Exactly fifty years and one day separate the two most consequential intelligence failures in Israel’s history – October 6, 1973, and October 7, 2023. The time that passed between them is vast, but the underlying cognitive and structural breakdown was nearly identical.
In both cases, Israeli intelligence possessed abundant warning signs yet remained captive to a monolithic assumption that war was improbable – an assumption that proved resistant to changing realities.
The question that continues to haunt the public is what went wrong in the intervening years, and whether the murderous Hamas attack on the morning of Simchat Torah might have been prevented had the lessons of the past been properly implemented.
Before proceeding further, intellectual honesty requires acknowledging a basic reality: intelligence work is a human enterprise conducted under conditions of extreme uncertainty. No structural, organizational, or cultural reform can fully eliminate the possibility of human error.
The goal is not “zero mistakes” – an unattainable standard – but the creation of a security architecture that reduces the likelihood of failure and ensures that political leaders manage risk based on a nuanced and multidimensional assessment.
To understand the roots of this failure, it is necessary to revisit the Agranat Commission, the state commission of inquiry established in November 1973 and chaired by Supreme Court President Shimon Agranat.
In the landmark report, the commission concluded that the IDF Directorate of Military Intelligence (AMAN) Research Department could not function as the state’s sole authority on national intelligence assessment, warning that such concentration risked “organizational blindness.”
Shift towards 'inteligence pluralism'
The commission found that AMAN’s assessment was the only one presented to the national leadership and called for a shift toward genuine “intelligence pluralism.” Its recommendations included strengthening the research done within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, expanding the Mossad’s independent assessment role, and strengthening the interface between the political and military echelons–steps that ultimately culminated in the enactment of Basic Law: The Military in 1975.
One of the central outcomes of the report was the establishment of AMAN’s Review Department, known as the “Ipcha Mistabra” unit. Its mandate was to serve as the system’s institutional “devil’s advocate” and to prevent assessment errors that could result in a failure to provide warning. Over the past five decades, however, the implementation of this recommendation has steadily eroded.
The Review Department suffered from a fundamental structural flaw: it remained subordinate to the Head of AMAN. In a hierarchical military environment, it is difficult for an officer tasked with criticizing the system to advance professionally without institutional safeguards to protect him, particularly when promotion depends on the very authority being scrutinized.
The structural weaknesses of the internal oversight mechanism were not hidden from view. In their comprehensive study, The Devil’s Advocate (March 2023), David Siman-Tov, David Sternberg, and Doron Matza identified the corrosive organizational dynamics at work and warned that the existing institutional framework for intelligence criticism was inadequate. Their research demonstrated how oversight mechanisms were pushed to the margins of strategic deliberation – a warning that acquired tragic resonance on October 7.
The erosion was also quantitative.
While intelligence-gathering arms such as Unit 8200 expanded dramatically and grew increasingly sophisticated, the Review and Oversight Department remained small and limited in scope.
Faced with multiple theaters and an overwhelming flow of information, its personnel were compelled to rely mainly on processed products and research summaries rather than on raw intelligence itself – thereby becoming subject to the very interpretive filters they were meant to challenge. The Head of AMAN’s post-October 7 decision to bolster the unit underscores the system’s retrospective recognition of its weaknesses.
Beyond the structural flaw, there is a deeper problem rooted in the “nursery” from which oversight personnel are drawn. As senior intelligence officials have noted repeatedly, the intelligence community tends to function as a “closed institution” that reproduces itself and relies on similar personality types.
Most of the natural candidates for oversight roles today are former senior officials from within the community, who often share the same worldview as current leadership. By contrast, independent academic experts must rely on open sources and lack access to the intelligence “source code.”
The October 7 massacre demonstrated that the system had developed a degree of resistance to internal criticism.
Although contrary to the 1973 assessment processes, today, there also exist within the Mossad and the Shin Bet, the multiplication of bodies without an independent national oversight authority risks deepening confusion rather than reducing it.
On October 7, 2023, warning indicators were gathered, but the failure occurred at the stage of assessment and risk management.
The prevailing conception that Hamas was deterred overrode a range of warnings, much as in the American intelligence failure in Iraq in 2003, where groupthink produced a single prevailing assessment despite the presence of experts who voiced doubt.
Reducing the likelihood of future failure requires a holistic approach incorporating a series of tools and reforms. The establishment of an Independent National Oversight Body (INOB) constitutes a central and decisive component of this toolkit.
The body would report directly to the prime minister and the minister of defense and operate outside the defense establishment.
Under the proposed model, it would be granted statutory status in law and subject to a triple reporting obligation: to the prime minister, the minister of defense, the Security Cabinet, and to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. This reporting requirement would occur on a regular and routine basis, as well as in the context of strategic events and critical decisions.
The solution lies in unrestricted access to raw data from all of Israel’s intelligence agencies. Israel should draw inspiration from the US Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) of 2004, which mandates the Director of National Intelligence to establish a process of “Red Team Analysis”.
The new oversight body must be equipped with substantial resources and advanced technological capabilities, including big data analytics and artificial intelligence, enabling it to synthesize raw data from agencies in parallel to AMAN.
Only technological capabilities on this scale will allow oversight personnel to identify intelligence that was overlooked or misinterpreted.
This requires broad resources to ensure comprehensive coverage and in-depth engagement across all arenas and fronts confronting the defense establishment, thereby preventing the body from becoming a limited “boutique unit” confined to a single theater.
In addition, the body should include technologists, strategists, psychologists, and academics who are not products of the military career track, thereby helping to break the mold of intellectual homogeneity.
Establishing a national oversight body represents an act of strategic maturity, recognizing that doubt is a security asset rather than a threat. Its purpose is not to produce “prophecy,” but to improve risk management at the political level.
Such a body would not constitute a guarantee against surprise and would not absolve decision makers of responsibility; on the contrary, it would provide them with an additional instrument for challenging the assessments they rely on.
This process would keep intelligence institutions sharp and alert, foster a healthy dialogue between the political and professional echelons, and ensure that the most consequential decisions for the state’s security are made only after thorough examination of all alternatives.
The writer is a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and a former deputy foreign minister.