Israel’s Mistake Was Viewing Hamas as a Minor Nuisance

The history of Israel has seen its share of surprises, most famously the intelligence and security failure of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. There is no doubt that the murderous attack of October 7 was an intelligence failure of an entirely different order, with catastrophic consequences. Reading Shany Mor’s essay, despite its many insights, has reaffirmed my sense that attempts to learn lessons from the outbreak of the war—whether political or military—have tended to miss their mark. Mor addresses four ways of thinking that paved the road to October 7, the first of which is bound up with the outlook and governing style of Benjamin Netanyahu. This focus on Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies and leadership, which has dominated so much of the conversation about Israel’s fatal blunders, in fact impedes learning the broader historical lessons as well as more specific intelligence-related ones.

Mor confirmed my skepticism about his argument when he added the Knesset member Zvi Sukkot into the mix. The episode involving Sukkot that Mor recounts is entirely marginal, and can at most illuminate something about Sukkot’s personality; it is fantastical to think that his erecting a sukkah in the Arab village of Huwara caused forces to be diverted from the Gaza border to Samaria.

But let’s set Sukkot aside and focus on the first portion of the essay, devoted to the character and decisions of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Mor makes the original point that since 1945 there has never been a case of a militia being granted territory and then expected to establish a state there—except on the border of Israel. It is not a coincidence that these three terrorist groups surround the borders of Israel or are located inside those borders. But who caused this dangerous reality?