The Kan public broadcaster also revealed an email chain showing Israeli counter-intelligence officer’s warning of Hamas ‘massacre designed to start a war’.
By World Israel News Staff
The Israeli military’s esteemed Unit 8200 was inactive near the Gaza border on the morning of October 7 as a result of a two-year-old decision to reduce operations during the night and on weekends, depriving the military of a critical intelligence resource that allowed 3,000 terrorists to storm the border, an Israeli news report on Monday alleged.
Israeli broadcaster Kan reported that a senior officer in the IDF’s Intelligence Corps cut the staff of the unit two years ago as it was determined that the intelligence-gathering techniques used by 8200 would not be able to detect a hazard from Gaza in a timely manner regardless.
According to the report, Unit 8200 could have provided a more comprehensive view of the situation had they been functioning during the initial morning hours of the attack on October 7th. Furthermore, they could have located Hamas’ elite Nukhba forces as they advanced through southern Israel, killing 1200 people and kidnapping 240.
Kan also reported that in July, a venerated counter-intelligence officer specializing in the Hamas domain sent an email titled “Death in the Kibbutz, at any cost.” In her email, the officer stated that “towards the end of May, there was an intense training session involving two companies in Nukhba, attended by several senior Hamas officials.” According to the email, this training session was “lengthy and arduous, lasting from morning hours until half-past eight in the evening.” The training encompassed mounted forces, utilizing both jeeps and motorcycles, and included a simulated scenario of aircraft interception, involving both fighter jets and helicopters.
She wrote, in no uncertain terms, that “this is a plan designed to start a war.”
The officer also quoted senior Hamas terrorists as chanting battle cries such as “Prepare to kill the Jewish pigs” or “prepare to go in and decapitate.”
“They are training, with large forces, for a big event. This is not posturing, this is preparation for the real thing,” she warned.
The eventual response she received from a senior officer was that the conclusions drawn from her intelligence-gathering were “entirely imaginary.”
One of the counter-intelligence officer’s colleagues defended her position in his own email: “I emphasize that we completely and emphatically disagree with the assumption that this is an imaginary scenario,” he wrote.
The head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate Aharon Haliva denied seeing the email chain, according to the report.
Reuters news agency reported on October 9 that Hamas had been deceiving Israel for years, leading Israeli intelligence to mistakenly assume that economic incentives would be sufficient to maintain a certain level of quiet.
The military responded to the report by saying that it was “currently focused on defeating Hamas.”
“After the war, the IDF will conduct a thorough investigation and share its findings with the public,” it said.