(Ken Silva, Headline USA) With the heinous Hamas attack on Israel now almost two weeks old, intelligence officials are beginning to play the blame game as to who’s responsible for the Arab terrorists evading their detection.
As a result, numerous conflicting stories are being leaked from U.S. intelligence agencies to various media outlets, obfuscating what really happened in the leadup to the Oct. 7 attack.
For instance, U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross has reportedly insisted that the U.S. was not devoting “enormous intelligence assets on Hamas, which has never been a threat to us.”
However, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said last week that he was debriefed by intelligence officials, and was told that Egypt warned Israel of an impending attack days before it occurred.
As Tablet Magazine noted, those two reports don’t add up.
“Egypt is a U.S. listening post, which is why it was strange to hear that the Cairo government had given a heads-up about the attack to Jerusalem but not Washington,” the magazine said in an article Monday.
“Obviously if the Egyptians did have something on a major Hamas operation designed to murder hundreds of Israelis, especially while Washington was in the midst of trying to broker peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, they’d have given it to the Americans immediately.”
Tablet suggested that the Biden administration is suppressing information about its foreknowledge of the attack because it would implicate Iran. Tablet cited reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, both having reported that Iran helped plan the Hamas attack.
“The United States can’t possibly have not known about this,” Tablet concluded.
“And that’s what concerns the White House. Not the prospect of a war with a terror state the United States has lavishly funded, but the PR mess that will ensue as it becomes clear … what exactly Washington withheld from Jerusalem about what the Americans knew about the coming attack,” the publication added.
Then, there’s Israel’s role in the intelligence failure.
Israeli military intelligence chief Major-General Aharon Haliva reportedly circulated a letter to his subordinates on Tuesday in which he acknowledged that the corps failed to anticipate the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught from Gaza and that he took full responsibility.
But that doesn’t explain why it reportedly took “hours” for the Israeli Air Force to provide support to responding forces, despite their being based just minutes’ flying time from the area.
The more conspiratorial-minded observers have suggested that Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu allowed the attack to happen to remain in power amidst the corruption allegations hanging over his head.
If that’s the case, Netanyahu’s strategy may have backfired, as his fellow Israelis are more upset at him now than ever before—not only for the intelligence failures, but also for his expansionist settlement policies that inflamed the Palestinians.
“A prime minister indicted in three corruption cases cannot look after state affairs, as national interests will necessarily be subordinate to extricating him from a possible conviction and jail time,” Israeli newspaper Haaretz said in an editorial the day after the attack.
“This was the reason for establishing this horrific coalition and the judicial coup advanced by Netanyahu, and for the enfeeblement of top army and intelligence officers, who were perceived as political opponents. The price was paid by the victims of the invasion in the Western Negev.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
