One Year Later, Lessons from Israel’s October 7 Intelligence Failures 

By Larry Hanauer

Larry Hanauer is the Deputy Director of the Global Dynamics and Intelligence Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a federally funded research and development center in Washington, DC

OPINION — As Israel marks the one-year anniversary of the tragic October 7 attacks by Hamas, the country still has limited insight into the security establishment’s failure to warn of the threat. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies in the Knesset have refused to charter an official commission of inquiry to assess Israel’s failures until the war in Gaza is over. In the meantime, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is issuing periodic reports on Israel’s approach to Gaza since 2018, and survivors of the attack have recruited retired security officials to serve on an unofficial Civil Commission of Inquiry that will publicize government actions before and during the assault.  

These inquiries, both formal and informal, will not only promote accountability and healing in Israel; they will generate lessons that enable all countries’ intelligence services to learn from Israel’s experience. To prevent similar strategic surprises from impacting their nations in the future, intelligence services must understand why Israel failed to maintain critical intelligence capabilities, collect and analyze intelligence indicators of potential threats, and make effective use of the information it possessed.  

The warnings were there 

This much is already known: while Israeli intelligence had many information gaps, it also had plenty of warning that Hamas was planning a large-scale attack. Junior intelligence and military personnel briefed their superiors about threat indicators on multiple occasions, and at least some of these warnings were delivered to the prime minister and the government’s most senior policymakers. In this regard, although Israel’s intelligence apparatus fell short in many ways, the failure to warn of the attack was not strictly an intelligence failure. 

More important than the contents of a particular intelligence report were strategic and systemic factors – the policy priorities, unquestioned assumptions, resource allocation decisions, and poor management that undermined Israel’s intelligence collection and analysis regarding Gaza, blinded senior officials to increasingly obvious threats, and led leaders to ignore intelligence analysts who were ringing alarm bells.

An echo of history 

Echoing the findings of the Agranat Commission that analyzed mistakes made prior to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the principal reason Israel was unprepared for October 7 was Israeli leaders’ adherence to the flawed conventional wisdom (or conceptzia, in the Commission’s words) that Hamas was content to govern Gaza and lacked the ability to launch a major cross-border assault. Just as Israeli leaders in 1973 believed, despite contradictory intelligence, that Egypt would never start a war it couldn’t “win,” Israel’s current leaders believed, despite contradictory intelligence, that Hamas had no interest in upending the status quo and posed no significant threat.  

This conceptzia justified politicians’ decisions to prioritize threats from Iran and Hezbollah and to address demands that the government stop violence against Israeli settlers in the West Bank. These policy choices led to troop redeployments and resource allocation decisions that, by reducing intelligence collection on Hamas, amounted to an acceptance of increased risk from Gaza.  

The redirection of resources created intelligence gaps regarding Hamas. The IDF’s signals intelligence unit, Unit 8200, reduced coverage of Gaza, stopped collecting entirely on nights and weekends, and stopped intercepting Hamas’s tactical communications. The IDF closed its Arab-language media and social media analysis unit, which could have provided insights into Hamas’s public engagement and outreach. The IDF’s human intelligence component, Unit 504, shifted its focus to Lebanon; that left clandestine collection in Gaza to the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, whose lack of sources there hampered Israel’s ability to understand the plans and intentions of Hamas’s leadership. 

“Jericho Wall” – and what was missed

Despite underinvesting in collection on Gaza, Israeli intelligence had clear indications of imminent action by Hamas. Israel captured a Hamas plan for a cross-border attack, code named “Jericho Wall,” though military officials dismissed it as “aspirational.” Friendly nations shared intelligence suggesting Hamas was planning something big. Border sentries (tatzpitaniyot), all of whom are female,reported observing Hamas activities that clearly represented training for an attack.  

Why didn’t these warnings convince Israeli leaders to take steps to counter a clear emerging threat? 

First, political leaders, military commanders, and intelligence officials refused to question their firmly held belief that Hamas was neither willing nor able to undertake a complex attack – even when presented with reports to the contrary. Analysts could not persuade senior officials that Hamas had evolved because the conceptzia was an article of faith among policymakers and senior defense officials, and Israeli leaders refused to view indicators of a changing environment as early warning of potential threats. Repeating Israel’s disastrous 1973 failure, senior officials’ adherence to incorrect assumptions blinded them to evident changes, leading them to both misread their adversary’s intentions and underestimate its capabilities. 

Second, Israeli intelligence had no effective institutional processes for questioning assumptions or exploring “outside the box” ideas. Following the Agranat Commission’s recommendation, the IDF had established a “Devil’s Advocate” unit to analyze competing hypotheses. That team has now shrunk to only a handful of staff. Even so, the unit’s chief wrote two assessments in September 2023 that Hamas’s world view had changed and that it would soon launch an attack on Israel. Senior officials ignored both reports. Rather than depend on lone designated contrarians, intelligence agencies should train all analysts in structured analytic techniques (including Devil’s Advocacy) to add analytic rigor to all finished intelligence products. 

Third, Israel’s intelligence organizations lacked formal analytic processes and dissemination mechanisms. Agencies were drowning in data they couldn’t analyze. Staff shared single-source tactical reports without context rather than integrating the information into comprehensive assessments of evolving dynamics in Gaza. In isolation, such one-off reports could not persuasively present the threat and convey the need to take action. Strategic warning in particular, according to the former head of Israel’s Devil’s Advocate unit, must be based on all-source analysis rather than selected raw intelligence reports. To be credible, intelligence analyses must be based on multiple sources, critiqued, coordinated with other agencies, annotated with known information gaps and alternative interpretations, and formally disseminated throughout the national security enterprise.  

Fourth, the hierarchy of military intelligence contributed to a lack of respect for women and junior personnel and fostered suppression of dissent. On multiple occasions, mid-level IDF officers ignored compelling evidence because it was presented by women and by low-ranking military personnel. One of the tatzpitaniyot was threatened with court martial if she continued to talk “nonsense” about a Hamas attack, and a Unit 8200 non-commissioned officer who observed Hamas drilling to attack kibbutzim was told that the scenario was “imaginary.” Intelligence officials must treat dissenting views as insights rather than insubordination. If an intelligence agency’s normal analytic processes cannot effectively consider alternative views, it should establish a mechanism akin to the U.S. State Department’s “dissent channel,” which allows rank-and-file staff to send contrarian views to senior leaders without fear of retaliation.  

Effective warning intelligence requires policymakers and intelligence leaders to consider all potential threats, accept challenges to conventional wisdom, resource intelligence capabilities effectively, and ensure information is presented in a strategic context. By applying lessons learned from October 7, intelligence officials around the world can enhance their warning capabilities and avert future tragedies.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. 

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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