[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.