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Israel's intelligence failure is a warning for America's politicized agencies
[NYPOST] Some people are calling it "Israel’s 9/11."

That makes sense, in that Hamas
...one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
’ massacre was a totally unexpected massive terrorist attack with a huge body count of innocent people.

Not as many people died as on 9/11 (though proportionately to Israel’s population it was worse than 9/11 was for America).

Because the assault involved shootings, rapes and kidnappings, it seems somehow more personal than the jets of 9/11.

But there’s one way in which it was identical, and that’s the "totally unexpected" part.

Like American intelligence agencies before 9/11, Israel’s security services were caught flat-footed.

Both American and Israeli officials have said it was a complete surprise.

Israel has spies in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
, of course, but apparently they heard nothing, which is worrisome. Or they aren’t reliable, which is more so.

The United States and Israel both monitor communications there and saw no indication anything was being prepared.

(There must have been plenty of communications, of course, but maybe they used couriers, carrier pigeons or some other nonelectronic means. Electronic spying doesn’t get everything, and people tend to rely on it too much.)

Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog admits there was surprise but wants to look forward, not backward: "Right now, we have to fight a war, and win it, as I said. Later on, we’ll have time to investigate what happened."

That’s probably sensible — though if I were Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I’d have someone lock down the records now — but since I don’t have a war to fight, I have a few thoughts.

We know what the Israeli intelligence agencies weren’t doing, which is getting warning of the attack. So what were they doing?

Well, one thing was organizing protests against Netanyahu, in opposition to his party’s platform of reform aimed at Israel’s Supreme Court.

As a Washington Post headline says, "Israeli spy chiefs led secret revolt against Netanyahu reforms."

"The leaked document labeled top secret says that in February, big shots of the Mossad Spy Service ’advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli government,'" the article continues.

This "direct intervention into Israeli politics by Mossad, an external spy service forbidden from wading into domestic matters," is "a significant revelation."

So the Mossad, whose job is to protect Israel from external threats, was instead monkeying with domestic politics.

Meanwhile,
...back at the precinct house, Don Calamari's lawyer was getting even redder in the face...
 Hamas planned mass slaughter, unmolested.

Was the distraction of the agency’s (illicit) involvement in domestic politics the reason nobody noticed a huge terror operation in the works?

We may get the answer after the investigation Herzog promised, but there are already some lessons for us here in America.

It is a characteristic of every bureaucracy — and intelligence agencies are very much bureaucracies — that it tends to engage in mission creep, and its leadership tends to become increasingly focused on politics as opposed to mission.


Posted by: Fred 2023-10-10
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=680829