Israel Ignored Highly Detailed Warnings of Hamas Attack For Months

[PeterRS]

No, that's not the claim of Palestinian or other peoples. It is the claim of an increasing number of Israel's own Defence Forces and reported in Israel's own media. The claims were repeated in yesterday's Guardian newspaper.

Israel’s military and intelligence officials were given a highly detailed warning that Hamas was actively training to take over kibbutzim on the Gaza border and overrun military posts with the aim of inflicting substantial fatalities, according to reports in the Israeli media.

The claim made by Israel’s Channel 12 on Monday evening was based on leaked emails from the Israeli military’s 8200 cyber-intelligence unit discussing the warnings.

Those emails revealed that a senior officer who reviewed the intelligence considered the danger of a massive surprise attack by Hamas across the Gaza border to be “an imaginary scenario”.

The hugely embarrassing leak describes in shocking detail what would turn out to be key elements of Hamas’s planning for its massacre of 1,200 Israelis on 7 October, including that Israel spotters were aware of senior Hamas officials present as observers during training preparations.

According to the leaked emails, Hamas went as far as giving the mocked-up kibbutz used in training a name and even practised raising a flag over its synagogue.

Plans were also intercepted that discussed overrunning a border military base and killing all of its occupants.

While much of the focus of recent scrutiny for the intelligence failure before the 7 October attack has looked at what information was available to senior political and military figures, including Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the new leaks and briefings suggest serious failings within the Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence reporting and distribution system as well.

The source of the warning is a highly respected career military intelligence NCO identified in Israeli media reports as V who warned her chain of command during the summer that Hamas was planning a large-scale incursion.

Further emails leaked to Channel 12 suggest the initial warning was corroborated a few days later with evidence that other Hamas units were involved in similar training aimed at apparently different targets.

Some officials appear to have been impressed by the intelligence but a senior intelligence officer who reviewed the material in July was more sceptical and suggested it was necessary to distinguish between what Hamas was doing for “show” and what was “realistically” the purpose of the training.

In another subsequent email, a colleague of the soldier who gave the initial warning said they emphatically disagreed with this assessment, while V herself suggested they were seeing a concrete “operational plan without a timetable for implementation” and that Hamas was planning for a “big event”.

Other very senior officers, including the head of the 8200 unit, have suggested in briefings to Israeli journalists that they were not shown V’s warning, despite the email chain discussing it . . .

Haaretz described the same training exercise on the mocked-up border kibbutz with reference to the 8200 unit email chain, which it said concluded with a Hamas message from those involved in the exercise saying: “We have completed the murder of all of those on the kibbutz.”

Haaretz described V’s warning six months before 7 October that Hamas had completed training exercises simulating a raid on kibbutzim and IDF outposts on the Israeli side of the border.

“V concluded that Hamas had completed its preparations, because senior Hamas commanders had turned out to view the exercises – something that was also reported by IDF spotters based on the border. Just like the spotters, her warnings were brushed off dismissively,” it said.

“While they were distributed to senior officers, to her own unit and to field intelligence, a senior intelligence officer wrote to her in response, praising her work but adding: ‘It sounds imaginary to me,’ almost exactly echoing the language of the leaked 8200 emails.”

According to this telling of events, V’s direct commander backed up her assessment, insisting it was a real exercise and not a display. The warnings were reiterated by the soldiers involved a few weeks before 7 October when an unnamed senior intelligence officer visited their base and the intelligence was presented to him.

Despite the warnings, however, even of the eve of 7 October, when senior officers discussed the prospect of an imminent Hamas attack, senior officers in the IDF were describing the evidence as “weak”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-military-had-warning-of-hamas-training-for-attack-reports-say

The BBC has reported that training for the attack on Israel had started as far back as 2020 with Hamas joined by five other armed Palestinian groups.

BBC Arabic and BBC Verify have collated evidence which shows how Hamas brought together Gaza's factions to hone their combat methods - and ultimately execute a raid into Israel which has plunged the region into war . . .

Brigadier General Amir Avivi, a former IDF deputy commander in Gaza, told the BBC: "There was a lot of intelligence that they were doing this training - after all, the videos are public, and this was happening just hundreds of metres from the fence (with Israel)."

But he said while the military knew about the drills, they "didn't see what they were training for".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67480680

[Department_Of_Agriculture]

They ignored the evidence because they wanted the massacre to happen. They wanted the massacre to happen because that piece of shit Binyamin Netanyahu is facing criminal charges for bribery and fraud in three separate criminal cases in Israel and was facing the risk of his government collapsing. A nice little slaughter and war was precisely what he thought would turn him from criminal to hero with his "heroic" response. After all, what are a few thousand dead Jewish and Palestinian kids compared to the greater good eh?

Of course it goes deeper than that. This piece of shit, who calls himself by the false name "Netanyahu" to pretend that he has some ancestral connection to the region, has long sought the elimination of the Palestinians and to completely destroy any possibility of a real Palestinian state. This nice little massacre that he knowingly permitted provided precisely the excuse that he needed to put his bloody plans into action. Palestinians weren't told to move from North Gaza to southern Gaza for their own protection; they were ordered to move so that North Gaza could be annexed by the Zionists. If protecting civilians had been the goal, they would not have been dropping bombs on kids as they evacuated and they would not have been dropping bombs on kids in southern Gaza.

Alongside that, this piece of shit has specifically attempted to wipe-out the Palestinian Christian community- the oldest Christian community in the world - in targeted attacks. Witness the targeted attack on the ancient Saint Porphyrius Church in Gaza City where the Christians were sheltering. What had they to do with Hamas? Saint Porphyrius Church is the third-oldest functioning church in the world and the existence of this ancient Palestinian community is an affront to those who make false claims of ownership on that land. By contrast, this Binyamim, whose real surname is Mileikowsky, is of Russian and Polish ghetto heritage with no historic connection to the land of Palestine.

The redeeming feature of this tragic episode, though, is how it has woken so many up around the world though. In America, the youth who have long been lied to about what is going-on in Palestine have been woken-up by images of screaming kids their own age being blown apart by bombs and are speaking out and taking direct action. Change is coming. That piece of shit who calls himself Netanyahu allowed the massacre to happen because he thought it beneficial to himself and that it would enable the final obliteration of Palestine. As the truth comes out though, it may prove to be his final doing. I look forward to seeing this rat in The Hague. 

In the meantime, the blood of the dead children, Jews and Palestinians alike, is on his hands and on the hands of those who back him.

[forky123]

Intelligence by hindsight is always 20/20. Intelligence is a bunch of data and educated guesses as to what it means. It's really easy to pull a list of pieces of intelligence that point to something that happened after the event but bloody hard to before the event.

[reader]

This matter is particularly troubling because the warning provided was from a staunch ally that had the assets to collect superior signals intelligence and surveillance monitoring. On the surface it seems incredulous that it would not be taken seriously.

it takes me back to 9/11. A field agent in the Southwest was the recipient of a tip that a group of middle eastern men taking flying lessons for commercial jets. What the tipster said was unusual that they wanted training in take off and flight ops but had expressed no interest in landing instruction. The info was passed on to FBI headquarters in Washington where it was never taken seriously for reasons yet to be explained. 

 

 

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, forky123 said:

Intelligence by hindsight is always 20/20. Intelligence is a bunch of data and educated guesses as to what it means. It's really easy to pull a list of pieces of intelligence that point to something that happened after the event but bloody hard to before the event.

To a certain extent I agree with you - but only a certain extent. What happened in Israel was ghastly and horrific in the extreme. In the light of what is now being discovered and revealed by the israeli media, and particularly the failures of Israel's Intelligence and military services and hence its government, I find it more than appropriate  that it has been called by more than a few "Israel's 9/11".

For those who have actually read the Official 9/11 Report, you will recall that planes flying into the World Trade Centre just would not have happened had someone bothered to connect all the dots emanating from various parts of the country and which should have been perfectly obvious to the intelligence and other services. But in the USA there was not even anyone like the anonymous officer V as in Israel who saw what was happening and did connect the dots. But senior intelligence officers basically did not believe her. Clearly they had not read the Official 9.11 Report.

As more detais are revealed through leaks - there will ALWAYS be leaks - what israel is now doing in Gaza seems increasingly like a "fuck you". "Our intelligence forces made a huge mistake but you Palestinians are now going to pay for it - big time." 

I urge readers to look at another Guardian article, this time from a surgeon who has a practice in London. 

Prof Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon . . . told of horrific scenes at al-Ahli Arab and Dar al-Shifa hospitals as they ceased to function and said he witnessed the use of white phosphorus munitions. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have denied using such weapons.

“Having seen this massacre unfold, the creation of an uninhabitable Gaza Strip was the aim and the destruction of all the components of modern life at which the health system lies was the main military objective,” said Abu-Sittah, who has a practice in west London and has worked in Gaza since 2009, as well as in wars across Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon . . .

 

For six weeks he shuttled between Gaza’s hospitals. It immediately became apparent about half of the wounded would be children, he said. As time passed, medical workers went from treating patients suffering from blast injuries to those exposed to fragmentary missiles, sniper injuries and incendiary bombs – which Israel has denied using.

 

On the day al-Ahli Arab hospital, the oldest in Gaza, was struck on 18 October, Abu-Sittah heard the whistling sound of a missile followed by an explosion. The blast killed hundreds and sparked protests across the Middle East as Israel and Hamas traded blame over the deadly blast.

 

It was a litmus test, Abu-Sittah claimed, for what the IDF had planned to do to the rest of the health system. Following the attack four paediatric hospitals were targeted, he said. Last week Israel targeted the al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals in Gaza’s north, and arrested Shifa hospital’s director and several medics.

 

“There’s a pattern in which the aim of this war was to turn Gaza into an uninhabitable death war zone,” said Abu-Sittah, who witnessed a phone call from the IDF warning the al-Awda hospital’s medical director to evacuate otherwise the hospital would be targeted.

 

Over time medical supplies dwindled and painful procedures were performed without anaesthetic before operating was no longer possible. Patients’ wounds were cleaned with store-bought washing liquid and vinegar, said Abu-Sittah, while others became infected with larvae . . .

Since leaving Gaza 10 days ago, Abu-Sittah said he felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for those left behind.

“My fear is even those who are steadfast enough to stay will eventually leave on their own and we will have what the Israelis want, which is another 1948,” he said.

“This war is the continuation of the 1948 Nakba.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/27/london-surgeon-says-saw-massacre-unfold-working-gaza-hospitals

[PeterRS]

3 hours ago, Department_Of_Agriculture said:

That piece of shit who calls himself Netanyahu allowed the massacre to happen because he thought it beneficial to himself and that it would enable the final obliteration of Palestine. As the truth comes out though, it may prove to be his final doing. I look forward to seeing this rat in The Hague. 

In the meantime, the blood of the dead children, Jews and Palestinians alike, is on his hands and on the hands of those who back him.

While I do not go as far as @Department_Of_Agriculture, it is perfectly clear to those who have considered Israel's treatment of Palestinians over a long period of time that the Israeli government absolutely does not want a 2-state solution, whatever Netanyahu and his cronies parrot time after time. Yet the Palestinians cannot absolve themselves of blame. Those who attended the 2000 Camp David Summit between President Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat are all very clear that a deal was very close but it was Arafat who killed it. On the other hand, I am reasonably certain that had an agreement in fact been reached, it would have quickly collapsed as Barak's government lasted less than a year to be replaced by the ultra right-wing hawk Ariel Sharon and his fellow believers who have ruled Israel virtually ever since.

I would be delighted if Netanyahu could be hauled before the Internatinal Criminal Court. Unfortunately, Israel does not recognise the Court and I am not sure if that could be possible. On the other hand, after the ghastly massacres in Israel and Gaza, I hope he is kicked out of office very quickly and finally brought to book for his criminal actions he has taken every action to avoid for many years.

In the meantime it seems President Biden could be in considerable trouble in his own country for his unwavering support of Israel, the more so given the Israeli Intelligence failures we are now learning about. Did the USA not have spy satellites over Gaza for the last few years and was it not aware of what Hamas and its affiliates were doing as they rehearsed the Israel raid? After all, these were done in plain sight and were even capured by Hamas on video! Could the USA not have warned Israel? Perhaps we will learn more in the fullness of time.

[EmmetK]

4 hours ago, Department_Of_Agriculture said:

They ignored the evidence because they wanted the massacre to happen. They wanted the massacre to happen because that piece of shit Binyamin Netanyahu is facing criminal charges for bribery and fraud in three separate criminal cases in Israel and was facing the risk of his government collapsing. A nice little slaughter and war was precisely what he thought would turn him from criminal to hero with his "heroic" response. After all, what are a few thousand dead Jewish and Palestinian kids compared to the greater good eh?

Of course it goes deeper than that. This piece of shit, who calls himself by the false name "Netanyahu" to pretend that he has some ancestral connection to the region, has long sought the elimination of the Palestinians and to completely destroy any possibility of a real Palestinian state. This nice little massacre that he knowingly permitted provided precisely the excuse that he needed to put his bloody plans into action. Palestinians weren't told to move from North Gaza to southern Gaza for their own protection; they were ordered to move so that North Gaza could be annexed by the Zionists. If protecting civilians had been the goal, they would not have been dropping bombs on kids as they evacuated and they would not have been dropping bombs on kids in southern Gaza.

Alongside that, this piece of shit has specifically attempted to wipe-out the Palestinian Christian community- the oldest Christian community in the world - in targeted attacks. Witness the targeted attack on the ancient Saint Porphyrius Church in Gaza City where the Christians were sheltering. What had they to do with Hamas? Saint Porphyrius Church is the third-oldest functioning church in the world and the existence of this ancient Palestinian community is an affront to those who make false claims of ownership on that land. By contrast, this Binyamim, whose real surname is Mileikowsky, is of Russian and Polish ghetto heritage with no historic connection to the land of Palestine.

The redeeming feature of this tragic episode, though, is how it has woken so many up around the world though. In America, the youth who have long been lied to about what is going-on in Palestine have been woken-up by images of screaming kids their own age being blown apart by bombs and are speaking out and taking direct action. Change is coming. That piece of shit who calls himself Netanyahu allowed the massacre to happen because he thought it beneficial to himself and that it would enable the final obliteration of Palestine. As the truth comes out though, it may prove to be his final doing. I look forward to seeing this rat in The Hague. 

In the meantime, the blood of the dead children, Jews and Palestinians alike, is on his hands and on the hands of those who back him.

Perhaps the most vile, hateful, and ignorant post ever made on this forum.

[forky123]

2 hours ago, PeterRS said:

For those who have actually read the Official 9/11 Report, you will recall that planes flying into the World Trade Centre just would not have happened had someone bothered to connect all the dots emanating from various parts of the country and which should have been perfectly obvious to the intelligence and other services.

The problem isn't connecting the dots. It's that you have thousands of dots and you have to know which dots are real and which order to connect them or you get a mindless scribble instead of a picture. Intelligence services don't go out of their way to miss things and rarely is anything obvious. It also isn't one mind looking at all the information so a person seeing one source may not be the person seeing other bits of information. I think people watch too many movies.

[Mavica]

2 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I urge readers to look at another Guardian article, this time from a surgeon who has a practice in London. 

Prof Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon . . . told of horrific scenes at al-Ahli Arab and Dar al-Shifa hospitals as they ceased to function and said he witnessed the use of white phosphorus munitions. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have denied using such weapons.

On the day al-Ahli Arab hospital, the oldest in Gaza, was struck on 18 October, Abu-Sittah heard the whistling sound of a missile followed by an explosion. The blast killed hundreds and sparked protests across the Middle East as Israel and Hamas traded blame over the deadly blast.

 

It was a litmus test, Abu-Sittah claimed, for what the IDF had planned to do to the rest of the health system.

 

From Human Rights Watch on Nov. 26, 2023:

"Gaza: Findings on October 17 al-Ahli Hospital Explosion

The explosion that killed and injured many civilians at al-Ahli Hrab Hospital in Gaza on October 17, 2023, resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition, such as those commonly used by Palestinian armed groups, that hit the hospital grounds, Human Rights Watch said today."    

[Marc in Calif]

58 minutes ago, forky123 said:

The problem isn't connecting the dots.

The problem was PRECISELY connecting the dots. And the problem was PRECISELY following through on clear, written warnings prepared specifically by the Clinton administration for the incoming Dubya Bush administration.

It was the Bush administration that failed to take the warnings seriously -- or else they were simply ignored and unread. 

[forky123]

10 minutes ago, Marc in Calif said:

And the problem was PRECISELY following through on clear, written warnings prepared specifically by the Clinton administration for the incoming Dubya Bush administration.

Sure, because there's so much trust between administrations. Could you really believe that a Trump 24 administration would pay attention to anything the Biden administration told it?

[Marc in Calif]

10 minutes ago, forky123 said:

Sure, because there's so much trust between administrations. Could you really believe that a Trump 24 administration would pay attention to anything the Biden administration told it?

We're not talking about Drumpf. This was the George W. Bush administration, which was staffed with at least a few very competent people and which still had very competent civil servants in the relevant executive agencies. They deliberately ignored the warnings. 

And don't get me started on Rudy Giuliani in New York City. He and his henchman decided to put their "Office of Emergency Management" HQ at the World Trade Center itself. The NY Fire Department under Rudy's administration had a faulty radio communications system. Radios were not even working for fire responders inside the World Trade Center. And Rudy ignored the many issues of air quality and protective equipment during the cleanup efforts: "The air quality is safe and acceptable."

These guys clearly didn't want to govern to benefit the general citizenry. They wanted to enrich their pockets. 

[forky123]

24 minutes ago, Marc in Calif said:

They deliberately ignored the warnings. 

Yawn, of course they did.

[Travelingguy]

I cannot imagine anyone in Israel wanted this massacre to happen.  And I am saying that as someone who is no fan of Netanyahu

[PeterRS]

9 hours ago, forky123 said:

The problem isn't connecting the dots. It's that you have thousands of dots and you have to know which dots are real and which order to connect them or you get a mindless scribble instead of a picture. Intelligence services don't go out of their way to miss things and rarely is anything obvious. It also isn't one mind looking at all the information so a person seeing one source may not be the person seeing other bits of information. I think people watch too many movies.

I wonder if you have in fact read the Official 9/11 Report. That makes it quite clear that the road to 9/11 had been quite clearly marked by dots, many dots of information which intelligence services had received and in some cases had passed on, but as @reader correctly points out those higher up the intelligence tree paid no attention to them.

It is surely part of the job of intelligence services to analyse all the information they receive, research them and then come to a decision as to which might not be real. Prior to 9/11 - as it seems has also happened prior to the massacre in Israel - too many of the dots were not even investigated. In other words, no research was done. If an intelligence officer learns that there are young men seeking to learn to fly but only interested in take off and in-flight procedures with no interest in how actually to land a plane, that was certainly a huge dot that at the very least should have been investigated. It was not. But who anywhere seriously wants to fly yet has zero interest in how to land an aircraft? Sadly that was not something from a movie.

[reader]

I’ve speculated often at the time how that bit of information wasn’t appreciated for what it was: a red flag.

I was trained many years ago as a private pilot. Airport approach and landing was my favorite part of any flight. Adjusting your rate of decent to end up at the runway threshold at just corrrect altitude was challenging and rewarding. It’s possible that that whoever handled the tip didn’t see the significance but still couldn’t buy that excuse. It was simply too obvious.

Yes, read the report. We’re left to our own devices to fill in the missing pieces.

[Latbear4blk]

9 hours ago, EmmetK said:

Perhaps the most vile, hateful, and ignorant post ever made on this forum.

No way. You are the champion on that field here.

[Latbear4blk]

I think no one looked for this massacre to happen. The IDF and Netanyahu did not ignore intentionally the warning, in my opinion. This is just blatant incompetence, an incident that put into question the legendary super efficiency of the Israel army and intelligence.

That is exactly why their reaction is unacceptable. If the IDF and the Israeli intelligence did their work as they were supposed to, we would not have thousands of innocent Israeli murdered by Hamas. They would have been stopped at the wall, and a few Israeli civilian would be hurt or killed by home made cheap rockets.

Easier than accepting your incompetence and your mistakes is blaming Hamas and the Palestinians. 

[forky123]

5 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I wonder if you have in fact read the Official 9/11 Report. That makes it quite clear that the road to 9/11 had been quite clearly marked by dots, many dots of information which intelligence services had received and in some cases had passed on, but as @reader correctly points out those higher up the intelligence tree paid no attention to them.

It is surely part of the job of intelligence services to analyse all the information they receive, research them and then come to a decision as to which might not be real. Prior to 9/11 - as it seems has also happened prior to the massacre in Israel - too many of the dots were not even investigated. In other words, no research was done. If an intelligence officer learns that there are young men seeking to learn to fly but only interested in take off and in-flight procedures with no interest in how actually to land a plane, that was certainly a huge dot that at the very least should have been investigated. It was not. But who anywhere seriously wants to fly yet has zero interest in how to land an aircraft? Sadly that was not something from a movie.

Yes, many years ago. 

For the rest I'll simply put what I did earlier

13 hours ago, forky123 said:

The problem isn't connecting the dots. It's that you have thousands of dots and you have to know which dots are real and which order to connect them or you get a mindless scribble instead of a picture. Intelligence services don't go out of their way to miss things and rarely is anything obvious. It also isn't one mind looking at all the information so a person seeing one source may not be the person seeing other bits of information. I think people watch too many movies.

Stop using the term Intelligence Services as a singular entity. It's not a hive mind. What one person knows is not automatically known by all. Information will be filtered out at every level by people who have a wider picture though not as detailed. Did IS collectively have most of the dots? Yes. Did they put them together correctly? No. Was this deliberate? Depends what you mean by that. Obviously everyone in the chain of command decides what they will pass on and what they won't. Those are deliberate actions. If people here though mean some person in IS knew when, where, what, how 9/11 was going to take place and deliberately ignored it, they need committing.

I really think people should stop watching spy movies as, for the most part, the complicated (boring) effort over weeks, months or years is always glossed over for the 5 minutes of fame. It's much easier looking back with hindsight at information and reports that came over weeks, months or years when you already know what happened. It's much harder putting it together without that picture and people will get it wrong sometimes.

[PeterRS]

1 minute ago, forky123 said:

I really think people should stop watching spy movies as, for the most part, the complicated (boring) effort over weeks, months or years is always glossed over for the 5 minutes of fame. It's much easier looking back with hindsight at information and reports that came over weeks, months or years when you already know what happened. It's much harder putting it together without that picture and people will get it wrong sometimes.

I suggest you read some of the earlier spy novels by John Le Carre who had himself worked for the UK Intelliigence Services - both the domestic MI5 and international MI6. Le Carre's prose makes it perfectly clear how Intelligence Services need to sift through every morsel of intelligence. Clearly the wrong conclusion may sometimes be arrived at. But at least when 'dots' are passed up the chain, someone must be looking at them much more closely than just assuming there is nothing to them. The USA screwed up. Israel screwed up.

Britain screwed up massively re the Cambridge Spy Ring which operated on behalf of the Soviet Union for decades. After the defection of the first two in 1951, suspicion fell on the third, Kim Philby. But he passed every test and understandably had to resign from MI6. Although a Soviet defector had unmasked Philby as a spy in 1961, he was permitted to continue his job as a journalist in the Middle East, at the same time almost unbelievably returing to work for MI6. He finally defected to Moscow in 1963.

The last two were elevated to high positions. Sir Anthony Blunt, spy No. 4 worked in Buckingham Palace as Surveyor of the Royal Art Collection. In 1979 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced in the House of Commons that Blunt had been revealed to be a spy for the Soviet Union 15 years earlier. But he had been allowed to continue in his work in return for confessing all he knew.

The fifth member of the 'Ring' John Cairncross had worked as a code breaker at Bletchley Park alongside Alan Turing. He was unmasked at the same time as Blunt, and similarly given immunity from prosecution in return for information about all his spying activites. Having passed on a great deal of secret information to their handlers over such a long period of time and given all the leads that seemingly pointed to both, that they were not imprisoned is a major stain on Britain's Intelligence Services.

But the Intelligence World has changed a great deal since the 1960s. Clearly it needs to change even more in future.

[reader]

37 minutes ago, forky123 said:

 It's much easier looking back with hindsight……

Much easier than looking forward, too.

[forky123]

18 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

I suggest you read some of the earlier spy novels by John Le Carre who had himself worked for the UK Intelliigence Services - both the domestic MI5 and international MI6. Le Carre's prose makes it perfectly clear how Intelligence Services need to sift through every morsel of intelligence. Clearly the wrong conclusion may sometimes be arrived at. But at least when 'dots' are passed up the chain, someone must be looking at them much more closely than just assuming there is nothing to them. The USA screwed up. Israel screwed up.

Britain screwed up massively re the Cambridge Spy Ring which operated on behalf of the Soviet Union for decades. After the defection of the first two in 1951, suspicion fell on the third, Kim Philby. But he passed every test and understandably had to resign from MI6. Although a Soviet defector had unmasked Philby as a spy in 1961, he was permitted to continue his job as a journalist in the Middle East, at the same time almost unbelievably returing to work for MI6. He finally defected to Moscow in 1963.

The last two were elevated to high positions. Sir Anthony Blunt, spy No. 4 worked in Buckingham Palace as Surveyor of the Royal Art Collection. In 1979 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced in the House of Commons that Blunt had been revealed to be a spy for the Soviet Union 15 years earlier. But he had been allowed to continue in his work in return for confessing all he knew.

The fifth member of the 'Ring' John Cairncross had worked as a code breaker at Bletchley Park alongside Alan Turing. He was unmasked at the same time as Blunt, and similarly given immunity from prosecution in return for information about all his spying activites. Having passed on a great deal of secret information to their handlers over such a long period of time and given all the leads that seemingly pointed to both, that they were not imprisoned is a major stain on Britain's Intelligence Services.

But the Intelligence World has changed a great deal since the 1960s. Clearly it needs to change even more in future.

I'm sure it would all have been obvious to you at the time. 

[PeterRS]

8 minutes ago, forky123 said:

I'm sure it would all have been obvious to you at the time. 

I doubt it. I have never been trained as a spy or interpreting intelligence. In one of my first jobs, though, I did have to sign the UK's Official Secrets Act. Although I was only in the job for 18 months, I was shocked to discover quite recently that my obligations under that Act remain in force for my lifetime! Hopefully MI5 and MI6 do not read this forum! 

[forky123]

30 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

I doubt it. I have never been trained as a spy or interpreting intelligence. In one of my first jobs, though, I did have to sign the UK's Official Secrets Act. Although I was only in the job for 18 months, I was shocked to discover quite recently that my obligations under that Act remain in force for my lifetime! Hopefully MI5 and MI6 do not read this forum! 

Indeed, you probably should have read what you were signing as the OSA does indeed last a lifetime. Annoying, isn't it. Unless you are a government minister when, apparently, you can leak with impunity.

Interestingly though, you don't have to have signed the OSA to be bound by it. All UK citizens are bound by its terms. 

[PeterRS]

So we now now that israel knew of the blueprint for the detailed Hamas plans a full year before its ghastly attacks, yet disrgarded them as "aspirational" and :imaginary". The plans were exactly as happened a year later. Israeli Intelligence even code-named the attack plans "The Jericho Wall." The senior officials in the IDF just did not believe Hamas had the ability to carry out the plan. Prime Minister Netanyahu was apparently warned "again and again and again" about the iklihood of such an attack.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/12/01/nyt-israel-intelligence-hamas-attack-blueprint-ac360-vpx.cnn