Intelligence Scoop: Could Netanyahu Have Prevented October 7?

The Rest Is Classified

The episode investigates whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received and ignored warnings prior to the October 7, 2023, Hamas

Key takeaways

• A Haaretz report claims UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed warned Netanyahu of a major Hamas operation in late September 2023.
• The Egyptian intelligence chief allegedly flew to Israel on a private jet days before the attack to deliver a similar warning.
• Israeli security forces possessed the 'Jericho Wall' document, which outlined a plan for a methodical assault similar to what occurred.
• The hosts argue that while tactical details might have been missing, strategic warnings were present and likely dismissed due to political assumptions.
• Netanyahu has actively resisted the formation of an independent national commission of inquiry into the events.

Main topics

• October 7 attacks
• Intelligence failures
• Netanyahu's accountability

Notable quotes

If there's not progress or change with Israel, then to expect an earthquake.

Conclusion

The episode concludes that while intelligence collection was flawed, t

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:03) For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Speaker 1 (0:24) The events of October 7th, 2023 totally reshaped the Middle East. But could what happened on that fateful day and everything that has come after have been prevented? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And Speaker 2 (0:39) I'm Gordon Carrera. And Speaker 1 (0:40) we are about to reach the third anniversary of the October 7th attacks. Now, we're not going to tell the full story of October 7th here. It is a grim tale of a horrendous terror attack and an absolutely devastating war in Gaza. But we want to zero in on one particular question. Was there an intelligence failure? That's right, because Speaker 2 (1:00) it is Speaker 1 (1:01) a Speaker 2 (1:01) question, David, that's Speaker 1 (1:02) been Speaker 2 (1:02) asked ever since the attack itself in the immediate aftermath. It's actually grown and been particularly in the news recently because of, I think, quite a stunning report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which we're going to analyse, which suggested a specific warning to Israel's prime minister. And it's hugely political, this question, and important because there is an election campaign going on with polling on October the 27th and it's finally balanced. And the issue of whether Benjamin Netanyahu received a warning... and what responsibility he might bear for that intelligence failure, if there was one, is clearly a massive issue in that election campaign. But before we get into that, here's a brief word from our sponsors, HP. Speaker 1 (1:49) This episode is brought to you by HP. 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Trick listeners also benefit from 10 % off HP business technology with the code TRICK10. Speaker 1 (2:56) So, October 7th. To start, I think it's worth setting up what actually happened on that day. Speaker 2 (3:02) Just to bring it to life, I think it's important to set the scene of Gaza itself. Gaza is a narrow 25-mile strip of land with Israel on the north and east side, the Mediterranean on the west, and Egypt on the southwest. It's got a population of just over 2 million Palestinians and has been run by Hamas since 2007. I visited Gaza and I stayed there before the Hamas takeover, so quite a while ago. It's a densely packed place with the border crossings very tightly controlled by Israel. Now, Israel thought it had built a high-tech wall around Gaza as we get to October the 7th. There'd been a 20-foot high barrier put up as part of a billion-dollar upgrade, which they'd finished in 2021. And as well as this... fence. There's also concrete under the fence, underground, which is to block tunneling. There are surveillance towers at intervals. There's cameras, even remote-controlled guns. And yet, on October 7, 2023, at 6.30am, Hamas takes Israel and its security forces by surprise. Hamas begins by firing rockets from inside Gaza. out into Israel. That's in a sense cover for what they're about to do. It's not necessarily that unusual. But then Hamas fighters target the cameras, the sensors, the remote controlled weapons on the fence. They use drones which drop explosives. Then they use explosives and anti-tank mines to blow holes in the fence. And then thousands of Hamas-led gunmen head out from Gaza in vehicles and on foot, on motorbikes, from about 30 different breaches in that fence. And then they go on to attack nearby Israeli communities, military bases, and a large music festival. On that day, about 1,200 people were killed, and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages. And of course, Israel at that point then responds by soon afterwards launching a military campaign in Gaza. during which it's estimated that at least 73,000 people have been killed, according to Gaza's own health ministry. Speaker 1 (5:15) And I guess it's probably also worth saying, although it won't be the subject of our conversation today, that that includes over 70,000 children and 90 % or so of Gaza's population has been displaced. So that day... And the events of that day and everything that has come after have completely shaken and changed the Middle East and the world. And Israel had been convinced beforehand, we'll talk more about this, that its intelligence, and in particular, the technical intelligence that it collected on Gaza through those cameras, the sensors, the just blanket of coverage that the Israeli state had over Gaza. would be good enough to provide warning of major attacks. But on October 7th itself, I think most of us could remember the day as just an absolute movie of confusion and destruction and chaos as those Hamas troops and GADMED stream into Israel through those breaches and attack kibbutz and attack the music festival and attack military bases. And Speaker 2 (6:29) they've been real. questions about the intelligence failure since the day itself. And there have been some reports by some of the organizations in Israel, like the military, which we'll come to. But it's worth saying there's been no national state commission of inquiry, a kind of independent inquiry into what happened and what went wrong. Now, some of the senior military figures, the head of Shin Bet, which is Israel's domestic security service, have resigned or been pushed out by the government since the attack for a variety of reasons, but not the man in charge of the country at the time, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. And he has delayed an independent commission taking place. He says he doesn't want that or believe it's the right time. So lots of other people taking the blame, not him. And he's tended to always blame the security officials for what had happened. I mean, he's even suggested they didn't wake him up early enough. on the morning. And so this question of where responsibility might lie has, in the last few weeks, become very intense due to a news story. Speaker 1 (7:33) It is a news story broken by Haaretz, which is a leftish liberal Israeli newspaper that is quite critical of Netanyahu. But it drops this bombshell report a couple of weeks ago about a warning that is issued to Benjamin Netanyahu in advance of October 7th. Speaker 2 (7:51) This report says that in late September 2023, so about a week and a half before October 7th, the leader of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, calls Benjamin Netanyahu, and he calls him from his presidential palace in Abu Dhabi, and they speak for 45 minutes. He would often speak directly with Netanyahu because relations between Israel and the UAE had been normalized as part of the Abraham Accords back in 2020. So there were frequent discussions, including about security between them. Speaker 1 (8:23) I think it's worth saying the Abraham Accords series essentially of bilateral agreements that are brokered by the US, happens in 2020, and the intent is basically to normalize relations between Israel and... as many states of the Arab world as possible. So that included the UAE, but also Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, even places like Kazakhstan. So it's this kind of effort to make the bilateral relationships between these states normal and to open embassies, for example, in each other's countries. And Speaker 2 (8:54) so the contacts were there, but normally when they spoke by phone, a representative from the Emirati embassy in Israel would come to the prime minister's office in Israel, and they'd bring a special phone device, a kind of encrypted phone. Now, Haaretz, the newspaper, claims that when this call took place in late September 2023, bin Zayed warned that Hamas's leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwa, was planning a major operation against Israel, one big enough that it could destabilise the region and undermine the Abraham. Now from the article you can get a sense that this was from Palestinian sources who have been talking with Sinoir and there'd been this phrase which was, if there's not progress or change with Israel, then to expect an earthquake. This is the kind of conversation that had been passed on and then goes to a Palestinian contact close to the ruler of the UAE. So that seems to have been the source of this quite specific warning which is then passed. to Netanyahu. We Speaker 1 (9:58) should say that these types of warnings, I mean, to get the ruler of the UAE on the phone with Netanyahu, even in an environment where relations are normalized between the UAE and Israel, this is an abnormal thing. This isn't happening every week. And the information, I suppose, that the Eberradis believed was credible enough and sufficiently explosive that it had to be passed along to the Israelis. So this is not a durable thing for Mohammed bin Zayed to call up Netanyahu and say, you should be aware of this. Speaker 2 (10:32) That's right. I mean, I think there are questions about, well, why was Simua telling someone else that something should be expected by Israel? I think it does raise some questions about what Israel and what the UAE thought was behind the message. But the claim is... that this call takes place and bin Zayed tells Netanyahu to take the situation seriously. Now, according to Haaretz, their account, Israel's prime minister is not worried by the warning. He says the West Bank, which is seeing a bit of an uptick in violence at that time, is more of an issue and Israel is prepared for any scenario. And Haaretz goes on to say that Netanyahu doesn't brief. the head of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, or the head of Mossad, the foreign service, or the Israeli defense forces, or the chief of staff. Speaker 1 (11:21) It's worth saying also that the warning from Mohammed bin Zayed is not particularly specific. No. And it seems reasonable, given that Hamas frequently, I mean, in the past has attacked Israel with rockets coming from Gaza, that Netanyahu, I'm not... you know, excusing the fact that Netanyahu didn't pass this information along to his security chiefs. Allegedly. Allegedly. But it is plausible that in Netanyahu's mind, this is a warning about another rocket attack, which is perhaps not as big of a deal. I mean, it's something to be concerned about, but it's not something, it's not October the 7th, right? Speaker 2 (12:01) It's not saying specifically, this is happening on this day and this is what it will look like. I think that's right. Now it's interesting because it's also emerged or been claimed, we should say, that a similar warning reaches Netanyahu, this time from the Egyptian intelligence chief, who also supposedly has a phone call with him warning of something unusual, a terrifying operation about to be launched by Hamas. There's a very good recent piece in the Atlantic magazine from the US, which says that the Egyptian intelligence chief flies into Israel on September the 26th. So the same kind of timeframe, a week and a half before October 7th, he flies in on a Cessna jet, a private jet, lands at an isolated area of Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. And he carries with him this warning that if Israel doesn't change course over Gaza, where the border crossings have just been closed and pressure is rising, that Hamas seems to be planning something, that it's mobilizing for something. It's again not specific and it's not clear who he meets on this visit. But his private jet, according to flight tracking sites, is only on the ground for 67 minutes before the Egyptian intelligence chief goes back to Cairo. Speaker 1 (13:11) This warning, or I guess this kind of the sense that something might be about to happen, has filtered into the US intelligence community at the time. I think the Atlantic article also covers this, that on September the 28th, the CIA... issues an internal report. It's not specific what sort of report that is, but it's just a report about a possible Hamas escalation in Gaza, which is reportedly based in part on information from foreign intelligence services. So it could have been the Egyptians or the Emiratis actually telling the Americans, passing along to the Americans the same information that they passed to the Israelis. So you have this sense that something is about to happen. It's not