Netanyahu ignored calls to disrupt Hamas finances, claims ex-Mossad official

February 26, 2024 by 7 Comments

Udi LevyA RETIRED SENIOR MOSSAD official has alleged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly ignored, and even frustrated, efforts to stop the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas. This inaction may have enabled the Palestinian militant group to plan, organize and execute Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which killed over 1400 Israelis on October 7, 2023, and sparked the current war between Israel and Hamas.

The allegation was made by Udi Levy, a 30-year veteran of the Israeli intelligence community, who served as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces before being appointed to head the Economic Warfare Division of the Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency. During his tenure in the Mossad, which ended with his retirement in 2016, Levy was a member of Task Force Harpoon, which aimed to disrupt the flow of funds to militant Palestinian groups, including Hamas.

Last week, Levy told the BBC’s flagship investigative television program Panorama that Task Force Harpoon had identified around 40 companies in the Middle East and North Africa, which were part of Hamas’ investment portfolio. These companies, based in countries such as Sudan, Algeria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, were active in the areas of real estate, mining, construction, and tourism, among others. Some of the companies were even directly controlled by Hamas, said Levy.

The income from these financial investments allowed Hamas to use “billions, not millions” of dollars to build its military infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, according to the former Mossad official. That investment income was supplemented with direct cash infusions from Iran and Qatar, which in some cases arrived monthly through special envoys, according to Levy. He added that Turkey was “a critical focal point” in Hamas’ money network, as it served as a financial hub for the militant group’s holdings.

Levy told the BBC that he personally advised Netanyahu to “target Hamas’ finances” and explained to him that “Israel had the means to crush Hamas by using only financial tools”. However, Levy claims that, not only did the Israeli prime minister ignore Levy’s advice, but he proceeded to shut down the Mossad’s Task Force Harpoon. This is not the first time that Levy has made these claims. In December 2023, he told The New York Times that Task Force Harpoon analysts were so frustrated with the Israeli government’s inertia, that they resorted to “uploading some documents to Facebook” in hopes that the Israeli authorities would be forced to take action once details about Hamas’ finances were disclosed.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 February 2024 | Permalink

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Analysis: Israel underestimated Hamas while overestimating its own capabilities

January 10, 2024 by 10 Comments

IDF IsraelTHE OCTOBER 7 ATTACK on Israel was a total surprise. There was no warning. There were very few signs of a possible attack. Israeli intelligence evaluated these signs as elements of a routine military exercise by Hamas, and even assessed them as parts of an imaginary scenario. It therefore gave no warning to those Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) units that were stationed on the border with Gaza. Meanwhile, what we know about the intelligence failure of October 7 will likely pale before what the commission of inquiry will reveal once it is established. That was precisely what happened in the case of the Agranat Commission of Inquiry, which made significant revelations while investigating the intelligence failings of the IDF in the run up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

In the eyes of the Israeli generation of the Yom Kippur War, the possibility of such a failure happening again was unthinkable. Yet there is a significant difference between the events of 1973 and the events of last October 7. In 1973 the intelligence failed, but the IDF reacted quickly and acted efficiently. This Q Quotetime, in the first two days of the conflict the IDF was confused and acted without direction, in the apparent absence of relevant action plans for what to do in the event of a massive invasion. The IDF was clearly not ready for such a scenario.

Recently, another important piece of information about the intelligence failure of October 7 was revealed. It was reported that, two months before the surprise attack by Hamas, information was received from an agent handled by the Israel Security Agency (ISA) in Gaza, with a “very high” reliability level. The agent allegedly reported that Hamas was planning “a major move in the week after Yom Kippur”. Yet that warning was not marked as significant; the assumption was that, if the warning materialized, it would be corroborated with additional intelligence. It was thus kept from higher levels of command and from Israeli Military Intelligence (IMI). The ISA did not deny the report, saying instead in a statement: “Focusing on one specific piece of news or another does not reflect the intelligence picture at the time”.

Given the high number of casualties and the horrendous destruction that resulted from the October 7 attack, many Israelis, including some in the security establishment, feel that it is far too long to wait until a commission of inquiry is established and publishes its conclusions. It will likely take at least two years Q Quotefor those conclusions to become public. What is to be done in the meantime? There is public pressure to launch the inquiry soon.

Recently the State Comptroller of Israel, Matanyahu Engelman, announced that he has begun to investigate the intelligence failure. This is an appropriate move. However, with all due respect to the state comptroller’s inquiries, we know from previous experience that his findings have no teeth. For instance, in the context of Hamas, the state comptroller’s review of Operation TZUK EITAN (the 2014 Gaza War) was published in early 2017. It revealed serious instances of misconduct in the intelligence community dating several years prior to the operation. Yet this severe criticism passed below the public’s radar and was practically ignored, while no actions were taken against IDF and ISA security personnel that were shown to have acted irresponsibly.

I would like to point to a number of stronger factors that led to the tragic complacency of October 7, drawn from the field of psychology. It relates to how a country (mainly through its intelligence analysts) perceives its enemies and how this affects the evaluations of said enemies. We know that there was a conception on the Israeli side that Hamas had no interest in attacking Israel at this stage. It seems that the State of Israel underestimated Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, based on the available evidence of Hamas and Sinwar. Read more of this post

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The OSINT factor in Hamas’ operational success and Israel’s intelligence failure

December 5, 2023 by 1 Comment

Hamas GazaIT HAS BECOME CLEAR that Hamas had up-to-date intelligence on Israeli targets prior to the attack on October 7, 2023, the largest and most devastating terrorist attack in Israel’s history. Hamas did not have access to clandestine information sources but rather relied on open-source intelligence (OSINT) to understand the structure and weaknesses of Israel’s defense system along the border fence. In addition to publicly available maps, Hamas meticulously gathered online intelligence about specific sites within the Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.

It is also possible that some of the intelligence came from human intelligence (HUMINT) sources, largely through Gazan workers who were employed in Israel. Moreover, Hamas had access to constant Israeli media broadcasts, which supplied them with invaluable intelligence on the border communities and adjacent military facilities, as well as on communities that were located further to the north and east. Although the Israeli state exercises censorship in the Q Quoteinterests of national security, the public’s ‘right to know’ purview is substantial. Thus, significant amounts of information are available online.

In assessing the behavior of Hamas in recent years, one can observe that it did not act as a terrorist group for quite some time. Rather, it operated as a government organization, while monitoring its enemy and waiting patiently for an opportune moment to attack. Simultaneously, Hamas utilized disinformation tools to conceal its attack plans. It trained its fighters within commando units that employed information effectively and relied on actionable intelligence, rather than chance. This can be observed from interrogations of Hamas members who were detained by Israeli authorities after October 7. In one example, Hamas used detailed maps of Israeli communities near the Gaza border, which are available on Google Earth, to plan its attacks of October 7. Printouts of these maps were found among the belongings of Hamas assailants that were killed during the attacks.

Some in Israel are now advocating for increased protection of OSINT, particularly for Israeli sites related to security, including civilian first-response units, defense systems guarding settlements, and civil technological assets. However, implementing such measures within the current framework of Israel’s open society seems challenging. Despite the known importance of OSINT to Hamas and its potential risk to Israel’s security, significant changes in this regard may not occur, as they could impact the country’s democratic values. However, it is still possible to improve the quality of security censorship regarding sensitive civilian information that can be used by adversaries. Such moves would include protecting databases, limiting information relating to the addresses of senior officials, or putting in place stricter policies on the movement of Gazan workers in Israel.

Contrary to Hamas’, Israel’s OSINT systems underperformed in the run-up to the October 7 attacks. That was so especially after the central OSINT unit of the Israeli Military Intelligence was dissolved, for reasons that remain to be investigated. CNN was among many news outlets that have revealed how Hamas advertised its military drills on social media, but somehow Israeli intelligence failed to pay attention to them.

When Hamas openly declared its intention to attack communities near the Gaza border, and trained its units for that purpose, the Israeli intelligence community, including the IMI and the Israel Security Agency (ISA), underestimated its real attack capabilities based on OSINT materials. This miscalculation stemmed from incorrectly assessing Hamas’s capabilities and overestimating the Israel Defense Forces’ ability to swiftly respond and prevent the attack on civil and military targets. Unfortunately, this assessment proved to be a significant mistake.

The effective use of OSINT lies at the heart of Hamas’ operational plan to attack simultaneously several Israeli targets and to cause extensive damage. It appears that Hamas was able to utilize the OSINT factor to its maximum extent, thus adding significant value to the success of the attack.

► Author: Dr. Avner Barnea | Date: 05 December 2023 | Permalink

Dr. Avner Barnea is research fellow at the National Security Studies Center of the University of Haifa in Israel. He served as a senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is the author of We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books, 2021).

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US is helping Israel detect intelligence blind spots and locate Hamas leaders: report

December 4, 2023 by 4 Comments

UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES are actively assisting Israel identify the intelligence blind spots that led to the security failure of October 7, and locate senior Hamas leaders, according to the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Representative Mike Turner (R-OH) said during an interview on Sunday with CBS’s Face the Nation that American intelligence agencies are “working closely” with the Israeli intelligence community.

The purpose of the collaboration is to find intelligence “gaps” and identify the “institutional bias that resulted in” Israeli intelligence officials dismissing warnings about a potential attack by Hamas in the months leading to October 7. The United States is also providing Israel with “selective […] information” about Hamas targets, including senior Hamas officials. Turner noted that “we are not just providing direct access to our intelligence” and that “caution” is being used in determining the types of intelligence that United States agencies are sharing with Israel.

Turner’s comments come less than a week after The New York Times reported that Israeli intelligence had managed to obtain Hamas’ detailed battle plan for the October 7 attack in 2022. It was a 40-page document, written in Arabic, which allegedly contained the precise details of Hamas’ attack plan, but did not specify a date. Senior intelligence officials dubbed the battle plan “Jericho Wall”, but dismissed it as purely aspirational and thought it too elaborate to be carried out in practice.

On November 27, Israel’s Channel 12 television revealed a series of leaked emails from officers in Israel’s 8200 Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces. The emails reportedly raised concerns about an impending attack by Hamas in southern Israel. According to Channel 12, the Unit 8200 emails provided a “highly detailed warning” about Hamas’ plans to take over Israeli villages near the Gaza Strip and kill hundreds of Israelis. However, senior military officials dismissed the plans as “an imaginary scenario”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 04 December 2023 | Permalink

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Analysis: Israel’s misjudgment of Hamas caused the October 7 intelligence failure

November 10, 2023 by 4 Comments

Gaza StripSINCE OCTOBER 7, WHEN Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, many more details about the intelligence failure have emerged. It appears that Israeli intelligence officials have warned for years about military exercises held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which have included practice raids on cities deep inside Israel. However, the Israel Military Intelligence (IMI) did not heed to the warnings, because it considered Hamas operationally incapable of carrying out such raids. Instead, the IMI estimated that the Hamas leadership aimed to arrive at a settlement with Israel. That seems like the result of a highly successful disinformation operation, which added significantly to the effectiveness of the sudden attack on Israel on October 7.

It now appears that several months after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Operation Guardian of the Walls, which targeted Hamas in the Gaza Strip in May of 2021, Hamas began to train for a large-scale operation against Israel. However, the IMI estimated that Hamas was not capable of attacking aQ Quote large number of settlements simultaneously. It also believed that such an operation would go against the spirit of Hamas leadership’s spirit intention to settle with Israel.

As early as 2022, the IMI had analyzed videos of Hamas’ military exercises, which Hamas itself had made available on social media networks. Meanwhile, the intelligence information that emerged from the Gaza Strip showed that the professionalization of Hamas’ military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was improving. However, IMI officials rejected the need to build an operative response to the mass-attack scenario that these exercises pointed to, because they saw them simply as exercises.

Israeli intelligence also analyzed the communications discourse between the commanders of Hamas, which it had acquired through intercepts. It purportedly indicated that Hamas intended to carry out raids on Israeli communities located near the fence between Israel and Gaza, but also on targets located deeper inside Israel. The communications discourse also indicated that such attacks could occur, not only using tunnels, but with incursions above ground and even through aerial methods.

One of the methods that Hamas trained on, and one that was known to Israeli intelligence, focused on disabling the highly sophisticated observation posts, sensors and remote-controlled machine guns, which Israel has installed along the border fence with the Gaza Strip. The purpose of these exercises was to enable an attack on the fence and overtake it these sophisticated tools with Hamas operatives, thus effectively blinding the Israeli forces. However, Israeli authorities made no effort to prepare for such a scenario by protecting these installations.

The broad picture that is emerging raises serious questions about why the IDF did not take a reasonable course of action against Hamas’ operational plan —and why it failed to do so despite being aware of the intensity of the Hamas exercises, and despite being aware of the group’s stated intentions. Q QuoteIndeed, a preventive course of action should have been in place even in the absence of specific intelligence warnings —if only to enable the IDF to repel a surprise attack by Hamas. There was no need to estimate what Hamas would do in order to prepare for a surprise attack.

Yet it is now patently obvious that there was ample intelligence about Hamas’ intentions. The latter were both apparent and known. Even without the wisdom of hindsight, it is clear there was enough intelligence to enable Israel to act in a timely manner against Hamas’ plan. Yet Israel severely misjudged Hamas’ intentions. In retrospect, it appears that ample intelligence about Hamas’ intentions had been gathered, that the IMI and Shin Bet were severely underprepared for a surprise attack, that the precise details of Hamas’ attack were missed, and that Hamas’ intentions were misjudged. These are the reasons why Israel was caught unprepared and suffered a catastrophic surprise on October 7.

► Author: Dr. Avner Barnea | Date: 10 November 2023 | Permalink

Dr. Avner Barnea is research fellow at the National Security Studies Center of the University of Haifa in Israel. He served as a senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is the author of We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books, 2021).

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In entering Gaza, the IDF will be facing not just Hamas, but Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’

October 23, 2023 by 1 Comment

Hamas GazaARGUABLY NO COUNTRY BENEFITED more from the American invasion of Iraq than the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a war that lasted over a decade, Washington spent over $2 trillion of its own funds to eliminate one of Iran’s most powerful regional adversaries. In the process, the invasion facilitated the rise of Iraq’s militant Shia movement, which today forms the core of the Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). Although it is technically an auxiliary branch of the Iraqi security forces, the PMF regularly looks to Tehran for guidance.

The PMF belongs to what Iranian leaders refer to as the ‘Axis of Resistance’ (mehvar–e moqâvemat in Farsi), a term that denotes the extraordinary expansion of Iran’s influence in the Middle East and Central Asia in recent years. In addition to the PMF in Iraq, the Axis of Resistance incorporates an international coalition of dozens of armed groups, militant factions, Shia tribes, and political parties. They range from the Houthis in Yemen and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, to entire branches of the Syrian Armed Forces, and even Shia militias in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain. The coalition also includes a complex mosaic of armed Palestinian groups, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and —increasingly after 2018— Hamas.

These actors are certainly disparate, and often contrast with each other. For instance, relations between Hamas and the Syrians have been strained for years. All of them, however, are united in their common anti-Western stance and contempt for pro-Western states in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Israel. Moreover, their ties under the Axis of Resistance umbrella remain informal and relatively loose. However, they all receive support —including funding and training— from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces that protects and promotes the ideological inheritance of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Since 2011, the IRGC has viewed the Axis of Resistance as a vital element of its asymmetric military strategy. Its purpose is to help Iran successfully confront its much stronger adversaries, two of which —the United States and Israel— are nuclear-armed. That is precisely why Tehran has invested nothing short of a fortune to transform Hezbollah into what experts describe as “a force multiplier” that can give Israel a run for its money. In 2014, Tehran launched a similar effort in the Gaza Strip, initially with Palestinian Islamic Jihad —a group that, very much like Hamas, emerged out of the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood in the 1980s.

The financial arrangement between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iran alarmed Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2008. Over time, however, Hamas too began to flirt with Iran’s Axis of Resistance, enticed by the lucrative funding and training opportunities offered by Tehran. By 2020, Hamas was actively engaging with the IRGC under the Axis of Resistance umbrella. To a significant extent, the operational sophistication of the October 7 attack on Israel, which was jointly led by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, provided clear evidence of Iran’s patronage of these two militant groups. Because of Iran, the Palestinian armed factions in Gaza are today better-armed and better-trained than at any time in the past. They will likely demonstrate that in the coming days or weeks, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) begin their ground offensive on Gaza.

The big question, however, is how the other components of the Axis of Resistance will respond to the impending IDF attack. Read more of this post

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Analysis: How Israeli Intelligence Failed to Anticipate the Hamas Attack

October 16, 2023 by 1 Comment

Hamas GazaSEVERAL DAYS HAVE PASSED since October 7, the day when Hamas stunned Israel with a surprise attack against several settlements near the Gaza border. It is now clear that Israeli intelligence was in possession of warning indicators about the attack, and that these indicators were misjudged.

The IMI and ISA Assessment

It is important to note that the intelligence division of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), known as Israeli Military Intelligence (IMI), and the  Israel Security Agency (ISA), have been monitoring Hamas for years. These two agencies are believed to have conducted a situation assessment approximately two weeks before the October 7 attack. The assessment concluded that Hamas was deterred and had no interest in changing the status quo by attacking Israel in the short run. This assessment was communicated to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.

It appears that this assessment was not supported by concrete intelligence. The agencies that produced it relied primarily on monitoring the recent behavior of Hamas, including the fact that it was allowing Palestinians living in Gaza to work inside Israel. Additionally, the assessment noted the fact that Hamas was receiving funds from Qatar to help the poverty-stricken residents of Gaza. In retrospect, this assessment appears to have been based on wishful thinking.

The Egyptian Warning

It is now known that Abbas Kamel, Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate, sent a warning to Israel a few days before Hamas’ attack. Kamel allegedly warned of “something unusual, a terrible operation”, which was about to take place from the direction of Gaza. The warning was forwarded to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office. The Israeli newspaper that published this report, Yedioth Ahronot, is known for its serious reputation and quality sources inside the Egyptian establishment. According to the report, Kamel was told by the Israelis that they were focused on preventing terrorist attacks in the West Bank.

Yet, in a speech that Netanyahu delivered immediately after the October 7 attack broke out, he denied claims about the Egyptian warning and claimed that they were fake news. However, American Congressman Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on October 11: “We know that Egypt […] warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen”. Speaking to reporters following a closed-door intelligence briefing on the crisis for American lawmakers, McCaul added: “I don’t want to get too much into classified [details], but a warning was given”. An Egyptian government source also asserted that Egyptian intelligence officials warned their Israeli counterparts that Hamas was planning “something big” ahead of the October 7 surprise onslaught. But this intelligence appears to have been ignored. Read more of this post

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