Israel continues to wrestle with the humiliating failure of its second October surprise

On January 21, 2025, the Israeli news outlet Ynet posted a video showing former Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin speaking while he was still the leader of the opposition. It was in the aftermath of the Israeli army’s failure to be prepared on October 6, 1973, when Israel was attacked by Syrian and Egyptian forces. Consequently, Israel’s army Chief of Staff, General David Elazar resigned. “Is it possible that the Chief of Staff will resign, and his superior, the Minister of Defense will remain in office?” Begin asks in his typical oratorical manner. He then continues to ask, “Is it plausible that the Minister of Defense will leave office and his superior, the Prime Minister, will stay?”

Ynet posted this video immediately after General Herzi Halevi, the Israeli army Chief of Staff announced his resignation due to the failures of October 7, 2023. The message Ynet was conveying was the same as that of Menachem Begin: The buck does not stop, or rather should not stop with the military and the government should take responsibility for the failure. In a rather long and detailed public announcement with the Gaza concentration camp in the background, General Halevi said that he takes responsibility for the failure of October 7, 2023, but also for the success the army has had since.

“An army is an organization designated to deal with situations of emergency, and to prevent them. We initially failed to prevent and to defend.” “This is a difficult war, yet we had significant successes.” He mentioned that more fronts emerged as the war was going on but that the army was able to destroy the resistance leadership in both Gaza and Lebanon and that “Israel killed twenty thousand terrorists in Gaza and 4000 in Lebanon.”

These are puzzling statements and one might easily forget that the resistance that initiated the October 7 operations came from one of the poorest and most oppressed regions in the world. It is also one of the most surveilled areas in the world constantly monitored with drones and other intelligence-gathering technology.

Just before the ceasefire deal was finalized, the Israeli press as well as the discourse within Israeli society was focused on the failures of October 7 and the need to see the responsible parties take responsibility. One major figure on which the press focused their attention is Brigadier General Amit Sa’ar. General Sa’ar was the tip of the intelligence pyramid within the Israeli army. He held one of the most prestigious positions in the army and arguably the most important one in military intelligence. Sa’ar was head of military intelligence research. He is the number one authority when it comes to intelligence and when the system he was responsible for was tested, he failed. 

All the roads within the intelligence community, i.e., intelligence gathering and analysis lead to him and he is the final authority. In an interview he gave on December 1, 2024 that was almost an hour long, General Sa’ar begins with a story about a letter he wrote to the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense in February  2023. In this letter, he warned that Israeli society is in grave danger, “Our major enemies, i.e. the Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran” see the break in Israeli society over the judicial reform as a major weakness and even the beginning of the end of Israel. “Israel,” he wrote, “is seen as weak and vulnerable. We stand at the edge of a precipice,” he wrote to his superiors.

The interview is reflective and not at all unkind to the man whose job it was to warn and prevent the attack of October 7. His failure was that he warned of an impending attack by Hezbollah, from the north, and he failed to see the signs of an impending attack from Gaza. What is quite characteristic, and yet puzzling at the same time about this man who represents more than anyone the IDF intelligence community. He headed the Jordan Desk and then the Gaza Desk, he is considered the expert on the Arab players in the region, he held the position of the intelligence chief of the army’s southern command, which is basically the Gaza front and yet, he says, “I failed to appreciate Hamas’ capabilities.”

Two weeks prior to October 7, 2023, Sa’ar called for an emergency meeting of the entire top brass of the Israeli army. He said at the meeting that there is tension and warned of an impending attack from the north, meaning Hezbollah. While he said there may be some sort of activity from Gaza, it would be no more than a disturbance. “Gaza was his kingdom,” the interviewer says, as Sa’ar claims deep knowledge about Hamas but displays no such depth of knowledge or understanding. There is not a single word he says that might point to the fact that the oppression of the Palestinian people has anything to do with Hamas. 

When asked point blank about a particular document that was later found that actually points to the possibility of the Palestinian attacks of October 7 he says, “That document never reached my desk, and even if it did it would have made no difference.” He explains that the failure was a result of a lack of belief that the Palestinians in Gaza were capable of such an attack and that no amount of intelligence could have changed that belief, or “concept” as he calls it.

Reports have also recently emerged and are published in the Hebrew press according to which the lower level commanders asked that battalion commanders be brought to the Gaza area on the night between October 6 and 7 but they were ignored by the commander of the southern front – who also recently resigned – and army the Chief of Staff. Both of them apparently felt that the signs were not sufficient to alert the battalion commanders. In the Gaza front, the army relied entirely on intelligence from technology and there were little to no human assets to provide intelligence. One commentator stated it was shocking that among the Palestinians who participated in the attack on October 7, there were no Israeli intelligence assets that could provide information.

As it happens, late in 2024 General Sa’ar was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and had to resign. 

Was it a coincidence that the attacks of October 7, 2023, came exactly fifty years and one day after the start of the 1973 war? It was on October 6, 1973, when Syrian and Egyptian armies surprised Israel with a perfectly coordinated attack that caught Israel completely off guard to the point where the Israeli government was terrified that the end of the Zionist state was imminent. Whether it was a coincidence or not, the fact of the matter is that in both cases the Israeli military and the Israeli intelligence were tested and failed.

Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, just voted down a proposal to open an independent investigation into the October 7 failure. Netanyahu’s coalition government – that otherwise would be held responsible – made sure it didn’t go through. Had there been such an investigation it would have shown that incompetence, hubris and a lack of accountability had contributed to Israel’s humiliating failures on October 7, 2023.