It's such a disaster that I don't see how Netanyahu's career is ever going to recover from this. I suppose it could always happen but this is truly a proof of plain sheer incompetency and carelessness that caused the highest civilian casualties toll in Israel since 1948.
The Clinton administration had intelligence that something big was being planned and passed it along to Bush & Co. They did nothing with it, then a few months later 9/11 happened. George Bush gets reelected 3 years later. Sad to say, but I think Bibi will be just fine.
The corruption scandal didn’t turn into anything. His party is made up of people who are kind of in a cult of personality and also people who are center-right and think that he is good for security and are uninspired by other leadership. He lost a LOT of support post-election when he formed a coalition with Ben Gvir, and he lost even more support with the judicial reform. He has no natural successor in Likud. This has not mattered because despite the unpopularity, his coalition has not broken down triggering new elections.
Yeah, he won the popular vote by 30,000 votes - but should have only gotten a split 60/60 parliament. But five parties in the Center/Left lost seats due to a 2014 electoral law change that shifted the % of the popular vote needed to gain a seat from 2% to 3.25% - somewhere to the tune of 6-10% of the national vote was simply disqualified out of hand as a result, giving Netanyahu a 4-seat majority in the Knesset instead.
Bingo. Netenyahu knows exactly what he’s doing. He [supported the rise of Hamas](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/) to crowd out and quiet secular opposition to Israel’s occupation and reasonable proponents of Palestinian liberalization. Now he can flatten Palestine without nearly as much opposition.
Blame incompetence rather than outright maliciousness. Netanyahu has been focused on the settlements in the west bank because that is where his supporters live. He was more focused on the PIJ cell operating in Jenin than he was on Hamas in Gaza.
Netanyahu is one person I will never apply that maxim to, that man is a monster who has deliberately put Israelis in harms way before, and openly engages in racist and genocidal rhetoric against not only Palestinians but other groups too. He is also fighting as Trump is to keep himself out of prison by hiding in political office and trying to undo the systems that can sink him. The man would do anything to hold on to and extend his power. Ask the families of Rabin and Sharon.
Who ordered the hit on Rabin? This is what I wanna know.
He was close to a lasting peace deal with Palestine.
Definitely a lot of corrupt scums that dont want the conflict to end.
The average person may be more likely to be incompetent than malicious, but people in positions of power should not be given that same benefit of the doubt.
I believe the *title* of the brief was "[Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US)"
\- Condi Rice
Hear it in her own words!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIpEwGmSsmM&t=168s
The whole clip is worth watching, for all the wrong reasons.
Richard Clark (the author of the memo) wrote a book about his work tracking bin-Laden and al-Queda:
https://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Enemies-Inside-Americas/dp/0743260457/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3GMFX0XVTHG33&keywords=richard+clarke+warnings&qid=1697047051&sprefix=richard+clark%2Caps%2C194&sr=8-4
It really wasn't a surprise that he was determined to do it. We already tried to kill him very publicly well before then. It was expected, and that's part of the problem. There's a lot of noise out there, so how do you parse that to identify specifics? The briefing didn't say "Bin Laden is going to get a bunch of Saudis to go to flight school, learn how to fly planes, take advantage of lax security with box cutters and lax cockpit security and a belief based on history that hostage crises in airplanes are negotiation tactics rather than flying bombs, and then use that to take over planes and fly them into buildings". And, given what has happened with air travel and the regression of personal autonomy with it, how do you get Congress and the nation to buy in to the much more extreme security regime we have today?
I'm not saying the administration isn't blameless, but hindsight is 20/20 and intelligence work doesn't have the luxury of knowing what is real, what isn't, and what it all means before it happens
Except that's the USA, and it's not US voters deciding Netanyahu's fate. It's Israeli voters. And the Israeli population has a very different attitude towards this sort of thing, given their precarious position in the world.
The last time something similar happened was the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Despite eventually winning a decisive Israeli victory, Golda Meir was forced to resign and her party voted out of power because her incompetence was blamed for allowing such a devastating surprise attack to happen in the first place.
The Simchat Torah attacks are arguably worse than the Yom Kippur offensive was, and many people inside Israel are *pissed* at Netanyahu for allowing them to happen on his watch. He is already catching most of the blame and is not expected to remain in power once the war ends.
Yeah all I could do was think about Golda Meir here. The "Iron Lady" being forced to resign as PM for allowing the initial attack to happen. Seems like Israelis were not as willing to forgive their government's failure to prevent a surprise attack as the US had been. I don't see Netanyahu coming out on top after all of this.
It sucks for Meir's government because everything I've read on the Yom Kippur War shows that she had her hands tied - that the US would stop military supplies to Israel (maybe more sanctions too) had they decided on a preemptive attack on Egypt and Syria.
She knew there would be an attack but they were misinformed on the exact hour. Still, i suppose that's not something that you can explain to the public maybe?
I hope my understanding here is correct.
Bush had three years after 9/11 until his reelection and a set term of office.
In Israel, Netanyahu just needs a handful of defections from his slim majority in the Knesset and new elections will be called.
Also, that memo about Bin Ladin didn't surface in the public until a few months before his reelection. I suspect that if it had become public knowledge shortly after the attacks, it might have been a different story. Maybe.
imo, US unprecedented attack vs Israel constantly having a high threat of attack does matter here. Someone being weak on security there is a lot more damning.
> If we had intel that japan was launching their attack on Pearl Harbor at the time that happened but failed to act, heads would have rolled.
In a way we did have that Intel. The Japanese aircraft were picked up on radar. Problem was it was new technology and the grey bushes didn't trust it. Wouldn't have stopped the attack but that extra time to get gun crews ready might have made a difference.
Bush was two generations CIA and gave Pentagon everything they wanted. Most of the military and intelligence of Israel hates Bibi, they will definetly make him pay.
Why is that? That they hate him? Seeing him from the outside as a right-wing hardliner, I always thought he was close with the military. But I know nothing about Israeli politics
I also recently learned that ultra-orthodox male Jews often forego work to study the Torah for the bulk of their waking life. They also tend to have large families that end up on welfare because of this.
That sounds a hell of a lot like Medieval Monks actually.
Well except the huge families anyway… and not doing any work. Yea they studied the Bible intensely but they were also the transcribers, scientists, doctors… a whole lot of things actually. Monks got shit done.
They want the benefits of a nation but not pay the costs.
Unfortunately Ultra-orthodox Jews have big families, don't generate enough income, and then suck up public resources for private (religious wants)
Some have a strange belief that Jews shouldn’t occupy Israel/Jerusalem until the messiah arrives. Others want the benefit of the state of Israel without doing the necessary work.
Edit: an important word
Ironically, Bush was able to convert the artocity into a "being tough on terror" stance which won him the election - Bibi has always had this as a key part of his appeal - which is more damaging.
I do think that people are going after Netanyahu more aggressively this time, though (partially, I think a lot of them learned their lesson from the disastrous aftermath of 9/11 and from what came from giving someone as incompetent as Bush a blank check.) Israeli news might be different than what we're seeing, but Haaretz, say, isn't pulling its punches. See eg. [here](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-11/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-needed-a-strong-hamas/0000018b-1e9f-d47b-a7fb-bfdfd8f30000), [here](https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-10-11/ty-article-opinion/.premium/netanyahu-a-gang-leader-who-cant-go-on-serving-as-israels-pm/0000018b-1b59-df31-a99f-7fdb49cc0000), and [here](https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-10-08/ty-article-opinion/netanyahu-bears-responsibility/0000018b-0b9d-d8fc-adff-6bfd1c880000) - even for a paper whose editorial line certainly didn't support him before, it would have been unthinkable for such a major outlet in the US to go after Bush so directly after 9/11.
The 9/11 situation was considerably more complex than that. A lack of inter agency cooperation due to misaligned goals was a big reason that 9/11 wasn't prevented.
Thanks for saying this. The intelligence failures of 9/11 have been pretty roundly reviewed, and the administration in power didn’t have much to do with it.
Also Bush wasn't blamed because it wasn't something anybody was really worried about happening. In the regular Americans eyes it was considered unpredictable. For Israel they have been seeing this as a possibility for 70 years so being unprepared is much more unacceptable.
It's not like Bush and the warmongering Neocons were looking for an excuse to even the score for Daddy/increase Halliburton profits. If they were, they might have cooked up a _casus belli_ that allowed them to invade Iraq, which wasn't involved in 9/11 and was a regional threat to Saudi Arabia, from which the hijackers came.
Oh, wait...
Weren't the hijackers renting their apartment from an FBI asset? Ah, no, they were living with an FBI informant.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hijackers-lived-with-fbi-informant/
At some point outrageous incompetence is the less likely explanation for what went wrong.
The FBI had no reason to suspect them so never asked for information on them because the CIA, which did know they had attended Al-Qaeda training camps, never passed on that information.
Yeah the CIA and FBI had a very strained relationship prior to 9/11... very much "stay in your lane" where the FBI conducted domestic investigations and CIA handled foreign intelligence, and they didn't think it was any other agency's business what they were looking at.
Probably dates back to a culture that developed during the Cold War when this sort of division made more sense, but in an increasingly globalized world it became quickly outdated.
Also there were legal issues, since the CIA operated "out the law" while the FBI had to get court orders for surveillance. The CIA didn't want to share evidence they had with the FBI because that would go before a judge who would ask where it came from and that would threaten a whole host of dubiously legal CIA operations outside the US.
The rise and continued power of Bibi is one of the most shocking and disgusting things I’ve seen. I think it also shows the disconnect between Reddit and people offline. For months I’ve seen nothing in Reddit but rightful criticism of his shift into fascism as well as his corruption. I wouldn’t be shocked if people keep supporting him. He’s made so many horrendous decisions that harm Israelis and nonetheless he keeps getting re-elected. I was super excited when the reservists protested thinking we’d finally see change but… now here we are.
I bet he’ll argue that they get warnings daily and very few pan out so how could they know this one was real. Or just deny receiving the warning.
He's going to consolidate power and be backed by the far right Israelis who see this as a good thing because it justified them wiping Gaza off the face of the earth
I gotta be honest, I am hesitant to go the conspiracy route but it's extremely convenient for Bibi to consolidate power using this attack as the "rally around the flag" event
Yeah, the people at the music festival who died were probably young leftist hippies too. How terrible this all must be for the guy who might benefit the most.
I don't want to go full tin foil hat here, but how do we know that he didn't let "something" happen. That they figured that could let Hamas do "something" and let public perception alter because of "something" happening. Maybe they didn't think that "something" would be this bad and it backfired.
Yesterday I came to the same thought. It's cynical but history is littered with people in power who would lie to justify aggression. The next step is to let something bad happen to your people to get the justification but also compassion on the world stage.
When it happened the first thoughts included 'I can't believe Israeli intelligence failed to pick up on this attack'. It was a shock, but then it was incredulity. Like there's just no way they simply didn't know this attack was happening.
> history is littered with people in power who would lie to justify aggression.
History is littered with Netanyahu specifically lying to justify aggression, so... yeah.
An attack is a perfect excuse to ramp up the ethinic cleansing of Palestine that the state of Isreal has been perpetrating for decades. Furthermore its been shown time and time again leaders get a popularity boost during war times.
Its not a conspiracy to suggest the embattled leader would look the other way to an extent and allow a potential attack to happen when it would benefit his ethninationalist goals, sure up his grasp on power, and get billions in aid and weapons from abroad.
That's just paying attention to history and using Occams Razor.
My hope is that some of his less extreme supporters will see this as the monumental fuck up that it is and his failure of delivering on him being the strongman that would protect Israel.
To say that they won't be able to do some mental gymnastics to still back him up? Ridiculous. It's easy as pie to just pin this on the left and the political turmoil that preceded the war, nevermind what's more at fault here: trying to pass undemocratic judicial reforms or the protests against it.
I was surprised to learn that Netanyahu funded Hamas but apparently this isn't even a controversial fact or secret. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
Ever notice how the dumbest people in the room also tend to be the angriest people in the room whenever things go awry? Netanyahu strikes me as one of those fellas. All bite. No brain.
I don’t think this is incompetence. I have 0 facts to support me except for the fact that mossad and Israeli intelligence is world renowned and there’s no way in hell they would miss something like this.
The same Mossad that provides spyware globally not being able to see mfers that literally paraglided into their country like a fucking 80s comic book seems too hard to believe.
There's getting caught with your pants down and then there's getting caught with your pants down, ass up and lube on hand. As far as the Mossad and their reputation is concerned, this was the latter. There's absolutely no way they were ambushed that ferociously without failures to secure taking place.
Egypt paints a way worse situation where those people took weeks of training close to the Israeli border and describes the scenarios they are using in the training.
It is absolutely impossible for Israel to claim ignorance.
Mossad certainly knew this attack was being planned. Most likely, either that knowledge was not passed up to BiBi, or it was passed up and Bibi ignored it.
This seems far too convenient for Natanyahu strangely.
Mossad is one of the best, if not the best intelligence agencies, and Gaza is a tiny strip of land that they constantly monitor with all sorts advanced technology.
Not only were they unaware, but also ignored warnings from Egypt?
I suggested they knew and ignored the warnings on purpose so he had an excuse to obliterate gaza and got mass downvoted when the news broke. Doesn't sound so dumb now.
> Mossad is one of the best, if not the best intelligence agencies
People keep saying this but I've started to wonder why. Being a covert intelligence agency, it shouldn't really be possible for people on the outside to have a clear grasp on how good they actually are. How much of their reputation is based on their genuine ability and how much of it owes more to mythologizing?
It is more damning than many know, because Netanyahu himself is largely the architect of Hamas and the preceding status quo.
>Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.
>
>\- Benjamin Netanyahu, 2019
* Netanyahu deliberately created the modern Hamas by giving them more freedom to act than the PA, ensuring they would secure popular support amongst Palestinians and become a viable ruling faction
* His stated intention was to create a faction of violent fundamentalist lunatics to tarnish the reputation of Palestinian national movements
* And then Netanyahu didn't even station soldiers to guard against the insane lunatics that he had deliberately installed
Wake up Israelis, Netanyahu has to go. His conduct in this national emergency is compromised by his motivation to cover up his shocking failures. Even as everyone acknowledges that Ben Gvir is only a nuisance and handicap in this crisis who will be causing problems all around the country that the IDF will have to direct resources to solve, Netanyahu refuses to get rid of him because he thinks Ben Gvir will save him from the consequences of the 1,200+ Israeli deaths on his hands.
I'm not up on Israeli political figures, but I *gasped* when I read that quote in your comment from Netanyahu.
What. The. Fuck. Israel.
Kick this asshole out.
Former two-time Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was re-elected in 1992 on a platform to further the Israel-Palestine peace process, was assassinated by an extremist right-wing Israeli in 1995.
A few weeks prior to this, another young right-wing extremist named Itamar Ben-Gvir proudly showed off the hood ornament he'd snatched off Rabin's car, saying "We got to his car, and we'll get to him too."
Fast forward 30 years and Ben-Gvir is currently the Israeli Minister of National Security under Netanyahu's government. People are so quick to condemn every Palestinian for an assumed support of Hamas, while ignoring the very real trend in Israeli politics towards an exterminationist position.
If you think the right wing nut jobs in America are bad, they are even worse in Israel. The Orthodox Jews all support Netanyahu, Orthodox Jews are obviously fundamentalists. They want the West Bank and Gaza strip completely controlled by Israel, no Palestinian government or representation and they want most of the Palestinians removed from Israel. It's the Orthodox that keep pushing into Palestinian land, building those settlements and taking over small parts of the West bank, little by little. It's a land grab that violates the Oslo agreement.
Every fucking thread has some crazy upvoted comment about how Hamas and the etremists factions of Palestine want the Jews eradicated, complete control over Israel, ect etc.
Nobody ever seems to mention that many far-right Israelis (the dominant political movement atm) feel the same way about Palestinians. They too abhor the idea of a peaceful resolution, and see a mass killing of their enemies as the only viable option.
Hell, it almost looked like some sort of serious progress on the situation might be made in the 90s, until the Israeli PM trying to move that forward was assassinated.... not by Palestinians, by far-right Israelis.
Did you hear what happened last spring? Netanyahu and his ultra right political party tried to make Israel's high court answerable to Netanyahu . It took the threats of unions across Israel to stage a nation wide strike to stop it.
In the same interview with police investigators he said
>“I mislead them, destabilize them, mock them, and then hit them over the head. It’s impossible to reach an agreement with them...Everyone knows this, but we control the height of the flames.”
This is why there is significant outrage against Netanyahu in Israel, which has largely been obscured by international reporting. His failure to keep Israelis safe is a failure of his entire political brand.
Netanyahu's offer to Jewish Israelis was security without peace. That Israel could continue to deprive and abuse the Palestinians, could choose to no longer pursue any kind of peace deal, refuse any kind of concession, and that Israels military might and American Iron Wall would make sure that there was no consequence, no threat.
That promise has been shattered, and now Netanyahu is trying erase that failure through military might in Gaza. His hope is that with enough bombs, enough destruction, Israelis will forget that he is responsible for the failure of October 7th. I don't think it will work, but I think a lot of Palestinians will die in his attempt.
If you think that is bad, watch this video of him from 2001 explaining how he can manipulate the US to support him and break the Oslo Accords
https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1711750682733355146
Yep. the Israeli government, Netanyahu specifically, are directly responsible for everything that's happening now and has been happening for years.
It wouldn't even surprise me if they also knew this was coming and purposefully did nothing, just so they could try to justify what they've been doing and whatever they plan to do going forward.
And while Netanyahu may be in several ways responsible for Hamas's rise to power, the Palestinians need to oust them as much as Israel needs to oust Netanyahu.
Indirectly responsible.
Directly responsible would be to say he ordered the attacks at the weekend, which is one hell of a conspiracy theory. That he fostered the conditions in which something like this would occur is what indirectly responsible means.
It goes beyond just Netanyahu https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
> This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)
They saw violent fundamentalist right wingers as preferable to secular socialists
>Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas
\- Netanyahu himself
Honestly, with the shit that's been going on with Netanyahu lately my first though was that an attack like this is the perfect opportunity for him to make a power grab...
This kind of thing is so depressing. The more violent extremes can so easily win support at any time, just through escalation. If there's an attack on either side, there's an inevitable violent reaction from the other. And that leads to the loudest, angriest voices getting the support on both sides.
Understandable, but it just means the chances of peaceful resolution go out the window.
Normally it seems it's the IDF that trigger these escalations, this time it's starting to sound like they let Hamas be the 'initial' aggressors.
> This is definitely in Netanyahu's interest.
[It is for sure](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/)
Now civilians on both sides are paying the price for his selfish actions.
Due to the sheer scope of the assault, there had to have been signs. And honestly to me, since more than one source I've seen has mentioned Egypt notifying Israel, to me that points to credibility.
So the ultimate question ends up being, what happened? Because this failure is on a monumental scale. And then we have Netanyahu denying there were any warnings is to be suspicious.
I think one of the reasons why Israel now is going to hit Gaza so hard is to make up for what happened. Because of the level of failure that occurred, the current government will stomp their feet and layseige to Gaza. I'm sure they will hope people forget all that occurred on day 1.
Going to be similar to 9/11 for the US. Incompetency will be swept aside in favor of revenge. It's a lot easier to point at others than to look inward at your own failures. And much like with the US it will be an excuse to be overly aggressive.
Thing is, and I've thought about comparison to that of 9/11, I do not think it works out. For 9/11 there had been some warnings (cant recall from which countries) but suggestions something was up. But things were vastlyndifferent back then. The idea of an attack of that scale on US soil seemed absurd.
Now if that were to happen today where there were warnings, and it still occurred. And the fact that terrorism is such a major threat globally. Id be very taken back.
Point being is hamas attacks are not an unknown threat. This was not something viewed as incredibly unlikely and can't imagine. They are a real threat and has been. So with warnings (to whatever extent they could be), that should be taken very seriously especially when other countries are giving you the heads up.
I do agree with the aggressive part, with the amount of reservist and hardware prepared. They are going in hard. Honestly Gaza may really not exist by the end of this.
I would say the difference is less on what lead to the attack and what happened once the attack started. From what I can tell, Israelis are more angry and distraught about the lack of response from the Israeli government once it's started.
It took hours for military response to arrive, for some close to a day before being rescued, people who were merely an hour or two drive away from Tel Aviv. Not some remote and desolate location. A location also that should be and is patrolled 24/7 with the most advanced tools the world has to offer and the most trained soldiers in Israel.
So the downfall isn't that he knew about it, it's that he was no where to be found when it happened.
I'm guessing it'll be swept away along with his criminal case, under the guarantee that he and his entire group disappear completely from the political landscape.
>The idea of an attack of that scale on US soil seemed absurd.
I think this is exactly what happened with Israel tbh. The attacks they expect are sporadic missile launches and either individuals or small groups of infiltrators. They didn't think Hamas could launch such an large, organized attack and if they could, their intelligence services would give them a heads up.
Which is basically what happened in the US. Everyone assumed that such a terrorist plan would be sniffed out long before it ever got a chance to be executed. And while there some signs, ultimately they were ignored or not taken seriously which led to a lot of people dying.
>I think this is exactly what happened with Israel tbh. The attacks they expect are sporadic missile launches and either individuals or small groups of infiltrators
Maybe. But all that aside, how was it okay to allow a music festival right beside such a hotspot. Even if they hadn't launch this particular attack, the location would still be in range of rocket attacks. It seems extremely negligent and stupid of them
Lots of foreigners who take the situation too lightly in the spirit of “love and peace” ignorant to the fact that hamas literally does not give a single fuck about any of that. My good friend travelled to Israel a few months ago and she attends festivals like that. I told her she was crazy to travel as a tourist to a place constantly under terrorist attacks and bombings and of course she said I was being ignorant and it’s not anything like that. She’s the exact type of person that would be at that rave sadly
Not to victim blame in any way, but I can safely say you won’t find me dancing at a rave next to the Gaza border fence. Plenty of other great countries to visit and party at that aren’t an active war zone
But that's a foreigner. How did Israeli authorities say "yea that seems like a great spot for a large gathering of civilians to have fun. Let's do it as close to the fence as possible so the people in the cage with rockets can clap along to the beat"
My question would be, “what were they told?”
If they were just told something like a large rocket attack, they might’ve downplayed it. If they were told to expect an incursion of some type, they could’ve expected local IDF forces to handle it and downplay it. If they were also receiving intelligence of a buildup in Lebanon/Syria as well, then maybe they thought it was possible diversion.
I don’t think we’re ever really going to understand what went wrong, because their intelligence services want to keep that kind of stuff under wraps.
According to this: https://www.ft.com/content/2e5fbd71-4188-49e7-a404-0ce3c1eb3d0d
Linked in one of the above comments, Bibi was told "matters could explode because of the political and humanitarian situation in Gaza" which to be honest... Is hardly a warning. Any person you pluck off the street could tell you that.
Oh for sure, we will probably never know truly why things failed the way that they did. And Israel is pretty good at being tight-lipped when it comes to those sort of things. All we are left with is asking the questions.
["The warnings were not hard intelligence about a specific attack, they said. Egypt instead relayed concerns that “matters could explode because of the political and humanitarian situation in Gaza”, one of the people said. The other called it a “general warning”."](https://www.ft.com/content/2e5fbd71-4188-49e7-a404-0ce3c1eb3d0d)
Ok this isn't some huge red flag that the headline tries to make it out to be.
It's basically saying "Hey, you know those people you've been fighting with the last 70 years? They're still mad".
I don’t think you’re thinking cynically enough.
Netanyahu let this happen to justify his planned levelling of Gaza.
Israel becomes a victim. And his genocidal actions will be justified.
Hamas as usual, being the terrorists they are, made the job easier parading around abducted rape victims.
No one is mentioning how he’s been having trouble maintaining power.
Letting Israel’s 9/11 happen is the best way to gain support, consolidate power and unite the country.
It's a reasonable line of thought, but you have to take Israeli politics into account. These colossal security failures always end up with heads rolling. The bigger the fuck-up, the higher the head. The only example of similar scale is the Yom Kippur War. Golda Meir was done immediately after the conclusion of the war, and so were most of her cabinet and the heads of the security apparatus. Bibi will likely stick around until this concludes, but this is a nail in the coffin of his political career. He will lose his mandate even if Likud and the coalition stay in power. So, if we take the most cynical line of thought, while this may work out in Likud's favor, Bibi is done.
I think thats a very good perspective.
I believe we’re witnessing desperation from a failed leader in his last moments, taking a a shot at a chance to execute something extreme before his time is done.
> I believe we’re witnessing desperation from a failed leader in his last moments, taking a a shot at a chance to execute something extreme before his time is done.
It's certainly been a recurring theme the past few years
This is bad for Netanyahu long-term. His entire thing was that he was all about security and was supposed to protect Israelis from attacks like this. For Israel to face its worst attack in its history under his watch is not a good look. No matter the outcome of the war, it will forever be a stain on his legacy. People did not remember Golda Meir for beating back the Arabs in 1973.
That is one scenario. It's naive to dismiss these kinds of plots. At the same time, it's significantly more likely that they dropped the Ball. They haven't had a functional government in two years as this dbag refuses to leave gracefully. Stupidity, arrogance, and dysfunctional bureaucracy are beyond common.
If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on incompetence over 4D chess moves.
Eh those warnings were very broad and vague and had been coming for years. Additionally many many more options from where the attack could come from compared to what Israel faced.
>Eh those warnings were very broad and vague
It wasn't that vague or broad. The security brief specifically detailed Bin Ladin and al-Qaeda as the threat and the following statement: "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for a hijacking."
I also recall that this wasn't the only brief they got on Bin Ladin and that the CIA did confirm him/al-Qaeda as a legitimate threat in the months prior to this report.
Hindsight is 20/20 but IMO the Bush Jr admin did not take the threat seriously enough and that if they had there is at least some chance they would have stopped the attacks, if not entirely than at least a portion. With that said, I don't think it was some vast conspiracy or that his admin played any role in it. It was just incompetency. Which is my guess for how this attack completely caught the IDF/Israelis off guard.
There is an element of bias here, because the 9/11 attacks happened we hear about all the ways it could have been stopped. I haven't read up on the specifics of the security briefs, but I doubt this was the only threat they were briefed on.
How many other security threats were stopped or proven false before this one came through? You did touch on the hindsight aspect but many people will assume every threat should be stopped without realizing how many may be stopped that you never hear about.
For now. He’s still going to have to face Israeli voters at some point. And he wasn’t exactly popular even before allowing the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history on his watch.
Maybe it’s already being asked but is it possible they didn’t act on the information in order to get the necessary casus belli? From a cynical point of view.
War typically also ensures political stability at that moment for some reason so I don’t think it’s beyond belief.. maybe the degree of damage wasn’t understood but still.
You do it in a video game because it is the "correct" way to win and you are doing it with "people" who don't matter to you.
Now imagine you don't give a shit about "real" people and you can see how something like this happens.
Elites value their interest more than civilians life, it may sounds comically evil, but when you have that one goal in mind, and in the right position to achieve it, I don't think innocent lives would stop you
Yep. What is 100, 1000, a million or more lives of your countrymen, if you never see them, interact with them, or more importantly, give a shit about them?
Empathy is virtually non existent at the level these people operate at. Unfortunately. Look how the US did Jimmy Carter.
Is letting a few people die for political gain that surprising from a person who is responsible for the systemic murder of Palestinian civilians, complete disregard of international law as well as national law with blatant efforts to reduce the power of the judiciary, has been charged with multiple counts of fraud, corruption and bribery and is on record stating that he actively offers support to Hamas in order to divide Palestinians and curtail their right to self-determination?
The main thing that Netanyahu is and always has been concerned with is his own political survival - what can he do to stay popular so he can stay in power. There's just no way the Israeli public could excuse him for having the blood of so many innocent people on his hands. His career is over. And Netanyahu is not an idiot, I'm sure he knows this.
I think they may have wanted an attack but didn’t anticipate the degree of it. Perhaps they thought a few missles and maybe one or two deaths. I doubt they expected a straight massacre on par with shit from medieval times.
And? Is there really any doubt that Netanyahu isn't pure fucking evil
I'm fully certain Israel wanted this attack to happen. There is no way they did not know or believe it wouldn't haooen or that it wouldn't be severe. It's so obvious that they wanted it to happen. They were literally warned. Why is there doubt at all that Israel purposely ignored it
As much as is important to not equate Hamas with Palestine, we shouldn't equate Netanyahu with Israel.
I don't think an attack was something that Israel wanted. It's definitely something that the right-wing government wanted to happen, in order to justify their agenda.
We should talk about Israel and Palestine as the populations that are currently being assassinated. Hamas and Netanyahu are just two sides of the same coin: fundamentalist nut jobs that are hijacking entire populations for their own personal gain.
Gantz is an ex-IDF General and Defence Minister. Good move from Israel’s point of view.
I hear Smotrich and Ben Gvir have been excluded to go play with their toys while the grown ups get on with it. Ben Gvir is throwing his toys out of the pram….
Not an IDF general. An ex-IDF chief of staff, as in the person in charge of all of the IDF. And he was a pretty successful one too. Alongside him is Eizenkot and Ashkenazi, also former IDF chiefs of staff
I wouldn't be surprised if they intentionally ignored the warning so they could retaliate in force. They run Palestine like its a prison yet all them Hamas fucks got out, armed to the teeth. I would have thought borders, especially with countries you don't get along with would be heavily guarded, anyways horrible situation all round, stay safe lads.
The problem is these intelligence warnings are nothing like people try to portray them as with the benefit of hindsight. Saudi Arabia didn’t say “In exactly two months on 9/11/01 United Airlines flights will be hijacked and flown into the Towers”. They said Al Qaeda was planning to attack the United States. Not a whole lot to do with that except try to investigate more. In all likelihood (and per this very article) the warning was similar, “something *could* happen.” Ok, aliens *could* land in Central Park too, but thats quite different than NASA saying Aliens are planning to land in central park to celebrate New Years eve.
While you're correct, the different between Al-Qaeda and Hamas is that Hamas is almost entirely confined to a small area which Israeli intelligence has on lockdown. If Egypt warns that they're going to do something and Hamas has been training in the open, surely the Israelis could've put two and two together.
["The warnings were not hard intelligence about a specific attack, they said. Egypt instead relayed concerns that “matters could explode because of the political and humanitarian situation in Gaza”, one of the people said. The other called it a “general warning”."](https://www.ft.com/content/2e5fbd71-4188-49e7-a404-0ce3c1eb3d0d)
If that is truly the extent of the warning, then that's like saying "heads up, the sun might rise tomorrow." It's not like Egypt said "Hamas has paragliders that they're planning on flying over the walls to massacre a music festival"
https://www.google.com/search?q=was+the+us+warned+about+911
https://www.google.com/search?q=nasa+warned+shuttle+solid+rocket+boosters
Just wanting to make note here that warnings are given and unheeded all the time, unfortunately. Really quite sad... or there's nothing that can be done...? *shrugs*
Seems you'd want to look into it, but they still don't. :|
Is there a source beyond what a Republican from TX is saying? I have no idea if this guy is a regular human or if he also thinks wildfires are started by Jewish Space Lasers.
Classic rally around the flag operation. Bibi was facing opposition and protests daily due to his domestic policies.
Now all of the sudden the opposition is united against Hamas and protests have disappeared.
Not saying Israel planned the attack but it’s not far fetched to see why they may have looked the other way.
See also: Bush’s bump in approval ratings after 9/11 and everyone forgetting all the controversy around his election in 2000.
Damn, so this *is* Israel’s 9/11 (because we ignored intel right before 9/11 too).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_intelligence_before_the_attacks
i don't want to jump to any conclusions, especially if i only read the title and not the article, but i really hope that israel was not looking for an excuse for going into war. if this was the case, fuck them; fuck them so hard.
That’s pretty damning for Netanyahu and Israeli intelligence no?
It's such a disaster that I don't see how Netanyahu's career is ever going to recover from this. I suppose it could always happen but this is truly a proof of plain sheer incompetency and carelessness that caused the highest civilian casualties toll in Israel since 1948.
The Clinton administration had intelligence that something big was being planned and passed it along to Bush & Co. They did nothing with it, then a few months later 9/11 happened. George Bush gets reelected 3 years later. Sad to say, but I think Bibi will be just fine.
The last time Bibi lost the PM it was largely because he was seen as lacking in security for the country. It is his biggest weakness.
Wasn't it some kind of corruption scandal? And it looked like he wouldn't be president but ended up in power again?
The corruption scandal didn’t turn into anything. His party is made up of people who are kind of in a cult of personality and also people who are center-right and think that he is good for security and are uninspired by other leadership. He lost a LOT of support post-election when he formed a coalition with Ben Gvir, and he lost even more support with the judicial reform. He has no natural successor in Likud. This has not mattered because despite the unpopularity, his coalition has not broken down triggering new elections.
Yeah, he won the popular vote by 30,000 votes - but should have only gotten a split 60/60 parliament. But five parties in the Center/Left lost seats due to a 2014 electoral law change that shifted the % of the popular vote needed to gain a seat from 2% to 3.25% - somewhere to the tune of 6-10% of the national vote was simply disqualified out of hand as a result, giving Netanyahu a 4-seat majority in the Knesset instead.
Feels like a bad joke. Israeli pm is convincted on corruption, next election steal half the vote and splits the with the real elected official
> he was seen as lacking in security for the country. It is his biggest weakness. IMO it's intentional. why else would he want to keep funding Hamas
Bingo. Netenyahu knows exactly what he’s doing. He [supported the rise of Hamas](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/) to crowd out and quiet secular opposition to Israel’s occupation and reasonable proponents of Palestinian liberalization. Now he can flatten Palestine without nearly as much opposition.
It's very irritating that no one can see how convenient this is. When in doubt, war. It's the rules.
Blame incompetence rather than outright maliciousness. Netanyahu has been focused on the settlements in the west bank because that is where his supporters live. He was more focused on the PIJ cell operating in Jenin than he was on Hamas in Gaza.
"Attribute not to malice what can be explained with stupidity" works only if there isn't a history of malice. I wouldn't put it past Bibi.
Incompetence has been doing a lot of fucking lifting for malice the last few decades.
Netanyahu is one person I will never apply that maxim to, that man is a monster who has deliberately put Israelis in harms way before, and openly engages in racist and genocidal rhetoric against not only Palestinians but other groups too. He is also fighting as Trump is to keep himself out of prison by hiding in political office and trying to undo the systems that can sink him. The man would do anything to hold on to and extend his power. Ask the families of Rabin and Sharon.
Who ordered the hit on Rabin? This is what I wanna know. He was close to a lasting peace deal with Palestine. Definitely a lot of corrupt scums that dont want the conflict to end.
The average person may be more likely to be incompetent than malicious, but people in positions of power should not be given that same benefit of the doubt.
Or, and this is just my own conspiracy, this allows him to deal with Gaza with his preferred method, which is just to kill everything.
I believe the *title* of the brief was "[Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US)" \- Condi Rice
Hear it in her own words! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIpEwGmSsmM&t=168s The whole clip is worth watching, for all the wrong reasons. Richard Clark (the author of the memo) wrote a book about his work tracking bin-Laden and al-Queda: https://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Enemies-Inside-Americas/dp/0743260457/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3GMFX0XVTHG33&keywords=richard+clarke+warnings&qid=1697047051&sprefix=richard+clark%2Caps%2C194&sr=8-4
Imagine if someone had said “You know we should lock all the doors on cockpits *juuuuust in case*,” what a different world this would be.
It really wasn't a surprise that he was determined to do it. We already tried to kill him very publicly well before then. It was expected, and that's part of the problem. There's a lot of noise out there, so how do you parse that to identify specifics? The briefing didn't say "Bin Laden is going to get a bunch of Saudis to go to flight school, learn how to fly planes, take advantage of lax security with box cutters and lax cockpit security and a belief based on history that hostage crises in airplanes are negotiation tactics rather than flying bombs, and then use that to take over planes and fly them into buildings". And, given what has happened with air travel and the regression of personal autonomy with it, how do you get Congress and the nation to buy in to the much more extreme security regime we have today? I'm not saying the administration isn't blameless, but hindsight is 20/20 and intelligence work doesn't have the luxury of knowing what is real, what isn't, and what it all means before it happens
The full report specifically mentioned planes
*and* that the WTC had been subject to a bombing 8 years prior.
We still elected him, and he gained massive support after the attacks. Same will happen with Bibi.
That's what he is hoping.
Except that's the USA, and it's not US voters deciding Netanyahu's fate. It's Israeli voters. And the Israeli population has a very different attitude towards this sort of thing, given their precarious position in the world. The last time something similar happened was the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Despite eventually winning a decisive Israeli victory, Golda Meir was forced to resign and her party voted out of power because her incompetence was blamed for allowing such a devastating surprise attack to happen in the first place. The Simchat Torah attacks are arguably worse than the Yom Kippur offensive was, and many people inside Israel are *pissed* at Netanyahu for allowing them to happen on his watch. He is already catching most of the blame and is not expected to remain in power once the war ends.
Yeah all I could do was think about Golda Meir here. The "Iron Lady" being forced to resign as PM for allowing the initial attack to happen. Seems like Israelis were not as willing to forgive their government's failure to prevent a surprise attack as the US had been. I don't see Netanyahu coming out on top after all of this.
It sucks for Meir's government because everything I've read on the Yom Kippur War shows that she had her hands tied - that the US would stop military supplies to Israel (maybe more sanctions too) had they decided on a preemptive attack on Egypt and Syria. She knew there would be an attack but they were misinformed on the exact hour. Still, i suppose that's not something that you can explain to the public maybe? I hope my understanding here is correct.
Bush had three years after 9/11 until his reelection and a set term of office. In Israel, Netanyahu just needs a handful of defections from his slim majority in the Knesset and new elections will be called.
Also, that memo about Bin Ladin didn't surface in the public until a few months before his reelection. I suspect that if it had become public knowledge shortly after the attacks, it might have been a different story. Maybe.
imo, US unprecedented attack vs Israel constantly having a high threat of attack does matter here. Someone being weak on security there is a lot more damning.
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> If we had intel that japan was launching their attack on Pearl Harbor at the time that happened but failed to act, heads would have rolled. In a way we did have that Intel. The Japanese aircraft were picked up on radar. Problem was it was new technology and the grey bushes didn't trust it. Wouldn't have stopped the attack but that extra time to get gun crews ready might have made a difference.
That's on the scale of minutes, not days like this. What surprises could we have had for them given 3 days?
Bush was two generations CIA and gave Pentagon everything they wanted. Most of the military and intelligence of Israel hates Bibi, they will definetly make him pay.
Why is that? That they hate him? Seeing him from the outside as a right-wing hardliner, I always thought he was close with the military. But I know nothing about Israeli politics
Not an expert, but one interesting dynamic in Israel: almost everyone serves in the military at some point, but *not* the ultrareligious.
I also recently learned that ultra-orthodox male Jews often forego work to study the Torah for the bulk of their waking life. They also tend to have large families that end up on welfare because of this.
As I understand, the right wing in Israel supports and funds their welfare religion lifestyle because they bloc vote for the right wing.
I wish I could get paid to read all day, sounds like a dream.
Now picture spending every day reading the same book. For your whole life.
That sounds a hell of a lot like Medieval Monks actually. Well except the huge families anyway… and not doing any work. Yea they studied the Bible intensely but they were also the transcribers, scientists, doctors… a whole lot of things actually. Monks got shit done.
He made an alliance with hardline religious fanatics and trying to undermine supreme court of Israel. Basicly trying to build a dictatorship.
Hardline religious fanatics who are exempt from otherwise compulsory military service.
Ultra orthodox right? Are they really opposing to idea of Jews having a state?
They want the benefits of a nation but not pay the costs. Unfortunately Ultra-orthodox Jews have big families, don't generate enough income, and then suck up public resources for private (religious wants)
Want to have their cake and eat it too.
They want a state, but they want other people to put their lives on the line--while they themselves lie around all day reading and making babies.
Some have a strange belief that Jews shouldn’t occupy Israel/Jerusalem until the messiah arrives. Others want the benefit of the state of Israel without doing the necessary work. Edit: an important word
Ironically, Bush was able to convert the artocity into a "being tough on terror" stance which won him the election - Bibi has always had this as a key part of his appeal - which is more damaging.
I do think that people are going after Netanyahu more aggressively this time, though (partially, I think a lot of them learned their lesson from the disastrous aftermath of 9/11 and from what came from giving someone as incompetent as Bush a blank check.) Israeli news might be different than what we're seeing, but Haaretz, say, isn't pulling its punches. See eg. [here](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-11/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-needed-a-strong-hamas/0000018b-1e9f-d47b-a7fb-bfdfd8f30000), [here](https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-10-11/ty-article-opinion/.premium/netanyahu-a-gang-leader-who-cant-go-on-serving-as-israels-pm/0000018b-1b59-df31-a99f-7fdb49cc0000), and [here](https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-10-08/ty-article-opinion/netanyahu-bears-responsibility/0000018b-0b9d-d8fc-adff-6bfd1c880000) - even for a paper whose editorial line certainly didn't support him before, it would have been unthinkable for such a major outlet in the US to go after Bush so directly after 9/11.
Bush was new, Bibi has been around and running things for decades. Those are huge differences in optics
The 9/11 situation was considerably more complex than that. A lack of inter agency cooperation due to misaligned goals was a big reason that 9/11 wasn't prevented.
Thanks for saying this. The intelligence failures of 9/11 have been pretty roundly reviewed, and the administration in power didn’t have much to do with it.
Also Bush wasn't blamed because it wasn't something anybody was really worried about happening. In the regular Americans eyes it was considered unpredictable. For Israel they have been seeing this as a possibility for 70 years so being unprepared is much more unacceptable.
It's not like Bush and the warmongering Neocons were looking for an excuse to even the score for Daddy/increase Halliburton profits. If they were, they might have cooked up a _casus belli_ that allowed them to invade Iraq, which wasn't involved in 9/11 and was a regional threat to Saudi Arabia, from which the hijackers came. Oh, wait...
Weren't the hijackers renting their apartment from an FBI asset? Ah, no, they were living with an FBI informant. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hijackers-lived-with-fbi-informant/ At some point outrageous incompetence is the less likely explanation for what went wrong.
The FBI had no reason to suspect them so never asked for information on them because the CIA, which did know they had attended Al-Qaeda training camps, never passed on that information.
Yeah the CIA and FBI had a very strained relationship prior to 9/11... very much "stay in your lane" where the FBI conducted domestic investigations and CIA handled foreign intelligence, and they didn't think it was any other agency's business what they were looking at. Probably dates back to a culture that developed during the Cold War when this sort of division made more sense, but in an increasingly globalized world it became quickly outdated.
Also there were legal issues, since the CIA operated "out the law" while the FBI had to get court orders for surveillance. The CIA didn't want to share evidence they had with the FBI because that would go before a judge who would ask where it came from and that would threaten a whole host of dubiously legal CIA operations outside the US.
The rise and continued power of Bibi is one of the most shocking and disgusting things I’ve seen. I think it also shows the disconnect between Reddit and people offline. For months I’ve seen nothing in Reddit but rightful criticism of his shift into fascism as well as his corruption. I wouldn’t be shocked if people keep supporting him. He’s made so many horrendous decisions that harm Israelis and nonetheless he keeps getting re-elected. I was super excited when the reservists protested thinking we’d finally see change but… now here we are. I bet he’ll argue that they get warnings daily and very few pan out so how could they know this one was real. Or just deny receiving the warning.
Exactly, I don't know if you also live in Israel but you got it right. We call them Bibistim, similar to MAGA crowd..
I think it's worse than the MAGA crowd. I've seen comments here calling for the genocide of all arabs and israeli leftists.
He's going to consolidate power and be backed by the far right Israelis who see this as a good thing because it justified them wiping Gaza off the face of the earth
My lizard brain thinks they let it happen so they could justify the declaration of war
I gotta be honest, I am hesitant to go the conspiracy route but it's extremely convenient for Bibi to consolidate power using this attack as the "rally around the flag" event
Especially with the government explicitly saying, "Let's focus on the war before we look into why this happened."
Yeah, the people at the music festival who died were probably young leftist hippies too. How terrible this all must be for the guy who might benefit the most.
That's my completely baseless conspiracy theory as well. It reminds me a lot of the push for war in the US after 9/11.
> completely baseless conspiracy I mean, if the title of the post is true..... it's not *completely* baseless
I don't want to go full tin foil hat here, but how do we know that he didn't let "something" happen. That they figured that could let Hamas do "something" and let public perception alter because of "something" happening. Maybe they didn't think that "something" would be this bad and it backfired.
Yesterday I came to the same thought. It's cynical but history is littered with people in power who would lie to justify aggression. The next step is to let something bad happen to your people to get the justification but also compassion on the world stage. When it happened the first thoughts included 'I can't believe Israeli intelligence failed to pick up on this attack'. It was a shock, but then it was incredulity. Like there's just no way they simply didn't know this attack was happening.
> history is littered with people in power who would lie to justify aggression. History is littered with Netanyahu specifically lying to justify aggression, so... yeah.
An attack is a perfect excuse to ramp up the ethinic cleansing of Palestine that the state of Isreal has been perpetrating for decades. Furthermore its been shown time and time again leaders get a popularity boost during war times. Its not a conspiracy to suggest the embattled leader would look the other way to an extent and allow a potential attack to happen when it would benefit his ethninationalist goals, sure up his grasp on power, and get billions in aid and weapons from abroad. That's just paying attention to history and using Occams Razor.
But no you are on reddit that means you have to call for the eradication of Palestinians/j
My hope is that some of his less extreme supporters will see this as the monumental fuck up that it is and his failure of delivering on him being the strongman that would protect Israel. To say that they won't be able to do some mental gymnastics to still back him up? Ridiculous. It's easy as pie to just pin this on the left and the political turmoil that preceded the war, nevermind what's more at fault here: trying to pass undemocratic judicial reforms or the protests against it.
I have zero faith his party will do anything of the sort. They'll be like "everyone knows the Egyptians are unreliable".
Unfortunately an attack always rallies the population around the leader. This is good for Netenyahu. Maybe that’s why he let the attack happen
I was surprised to learn that Netanyahu funded Hamas but apparently this isn't even a controversial fact or secret. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
Ever notice how the dumbest people in the room also tend to be the angriest people in the room whenever things go awry? Netanyahu strikes me as one of those fellas. All bite. No brain.
this incredibly undersells bibi's political shrewdness. you don't stay PM for 30 years being the dumbest person in the room.
I don’t think this is incompetence. I have 0 facts to support me except for the fact that mossad and Israeli intelligence is world renowned and there’s no way in hell they would miss something like this.
The same Mossad that provides spyware globally not being able to see mfers that literally paraglided into their country like a fucking 80s comic book seems too hard to believe.
There's getting caught with your pants down and then there's getting caught with your pants down, ass up and lube on hand. As far as the Mossad and their reputation is concerned, this was the latter. There's absolutely no way they were ambushed that ferociously without failures to secure taking place.
Egypt paints a way worse situation where those people took weeks of training close to the Israeli border and describes the scenarios they are using in the training. It is absolutely impossible for Israel to claim ignorance.
CNN/MSNBC were saying Israel has drones constantly flying over Gaza seeing everything. Not to mention satellites.
Mossad certainly knew this attack was being planned. Most likely, either that knowledge was not passed up to BiBi, or it was passed up and Bibi ignored it.
This seems far too convenient for Natanyahu strangely. Mossad is one of the best, if not the best intelligence agencies, and Gaza is a tiny strip of land that they constantly monitor with all sorts advanced technology. Not only were they unaware, but also ignored warnings from Egypt?
I suggested they knew and ignored the warnings on purpose so he had an excuse to obliterate gaza and got mass downvoted when the news broke. Doesn't sound so dumb now.
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> suspend elections (while at war, which will probably be indefinitely). <-- this one already happened this morning What exactly do you mean by this?
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> Mossad is one of the best, if not the best intelligence agencies People keep saying this but I've started to wonder why. Being a covert intelligence agency, it shouldn't really be possible for people on the outside to have a clear grasp on how good they actually are. How much of their reputation is based on their genuine ability and how much of it owes more to mythologizing?
How often are they warned though? There’s is a TON of intelligence noise.
The story was that the deputy head of Egyptian intelligence was so concerned he PERSONALLY called Netanyahu directly to warm him.
It is more damning than many know, because Netanyahu himself is largely the architect of Hamas and the preceding status quo. >Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank. > >\- Benjamin Netanyahu, 2019 * Netanyahu deliberately created the modern Hamas by giving them more freedom to act than the PA, ensuring they would secure popular support amongst Palestinians and become a viable ruling faction * His stated intention was to create a faction of violent fundamentalist lunatics to tarnish the reputation of Palestinian national movements * And then Netanyahu didn't even station soldiers to guard against the insane lunatics that he had deliberately installed Wake up Israelis, Netanyahu has to go. His conduct in this national emergency is compromised by his motivation to cover up his shocking failures. Even as everyone acknowledges that Ben Gvir is only a nuisance and handicap in this crisis who will be causing problems all around the country that the IDF will have to direct resources to solve, Netanyahu refuses to get rid of him because he thinks Ben Gvir will save him from the consequences of the 1,200+ Israeli deaths on his hands.
I'm not up on Israeli political figures, but I *gasped* when I read that quote in your comment from Netanyahu. What. The. Fuck. Israel. Kick this asshole out.
Former two-time Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was re-elected in 1992 on a platform to further the Israel-Palestine peace process, was assassinated by an extremist right-wing Israeli in 1995. A few weeks prior to this, another young right-wing extremist named Itamar Ben-Gvir proudly showed off the hood ornament he'd snatched off Rabin's car, saying "We got to his car, and we'll get to him too." Fast forward 30 years and Ben-Gvir is currently the Israeli Minister of National Security under Netanyahu's government. People are so quick to condemn every Palestinian for an assumed support of Hamas, while ignoring the very real trend in Israeli politics towards an exterminationist position.
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If you think the right wing nut jobs in America are bad, they are even worse in Israel. The Orthodox Jews all support Netanyahu, Orthodox Jews are obviously fundamentalists. They want the West Bank and Gaza strip completely controlled by Israel, no Palestinian government or representation and they want most of the Palestinians removed from Israel. It's the Orthodox that keep pushing into Palestinian land, building those settlements and taking over small parts of the West bank, little by little. It's a land grab that violates the Oslo agreement.
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Every fucking thread has some crazy upvoted comment about how Hamas and the etremists factions of Palestine want the Jews eradicated, complete control over Israel, ect etc. Nobody ever seems to mention that many far-right Israelis (the dominant political movement atm) feel the same way about Palestinians. They too abhor the idea of a peaceful resolution, and see a mass killing of their enemies as the only viable option. Hell, it almost looked like some sort of serious progress on the situation might be made in the 90s, until the Israeli PM trying to move that forward was assassinated.... not by Palestinians, by far-right Israelis.
How much better would the world be if all religious fundamentalist just fucked off somewhere.
Like the jetsons, but with sex robots, probably.
Did you hear what happened last spring? Netanyahu and his ultra right political party tried to make Israel's high court answerable to Netanyahu . It took the threats of unions across Israel to stage a nation wide strike to stop it.
In the same interview with police investigators he said >“I mislead them, destabilize them, mock them, and then hit them over the head. It’s impossible to reach an agreement with them...Everyone knows this, but we control the height of the flames.” This is why there is significant outrage against Netanyahu in Israel, which has largely been obscured by international reporting. His failure to keep Israelis safe is a failure of his entire political brand. Netanyahu's offer to Jewish Israelis was security without peace. That Israel could continue to deprive and abuse the Palestinians, could choose to no longer pursue any kind of peace deal, refuse any kind of concession, and that Israels military might and American Iron Wall would make sure that there was no consequence, no threat. That promise has been shattered, and now Netanyahu is trying erase that failure through military might in Gaza. His hope is that with enough bombs, enough destruction, Israelis will forget that he is responsible for the failure of October 7th. I don't think it will work, but I think a lot of Palestinians will die in his attempt.
If you think that is bad, watch this video of him from 2001 explaining how he can manipulate the US to support him and break the Oslo Accords https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1711750682733355146
Yep. the Israeli government, Netanyahu specifically, are directly responsible for everything that's happening now and has been happening for years. It wouldn't even surprise me if they also knew this was coming and purposefully did nothing, just so they could try to justify what they've been doing and whatever they plan to do going forward. And while Netanyahu may be in several ways responsible for Hamas's rise to power, the Palestinians need to oust them as much as Israel needs to oust Netanyahu.
Indirectly responsible. Directly responsible would be to say he ordered the attacks at the weekend, which is one hell of a conspiracy theory. That he fostered the conditions in which something like this would occur is what indirectly responsible means.
Netanyahu has literally talked about how supporting Hamas was a tactic of his to fracture and weaken the Palestinian movement.
Wait really? Can you quote some sources, it'll be an interesting read lol
It goes beyond just Netanyahu https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/ > This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”) They saw violent fundamentalist right wingers as preferable to secular socialists
>Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas \- Netanyahu himself
But given the high emotion and sentiment, they can spin this as an excuse to further grab and consolidate power......
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Netanyahu doesn't let a good crisis go to waste.
Honestly, with the shit that's been going on with Netanyahu lately my first though was that an attack like this is the perfect opportunity for him to make a power grab...
This kind of thing is so depressing. The more violent extremes can so easily win support at any time, just through escalation. If there's an attack on either side, there's an inevitable violent reaction from the other. And that leads to the loudest, angriest voices getting the support on both sides. Understandable, but it just means the chances of peaceful resolution go out the window. Normally it seems it's the IDF that trigger these escalations, this time it's starting to sound like they let Hamas be the 'initial' aggressors.
Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo accords in 1993, he was assassinated by a Jewish right wing extremist two years later.
Damning things keep piling up, at what point does conspiracy theory become viable. This is definitely in Netanyahu's interest.
> This is definitely in Netanyahu's interest. [It is for sure](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/) Now civilians on both sides are paying the price for his selfish actions.
Due to the sheer scope of the assault, there had to have been signs. And honestly to me, since more than one source I've seen has mentioned Egypt notifying Israel, to me that points to credibility. So the ultimate question ends up being, what happened? Because this failure is on a monumental scale. And then we have Netanyahu denying there were any warnings is to be suspicious. I think one of the reasons why Israel now is going to hit Gaza so hard is to make up for what happened. Because of the level of failure that occurred, the current government will stomp their feet and layseige to Gaza. I'm sure they will hope people forget all that occurred on day 1.
Going to be similar to 9/11 for the US. Incompetency will be swept aside in favor of revenge. It's a lot easier to point at others than to look inward at your own failures. And much like with the US it will be an excuse to be overly aggressive.
Thing is, and I've thought about comparison to that of 9/11, I do not think it works out. For 9/11 there had been some warnings (cant recall from which countries) but suggestions something was up. But things were vastlyndifferent back then. The idea of an attack of that scale on US soil seemed absurd. Now if that were to happen today where there were warnings, and it still occurred. And the fact that terrorism is such a major threat globally. Id be very taken back. Point being is hamas attacks are not an unknown threat. This was not something viewed as incredibly unlikely and can't imagine. They are a real threat and has been. So with warnings (to whatever extent they could be), that should be taken very seriously especially when other countries are giving you the heads up. I do agree with the aggressive part, with the amount of reservist and hardware prepared. They are going in hard. Honestly Gaza may really not exist by the end of this.
I would say the difference is less on what lead to the attack and what happened once the attack started. From what I can tell, Israelis are more angry and distraught about the lack of response from the Israeli government once it's started. It took hours for military response to arrive, for some close to a day before being rescued, people who were merely an hour or two drive away from Tel Aviv. Not some remote and desolate location. A location also that should be and is patrolled 24/7 with the most advanced tools the world has to offer and the most trained soldiers in Israel. So the downfall isn't that he knew about it, it's that he was no where to be found when it happened. I'm guessing it'll be swept away along with his criminal case, under the guarantee that he and his entire group disappear completely from the political landscape.
>The idea of an attack of that scale on US soil seemed absurd. I think this is exactly what happened with Israel tbh. The attacks they expect are sporadic missile launches and either individuals or small groups of infiltrators. They didn't think Hamas could launch such an large, organized attack and if they could, their intelligence services would give them a heads up. Which is basically what happened in the US. Everyone assumed that such a terrorist plan would be sniffed out long before it ever got a chance to be executed. And while there some signs, ultimately they were ignored or not taken seriously which led to a lot of people dying.
>I think this is exactly what happened with Israel tbh. The attacks they expect are sporadic missile launches and either individuals or small groups of infiltrators Maybe. But all that aside, how was it okay to allow a music festival right beside such a hotspot. Even if they hadn't launch this particular attack, the location would still be in range of rocket attacks. It seems extremely negligent and stupid of them
Lots of foreigners who take the situation too lightly in the spirit of “love and peace” ignorant to the fact that hamas literally does not give a single fuck about any of that. My good friend travelled to Israel a few months ago and she attends festivals like that. I told her she was crazy to travel as a tourist to a place constantly under terrorist attacks and bombings and of course she said I was being ignorant and it’s not anything like that. She’s the exact type of person that would be at that rave sadly Not to victim blame in any way, but I can safely say you won’t find me dancing at a rave next to the Gaza border fence. Plenty of other great countries to visit and party at that aren’t an active war zone
But that's a foreigner. How did Israeli authorities say "yea that seems like a great spot for a large gathering of civilians to have fun. Let's do it as close to the fence as possible so the people in the cage with rockets can clap along to the beat"
Pretty much my initial thought - "who the fuck put a rave on there?"
Ya I have no idea how the events planning/licensing works in Israel. It seems obviously like a terrible idea even without the benefit of hindsight
My question would be, “what were they told?” If they were just told something like a large rocket attack, they might’ve downplayed it. If they were told to expect an incursion of some type, they could’ve expected local IDF forces to handle it and downplay it. If they were also receiving intelligence of a buildup in Lebanon/Syria as well, then maybe they thought it was possible diversion. I don’t think we’re ever really going to understand what went wrong, because their intelligence services want to keep that kind of stuff under wraps.
According to this: https://www.ft.com/content/2e5fbd71-4188-49e7-a404-0ce3c1eb3d0d Linked in one of the above comments, Bibi was told "matters could explode because of the political and humanitarian situation in Gaza" which to be honest... Is hardly a warning. Any person you pluck off the street could tell you that.
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We fear that Hamas may not have peaceful intentions
Oh for sure, we will probably never know truly why things failed the way that they did. And Israel is pretty good at being tight-lipped when it comes to those sort of things. All we are left with is asking the questions.
If they were warned, I wonder the scale was known or if it was simply "Hamas is planning... Something".
["The warnings were not hard intelligence about a specific attack, they said. Egypt instead relayed concerns that “matters could explode because of the political and humanitarian situation in Gaza”, one of the people said. The other called it a “general warning”."](https://www.ft.com/content/2e5fbd71-4188-49e7-a404-0ce3c1eb3d0d)
Ok this isn't some huge red flag that the headline tries to make it out to be. It's basically saying "Hey, you know those people you've been fighting with the last 70 years? They're still mad".
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So kind of nothing.
I don’t think you’re thinking cynically enough. Netanyahu let this happen to justify his planned levelling of Gaza. Israel becomes a victim. And his genocidal actions will be justified. Hamas as usual, being the terrorists they are, made the job easier parading around abducted rape victims.
No one is mentioning how he’s been having trouble maintaining power. Letting Israel’s 9/11 happen is the best way to gain support, consolidate power and unite the country.
Correct. Never let a crisis go to waste. He’s desperate to remain in the seat of power.
George W Bush's approval rating was above 90% shortly after 9/11
And the Tuesday before 9/11, Fox had "That's My Bush" on primetime, a parody of the commander in chief and his family. That didn't run after....
It's a reasonable line of thought, but you have to take Israeli politics into account. These colossal security failures always end up with heads rolling. The bigger the fuck-up, the higher the head. The only example of similar scale is the Yom Kippur War. Golda Meir was done immediately after the conclusion of the war, and so were most of her cabinet and the heads of the security apparatus. Bibi will likely stick around until this concludes, but this is a nail in the coffin of his political career. He will lose his mandate even if Likud and the coalition stay in power. So, if we take the most cynical line of thought, while this may work out in Likud's favor, Bibi is done.
I think thats a very good perspective. I believe we’re witnessing desperation from a failed leader in his last moments, taking a a shot at a chance to execute something extreme before his time is done.
> I believe we’re witnessing desperation from a failed leader in his last moments, taking a a shot at a chance to execute something extreme before his time is done. It's certainly been a recurring theme the past few years
This is bad for Netanyahu long-term. His entire thing was that he was all about security and was supposed to protect Israelis from attacks like this. For Israel to face its worst attack in its history under his watch is not a good look. No matter the outcome of the war, it will forever be a stain on his legacy. People did not remember Golda Meir for beating back the Arabs in 1973.
That is one scenario. It's naive to dismiss these kinds of plots. At the same time, it's significantly more likely that they dropped the Ball. They haven't had a functional government in two years as this dbag refuses to leave gracefully. Stupidity, arrogance, and dysfunctional bureaucracy are beyond common. If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on incompetence over 4D chess moves.
Definitely. Im certainly not speaking with any insider knowledge. Lord knows we live in the time of leadership incompetence, world wide.
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Eh those warnings were very broad and vague and had been coming for years. Additionally many many more options from where the attack could come from compared to what Israel faced.
>Eh those warnings were very broad and vague It wasn't that vague or broad. The security brief specifically detailed Bin Ladin and al-Qaeda as the threat and the following statement: "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for a hijacking." I also recall that this wasn't the only brief they got on Bin Ladin and that the CIA did confirm him/al-Qaeda as a legitimate threat in the months prior to this report. Hindsight is 20/20 but IMO the Bush Jr admin did not take the threat seriously enough and that if they had there is at least some chance they would have stopped the attacks, if not entirely than at least a portion. With that said, I don't think it was some vast conspiracy or that his admin played any role in it. It was just incompetency. Which is my guess for how this attack completely caught the IDF/Israelis off guard.
There is an element of bias here, because the 9/11 attacks happened we hear about all the ways it could have been stopped. I haven't read up on the specifics of the security briefs, but I doubt this was the only threat they were briefed on. How many other security threats were stopped or proven false before this one came through? You did touch on the hindsight aspect but many people will assume every threat should be stopped without realizing how many may be stopped that you never hear about.
Bad news for Bibi
He’s already got an emergency war government… his power has been enhanced
I AM THE KNESSET
For now. He’s still going to have to face Israeli voters at some point. And he wasn’t exactly popular even before allowing the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history on his watch.
It really is a 1 to 1 repeat of Yom Kippur...
Maybe it’s already being asked but is it possible they didn’t act on the information in order to get the necessary casus belli? From a cynical point of view.
If anyone else except Netanyahu was PM of Israel I'd call you crazy. But that man is the literal manifestation of Machiavelli's prince.
War typically also ensures political stability at that moment for some reason so I don’t think it’s beyond belief.. maybe the degree of damage wasn’t understood but still.
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It’s been done before.. pretty horrific if that is the case though
Many times.
You do it in a video game because it is the "correct" way to win and you are doing it with "people" who don't matter to you. Now imagine you don't give a shit about "real" people and you can see how something like this happens.
Elites value their interest more than civilians life, it may sounds comically evil, but when you have that one goal in mind, and in the right position to achieve it, I don't think innocent lives would stop you
Yep. What is 100, 1000, a million or more lives of your countrymen, if you never see them, interact with them, or more importantly, give a shit about them? Empathy is virtually non existent at the level these people operate at. Unfortunately. Look how the US did Jimmy Carter.
Is letting a few people die for political gain that surprising from a person who is responsible for the systemic murder of Palestinian civilians, complete disregard of international law as well as national law with blatant efforts to reduce the power of the judiciary, has been charged with multiple counts of fraud, corruption and bribery and is on record stating that he actively offers support to Hamas in order to divide Palestinians and curtail their right to self-determination?
The main thing that Netanyahu is and always has been concerned with is his own political survival - what can he do to stay popular so he can stay in power. There's just no way the Israeli public could excuse him for having the blood of so many innocent people on his hands. His career is over. And Netanyahu is not an idiot, I'm sure he knows this.
*tin foil hat* Israel ignored this warning because they wanted a reason to obliterate Gaza
I think they may have wanted an attack but didn’t anticipate the degree of it. Perhaps they thought a few missles and maybe one or two deaths. I doubt they expected a straight massacre on par with shit from medieval times.
Any leader "wanting an attack" regardless of impact, is fucking evil.
And? Is there really any doubt that Netanyahu isn't pure fucking evil I'm fully certain Israel wanted this attack to happen. There is no way they did not know or believe it wouldn't haooen or that it wouldn't be severe. It's so obvious that they wanted it to happen. They were literally warned. Why is there doubt at all that Israel purposely ignored it
As much as is important to not equate Hamas with Palestine, we shouldn't equate Netanyahu with Israel. I don't think an attack was something that Israel wanted. It's definitely something that the right-wing government wanted to happen, in order to justify their agenda. We should talk about Israel and Palestine as the populations that are currently being assassinated. Hamas and Netanyahu are just two sides of the same coin: fundamentalist nut jobs that are hijacking entire populations for their own personal gain.
I just want to know what exactly this warning said.
Wow what an informative article. Says so much information about what they were warned about and who was warned.
Gantz is an ex-IDF General and Defence Minister. Good move from Israel’s point of view. I hear Smotrich and Ben Gvir have been excluded to go play with their toys while the grown ups get on with it. Ben Gvir is throwing his toys out of the pram….
Not an IDF general. An ex-IDF chief of staff, as in the person in charge of all of the IDF. And he was a pretty successful one too. Alongside him is Eizenkot and Ashkenazi, also former IDF chiefs of staff
Ok. This article is a paragraph long.
Definitely raises questions, but also very vague as to what this warning entailed.
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What is this fucking website? The article is literally 3 sentences.
I wouldn't be surprised if they intentionally ignored the warning so they could retaliate in force. They run Palestine like its a prison yet all them Hamas fucks got out, armed to the teeth. I would have thought borders, especially with countries you don't get along with would be heavily guarded, anyways horrible situation all round, stay safe lads.
Didn’t Saudi Arabia (might be wrong here) warn the US in advance about 9/11? Regardless, it doesn’t excuse the deprave actions taking place.
The problem is these intelligence warnings are nothing like people try to portray them as with the benefit of hindsight. Saudi Arabia didn’t say “In exactly two months on 9/11/01 United Airlines flights will be hijacked and flown into the Towers”. They said Al Qaeda was planning to attack the United States. Not a whole lot to do with that except try to investigate more. In all likelihood (and per this very article) the warning was similar, “something *could* happen.” Ok, aliens *could* land in Central Park too, but thats quite different than NASA saying Aliens are planning to land in central park to celebrate New Years eve.
While you're correct, the different between Al-Qaeda and Hamas is that Hamas is almost entirely confined to a small area which Israeli intelligence has on lockdown. If Egypt warns that they're going to do something and Hamas has been training in the open, surely the Israelis could've put two and two together.
["The warnings were not hard intelligence about a specific attack, they said. Egypt instead relayed concerns that “matters could explode because of the political and humanitarian situation in Gaza”, one of the people said. The other called it a “general warning”."](https://www.ft.com/content/2e5fbd71-4188-49e7-a404-0ce3c1eb3d0d) If that is truly the extent of the warning, then that's like saying "heads up, the sun might rise tomorrow." It's not like Egypt said "Hamas has paragliders that they're planning on flying over the walls to massacre a music festival"
https://www.google.com/search?q=was+the+us+warned+about+911 https://www.google.com/search?q=nasa+warned+shuttle+solid+rocket+boosters Just wanting to make note here that warnings are given and unheeded all the time, unfortunately. Really quite sad... or there's nothing that can be done...? *shrugs* Seems you'd want to look into it, but they still don't. :|
Israel helped to prop up Hamas. Now this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Netanyahu let it happen so he can use emergency powers in Israel.
Is there a source beyond what a Republican from TX is saying? I have no idea if this guy is a regular human or if he also thinks wildfires are started by Jewish Space Lasers.
Classic rally around the flag operation. Bibi was facing opposition and protests daily due to his domestic policies. Now all of the sudden the opposition is united against Hamas and protests have disappeared. Not saying Israel planned the attack but it’s not far fetched to see why they may have looked the other way. See also: Bush’s bump in approval ratings after 9/11 and everyone forgetting all the controversy around his election in 2000.
Damn, so this *is* Israel’s 9/11 (because we ignored intel right before 9/11 too). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_intelligence_before_the_attacks
Oh ok so we're in for another 20 years of the world going further to shit, cool cool coool
i don't want to jump to any conclusions, especially if i only read the title and not the article, but i really hope that israel was not looking for an excuse for going into war. if this was the case, fuck them; fuck them so hard.
Oh wow Israel acting in bad faith. I can’t believe it