The New York Times has published an extraordinary article which indicates that information about the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas was available to the Israeli government more than a year ago. According to the article:
"Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel's signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.
"But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.
"'I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,' the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched 'the content of Jericho Wall.'
"'It is a plan designed to start a war,' she added. 'It's not just a raid on a village.'
"Officials privately concede that, had the military taken these warnings seriously and redirected significant reinforcements to the south, where Hamas attacked, Israel could have blunted the attacks or possibly even prevented them."
If this report is true, it is distressing to know that the atrocities of 7 October could have been avoided by the simple placement of Israeli troops along the Gaza border. It likely would have been easy to target the bulldozers that tore down the fences, thereby preventing the invasion of the 2,000 odd members of Hamas that entered Israel. As of today, the Gaza Health Ministry is reporting that over 15,000 people have been killed so far and most experts regard the Ministry as a credible course. The numbers are unusually high according to the New York Times:
"Israel has cast the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip as a regrettable but unavoidable part of modern conflict, pointing to the heavy human toll from military campaigns the United States itself once waged in Iraq and Syria.
"But a review of past conflicts and interviews with casualty and weapons experts suggest that Israel's assault is different.
"While wartime death tolls will never be exact, experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza shows that the pace of death during Israel's campaign has few precedents in this century.
"People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of U.S.-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups.
"Precise comparisons of war dead are impossible, but conflict-casualty experts have been taken aback at just how many people have been reported killed in Gaza — most of them women and children — and how rapidly."
It may be the case that the Netanyahu government believes that it is "eliminating" Hamas. It is more likely that Hamas will emerge stronger and more powerful over the long run. This conflict is rapidly becoming one of the worst atrocities in the 21st century.
The discourse over the conflict is tortured because analysts are not being careful about how the conflict is defined. I personally think about the conflict as one between the Netanyahu government and Hamas, not as a conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. I also encourage people to read more than just Western media. I recommend that those who wish to have a more complete understanding of the conflict read some alternative sources (just remember--there are no unbiased media sources):
Al Jazeera
+972 Magazine
Mondoweiss
Middle East Monitor
Middle East Eye
The Palestine Chronicle
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