would understand, even if the handful of American peaceniks cannot!
This echos my thoughts.
How with the degree of surveillance, the number of potential informants the continual undercover work by the Israelis and their American friends could they have absolutely no inkling of this?
It however forms the perfect 9/11 excuse to go in and obliterate Gaza and the Palestiniens and thereby achieve the objective of ethnic cleansing for Israel.
Observing who has been targeted is also interesting.
It all seems just a little bit too much of an own goal to be credible that it was completely constructed by the Palestinians, since not only has the western press jumped on board to demonise the Palestinians so also has the excuse to finish the job quickly and ruthlessly been sold to the public. Against the fourth biggest army in the world with nuclear weapons?
Who really set this up?
All you wrote resonates with me too, thanks for this. Further, a like-minded reader-commenter on an Independent.co.uk article posted the same ideas you did, along with a long list of known facts about how the IDF monitors at all times the Gaza borders. It is not conceivable that one or more hours went by, whilst the Hamas somehow got through a border barrier and committed their atrocities, without Israeli soldiers showing up. Just no way.
Israel murdered 256 palestinian civilians and wounded 4,000 in 2021. How can Scott keep declaring that a success?
The concept of an eye for an eye essentially means that if someone hurts you in some way, you repay them with a punishment that fits the crime. In the literal sense, if someone takes out your eye, you take out theirs.
Israel of course, expands on this on every occasion over the years by making te Palestinians pay for any action they commence. I would say that the attack was known to Israel who decided to take the initial losses and to then go for broke and kill as many as they could, bringing Gaza to its knees.
My guess is that this is what will happen
Israelmust have been aware pf this attack and would have been advised by the USA
I agree with you.
I think the military action will be to openly commit a campaign of genocide on the Palestinian people – as many as they can as fast as they can, since my understanding is that is the ultimate goal of the Israelis.
Sinister behaviour if that’s what this is Rex.
Ghandi – “An Eye for an Eye, leaves the whole world blind.”
And sure, enough, this world has a whole lot of people staggering around like they blind. Even the ones that appear to still have functioning eyeballs keep them clued to screens waiting for the next message to tell them to go put someone’s eyes out because they are an evil #$%@# … @##$$23 … *&^&^## … etc, etc, etc.
Many people from all types of backgrounds have reached this conclusion. Probably because, this operation was vulgar and heavy handed.
An excellent article by Scott Ritter. He has provided the background of events that led to shaping of of US and Israel’s current intelligence services, including “contamination” of political perspectives. The over reliance over on their model of AI would logically be countered as Hamas became familiar with how this exceedingly detailed extensive data was collected. Obviously Hamas would work out to provide the Israelis with a period appearing to replicate settled times and carefully do preparations very covertly. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem the Israelis updated their AI system often enough cover their blackspots where some activities could shift to. Complacency’s of their and the US was their embarrassing undoing.While maintaining the human contributions would anticipate such problems and potentially keep the AI systems more relevant.
“carefully do preparations very covertly.”
Step 1: Turn off your phone. Better yet, leave it at home.
Very interesting. I have to wonder, though, whether part of the blindness in certain quarters might not result from a desire for escalation, sort of like “We don’t have to worry about Hamas drawing us into a full scale war because if they do, we’ll win.”
So, in such a formulation, the actual well being of a population is not weighed very highly, whereas some other notion of “victory” is–being free to kill, to conquer, to sell arms, whatever. One would expect the conception to vary between individuals.
I notice too that some on the US side might see this as a welcome distraction from the debacle of US meddling and even Biden’s own particular meddling in Ukraine.
Israel was founded in slaughter and terrorism and nothing has changed.
The only thing you left out was ORGANIZED CRIME. Mobsters in the U.S. had a lot to do with funding and arming “Israelis.”
None of this would have happened if a State called Israel had not been forced into Palestine in blood and death for the Palestinians in 1947. None of it would have happened if Israel had not spent 75 years in a murderous campaign of colonisation and dispossession fueled by hatred of the native Palestinians.
None of this would have happened if Israel had not created the Gaza prison, where it regularly bombs the men, women and children to test its weapons.
All of this is Israel’s fault and has been since 1947. Beats me why we supported the French Resistance against the Germans but so many demonise the Palestinians for doing the same thing.
An interesting angle: the US maintains a massive stockpile of free weapons in Israel for them to use as needed. The NYT and Times of Israel reported in Jan of this year that some of those weapons/ammo were shipped to Ukraine.
Recall during the Obama regime that the US sent 38 billion worth of weapons. Today the State Dept announce the planes are in the air to deliver more (free) weapons. No money for health care, infrastructure, SS/Medicare though.
The Arms Export Control Act is a cruel joke. The US govt. flagrantly violates it’s own laws and few even mention it. The rule of law is dead: the NewSpeak term is “Rules Based Order” (TM)
Free weapons = an act of free love by the American federal government!
But not nearly enough monetary support for all the things you mentioned that might rationally be given precedence in a society that values life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness above all else.
Nor nearly enough spending to upgrade elementary, secondary or higher education or to make it affordable once again, not even for the financially-stressed upper middle class. Woefully short on support for basic science, especially in development of new energy sources, transportation systems, or on biomedical research, except for bioweapons development. However, if the money is for war and discovering new vectors and delivery systems for efficiently killing more human beings with the greatest of ease, especially members of specifically targeted groups possessing different biomarkers (putting “diversity” to work for America!), the money pot can be expanded without limit, even at the complete expense of every one of all these other needs (and more!), usually considered crucial to life by most sane people.
Oh, well, at least we now have what look to be potentially effective laser canons, as both sides roll them out before the media to intimidate each other. I’ll bet that most of us won’t even qualify to own one under the 2nd Amendment. Any one seeking to acquire one will be certified as crazy and therefore unqualified to possess it.
None, absolutely none of this sickening lawlessness and brutality emanating from the weird and sadistic artificial state of Israel could happen if it weren’t for the American taxpayer handing these arrogant yet cowardly bandits at least $5 billion each year for several decades now.
Every single spoiled Israeli citizen has “Medicare-for-All” or national single-payer universal healthcare coverage. The American taxpayer foots the entire bill. Meanwhile here in the U.S. we have people committing suicide or filing for bankruptcy due to out-of-control medical bills; we have American citizens dying bc they can’t afford certain health treatments or medications.
Outrageous!
The American taxpayers are not handing over the money. The U.S. government is handing over the taxpayer’s money plus tons of borrowed money on top of that.
Yes. And the US gov is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Kleptocratic Oligarchy Inc. Taxpayers have no choice in the matter as Democracy Inc is just a PR facade.
I wonder why the author thinks this was an “intelligence failure” when it seems like manna from heaven in terms of the things they will now claim to be justified in doing to the Palestinians ?
Egypt claims they sent warnings about the impending attack to Israel and their warnings were ignored. Was this due to incompetence or not enough funding of Intelligence by Israel and the US? I’m sure the debate in Israel will lead to many “conspiracy theories”.
One that is sadly resonant is that Saudi Arabia and the US have their Yemeni Genocide. US Puppet State Ukraine (with US blessing) has their Ethic Russian Ukrainian Genocide. And now Fascist Apartheid Israel and the US (and our raving politicians) now have the excuse for their Palestinian Genocide; or as Nikki Haley so elegantly put it: “Finish Them!”
If the headline read … ‘Most Powerless People on the Planet Pull Off Massive Intelligence Success’, then that might make people who currently believe in their own powerlessness reevaluate that position compared to what the inmates of the world’s largest open-air prison have just pulled off against mighty, high-tech Israel.
The one thing that you can not be told is that the Elites are fallible, make mistakes, and might be vulnerable, especially if you turn off your phones and they can’t track you and spy on you.
But see George i think it might depend on your phone and its capabilities. For example:
“As of March 2023, Pegasus operators were able to remotely install the spyware on iOS versions through 16.0.3 using a zero-click exploit.[3] While the capabilities of Pegasus may vary over time due to software updates, Pegasus is generally capable of reading text messages, call snooping, collecting passwords, location tracking, accessing the target device’s microphone and camera, and harvesting information from apps.” (Wikipedia)
This is Israeli spyware. And there are so many “unknowns” about what they can/cannot do, as far as joe public goes.
AI is not so good at predicting things. Its main purpose is control.
It is strange to have been a life-long reader of science fiction while having a career as a professional computer geek. The world has a completely different meaning for “AI” than myself. And much of it appears to have come from fairly recent propaganda.
For instance, I would say that AI’s are good at predicting things, but weak at control. But then again, I’ve been reading science-fiction for decades, while ignoring hollywood and cnn. But, it is strange to hear a whole world calling chatbots to be AI’s, but in all the talk about AI’s, the phrase Turing Test never comes up? Its a surrealistic world out there. What is described as ‘artificial intelligence’ really shows no sign of ‘intelligence’. Computers do process Big Data to make predictions, but while Chatbots are called AI’s, those computers that predict your purchases are not.
The only AI that I know of that is good at ‘control’ is the one that answers the phone at the corporation and then controls you by putting you on hold and getting you to press numbers.
But I shouldn’t be surprised. I live in a world where now ‘liberals’ fully back Wall Street bankers, and love war more than anything else. Why should AI be a word that has a real meaning?
I disagree with Scott here that the largest question looming is the intelligence failure. Unless, of course, what we are talking about is the failure of intelligence inside Israel that causes it continually to see itself as beyond reproach and to never acknowledge that the Palestinians are a desperate people dispossessed by Zionism itself beginning with the arrival of the first settlers in the 1880s, Herzl’s First Zionist Congress in 1898, the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and Truman’s collapse to Zionism leading to his fixing through bribery and armtwisting of UN member nations to ‘win’ the partition resolution in November 1947. THAT is the real question: Will Israelis EVER wake up to their own crimes, which are the reasons Palestinians are displaced and fight back whenever they can.
Once again the Israelis piggy-backed on a lesser foe’s initiative.
It might not be an intelligence failure.
A couple of years ago, I wrote the book Break in the Chain Intelligence Ignored. It’s about the Easter Offensive of 1972 and the only intelligence unit still available in I Corps of Vietnam. General Abrams, his J-2, and the ambassador to S. Vietnam were on holiday and not in Vietnam when the NVA came across the DMZ and Laos. We had warned MACV and everyone else we could think of, to no avail. Hence the Intelligence Ignored (primarily because we ran HUMINT/Agent ops). In the Mideast, it could like be this type has occurred again.
Nothing has changed. In a year nobody in the rest of the world, except Palestinians and a minority of Israeli, will remember this skirmish. Everybody will by then be focused in the final days of the American election and, possibly, the severe social and economic unrest that the United States will be undergoing. Wonder how the global media will deal with that scenario?
• Long time admirer of Scott’s work here. I don’t think Netanyahu wants boots on the ground in Gaza indefinitely, and certainly doesn’t want the responsibility of administering it if Hamas is defeated. Which is why I think this was a genuine intelligence failure. Only an Israeli military invasion and physical occupation over the long term could defeat Hamas. This would require deploying tens of thousands of soldiers which would expend blood and treasure unacceptable to Israel. The last time the Israeli military saw hand-to-hand combat in Gaza was in 2014. Unfamiliar with fighting in Gaza’s urban terrain, it withdrew after losing 68 soldiers.
Israel can only claim UN Mandated borders and should return to them and get out of Palestine.
“UN Mandated borders”
That ranks as an oxymoron equal to “military intelligence”.
Just recently the Duran (Alex and Alexander) speculated that Hamas actually might want the Israelis to invade and occupy Gaza after having levelled much of the physical plant and infrastructure. The bombarded ruinous cityscape would be an urban guerilla’s dream come true. Under such circumstances the defender usually enjoys a significant tactical advantage. If the Israelis swallow the bait and invade on the ground, and especially if Hezbollah/Iran then decide to join the battle and push down from the north, the IDF would be bogged down in a terribly costly two-front war.
Against well-organized, well-trained, highly motivated opponents. With much of their locally stockpiled artillery shells having gone (at the American’s insistence) to Ukraine, the Israelis would have to rely heavily on their air supremacy to support infantry and armored units. Do we know if Hamas and Hezbollah have air defense systems ready to use against Israeli planes? Of course with food, electricity and water to Gaza cut off by the Israelis, Hamas would have a hard time remaining combat-effective for very long. Might they have planned for this and stored significant amounts of food and water? And how will the Israelis and Americans keep the war contained and prevent other regional powers out of it?
Why do intelligent people ignore the fact that most country’s leaders are puppets of the globalists?
Until intelligentsia call out the real criminals behind the acts, the evil villains will continue to get away with it.
If one sows death and destruction, one harvests death and destruction.
That picture seems very clear to me.
Great article.
The propaganda on the bbc is breathtaking. As usual pictures of women & kids are being used for emotional reasons. That’s fair enough but I never see this when the IDF deliberately shoot kids or bomb innocent civilians.
Noticed that as well. The Guardian is even worse. Jewish suffering trumps that of all others.
Am hopeful that Brits are at last wising up to these worn-out tactics. The demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy in London are encouraging.
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-qaOJjqJw
Did you read the comments on that video Arthur? They were not in agreement with these rallies/support for Palestine. And now the UK gov (Cleverly, Braverman) have said waving Hamas/Palestinian flags may be a criminal offence.
Weapons from the United States that have been given to Israel are now demolishing buildings and killing innocent men, women, and children in GAZA, and area the size of Detroit, Michigan. Detroit has a population of about 600,000 people. Gaza has a population of about 2.4 million people. Gaza is the largest outdoor prison in the entire world. After the war crime committed by Hamas, now Netanyahu has declared war, another war crime, against GAZA. He is now moving tanks, soldiers and other war weapons toward Gaza awhile his U.S. weapons continue to bomb and kill people in Gaza. WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER. Furthermore, U.S. president Biden is handling this all wrong. He totally supports Israel and is moving U.S. aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean Sea in support of Israel, instead of tying to work for peace. The U.S. president is supposed to be the most powerful human on the planet. Given what he is doing, that proves to incorrect.
We’ve been electing “front man” presidents since 1980.
Israeli military men saying there was no failure of intelligence. Besides surveillance, walls have multiple layers of protection. Deal with that. We’ll get to see end game for ourselves.
SHAME on israel and SHAME on the entire Western world…Always ready and willing to point out what damages Palestinians have done but NEVER pointing out what Palestinians have suffered under israel…all the deaths, stealing land, destroying olive groves, being subjected to minimum supplies to survive, the camp raids, holding up ambulances at the border so long that the sick person dies, diverting water/restricting amounts, settlers setting fires to homes, not respecting the Muslim holy sites, etc. etc. etc. Some of these tactics remind me of Hitler’s goons.
I sadly agree. Hitler’s goons have now become Israel’s.
I’ve thought for quite a while that Israel learned a lot from the Nazis, and then there’s the Stern Gang, Stern being the man who wanted to model Israel on the Third Reich. He was not without influence.
For example, one Israeli killed, the Israelis kill a hundred Palestinians; that’s right out of the Nazi playbook. Shutting people up in a ghetto? Where have we heard that one before?
And what’s ironic is that the Palestinians know how to survive in a dry climate. Goats and olives do very well whereas the Israelis — being Westerners — think that they can remake the climate into what they want, watering crops that are water-hungry and engaging in super-consumerism. The only Israelis I respect are the resisters who are put through bloody hell and the dissidents.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, and its approximately 5,000 sailors and deck of warplanes will be accompanied by cruisers and destroyers in a show of force that is meant to be ready to respond to anything, from possibly interdicting additional weapons from reaching Hamas and conducting surveillance.
All that is needed because the sole ME nuclear power Israel can’t deal with HAMAS and the limited Partisan rebels, or is there more to it than meets the eye?
Meanwhile No. 10 Downing Street have hung a very large Israeli flag over the building in a show of solidarity. (And promised military aid – how this will be achieved is not apparent, as supposedly they are a bit short on weapons having sent them all to the Ukraine – which mysteriously have puportedly ended up being used against the said Israelis.)
750, 000 Palestinians were killed by the burgeoning state of Israel between 1947 and 1949. Why escape a Holocaust to enact a Holocaust upon others? These murderous decisions have never been answered, other than to say that asking the question itself is not allowed. No one wishes conflict to be pursued under any circumstances. But to extend a conflict for decades, just to take land and extend political power, is a hopeless way forward. Like the U.S., Israel must have a reckoning with itself, and decide if the annihilation of others is a worthwhile pursuit for what is basically a luxury of needless authority. With endless armaments and nuclear weapons, what threats can there be beyond guerilla actions? The moral argument having been lost, what material argument allows any support to occur outside the borders of your own country? The only choice left in these situations is between a banana republic or a dictatorship of dwindling, centralized power. No one is interested any longer in narratives belonging either to an aggrieved superpower or the decades-long aggressions of an anti-democratic theocracy. The latest back and forth does not provide a transformation into innocence on either side of the equation.
Well put. The only solution to the Israel/Palestine wars is to enact a unitary-state with equal rights for all citizens. The time for imperialist imposition of rule of others by a colonial power has long gone, as has the idea of a theocracy (despite the present existence of the Jewish, Iranian and Saudi ones) being a viable proposition.
Aka Lebanon
@ firstpersoninfinite ?
By way of adding some historical emphasis to your excellent assault on the prevailing “code of silence”, particularly regarding the criminal actions of the Zionists and their international facilitators against the Palestinian women, children, and men every day for more than 76 years, I commend to your attention this recent article in hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/09/chris-hedges-palestinians-speak-israels-language/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=e53429bc-f7a9-4f6d-aba9-03f1eb6452dc
by Chris Hedges.
As Usual,
EA
Great article. Some are doubting if more sinister vectors than intel failure are at play.
Fascinating theory Scott. The IDF slept happily believing their AI generated readouts.
This is much more plausible than false flags, high level treachery or other conspiracies touted. Incompetence is the usual culprit for military failure.
Source Merlin, product Witchcraft.
I am a big fan of Scott Ritter. I listen to his podcasts weekly. History is full of examples of “intelligence failures,” the timing of which were conveniently used to justify or increase involvement in war. Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin, US Liberty, 9-11, Ft. Detrick anthrax, Saddam’s WMDs I don’t believe Israel intelligence was unaware of Hamas’ imminent attack. Israel will use the attack to justify increased military expenditure and to justify whatever happens next to the Palestinians. Add to the equation that last April, China had expressed a willingness to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine, the success of which would have been a major embarrassment to the US after their decades long “failure” to broker peace in the region.
In what way was the Israeli Air Force attack on the USS Liberty an “intelligence failure?”
Israel touts itself as a premiere developer and supplier of military hardware and software, frequently using Gaza as guinea pigs for its R&D Sector. It’s probably their biggest export. Why would they deliberately allow this total system failure?
The Israelis do not want peace. The corrupt and hideously destructive military industrial complex that Ike warned us against does not want peace. Both Tel Aviv and Washington are acting out of sheer desperation as the world turns its back on the disastrous failure of the US/NATO perpetual war project. The Atlantic Council’s announcement on April 6 last year in support of Zelensky’s plans for Ukraine as “a big Israel” clearly signaled that Israel, the US, NATO, and their allies are lurching blindly toward a nuclear holocaust. Unlike China and Russia, the West, focused on perpetual war, death, destruction, and lucrative arms sales, has forgotten how to build infrastructure and conduct diplomacy.
I also do not believe that Israel was ignorant of Hamas’ intentions, especially if:
“Israel has perfected the art of human intelligence against the Hamas target, with a proven track record of placing agents deep inside the Hamas decision-making hierarchy”etc.
Let Hamas act and then Israel can have an excuse to “come down hard”, and use “enormous force…” as Netanyahu has put it. I do not believe in conspiracy theories, just conspiracies.
Just remember Kim Philby.
The Question is now: What does Israel do? (And of course what is the US going to do?) I can guess. If they usually murder a couple thousand people in attacks that leave a few dead Israeli soldiers, there are going to be tens of thousands of dead Palestinian civilians, and God knows where it ends. Look for the US to put up it’s usual lies about Israel, lies that are wearing thin among the population, as terribly mis-informed we are here about the true state of things.
“…Hamas was able to generate a veritable Ghost in the Machine, corrupting Israeli AI and setting up the Israeli people and military for one of the most tragic chapters in the history of the Israeli nation.”
Thankfully. The status quo was completely untenable for the beleaguered and oppressed Palestinians. The thieving settlers and Zionist regime could only dish out so much racism, sadism, arrogance, and apartheid before an obvious and well coordinated backlash was in the cards.
Ritter mentioned this article on George Galloway’s show earlier today (ff to 57:40):
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxQBFWaRBkc
The idea that Israel is now going to flatten Gaza dismisses the likelihood that Hezbollah, Syria and Iran will all join the party.
Zionists picked this fight over 100 years ago. They genuinely do not seem to understand this.
Excellent information from Mr. Ritter and great comments.
As George Galloway and others have pointed out: The British had no right to give away land that did not belong to them. The legacy of the British Empire still haunts us in many ways.
This is why I try to get people to respect history. History is what brought us to this point in time, and if you don’t understand what came before, the present becomes incomprehensible.