We Were Warned About October 7; Why Didn't We Listen?

This episode is sponsored by our friends Kim Schaefer and Isaac Finkel with profound gratitude in their words for the moral aspirations of the Shalom Harp Institute that manages to embrace pluralism and pragmatism, which are presented with rare humility and humanity. Thank you for your friendship and thank you for those very generous words. You are listening to an art media podcast. Before the Yom Kippur War, Moshe Dayan, infamously, said I'm waiting for a form call from our leaders. They know how to reach me if they want peace, they can call me. Is this really the right time for a Moshe Dayan posture toward the Arab world, which is I'm deeply skeptical, but I'm not showing the door. There is another option and that is that we actually call. Startup creative, powerful Israel is not just a country that has to learn how to defend itself. It's also a country that has to learn how to innovate and initiate. Maybe we have to go from why we didn't listen to why we didn't initiate. Hi friends, this is Daniel Hartman and Yossi Kleina-Lavy from the Shalom Harp Institute and this is our podcast for heaven's sake in collaboration with Arc Media. Today is Tuesday, September 29th and our theme is shouting out at us from every headline in the Israeli newspapers with the possible exception of Israel's Fox News channel 14 for the last week. We were warned, repeatedly, repeatedly. We weren't just warned by the women who were stationed at the border and who were watching radar and listening to various sources of intelligence who told us something's going on. There were so many warnings, there were telephones and all the things that we know about, but now we know more than that. We know that multiple Arab countries who are interesting, who have ambivalent relations, some warmer relations with us, some less warm relationships, the amir of the Emirates, the head of Egyptian intelligence, three times flying here specifically, calling it to meet with Nintendo personally, telling something is about to explode. We also know Israeli intelligence said something's about to explode, but we didn't listen and in our podcast we want to try to delve into why is it that we didn't listen? Of course there's the technical, people will always make mistakes. The imperfection of the human condition, the failures which are inevitable, that we know. But it's astounding that warning after warning was ignored and I think we need to give an accounting. Now in some ways that's what Israeli society is looking for, when it declares its interest in a national commission of inquiry. Because like we're sitting here and we don't understand how one of the most powerful armies in the world couldn't stop a thousand terrorists on Toyota jeeps. Like really? Like this was it and then afterwards a few thousand more, but we couldn't, our army couldn't stop. And the desire for a national inquiry is to try to make sense of why is it that we lost our basic sense of security? We didn't just lose on October 7th, win on October 8th, but lose on October 7th. We've still lost our basic sense of security. And when you look in the newspapers, all there might be an attack on a lot than it might come from, there's a tunnel that's found next to this town in Israel near the West Bank. And is it a tunnel? Is it not? We're hysterical. Because what happened? We still don't understand why we didn't listen. Now there is no doubt that some people want to the purpose of the inquiry is because the Tanyahu owes us, not just an explanation, but needs to be declared as the prime minister who oversaw. He needs to own the failure. Own the failure. And not just the response he, because he constantly says I'm responsible, but to own the failure. And there is a whole anti-Nitanyahu agenda, but it's also a true agenda. What could we say? You're the prime minister. There has to be some consequences. But I think the deeper passion in the country is to try to reclaim something that we've lost. And I don't think we can reclaim it unless we understand why we didn't listen. And so we're not a national commission of inquiry. But it's our job to try to analyze and to try to figure out what's happening. What do you believe is a primary cause for our failure to listen and to heed? So first is the question of why the prime minister didn't listen to the warnings. And then a related question is why did the security establishment let him get away with it? Why didn't they listen to the warnings? I think that the two responses are related, but it's worth unpacking. So looking at Netanyahu, he and we forget this now, but a major selling point to the Israeli public was that Netanyahu keeps things calm. He doesn't go to war. He thinks ten times before sending the army on even a limited incursion into Gaza, let alone Lebanon. And so Netanyahu is the prime minister, as absurd as it sounds today, of that Israeli sentiment that wanted quiet. And peace in quiet. Peace in quiet. Peace, you know, but it's peace with peace in quiet. That's right. It's not peace in quiet. Exactly. That's right. You remember how during one of the Gaza operations, and I think it was 2013, an army spokesperson said, this is not going to be a major war. We've just gone into Gaza to mo the grass, right? And there was a lot of pushback against that phrase. Many, I remember this, many American Jews were horrified. How can you speak so lightly about war in that way? And I remember thinking, and I think most Israelis felt this way, one of what a relief. We're only going into mo the grass. In other words, we aren't going to, as we say in Hebrew, "Lishebara ta'kelim" to go to the end. And we're not going to try to destroy Hamas. And the truth is, we didn't want to. Netanyahu was our prime minister reflecting that mood of disengagement. We had physically disengaged from Gaza in 2005. We had pulled out the settlements, the army bases. Now we were emotionally disengaging. You know, so they'll send a few rockets every so often. We, the Israeli public, wanted to be left alone. We wanted to forget that Gaza exists. And Netanyahu, who is, or at least was, a genius at intruding the national mood and reflecting it, and then reflecting it back to the electorate, gave us what we wanted, which is to say nothing. Don't do anything in Gaza. Now, there were dissenting voices. Avigdard Lieberman, the head of the opposition parties, or El-Betain, or Naftali Bennett, to their credit in retrospect. They were insisting that we take down the leaders of Hamas. They said, "Don't let this fester." I saw an extraordinary clip from Lieberman three or four days before October 7th, walking along the Gaza border, saying something terrible is happening here. It's heating up, and no one is doing anything. Where's the army? For that alone, the man deserves to be the next defense minister. And Bennett, of course, was warning constantly. We need to take down the leaders of Hamas. But they did not reflect the national consensus. They didn't reflect what I wanted, and I have to own that. You know, if we're talking about owning these failures, yes, Netanyahu is the primary father of this failure, and he needs to take responsibility. And so far, he is the only one in the entire security establishment who has not taken responsibility. He's fired the defense minister. He's fired the former head of the Shabbat, the Shunbet. He's fired, of course, the commander of the IDF. The list is long. You mentioned two responsibilities. One is Netanyahu. The other question is what about the defense establishment? What did the defense establishment want here? I think that the defense establishment looked at the history of our involvement in Gaza and said, "What do we need this for?" There is no way we can decisively win. Gaza is lose-lose. And the more hands-off, the better. Think about how many times we had to fight in Gaza going back to 1948. And then the 1956 war was all about Gaza, the terrorism coming from Gaza. And on and on, you know, I remember when I served in Gaza during the first entity father. This was the late 80s, early 90s. What people in the army said was we conquered Gaza in the six-day war in one day, maybe a few hours. And we're fighting this first, this we didn't call it the first entity father, but that's what it was, the entity father. We're now in our second, third year, and we can't subdue Gaza. And that was the sense, you know, and think about Moshe Arons, who was the defense minister for the Likud in the late 80s, early 90s, was the first to say we should think about unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza. Now Arons was a hawk. So there was this sense not only of a dovish, the dovish wing of the military establishment, but this was a consensus leave Gaza alone. And then when we actually left Gaza, then why go back? You know, the Hebrew expression of why stick a healthy head in a sick bed. That was the deal. So we couldn't respond to the warnings because a military response was essentially off the table. We're willing to have not a war, a little operation, but something that would demand a systemic transformation of the reality in Gaza, militarily was perceived to be either unattainable, or the price would be too high, which then led Israeli society to your first point, saying, just leave it alone. We don't want to a Netanyahu channel that it's really interesting, but as I'm listening to you, there's a almost the mirror image of what you're saying is I believe we couldn't listen to these warnings because accompanying each one of these warnings was challenged in a Netanyahu not to attack Gaza, but to actually talk to Hamas. Or think about some political engagement. Here it is. There's something festering. There's something about to explode. Now we know that before them, the Minister of Defense, the head of security, all said that Hamas is identifying a weakness in Israeli society, growing out of judicial reform. And the consequence was, stop the fight. Here it is. You want this complete victory against Israeli society. They're realizing that you're fracturing the country, you're weakening us, and there's someone's going to take advantage. So the result would have been, so stop. Say something. Look for another direction. Stop this internal civil war. But why didn't he? Why do you think he didn't? Because they were drunk with the first full right wing government, which was going to do whatever it wanted. And nobody was going to limit us. And all of these warnings beforehand were perceived as political manipulations. By the way, the original sin of not listening to warnings was rooted in the judicial appeal. Possibly, but it's within the culture that defined Netanyahu's government. And so when they say to him, Netanyahu, stop being a right wing prime minister. He's saying, here it is, the left is coming, the old establishment, the secret government, you know, this whole cabal are threatening me with a catastrophe. And what's the solution to that catastrophe? Change your political agenda, the Emirates and Egypt did the same thing. Because they didn't say to Netanyahu, even though this was possible, you know, bolster your defense. What they said to him is you have to talk to Hamas. Now, Netanyahu, just do we know that? Yes, that was part of the warnings. This is when you're either you have to talk to him, you have to talk, you have to negotiate, you have to do something. But all Netanyahu wanted to do a neighbor come back later and she said, I got Hamas controlled through Katari money. I got that control. But not only was there no military option, there was no political option. We had no political horizon. There was nothing that we were willing to put on the table. There was no political engagement. Netanyahu had already decided that I'm not engaging. I'm not engaging with Hamas. I'm not, this is not the path and his minister, Smotritch and Benvier, would not have allowed any compromise, any weakness, any sense in which we aren't the Adoné Haritz, the masters of the land. Anything else was off the table. So, we were in this strange predicament in which our prime minister and our military establishment are being warned. But all the tools to respond were off the table. Military and political. And then basically, Netanyahu becomes the prime minister of the status quo. So, he becomes the prisoner of the status quo, really. And that's my job. My job is to tell Israel what is, is what we could sustain. I got you. Keep on building a wonderful life for yourself. Keep on advancing economically. Don't look. You're the eighth, seventh, sixth and sometimes fourth happiest people in the world. Live in a crazy world and be merry. I will manage all of that. Now, this is one dimension of why we couldn't hear. But why we didn't even prepare some better defenses. This is one level. I think there has to be another level to explain how we did absolutely nothing. Do you have any thoughts? You know, what haunts me is that October 7th happened literally 50 years a day later to the Yom Kippur War, which of course was the last time we were taken by surprise. The Yom Kippur War haunted our generation. That's right. And the question that has remained unanswered for 50 years was how was it possible? Same thing. And there were warnings. We know again. We had a spy. That's right. An Egyptian who had turned very highly placed. I think he was President Nasar's sudden law. And he purportedly warned us. Something's coming. And we ignored it. And 50 years to the anniversary. And what's even in some ways more surreal is that if you remember the weeks leading up to October 7th, the Israeli media was preoccupied with reopening that question. What went wrong? How could this have happened? Panel discussions on TV, newspaper supplements, looking back on what was called the mechdaal, the failure. And then 50 years almost to the day, we're back with a far worse, a far devastating mechdaal. So it's so uncanny that you just don't know what to make. So the question is so great. So the question is, what went wrong in Yom Kippur? And the general consensus is that we were arrogant. Our power went to our head. We were still in the post 1967 euphoria. Although I have to tell you, as someone who spent a lot of time studying the post 67 period, the euphoria was gone after the summer of 67. You know, this is not a country that lives on euphoria. And we were certainly drunk on euphoria for few months. But then terrorism began and the war of attrition began. This was not a country in euphoria. But the psychological impact of the 6th day war was an exaggerated sense of our own invincibility and contempt for Arab capabilities. That's what remained. It wasn't the euphoria. Do you remember the songs, Nasir Mechakal Arabin? I, you know, all the pictures of the shoes. Oh, that's one of them. That's interesting because that was actually a song that was released during what we call the waiting period before this. Oh, I didn't know that. And so it was meant to raise morale. Nasir had just said, I'm waiting for Arabin. No, the song came out. Nasir is waiting for Arabin. I, I, I, let him wait. Don't move. After the war, that song became even more popular than it really expressed, you know, the euphoria and the contempt. We strut. That's right. That was how it's all strutting people. What began as a song to reinforce a desperately afraid population became instantly a song of strutting. But I don't think that that's what was going on here. I don't think that it was arrogance. Although we certainly underestimated Hamas's potential, we were not underestimating his balance potential. We weren't looking to the right border. We knew that we had very serious enemies. We had very serious threats. And the army for years to its credit was trying to warn the public. We don't have this under control. There are going to be, you remember, serious casualties. If there's a missile war of the cities, there could be thousands of casualties. The army was trying to prepare us. So it was a very different dynamic. But Danielle, I don't think it was arrogance. I think we just didn't want to look at Gaza. And by extension, We didn't want to look at the Palestinians. We were still in protracted post-Second Antifada mode. The Second Antifada ended in 2005. The last suicide bombings were around 2005. But the trauma was so deep and the disgust that Israelis felt toward Palestinian society was so raw that people just avoided the whole question of the Palestinians. The Yasha Council, which is the umbrella council of the settlement movement, didn't hold a single meeting on what actually is the plan. What are we going to do with 3 million Palestinians? And this always surprised me and this is going back to the 1970s and 80s and straight through the 2000s. The settlement movement and in this sense it set the tone for Israeli society. And it goes back to the point beforehand because if you don't have a military solution and you don't have a political solution, what do you do? You just don't talk. And so you just ignore. So you're saying it wasn't arrogance, it was just we just don't see. Self-willed blindness. It's a good term. The Israeli novelist David Grossman said that the Palestinians are transparent and it was too frightening to actually see them because what do you do? Nothing's going to work. We tried peace, we tried war, we tried unilateral withdrawal. Nothing worked. So what do you do? Just ignore them. I actually do think there was an arrogance here. I think there's a difference in the way Israel looked at Hamas as distinct from looking at Qizbalah and looking at Iran. Iran, existential crisis, even though initially the nuclear threat was shared only in the upper echelons. The vast majority of Israelis were too busy living our lives to think that maybe this would come to an end. And it also was just something I don't want to see. Qizbalah has been a major major issue. Two wars or especially the Second War in Lebanon realizing that this is a very powerful group talking about the missiles, the numbers of missiles. This is our great challenge. Hamas. Okay, mostly what are they going to hit? It's southern cities and since most of Israel doesn't live in the southern cities, we had a tremendous tolerance capacity for the suffering of the inhabitants of Jderot and Ashkelon. And if they would go to Tel Aviv, then we would have an operation, bomb them, and declare victory and stop. I think essentially, we never saw Hamas as an existential threat. Sure. There a terrorist organization that they would be able them in Gaza, like, you know, Gaza is like that neighborhood in Argentina. The inhabitants of some primitive burial of they're going to threaten start-up nation. And we build this wall, which we spent billions on and declared now everything is safe. There's no tunnels coming underneath. And on top, we have all these cameras and we have these machine guns. And start-up nation could defeat primitive Hamas. And all we need is a bunch of women sitting on their radar screens and watching. And all will be fine. And it's so amazing. They're not, you know, it's like they don't get to even play on the same soccer field. It's like the way Israel, you know, we just had this great war against Ireland, you know, the boycotting country. We are going to go play soccer. We couldn't even compete. You know, it wasn't an embarrassment. We lost three nothing. But Hamas is like Israel trying to play soccer against Spain. Like, what are you? So I think it wasn't just that we don't want to see you. I think we actually saw you. And the idea that you could take us down, you could take us down. And paradoxically, the number of politicians on the right in particular now, Patel Smotrich, of the religious Zionist party, our minister of finance and quasi minister of defense for civilian affairs in Judean, Samaria. He's saying we're doing the same thing now with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank. And now he's called for war. He's literally we have to go to war in the West Bank. How do you go to war against the population that you're already ruling over? But what he's saying is it's the same concept. You're going on living your life. You've now focused on Gaza. You're there. All the troops are there. And your theory about Judean Samaria is exactly the same theory that you had with Gaza. It's under control. We're going to have the Palestinian Authority. Whatever it is, it's all under control. And he's saying this is the conceptia. That conceptia of belittling our enemy. But there have been warnings from the army as well that we could experience another October 7th on an even greater scale in Judean Samaria. The conversation is there, but Israeli society. So now, and this goes back to our first point, you'll see. The question is, A, what do we want to do? And B, what are the options that are on the table? Right. Because if the option is, okay, he's listed Smotrich. What's the solution to our problems? Capture war bombing. Now imagine Israel in this context now opens up another front, but he's saying there's a conceptio. You're not taking them seriously. They're far more dangerous than you're taking into account. And the proximity and the potential damages far greater. The former General Winter and his party is saying, yes, Israel is enslaved in its old conception. But again, there is no political solution either. So here it is. You're sort of trading water. You see the right has an advantage over the opposition. The right is offering a policy, war, annexation. They are now very much looking at the Palestinians. The opposition is still turning away. And if you listen to the opposition, listen deeply to what the different components of the opposition are saying about the Palestinians. There's basically three camps within this one opposition. There's yeah, Irgolan on the left saying we need to try. We need to revive the political option and we need to have a horizon. And we need to keep the alive the hope of a two state solution on the right wing of the coalition, which is Bennett and Lieberman. No Palestinian state period. They're not saying what the alternative is. They're not explicitly saying annexation. Maybe shrinking the occupation at best. So yeah, managing the occupation. And then you've got Eisenkot, who all he has said so far, is that I've never, ever expressed support for a two state solution. And he's saying that because Netanyahu is trying to turn him into a leftist. And he needs to say that. But what I sense under that that veneer of opposition is circumstances have never seemed to me suitable for two state solution. If circumstances were to change, for example, regional peace agreement, maybe the solid is coming in, then we'll see. So in other words, so you have these three options. No. Yes. And maybe. Now, that's not a coherent voice. And that creates, I think, a certain disadvantage in this debate. Very interesting. But Smotrich and winter who are offering a solution, Netanyahu was not by the way. Netanyahu is doing the same thing. Yes. Yes. Netanyahu belongs in the opposition. He's not saying anything. All he's doing is he's allowing Smotrich to do whatever he wants to do. But Smotrich and winter and bendr when they talk about there is a danger here. They're talking about fighting going to war and expelling Palestinians from the West Bank. This is in winter's political platform that any winter isn't talking about expelling. Oh, absolutely. It's from the West Bank. Oh, absolutely. It's talking about row. No, from God. I don't think so. I hear I'm on the record. Yes. Yes. Winter has put forth a military strategy. It's not that he's saying we have to kick them out. He says, anybody who endangered us, this is part of his theory. When you endanger us, we are going to go to war and we are going to win and anybody who started a war against us is going to be banished. And we are going to resettle and capture until people know that you don't start wars with us. We are going to his whole platform is we are going to achieve the complete victory that Netanyahu promised but was never willing to do what is necessary in order to achieve a complete victory. And I have that path. Now that is also not a solution. So here it is. Israeli society is against us because if you had actually a military solution, you're the one who said it. It's called the occupation. You're sitting there. You know, what is it? The refugee camp in Janine where there was terrorism. It's already been removed and destroyed expulsion expulsion. Expulsion is also expulsion is also a solution. But most Israelis know that this is not a solution. You're not going to expel three million people from the West Bank or Judean Samaria politically, morally, militarily. So what you have is, again, we're in pre-October 7th. We're talking but it's with a slight switch there. I don't want to deal with it or if dealing with it and the solution you have the military solution is not tenable, then where are you again? You're nowhere. You can't talk about it, you don't have any political solutions, and then you're just sort of treading water and you're living on a powder kick. And why we didn't listen, again, when you were talking about the Omm Kippur War, I moved to Israel two years before the Omm Kippur War in 1971. And the first 20, 30 years of my life in Israel, especially the first 10 years, post the war, were so much defined by how did we who won in '67, suffer this type of freeze, brain freeze, it's like we couldn't understand. And so we had our commissions and we found those people guilty, and we solved it how it was your fault. Here we haven't had that release yet, and in many ways I think we're in the same place. And unless Israel either comes up with viable military solutions, not a winter type, I know it sounds nice in books. I'm going to go in, and I'm going to wipe out, and I'm going to kill, and I'm going to banish, and I'm going to level, and I'm going to resettle, and I'm going to claim any space for Israel from the land that dared to threaten me, that's not happening. So if you don't have credible military, and you don't have credible political, we call this, you know, we were warned about October 7th. Why don't we listen? In many ways I think we're in the same place with different nuances, and I think it requires of us to engage. And what you said, and here I'll turn to you for the last comments, none of our political parties, this next election in what three and a half weeks, four weeks. No one is saying anything, and then we'll always find people to blame, but people really aren't saying anything that is either a solution at all, or even dealing with the question, or as a practical solution. You know, building another settlement is not going to solve your problem. Last thoughts, Yossi? No, my problem, Danielle, is that I am a reflection of the opposition, and each component of the opposition speaks for a part of me. Yeah, you go on, who says, hold open the hope of a solution, speaks to a part of me. Then it and Lieberman saying, don't be naive, we've tried this over and over again. Look at the Middle East, look at the condition of the Palestinian National Movement, look at October 7th, forgot to say, not going to happen. And then the silent Eisenkut speaks to me as well, maybe more than the others. He's conveying that deep sense of skepticism. And then the other hand, he's also saying, skepticism is not totally shutting the door. I'm here, you know, before the Yom Kippur War, Moshe Dayan, the legendary Minister of Defense in those years, said famously or infamously, he said, I'm waiting for a form call from our leaders. They know how to reach me, if they want peace, they can call me. Eventually, so that did, but it took a war in the interim. So is Eisenkut making the same mistake? Is he our generations, Moshe Dayan, or is this really the right time for a Moshe Dayan kind of posture toward the Arab world, which is, I'm deeply skeptical, but I'm not showing the door. Now, there's one option that you didn't put on the table, is that, call me and I'll lift up the phone. There is another option, and that is that we actually call. There is that option. And I'm not even going to the two states, I think we're stuck in that same environment, that we think that the status quo is sustainable. And I think part of the real lesson of October 7 is, you know, we're what a week away from the anniversary, we're just three, four days from the Hebrew anniversary, is that start up creative, powerful Israel. It's not just a country that has to learn how to defend itself. And I'm just as skeptical as you are. I'll vote somewhere, but anybody who doesn't admit that there's a validity to one of those three points I think hasn't been living in the Middle East, that no one could claim I'm certain. I could feel a moral obligation. I could feel that this is reasonable. I could be, but that there isn't that skepticism and those three options, I think we're very well put. But I think even Jair Galan doesn't say initiate. I think at best what Israel is now at is if they call, if they do, if they change, if the Abraham, of course, if they do this, if they change this policy and change their education, and all of them is above, it's true. And I know I'm not wealth's very serious lady, you know, is brazen, you know, who are you making talking a lot about, who are you making peace with, unless you do serious conversation, unless they're serious transformation, all of those are correct. And still, I really appreciate the way you've put that. And we do have the option of picking up the phone, of initiating a call, and maybe it requires a deeply skeptical Israeli leader to do that. I can sign on for that platform. Maybe, maybe that's one of the lessons. You'll see it was such a pleasure. Oh, it was great. Thank you. Thank you. Here's some other things that are happening at the Shalom Hartman Institute. 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