[acdha]

Don’t forget that governments are big organizations. The Israeli government “knew” in the sense that they were earned by the Saudi and Egyptian governments, and the Israeli intelligence community had Hamas’ plans at least a year before the attacks and widely circulated them, and had specific warnings months and days before the attacks:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-05/ty-article/.p...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-h...

One take on this is that Netanyahu allowed them to happen because he needs to stay in power to delay his personal risk of going to jail, which would be compatible with his subsequent actions to prolong the war, but it’s also quite plausible that this simply reflects widespread arrogance: many reports say the intelligence alerts were ignored because senior officials didn’t believe that Hamas was capable of a sophisticated attack. Their tactical excellence would have fed into this, because they generally do outclass their opponents considerably.

[edanm]

I'm a big Netanyahu critic, as are many in Israel nowadays. And I think he'd do pretty much anything to stay in power, which is at least some part of the reason the war is still ongoing, if not the main reason.

But the idea that he actually knew about this and let it happen, is IMO very, very unlikely. I mean, just from that same pragmatic perspective in which he'd do anything to remain in power - he lost massive amounts of support because of October 7th. He's been able to claw some of that support back, but he's still polling far below where he was before October 7th, and it is very unlikely he will remain in office past the next elections.

[aguaviva]

But the idea that he actually knew about this and let it happen, is IMO very, very unlikely.

Another take is somewhat between yours and that of the parent:

It's not that Bibi "knew" that an all-out massacre was coming on the scale that it actually did. Rather, that he chose to discount the signals he was receiving (that something "big" was in the works), and to downgrade the actual risk to his people. Thinking "Okay, so they might try something, but then we'll just hit back with some heaver-than-usual rounds of lawn mowing. Which will get the message across, and be lots of fun besides."

So in that sense he did "know", in that he could have known if he wanted but his ideology and his blind belief in his insane long-term strategy vis-a-vis Hamas prevented him from seeing what should have been staring him in the face.

Very much like with Bush II and the warnings he got about 9/11 -- but in Bibi's case, apparently the indications were much more specific.

[weatherlite]

Regardless of what Bibi knew or didn't know, the army was totally gone. Bibi is not the chief commander of the army, there is the commander of the South, the chief of staff (ramatkal), the head of intelligence - all were missing in action. Israel's entire understanding of border defense was completely lacking - and we now know that the same issue has been going on in the North. Had Hezbollah wanted to they probably could have created an even bigger October 7th - that's why Israel is now insisting on creating some kind of security zone clean of Hezbollah fighters for a few kilometers in South Lebanon.

[edanm]

The stark truth is that no one in the public really knows, yet, because there still hasn't really been any outside investigation of what happened. Netanyahu is pushing hard against such an investigation, btw.

The little we do know doesn't seem to point to him being a single point of failure - it does seem like there were many warnings, but for various reasons being uncovered now, it looks like several people in the establishment discounted these.

[aguaviva]

Agreed -- we don't know all the details, and most likely it was a group effort, this debacle.

[orwin]

I do too think it's more stupidity than malice, but this is a very rare case of a conspiracy theory that could easily convince me. One, the civilians hit by the 7th october are bedouins, leftists still living in their anarchist commune, and partying teens/YA who wouldn't vote for him anyway. Two, intelligence agencies all knew, they had the plan (according to haaretz), and it is well-known that Egypt send a lot of advance warning (the week when it happened).

The fact that most of the IDF was busy finding ways to "liberate" land in the left bank while it happened to me is a reason why i mostly think it is due to stupidity. It's very plausible, and that's what IDF primary purpose was until last october. By removing people from their houses in the west bank, they allow settlers to take that land (as it is unused), and that's how Israel grow. It was like that that they took my father's (christian) orphanage and school: pretexted the building was too old and needed reparation, put the Sisters and the kids out, destroyed the orphanage, settled the place. Easy. They probably thought the warnings were given to prevent them to build new settlements fast enough, and choose to ignore them.

[edanm]

> It was like that that they took my father's (christian) orphanage and school: pretexted the building was too old and needed reparation, put the Sisters and the kids out, destroyed the orphanage, settled the place. Easy. They probably thought the warnings were given to prevent them to build new settlements fast enough, and choose to ignore them.

I'm sorry that happened to him.

[weatherlite]

> the civilians hit by the 7th october are bedouins, leftists still living in their anarchist commune, and partying teens/YA who wouldn't vote for him anyway.

That's a pretty crazy claim. There were very few Bedouins killed (and how the heck would Bibi know who Hamas was going to kill btw? Hamas could have tried driving straight to Ashkelon or could have focused only on Sderot). Nova party was not a left wing event, right wingers are just as likely to go to raves - I would say the rave was pretty much an ordinary representation of Israeli secular society. Other than that tons of cops got killed, tons of right / center leaning people in the towns near Gaza and so on. And yes quite a few left wingers.

[orwin]

His party polls very low among the youth (that do not vote a lot anyway), i'm not saying that people who go to raves are left or right-wing, i'm just making a claim about their youthfullness. I don't even believe that anyway, i think it's more stupidity than malice, i just wanted to say i understand the people who believe that.

I don't think this is a Netanyahu issue anyway, i think that most israeli leaders, whatever their political leaning would probably have made the same mistakes. Not at least acknowledging "discourse on colonialism" from Cesaire when you have settlers yourselves is to me a grave mistake of the Israeli society. I'm not saying you must agree with most of it, i don't, or that it apply 1 for 1, it doesn't, but acknowledgement this text exist and trying to draw parallels and do a self-criticism is a very good way to limit the impact of colonialism on your own population and (especially in this case) leadership.

[acdha]

It’s too conspiratorial for my tastes, too, but I think you have to at least evaluate it given how much advanced notice they had. It certainly wouldn’t be unprecedented for someone to think they could spin things in a more favorable direction than turned out to be the case.

That said, if I had to bet my money is on simple arrogance. When you’re that consistently outclassing your opponent it’s easy to assume that’s always true as opposed to to _mostly_ true. We had similar problems with 9/11 where FBI offices were playing internal political games because they just weren’t serious enough about major domestic attacks.