 As many of you know, I served in Israeli military intelligence just over about two years during my military service. I was nine months in the tank corps and then had major back surgery, so I couldn't be in combat anymore in a combat unit, so I was transferred to military intelligence and served in military intelligence basically in 1981 and 1982. And one of the things that really shocked me on October 7th was the fact that Israel had, that the intelligence services had failed so miserably, so badly, that Israel was not prepared at all, that the soldiers at the front were shocked to find Hamas right on top of them, that a civilian population along the border was not armed, it was not prepared to be armed and had no, no indication that this was happening, or that this might happen, or that there was a threat of this happening. And it clearly appeared, and still is, the largest intelligence failure in Israel's history and maybe, you know, just in history, it's just stunning. The Gaza Strip is not that big, Israel has drones, Israel can look in, clearly now we know that Hamas was practicing this, was engaged in mock, mock attacks, it's just unthinkable. Israel has maybe the best signal intelligence in the world, it listens in and has the capacity to listen in, and basically pretty much every single phone conversation that happens in Gaza, my guess is encrypted or not, they have electronic surveillance, they were probably monitoring email and every other form of communication. It's just inconceivable that Israeli intelligence missed this, and indeed it turns out it did not. There is a major story today in the New York Times that basically lays out what happened, at least this is not official yet, but this is unofficial, but it lays out the scope of the failure and where the failure actually happened. It turns out that Israeli military intelligence had at their disposal a 40-page document called, that they called, the Israeli authorities code named Jericho Wall, that basically outlined point by point exactly the kind of invasion that was experienced on October 7th. The use of drones, the use of paragliders, the use of trucks, all of this stuff laid out in massive detail, the killing of civilians, the taking over of civilian population centers, the overrunning of military bases, Hamas had detailed information about the military bases, who was there, how many troops were there. The idea that the drones would knock out some of the surveillance before the attack actually happened, which indeed is what happened. The rocket launches, first you launch rockets, distract the Israelis, and then you come by ground, exactly what happened, I mean, step by step. And what's shocking about this is Israel had this a year ago. And the intelligence had been sitting on this for a year. And to a large extent, this document, this 40-page document, was widely circulated among Israeli military and intelligence leaders. But at the very top of the leadership chain, at least as far as we know within the military, we don't know if this got to the civilian. I mean, I'm sure the Shin Bet and the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agencies, were part of this. But it's not clear if it got to the politicians, if it got to Netanyahu. But we know it got to senior military officials. Basically, they determined that it could attack on a scale and ambition, as described in this document, was beyond Hamas's capabilities, that they couldn't pull it off, that it was unlikely that Hamas had approved it, that the leadership had approved it. There was unlikely that Hamas wanted a full-scale war with Israel, which everybody understood that this would lead to. In July of this year, just three months before the attack, a veteran analyst with the 8,200 unit, which is the electronic signals unit, the signals intelligence unit, warned that Hamas was conducted an intense day-long training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the 40-page document. She had read it. This was a female intelligence agent. A colonel in the Gaza division, one of her bosses, brushed it off. I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary. She wrote back. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched the content of Jericho Wall. It's a plan designed to start a war, she added. It's not just a raid on a village, but the military did not take it seriously. The senior people in the military just did not take it seriously. They brushed it off. I mean, if the military had been prepared for the terrorist attack on October 7th, it would have never happened. Maybe it would have been crushed right at the beginning. If there had been more troops on the border, if the civilian population had been armed, maybe they would have never approved of a music festival so close to the border, maybe they would have had armed security there, it just would not have happened. The lives of 1,200 people would have been saved and a war avoided. Maybe the war would have happened anyway. But it's just a stunning failure of Israel's military leadership, of the leadership of the intelligence services. I really don't know how they sleep at night. I mean, at the heart of it, at least from what we can tell today, who knows what we'll yet discover as information comes out in the weeks, months, years to come. But the heart of it was a real belief that Hamas both lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do it. They didn't have the audacity, if you will, to pull it off. That belief was ingrained in Israeli government, ingrained in the military. You know, we'll see how much the government had involvement in this. As we discover more and more of this, this was not a failure of the intelligence apparatus on the ground. Just like in a sense, 1973 was not a failure of the intelligence agencies, indeed, they saw it coming. It was in 1973, it was a failure of the political leadership to take their warning seriously. Yeah, it's not even clear that it made it to the political levels. The military at its highest levels are the ones that did not take it seriously, did not put the military on an alert status, did not beef up security along the border, did not warn the civilian population of this possibility. And just the most horrific day in Israeli history in many respects could have been avoided and was not. I'd say that, you know, as somebody who was in Israeli military intelligence, I've told you the story about the unwillingness of certain people within the hierarchy to believe intelligence that me and my colleagues had produced with regard to Syrian ambush in 1982 that landed up, they didn't take it seriously and as a consequence it happened and Israeli troops died as a consequence. This doesn't shock me, it doesn't really surprise me. The reality is, I don't know if this is true of the American army but it probably is, is the majority of the people who stay in the military, beyond the conscription, the three years they have to, and then maybe a couple of years to build up their resume or to get some experience in leadership, the people who stay for the long run, not all of them but a big chunk of them, including in intelligence, are often, how do I put this delicately, losers. There are often people who are afraid to go into the private sector because they don't know what and how, what they would do there. There are people who don't want to start over in the private sector, they've got kind of a path, the military gives them a very protected path with a very defined pension and a very clear level of promotions. I was never impressed during my time in the Israeli military, in intelligence, with the level of intelligence, the self-esteem, the confidence of my superior officers, particularly in my unit but generally, with their knowledge, with their expertise, with their ability to make decisions, with their ability to analyze information, they never impressed me. They never impressed me. And I was kid, I was 19, 20, 21, and particularly in times of emergencies, particularly in times where quick, instant decisions needed to be made, decisions that pertain to the life or death of soldiers at the front. I mean, I don't want to sound arrogant but this is true, you can ask my wife, she was there. They often looked at me to make decisions. I was a sergeant, a first sergeant. They were majors and colonels and so on. It was pathetic. They knew it, I knew it. I don't know what the most senior levels were, I don't know how good they were. Again, based on my experience, not that. I just have never really been impressed by people in the military. I'm impressed by people I read about in the military of the past. I've never met anybody who's impressed me in the military of the present. I don't know if that's a bias of historians to talk up and impress us with the past. Anyway, we will learn more and more as more information comes out in the weeks, months, years to come on the extent of the failure and who specifically is responsible. I'm very curious to know how much of this went to the political establishment. How much of it was rejected by the politicians themselves? All right, Bonaparte would be an example of what? I mean, Bonaparte, I mean, Napoleon was both brilliant and a complete and not a failure and a disaster as a general. He fought some brilliant battles and he also was just fought some horrible battles where he should have been able to win or who should have avoided the battle or he could have come up with alternative tactics. And but he, you know, if you think you add up the number of people died in all the wars that Napoleon was involved in. It's something like three million, three million, million, not a thousand, million.