The Israeli military had advanced notice about a plan by Hamas to raid southern Israel including accurate predictions about the number of hostages the group would seize, a new report has found.
The internal report shared with Gaza Division commanders, entitled ‘Detailed raid training from end to end’, was released on 19 September and found that Hamas fighters had been training for a huge assault on Israel, a warning that was ignored by officers, Israeli broadcaster Kan reported.
Three weeks later, Hamas and its allies launched a series of assaults into southern Israel, killing 1,190 Israelis and taking 251 captives back to Gaza, sparking a brutal Israeli war on the Palestinian enclave that has seen more than 37,000 people killed.
“I feel like crying, yelling and swearing,” one of the authors of the report said about the ignored warnings, according to Kan.
October 7 was almost a mirror of how the report warned an assault would play out, even predicting the number of hostages who would be seized by Hamas at between 200 and 250, while detailing how its fighters from its elite units would assault military posts and towns.
The 7 October events remains a hugely sensitive issue in Israel with demands for commanders and politicians to step down due to the collapse of the southern front on that day.
Israel’s High Court issued an injunction on Sunday to suspend an investigation by State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman into the military and Shin Bet over alleged failings that led to Hamas’s surprise attack on 7 October.
That take on Pearl Harbor is not historically accurate though. US Naval command had Japanese radio transmissions as well. It was more hubris and incompetence than some secret desire for an excuse to join the war. The US was already preparing for war with Japan. And Japan was crazy enough to skip straight to attacking US Naval command in Hawaii head-on as an opening move. Whereas US command assumed they’d take smaller targets first and try to stretch the fleet across defending many locations.
Japan ironically was both more and less successful than intended because of US mistakes. US carrier groups were sent west out near Wake Island and the Marshall Islands to cut off the attack that was thought to be coming. But Japan sailed around Midway approaching Hawaii from the North. They even had their planes loop around to fly in from the East to cause extra confusion until it was too late. What they found was less resistance than expected because the carriers weren’t there. It didn’t end up being the kinda suicidal knock out blow Yamamoto was going for.
Congress demanded multiple investigations over the years after. They all bore out a similar conclusion that US command and intelligence fucked up. They went looking for the fight in the wrong place. Assuming the attack on Hawaii intelligence had to be a ruse.
Thanks for setting me straight. I’ll edit my post to reflect that.
All good. It’s a pervasive myth that on the surface seems plausible. There are other examples of what you mentioned that probably were a false flag or manufactured consent. Extending a conspiracy like that to Pearl Harbor takes a lot of credit away from Yamamoto’s strategic genius.