The October 7 failure was caused by a mix of the defense and political establishment’s obsession with the tunnel threat, the “traffic jam” blocking intelligence points from reaching top officials, and the harm of the legal overhaul to the IDF’s strength, former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate commander Amos Malka said Tuesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu essentially presented to the Knesset State Control Committee in 2017 the threat of a Hamas invasion along the lines of the terrorist group’s “Walls of Jericho” battle plan, which Israel later intercepted, he said.
When Netanyahu warned of a Hamas invasion, however, it was based on the notion of it being carried out by tunnel warfare, Malka said.
The framework of this discussion was that Hamas had blindsided Israel using tunnel warfare in 2014, he said, adding that Israel needed to alter its perspective to take the tunnel threat seriously, including pouring in significant new technological and human resources.
According to Malka, one piece that was missing was that Israel had replaced the act of fully assessing the diverse threats presented by Hamas with an obsession to prevent the tunnel threat.
IDF blinded to the potential threats
He implied that the focus on the tunnel threat, however important, had blinded Israel to the possibility of a classic land invasion.
The IDF and the political echelon had become convinced that one of the reasons that Hamas invested so much in cross-border attack tunnels was because it gave up entirely on the idea of a classic above-ground invasion, Malka suggested.
This meant that once the IDF had neutralized several attack tunnels, it let its guard down, even more than it might have if the entire attack-tunnel phenomenon had not taken place, he further implied.
Much of the critical intelligence collected by lower-ranking lookouts and intelligence officers such as “V,” who issued warnings to her superior officer in IDF Southern Command Intelligence Lt.-Col. “A,” was never passed on to the top echelons of Military Intelligence or the top political decision-makers, Malka said.
If true, this would mean that IDF Brig.-Gen. Amit Sa’ar, head of Military Intelligence analysis; Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva, head of Military Intelligence; IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, Netanyahu, and the cabinet did not know about these critical warnings.
Former IDF Intelligence officer Col. Assaf Heller said there was a massive “cultural problem” in Israeli society, which has leaked its way into the IDF and the cabinet, of viewing complex issues in black and white and dismissing minority scenarios and viewpoints.
Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, director of Tel Aviv University’s Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center, said humanity throughout history, and certainly Israelis in 2024, is uncomfortable with uncertainty and jumps toward whatever is “the most likely” scenario to obtain certainty, even if that scenario turns out to be catastrophically wrong.
Malka said simply replacing some top-level IDF and political personnel would be insufficient to avoid future October 7 disasters. This was true because until the intelligence structure and processes make sure that unlikely scenarios and data collected by lower-ranking officials are taken seriously by the highest levels of the IDF and the cabinet, the same mistake could be made repeatedly, he said.
Furthermore, Malka said National Unity MK Gideon Sa’ar had warned Netanyahu twice in official letters during 2023 that Israel’s enemies, including Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, were all viewing the IDF as weaker as part of the impact of the judicial-overhaul fights and the threat of IDF reservists quitting.
He cited Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s warnings to Netanyahu, which he said were ignored, as were Saar’s, that the IDF was in danger of collapsing, and that Israel’s enemies knew and perceived this.
Netanyahu fired Gallant for making his warnings public and only reversed his decision when he saw that firing Gallant would hurt him more politically.
Although Netanyahu did freeze the judicial overhaul for a few months, he eventually returned to it and in July 2023, he passed a repeal of aspects of the High Court’s judicial-review powers.
Passing that law led to a spike of thousands of IDF reservists publicly quitting, which continued to rise leading up to October 7 and, absent the war, was expected to worsen in November once the High Holy Days ended.
Based on Netanyahu’s repeatedly ignoring these warnings, even if the prime minister had believed that they were colored by politics, Netanyahu, along with key IDF officers and other defense officials, held significant responsibility for the October 7 failures, Malka said.