OPINION:
Israel is reeling from Hamas’ unprecedented combined air, land and sea attack, in which hundreds of Hamas terrorists infiltrated as much as 15 miles into southern Israel across Gaza’s 37-mile border.
The war already represents a humanitarian catastrophe, with hundreds of innocent civilians killed and wounded. Hamas most likely planned its murderous assault months ago, likely with Iran’s tactical support. The Israeli Defense Forces, border guards, and the security services Mossad and Shabak all failed in their primary mission: to detect and preempt terrorist threats.
Israel’s intelligence failures were twofold. There was the tactical intelligence failure to discern the timing, locations and means of Hamas’ well-coordinated attacks Saturday night. And there was a strategic intelligence failure to learn of the Palestinian terrorist group’s plans and intentions, as well as any coordination with Iran on the operation.
The Netanyahu government must have recognized that the probability of a Hamas attack would increase in tandem with Israel’s growing diplomatic engagement with Saudi Arabia. Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas all stand to benefit from a prolonged war in Gaza, which will drive a wedge between Israel and key Sunni Arab states whose populations sympathize with the Palestinian cause.
Having declared that it is at war with Hamas, Israel has cut off food, fuel and electricity to Gaza in preparation for a likely coming ground offensive into Hamas-controlled Gaza. The coming days pose many dilemmas for Mr. Netanyahu.
Israel has likely concluded it can no longer allow Hamas to enjoy ungoverned space in the enclave to plot terrorist attacks. If there is one thing I learned from serving alongside the U.S. military in the Middle East and South Asia war zones, it’s the importance of using tactical intelligence to distinguish between innocent civilians and enemy combatants. The Israeli army will also be on the hook for extensive and highly complicated hostage rescue operations.
Israel, therefore, needs its highly vaunted intelligence services more than ever. The services will need to analyze their past intelligence failures on the fly, even as they support ongoing and future operations.
Learning — quickly — about past collection and analytical misjudgment is vital to understand why Israel was so unprepared and vulnerable.
Israel will need to plug the reporting gaps and acquire and vet new sources as rapidly as possible.
Was the information gleaned from signals intelligence and overhead reconnaissance not as robust as it should have been? The best executive decisions are impossible without the most comprehensive, sensitive human source collection and thorough analysis.
The U.S. can assist Israel with strategic and tactical intelligence on potential new threats from Syria, Iran, China and Russia and augment Israel’s intelligence on the threat from Lebanon-based Hezbollah. For now, Israel has effectively deterred any major military attacks from hostile forces across the border in Lebanon and Syria as the Gaza fighting proceeds.
Going forward, insight into the diplomatic, military and intelligence plans of these adversaries will be vital to Israel’s defense planning.
U.S. policymakers should be discussing with Israel how to most effectively deter Syria and Iran from using their proxies to open those second and third fronts so that Israel can focus on its Gaza operations. Intelligence will be vital to making the right decisions, especially making it clear to any potential adversary that the cost of an attack would be prohibitive.
If Israel’s enemies assess that this is their best time to strike, then we could be looking at a wider and even bloodier war in the Middle East, destroying any chance for peace and normal relations between Israel and its Sunni Arab neighbors.
U.S. citizens watching with horror this past weekend should take a moment to reflect on the value of an effective intelligence community. The fact that we rarely hear anything about our successes in protecting the homeland reflects that U.S. intelligence agencies are good at keeping their missions secret, not that our enemies have given up trying to cause us harm. We rely on capable and dedicated Intelligence professionals on the watch to keep us safe.
Speaking to Fox News’ Eric Shawn, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., called the Hamas attack “Israel’s 9/11.” Let’s remember that 36 days after 9/11 — the worst U.S. intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor — the CIA deployed to Afghanistan and took the fight to the enemy with Operation Enduring Freedom.
Israelis know plenty about never giving up, whatever setbacks they have endured. There is no better way to honor the memories of those whom Hamas so brutally murdered than by relentlessly focusing on success in the next mission at hand.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the CIA.
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