The New York Times published a bombshell article Thursday that says Israeli military and intelligence officials had obtained a detailed blueprint for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks more than a year before the group carried them out. While it’s unclear if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was aware of the blueprint before the attack, the report is still the kind of revelation that’s likely to deal another blow to Netanyahu’s credibility as a defender of Israel — and further endanger his already precarious political future.
According to the Times, the Hamas battle plan that Israel obtained in 2022 is outlined in a 40-page document that describes in great detail many of the strategies and tactics Hamas deployed on Oct. 7. The document includes plans for an initial burst of rockets to overwhelm and distract Israeli security forces, drone attacks on security cameras and automated border guns, incursions into Israel by motorcycle, paraglider and on foot, and plans to target and take over specific military bases. Hamas carried out all of those plans. The Israeli military and the Israeli Security Agency declined to comment on the matter to the Times; the Israeli military told the Associated Press that “Questions of this kind will be looked into in a later stage.”
To put it lightly, this is all a bad look for the Israeli national security state.
The document is even prefaced by a verse from the Quran that Hamas used in videos of the attack it released afterward. The Times also obtained emails showing that an Israeli intelligence analyst warned that a Hamas training exercise this summer indicated the militant group was preparing for the outlined attack — predicting, presciently, that it appeared “designed to start a war” — but that analysis was disregarded by a higher-up.
To put it lightly, this is all a bad look for the Israeli national security state. Israeli defense officials had already conceded that they failed, catastrophically, in fulfilling…
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