Did Israel Know About Hamas’s Attack Plan Before It Happened?

What do we make of facts that don't support official narratives we hear?

The Israel-Gaza border fence after the barrier was bombed and breached in the southern Gaza Strip, October 7, 2023. Image via Shutterstock

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On October 7, Hamas attacked Israel, killing approximately 1500 innocent Israeli citizens and taking many hostage. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then formally declared war on Hamas. This declaration was accompanied by a statement from Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, in which he mentioned that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel” for the people of Gaza, and he added, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”

Since that day, the Israeli leader has consistently emphasized that this war is expected to be “long and challenging” and may extend for “months.” This seems to be the case and fighting has since resumed after a brief “ceasefire.”

Thousands upon thousands of Palestinian men, women and children have been murdered in the process of Israel’s offensive. Hospitals, generational homes, schools and more have all been destroyed. Dozens of journalists trying to cover what’s happening in Palestine have been killed.

It’s painful to watch these events in history. I feel for the attacks on Israel and the terror they must have felt, and do feel. I also feel for the absolute horror Palestinians are experiencing as Israel, in my view, takes their retaliation much too far.

I often can’t believe I live on a planet where death, destruction and the bombing of innocent people are so easily justified.

All this said, some facts have been emerging that I’m trying to place in my sensemaking process. These facts can be hard to face, but we must do something with them if we want to live in reality and not in the world of geopolitical storytelling.

This article is a transparent process of my thinking on this issue as it evolves day by day. Many events in history are often not what they seem, but this does not mean people aren’t suffering. It means that elitists in power may use citizens for their gains while using propaganda to control perceptions and narratives.

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Fact 1. Recent reports are emerging suggesting that the Israeli military and intelligence officials knew about Hamas’s planned attack. To be fair, we reported these suspicions early on as various people brought forth the idea that Israel really should not have had this bad of an intelligence failure.

According to the New York Times,

“The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.”

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

Apparently, the Israeli government didn’t believe that Hamas was capable of such a precise attack, especially given their limited resources. Officials have not shared how they obtained these documents. This supposed lack of belief led Israeli intelligence to ‘brush off’ the document and not take it seriously… or so we’re told.

That’s too bad, because many of the objectives and plans outlined in the document were carried out by Hamas in their October 7th attack.

Western media coverage seems to be framing the Jericho Wall Document as something suggesting Hamas’s ever-growing capabilities. It’s a document that, when framed in this way, adds to the justification for an increased need for security, intelligence and continual destruction of Palestine. It adds to the narrative that the only way forward is for Israel and its allies to protect against Hamas using any means necessary, even if it means killing tens of thousands of innocent people and displacing millions more.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden pointed out the unlikely fact that Israel was unaware of this impending attack on the day of the attacks. He linked an article that outlined the sophistication of Israel’s surveillance state and the Pegasus scandal.

“Netanyahu nurtured a zillion-dollar industry selling spying tools to despots that use them to break into the iPhones of critics, elected opponents, human rights lawyers, and even students (these are all real examples). Turns out out they are not very useful for spying on Hamas tho…”

You can “hear” the sarcasm in his words in his very last sentence…

A friend of our publication, Dr Madhava Setty, shares the suspicion around Israel’s claim of “not knowing” in his piece ‘Israel’s 9/11:

“The loss of so many innocent Israeli lives is tragic, but is this really the story we are being asked to accept? Hamas kept their plans under wraps for two years? Since when does the Mossad get fooled by “public impressions”? Reuters says that “Israel has long prided itself on its ability to infiltrate and monitor Islamist groups” yet Hamas got away with it by preventing leaks? Leaks or no leaks, if the IDF infiltrated Hamas the jig should have been up.

The overarching theme of this discussion is how the oversimplified version of the story obscures the very real possibility that the IDF was fully aware that Hamas was planning this incursion into Israeli territory and let it happen to justify a shock and awe campaign against their strongholds in Palestine as well as bigger targets on the world stage.”

For longtime followers of Collective Evolution and The Pulse, you know we’ve spent a lot of time unpacking the particulars of 9/11 and how the official narrative we’ve been told cannot be true as is. This event just happened to be used to bring on incredible amounts of surveillance, a loss of citizen rights and a never-ending war on terror that brings in trillions for the Military Industrial Complex.

Fact 2. On October 17, an Israeli think tank known as the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy released a position paper in which they presented a proposal for the forced displacement of up to 2.4 million Palestinians from Gaza.

Israeli diplomat Danny Ayalon has publicly advocated for the implementation of this, what many consider to be an ethnic cleansing plan, presenting it as a ‘humane option,’ as argued in the Intelligence Ministry document. The Israeli Premier has also issued a call for Gazans to “leave now,” preceding the military’s request for Palestinians to evacuate the northern part of the besieged coastal enclave.

This strategy has been observed as a means to achieve what seems to be an objective of widespread civilian expulsion from Palestine.

“The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger 

Governments harming their own citizens, or letting their citizens come in the way of harm to push forth their motives and goals is nothing new.

Take, for example, Operation Northwoods. This was a plan hatched by the US government in the early 1960s to fool the American public and the international community into supporting a war against Cuba to oust Fidel Castro.

The plan included blowing up a US ship, attacking a US military base, sinking and blowing up boats of Cuban refugees, hijacking planes, and orchestrating violent terrorism in multiple US cities against American citizens. And of course, blaming Cuba for these actions. This plan never came to fruition.

There are numerous examples of fake evidence and smear campaigns that are used and propagated to eliminate undesirable governments and foreign leaders throughout history.

For example, a document titled “Syria: Scenarios of Dramatic Political Change” written in July of 1986 by the Foreign Subversion and Instability Center, part of the CIA’s Mission Center for Global Issues, outlines the agency’s mission to analyze “a number of possible scenarios that could lead to the ouster of President Assad or other dramatic change in Syria.”

Wikileaks has also published several classified cables, many showing how it was the primary goal of US foreign policy to destabilize the Syrian government, among others. These destabilization efforts are carried out with little, if any, regard for their impact on civilians who are often caught in the crossfire. Oftentimes civilians are used to ramp up death counts.

Fact 3. A Connection Between Israel and Hamas

Wikileaks has also shed light on so much over the years regarding Palestine. For example, one cable reveals that the Palestinian government had requested assistance from Israel in defeating Hamas. In another cable, we learn that Israel determined that Hamas’ rise in Gaza would benefit them as it would allow the IDF to “deal with Gaza as a hostile state.”

A diplomatic exchange between then Israeli Director of Military Intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, and US Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones showed Israeli support for a Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip which Israel could then declare Gaza to be a hostile entity. In the transcript, Yadlin told the US Ambassador that he would be “very happy” if Hamas formed a government in Gaza “as long as they have no (air or sea) port.”

WikiLeaks documents also show that Israel was interested in empowering Hamas in an attempt to end the first Intifada - Hamas "serves as a useful counter-force."

What does this tell us? That the existence and activity of Hamas actively serves the interests of the Israeli government? Where have we seen this before? We know that the United States, for example, has funded and had close ties to organizations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, both of which have been used to justify the infiltration of the Middle East under the guise of goodwill.

Holding Thoughts Together

We live in an age where as citizens we have been verifiably lied to for decades by governments for them to advance elite agendas. What shall we trust as true? If a tragedy is big, are we not allowed to ask questions? That seems to be a cultural pressure.

Israel has a very powerful government, and has various resources and connections to other powerful governments like the United States. To assume the Israeli government never lies and never utilizes propaganda to influence public opinion around the world is naive. All governments do this, including Israel. Further, Mossad is considered one of the biggest and best intelligence agencies in the world.

War crimes, like the ones executed by Hamas in Israel, and the crimes currently taking place in Palestine by Israel, are rarely properly investigated by the international community when they are committed by developed, heavily sophisticated and allied governments. In culture, war is often justified

We’ve seen this with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Julian Assange is in jail for exposing unethical, immoral and unnecessary war crimes committed by governments like the United States and Israel.

In the past, the US moved to block an International Criminal Court referral for alleged Israeli war crimes after the 2009 Goldstone report, which was commissioned by the Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva to investigate Israeli violations of international humanitarian and human rights law during the 2008/2009 conflict in Gaza.

There are currently at least 99 former Unit 8200 veterans currently working for Google. The Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) Unit 8200 is known for surveilling the indigenous Palestinian population, and amassing dirt on individuals for blackmail and extortion. Spying on the world’s rich and famous, Unit 8200 hit the headlines last year after the Pegasus scandal broke.

Was it simply a matter of brushing off important intelligence information simply because they (Israel) did not believe Hamas to be capable of such attacks? It’s hard to believe. Is it too much to suggest that Israel was aware of these pending attacks and let them happen in order to justify more war for ulterior purposes?

Today, intelligence agencies directing the coverage of American and international news organizations, overthrowing democratically elected governments and establishing propaganda outfits to manipulate public sentiment is the norm.

It’s not wrong or anti-Semitic to question powerful and influential governments.

It’s becoming much harder for governments to implement plans under the guise of goodwill that people see as harmful rather than beneficial.

For me, I have to consider where all this fits into what we are told about these wars and how we are pressured or shamed into reacting the way certain people want. It’s not easy watching human suffering, but can’t we perhaps explore being on the side of humanity instead of one bloodline or another? Can’t we call for a solution that doesn’t involve so much needless killing and destruction?