Fact check: Was Israel really caught by surprise?

In the days following the October 7th massacre of more than 1,300 Israelis, many are questioning whether Israel’s renowned security apparatus was indeed caught by surprise.

The question is being asked by 80% of Israelis, as well as security analysts who place the blame “squarely” on the Israel government. Trump-appointed former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman called it “a large intelligence failure” which he has “never seen before.”

But journalist Daniel Greenfield is not among that group. Greenfield, a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, wrote an article for the center’s magazine Front Page Monday claiming Israel’s government was caught completely unaware by the Muslim invaders from Gaza. Israel did not foresee such an attack, says Greenfield, and those who suggest otherwise — or “truthers”, as he derisively calls them — are fanning “conspiracy theories.”

Here we address Greenfield’s claims:

Without having boots on the ground, Israel was relying on passive intelligence collection and on sensors and cameras, rather than on human intelligence sources and people who were actually paying close attention to what was going on.

It is true that Israel’s border with Gaza is laced with sophisticated technology — some of it classified — including several electronic fences and walls, motion sensors, thermal imaging technology, hundreds of AI-powered cameras, drones, semi-autonomous armed robots, anti-aircraft systems, underground walls and Humvees packed with highly trained IDF troops.

It is also true that these defenses and the border they are designed to protect are constantly monitored by military and intelligence operatives in command centers, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These operatives also participate in daily drills and maneuvers such as the “dawn alert,” which involves both night and day shifts testing all the border’s defenses. According to a former IDF commander who was stationed at the Gaza border, this exercise happens every day during the dawn hours, which is when the attackers invaded.

It is not true, however, that Israel has no “boots on the ground” and does not rely on “human intelligence sources.” As recently as August, Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet foiled a Hamas plot to kidnap an IDF soldier and carry out shooting and bombing attacks. In 2021 the Shin Bet and IDF uncovered a large Hamas network operating in Israel. In addition to the Shin Bet's network of local informants, the IDF's mista’aravim units, whose operatives are trained to masquerade as “Palestinian” Muslims, are known to gather intelligence from within Gaza.

As international security expert Colin Clarke says: “They have had sources inside these Palestinian groups for years.”

As I recently wrote, Israel was nearly destroyed 50 years ago during the Yom Kippur War because key intelligence figures refused to believe that an Egyptian attack was coming even though they had plenty of warning. That was a worse and more unjustified intelligence failure than this one.

This is at best an oversimplification. There were many failures besides interpreting the intelligence, assuming that they actually got that wrong. Israel’s intelligence apparatus and technology were also not nearly as sophisticated and well-oiled as they are today.

Israel knew that something was coming. It sent a small security team expecting to intercept maybe 5 or 7 attackers. Instead, it was overwhelmed by a massive assault that no one saw coming because it was unprecedented.

This is true: according to an Axios report, the Shin Bet did have intelligence about an impending attack and even sent special forces teams to southern Israel to create possible attack scenarios, but Israel’s top brass decided "to not put out an alert.”

As for why it took Israel’s forces hours to respond to the attack, Greenfield says Israel was not prepared for such a large-scale invasion, which reports say involved around 2,500 Muslims:

The IDF was unprepared and caught off guard by the scale of an attack that no one was expecting. It did not have the manpower or organization to quickly respond.

Greenfield cites a report from the Jerusalem Post which says IDF forces began fighting the Islamic attackers at approximately 8:30 AM, about two hours after the invasion and after the attackers were well inside Israeli territory. By that time, hundreds of Israeli civilians in kibbutzim and the Nova music festival had already been murdered.

This means that for at least two hours, the invaders went unimpeded by the division of 10,000-20,000 soldiers assigned to protecting the border. The attackers faced no resistance from the many watchtowers armed with remote-controlled machine guns and avoided detection by Israel’s command centers, who would have noticed immediately if communications were somehow damaged.

There are no reports of any shots being fired as the invaders came across the border.

Hours later, Hamas operatives were also able to cross back into Gaza carrying Israeli hostages on dirtbikes.

Israeli Parliamentarian MK May Golan said she has received reports of attackers taking lunch breaks during the massacre.

“How did they know they would have time?” asked Golan. “Why didn't they kill, take the prisoners and disappear? Who really commanded the terror and what did his watch tell him?”

Golan added that she has heard from survivors who dispute media reports that Israel's security forces responded as soon as they could.

“It is a lie that we did not see the fence breached," said one survivor. “We saw and called for help for three and a half hours. They told us it would be okay, they were taking care of them, meanwhile we watched them leave and enter Gaza like on the freeway. It was delusional, like a surreal movie.”

Another survivor recalled, “Our daring rescue stories are a pile of lies. No one rescued us for hours and did not enter the area. We drove alone on the rims in a car with three punctured wheels, we were shot at from point blank range, we made phone calls to the entire world and they answered we were sorry, we don't have a vehicle to enter the line of fire.”

But logistics aside, Greenfield also claims that Israel’s leaders would have no motivation to allow such an attack:

The idea that Prime Minister Netanyahu or top generals would have issued a “stand down” (apart from being horrifying) makes no sense. Before this attack, he was the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. Now he’s been forced to join a unity government and polls show that most Israelis want him to resign. His political career may be over. Likewise that of the top generals. In Israel, they transition into politics. That is a whole lot less likely to happen now.

This summer, Israel was wracked with widespread, sometimes violent demonstrations by Leftists against Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reform. These protests, funded by the Biden administration and George Soros-linked organizations, included calls for his assassination and civil war by Israel’s political elite.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “We now must get to the next stage, the stage of war, and war is not waged through speeches. . . . The real fight will break through these fences and spill over into a real war.”

Ex-Pilot Lt. Col. Ze’ev Raz publicly called for the assassination of Netanyahu and his supporters. “If the prime minister assumes dictatorial powers, he has to die, plain and simple, along with his ministers and followers,” he said.

Hundreds of military reservists swore off their duties in protest of the proposed judicial reform, and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi expressed concern about a revolt in the army’s ranks.

But in the aftermath of this month’s massacre, Israel’s civil unrest has melted away. Netanyahu now sits at the head of a unity government alongside his chief detractors, protests have stopped, and the IDF says 120% of reservists have reported for duty — more than were summoned.

Netanyahu is also not averse to sacrificing portions of Israel’s population for certain causes. In 2021, for example, the prime minister boasted of turning Israel into “the lab for Pfizer” when he offered Israelis as the world’s first subjects for Pfizer’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine.

Therefore, while it is unknown who in Israel’s upper echelons bears true responsibility for the attack, both committed globalists like Netanyahu and his opponents are not without motive.