December 7, 2023 • 32 mins
A recent bombshell report in the New York Times reveals that Israel knew about Hamas’s attack plan for October 7th, 2023, codenamed “Jericho Wall,” more than a year before it happened. On this episode of Next Question, the journalists who broke the story, Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman, detail how this intelligence failure came about, including the dismissal of a female Israeli intelligence analyst’s urgent warnings that Hamas had devised a “plan to start a war” as “imaginary.”
We now know that Hamas’s intentions as laid out in the Jericho Wall document were deadly serious, and Bergman and Goldman note that the attack followed the plan with “shocking precision.” They give insightful analysis of how a threat like Jericho Wall could be dismissed and what this grave misstep means for not only this conflict, but also for Israel's broader idea of itself in the world and for the trust in its powerful intelligence service at home and abroad.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is next question.
As the war between Israel and Hamas enters its second month,
nothing is certain, but even as we look forward to
the end of this conflict, its origins have a lot
to tell the world. The latest revelation comes from New
(00:26):
York Times reporters Ronan Bergmann and Adam Goldman, reporting from
Tel Aviv on the developing story of an Israeli intelligence
failure that, if acted upon, may have stopped this war
before it even began. Bergmann and Goldman have discovered that
Israeli intelligence had Hamas's battle plan for October seventh in
(00:48):
hand nearly a year before the attack. In this episode,
they outlined the intelligence Israel had and when they had it.
They also provide insightful analysis of how a threat like
this could be dismissed as imaginary and what this grave
misstep means for not only this conflict, but Israel's idea
(01:10):
of itself in the larger world. Ronan, I know when
you first started asking your sources within Israel's intelligence community
about the attack, everyone told you they had quote no
idea and were completely blindsided. In retrospect, do you believe
they were telling the truth.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Some of the WS some of them, I'm not sure.
And this is also this almost spontaneous, immediate sort of
admittal to a major failure. We're talking about maybe three
thousand people preparing for a moment, and Israel doesn't know anything.
So I started to think maybe the middle is too
(01:54):
fast to hide another much more problematic truth. I don't
want to say that, I don't believe how I know
that there was no deliberate hiding of information that could
bring Israeli force us to be ready for this horrific attack.
(02:17):
At the end, this will take the lives of many,
and of course those who are in charge of the
Israeli defense establishment and the intelligence community, they already took
responsibility and said that when this is over, I mean
the war is over, they will conclude, they will come
to the conclusions, which in Israel in Hebrew means they
(02:38):
will resign. But it's not going to be the first
time that things that happened, that signs were not interpreted
in the right way. So to say nothing came through
our channels, it's embarrassing. It means that this intelligence officer
or agency admit they had nothing The coverage was not right,
(03:01):
not accessing the right places in Hamas, But to admit
that there were signs that were not regarded as signs
for preemptive attack, that's more embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Ronin not long after those initial conversations began, you started
hearing stories about the existence of something called the email
threat with the Southern Command and a woman who got
it right. Can you explain what you started to hear
circulating about those things?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
So this story is taking place mainly in something called
Unit eight two hundred. That's the biggest, one single unit
in the Israeli defense establishment. It's bigger than MOSAD. These
really foreign intelligence agency, or she'd bet the is really
domestic intelligence agency that are more famous. But this is
(03:58):
just one unit of military into religious is the equivalent
to the American and issae of the British GCHQ in
charge of the collection of singand sigular intelligence and cyber intelligence.
If there is an expectation that Israeli intelligence would bring
an alert, would bring sufficient intelligence to notify Israeli leaders
(04:21):
that the creative strike from the enemy's coming, it's mainly
on the shoulders of this Unit eight two hundred, and
something was happening there.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
So this very elite group of Israeli intelligence officials, military
intelligence officials started to get word that something was going on, Adam,
can you explain what the email thread with the Southern
Command and the woman who got it right was.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well, I believe in July of this summer, this veteran
AMAS analyst who had spent her career studying a mo
she knew the voices on the walkie talkie, she knew
the families, intimate details of the people who she would
eavesdrop on. She had learned that there was a belive
(05:13):
a training exercise two months prior, and so she came
to the conclusion, based on her expertise and her knowledge
of the people involved in the training and some of
the things they did in the training, that this was
no longer in fact a training exercise. It was the
last moment of preparation for these particular Nuukba or Hamas commandos.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
And this was in July, Adam. And in this thread, Ronan,
she also said the drill is quote in complete overlap
with a forty page document called Jericho Wall. Tell me
about that document.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
She just said, it's incomplete overlap with Jericho Wolves. Was
just the word. This term Jericho Wall repeats itself throughout
the thread, and it's clear that this is a code
name for something else, for something that happened before this thread,
for something that is the reference to everything she says
(06:17):
in order to prove her point in the debate that
follows her email with seeing most senior officers.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
So what is jericho wall ronin?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So this is what I was trying to find out.
Bottom line, Jericho Wall is the code name for a
copy of around forty pages of Hamas Attack Order. It
was obtained more than a year before October seventh, during
twenty twenty two. It's a top secret Hamas document that
(06:49):
details how to destroy how to break through the front,
the southern israelly front, the Gaza is really border in,
fix different places and smuggle through this dispatch through those
holes in the fence some two thousand Hamas gunmen. Now,
(07:12):
just to give a proportion, Israel believed this is why
this document was regarded as they called it a compass
to building of the force, meaning where Tamas wants to
be in its competence and capabilities, where not the reflection
of where Hamas was. This is the core of Israeli
(07:33):
failure to anticipate what happened.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
We have to take a quick break, and then Ronan
and Adam will share more context and details about Jericho
Wall's origins and purpose. If you want to get smarter
every morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating
takes on health and wellness and pop culture, sign up
(07:59):
for our daily news wake up call by going to
Katiecuric dot com. And we're back with Ronan Bergman and
Adam Goldman of The New York Times. So Jericho Wall
was a Hamas document outlining how it would wage an
(08:20):
attack an invasion of Israel. When was that discovered?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Well, it's by understanding that dating back years, Israel had
versions of that document, and I think the last most
updated document they got was in mid twenty twenty two.
I think one way to think of the Jericho Wall
document is to think of the D Day invasion of Normandy.
That's what that was.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
It was a blueprint basically with.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
An invasion blueprint. Like I said, I imagine it is
the invasion of Normandy. It's the break through the wall.
The Jericho Wall is the Jerusalem Wall. It's literally a
battle plan to break through the wall or the fortifications
Israel had a massed around the.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Gossars trip Ronan.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
The report was meticulously detailed in terms of its knowledge
of Israeli security and defense information. How do you believe
Hamas was able to have access to such critically important information?
Speaker 4 (09:20):
That?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I think the first question I had when I read
that a few weeks ago. It's such a detailed information
that I believe at least part of that dealing with
the exact nature location of all the different fortification israll
put on the wall, the town, they cell phone towers,
the fortress with the automatic controlled machine guns, the communication hubs,
(09:46):
the cameras that drop everything.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
How did they know all this?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Some of that clearly does not come from open media,
open sources, or the social network, or even a gardener,
a palaestinan garden that went to work in one of
the keeble seamen maybe well possibly was recruited by Ramas.
This is a question, maybe a task for our further reporting.
I assume that this is also one of the questions
(10:10):
that Israeli authorities are dealing with now. But it's not
just the intelligence, but how the intelligence is translated into
a detailed plan of attack with the aim of breaking
the fence, letting hundreds of teams of Ramask gunmen storm through,
(10:30):
each one with a different plan to a different location.
Would the first location be the division headquarters in the Inn.
This is the base from where they control the whole front.
All of that done at the same time when power
glides and drones are sent over to explode those towers
(10:51):
and communication hubs, when a massive bombardment of motors at
missiles and rockets is rained all over to create diversion.
All of that create intelligence and operational folk to the
extent that it took many hours until the idea if
sad Koman in Central Kouman realized what was happening, Adam.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
How many people knew about this forty page document? For example,
was Netanyahu aware of it? Were other top political leaders
aware of it?
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I'll let run and speak to that. But I would
also add one of the keys to success for Hamas
was ensuring that few people within Hamas's senior ranks knew
about that. And it's clear only a handful of people
within hamas its most senior ranks signore the leader Mohammed
(11:48):
diff These people, basically the shure of Hamas knew about that.
In fact, today I was at a very sensitive briefing
with the Israeli intelligence and they they themselves believed that
very few of the people who the fighters who were
actually sent to Israel knew what was going to happen
that day, and they only learned about it within the
(12:11):
first few hours of the attack.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So you're saying it was a very small circle of
Hamas leadership that had access to this highly sensitive information.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Part of the plan was using deception and surprise. They
knew they had to deceive the Israelis into thinking that
they were not going to attack, and of course they
needed the element of surprise to do that, and they
succeeded on both fronts. And that's because they kept the
circle small. Right is they used to say in World
War Two, loose lips sink ships. Right, So they had
(12:45):
the discipline to ensure that their plans didn't leak. Though
to Israel's credit, they had the plans and ronan how
many people knew of this blueprint?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Bb net and Yahoo top political leader who was aware
that this existed.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So again this is another question we are looking at,
but clearly this is from many documents that we review.
The top leadership of the military and the intelligence community
where part of the loop who saw the document back
in twenty twenty two. This was not hidden from anyone,
(13:24):
This was not disregard. It was wrongly analyzed. That's the mistake.
This state was shown and it's you know, and that mistake,
though very hard to measure, has also these same scenes,
bad scenes of failure that led to the Yoki puh
blunder fifty years and a day before October seventh, vanity hubris,
(13:49):
feeling or certainty that the enemy is just uncapable and
stupid to perform strategic deception. And it's unbelievable how much
similarities we don't at the time, but how many, how
many similarities there are between those two fists.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Not only that, but I know, Adam, you've compared it
to the intelligence failure that preceded nine to eleven. Do
you think that really is an accurate parallel? It was
hubris that really led to it or was it a
lack of communication? I mean, how do you see these
two things comparing?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
They have a few things in common. One is that
nine to eleven wasn't a failure of intelligence collection, right,
nine to eleven was a failure of imagination, like the Americans,
like the Israelis, had developed information that al Qaida was
going to attack the US. President Bush was made aware
(14:47):
of that in August of two thousand and one. I
think the title of the membo that went down and
the President's dailian briefing was blinking red, right. So it
wasn't a failure of collection. They knew they needed to know.
But there was a lack of urgency and a.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Lack of communication among agencies. I mean, I covered that,
and I remember that was the big thing, that none
of these people were talking to each other.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
The big blunder was the FBI was only told later
that to al Qaeda operatives. Midhart Hamsey had actually entered
the United States, putting the FBI on their heels, right
and reacting whether they had to find them and then
figure out what they were doing. You know what seems
to be, and we don't know this for sure, is
(15:35):
that I think Israeli authorities think that there were Palestinian
workers on the ground in Israel collecting intelligence, so imagine
midharn Hamsey, but you know many more midharn Hamsey's and
Israel was gathering the work for Hamash right under the
noses of the shin Bet, which is the equivalent of
the FBI. You know, I also think that Israeli intelligence,
(15:56):
at least it seems at this point that it was
effected by confirmation bias, and confirmation bias can be deadly.
We saw it happen on January sixth, right with the insurrection,
right with the sacking of the capitol. There are many
many red flags that were apparent to the FBI, which
is in charge of thwarting domestic terrorists in this country.
(16:18):
And at the end, it's sort of like Hamas the
FBI didn't think that anything would happen, and these people
were going to do exactly what they did, and they
had forecasted even though it was only rhetoric. So I
think they're parallels too with j six and what happened here,
though obviously less fatalities.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Ronan, can you elaborate on some of the wrong analysis
that happened with all these warning signs, because I know
you've written about others as well. So you have this
senior female intelligence analyst raising concerns, you have this Jericho
Walls forty page document that's a blueprint, what other factors
(16:58):
Ronan were at play that made Israeli officials not take
these threats seriously.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
There are three main reasons for the failures. The first
one was a total misunderstanding of intent. Israel thought that
Jeja Sinumar, that the leader of Hamas is they said
contained or detered and in any case, is looking for
sort of a ceasefire. He's not looking to esculate, he's
(17:30):
not looking for all out war. Just five days before
this happened, in a public radio interview, the National Security
Advisor to Letaniao said Hamas has learned the lesson from
the previous rounds of hostilities with Israel. The Cutteries were
mediating between Israel and Hamas, and I would say not
just Israel and Hamas. Caamas is an anxiety leadership based
(17:53):
in Doha in Kato, but it was the Israelis knew
that the cutterarist are calling Sinuar to get his approval
to reduce the violence of oblos close to the border
in exchange for Israel giving more working permits inside Israel.
Working permits meaning money coming from Israel to Gaza. That
means a lot of people dependent on money from Israel.
(18:16):
Israel thought all of that as a very good sign.
Even that analyst she said, what I'm saying is not imminent.
She accepted the point of view that there's no clear
indication of intent to launch that attack. The other one is,
of course a total misjudgment of their capabilities, which we discussed,
(18:37):
and the third one is not having any reliable intelligence
any signs suggesting that Hamas is going to attack at
that day. The first sign was received at half past
Bidnet in the night between the six and the seven.
It led the chief of Shibat deployed Takila is the
(19:00):
secret unit, that is u Okuda, Jervis and unit. But
because everybody thought that Haramaskn only deployed two teams of
up to seventy, they sent te Quilla that can confront
up to two teams. But we're talking about an all
out invasion to Israel. It's not a rain, it's war.
And so or that together just created this unbelievable fiasta.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
You say the senior intelligence officer, the woman didn't think
it was eminent, but when she was told this plan
was imaginary, she responded by saying, quote, I utterly refute
that this scenario is imaginary. It is a plan designed
to start a war. It's not just a raid on
(19:46):
a village. So while she might not have believed it
was imminent, she obviously believed it was extremely serious.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
And she expressed with a very clear and shock wards
replying to that officer, which she might interpret it as
a little bit chauvinistic or you know, paternalism, he said, basically,
Hamas doesn't have the capability to execute Jericho Wohl. She said, no,
I am the one who monitored Hamas and military exercise.
(20:19):
It's serious. They do have the capabilities. She was she
to call it, but the only ones that realized Hamas
narrowed the gap between what it could do and Jericho Wohl.
And now Hamas is capable, though they didn't know if
it's happening, but it's capable of launching this massive, horrenderous
(20:42):
invasion into Israel.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
When we come back more with Ronan and Adam about
how these intelligence failures happened, and we're back with Ronan
Bergman and Adam Goldman of the New York Times, Do
(21:09):
either of you think sexism might have played a role
in this, because a lot of people that I've spoken
with said, you know, it was because it was a woman,
her concerns were dismissed.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Well, there had been stories in the Israeli media about
women who were on the border and observation post running balloons,
who were dismissed. And in fact, you know, I got
an email from somebody after our story ran too, you know,
basically accused as well of sexism. You know, there's another
parallel with the CIA and al Qaeda was zero dark thirty. Yeah,
(21:44):
it was zero dark thirty. And you know this intelligence
analyst who worked for eighty two hundred at the end
of the day, she had a strong hunch based on
her expertise, right, she couldn't articulate to her bosses, who
would then after artic to the leadership of the IDF
and the country. You know, Nan Yahoo that an attack
(22:04):
was imminent. Right, But if you look what happened in
zero dort thirty, it was a woman, right, It was
women who drove the reporting on al Qaeda in and
it was a woman Maya, I know her real name.
She drove this reporting on bin Laden where he might be.
And let's remember that was essentially a hunch, right, there
was you know, there was a guy they didn't see.
(22:26):
They thought he was tall, and there was a courier
right who was close to bin Laden who was working,
but they never knew Ben Lauden was there, right. But
I think the difference here with Israel is that she
had an advocate, and her advocate was the director of
the CIA, and the director of the CIA, Liam Panetta,
pushed this. I think it was Panetta who who gave
a fairly optimistic rating. What did he say? There was
(22:49):
a ninety percent chance that bin Laden was in that
compound and because she had she had an advocate like
liamp Panetta, that raid got done. It doesn't happen without
the big boss. And I'm not sure this woman who
Israeli media described to me had those type of advocates.
And when you look at the email chain, you don't
(23:09):
see that, right. They describe what she says as imaginary.
And you know, Ronan has made a great point. It's
not that they dismissed this, It's not that they didn't
take this seriously. Imagine the time and effort Israel invested
in me getting these plans. This is a serious intelligence operation.
Even get your hands on these plants. And one of
the officials acknowledged in the email chain there was some
(23:31):
gold in here, right, But at the end of the day,
she didn't have a strong enough advocate who went to
the leadership of AIDF and said, listen, at a minimum,
we need to lose some forces to the border, right.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Gronan, Have you met with her at all?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
No? No, No, she's an active duty non officer commander.
She cannot meet with journalists. But I think the tragedy
here is that she goted rights. I'm sure that parts
of this email exchange will end up in the pages
of the inquiry investigation panel that will be established to investigate.
(24:10):
The tragedy is that it was left in the capsule
of few analysts and few officers up to the rank
of the connelly. None of those took that as other
indicated and said, okay, let's write a memo, let's take
it to someone more senior. And this was just left
(24:33):
sort of in the air of this thread with no
further investigation to substantiate it or dis orbit.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Well, it sounds to me that Israel was lulled into
a false sense of security by these other factors that
were transpiring, sort of more soft intelligence, kind of a
sense that Hamas was either incompetent or had been less adversay.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
They thought Hamas Sinua included, is more interested in being
the governor of the states mostly but the state, the
Gaza Strip, taking care of the water, the electricity, the
health services, and not jeopardizing everything they already achieved with
(25:21):
all out war with Israel because they those don't work together.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
You know, Hamas was obviously much more sophisticated militarily but
also psychologically in terms of the signals they were sending
Adam to Israeli intelligence about their intentions.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
It was a grand deception plan and as I said,
they needed to pull off. The deception. Part of this
is essentially a false flag. You know, they gave a
false they were providing false signals to Israel and Israel
bottom and you know, Sineoir as somebody said somewhre out
Israeli the israelis right and studied his adversary and was
(26:07):
incredibly patient. And you know, as I said earlier today,
I was at a military base with a unit that
exploits information or documenting computers found on the battlefield, and
we were able to look at that information and it
was extraordinary. The amount of preparation that they put into
this attack was really really, really extraordinary, and it shows
(26:31):
a level of patients that these people had to pull
this off.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Ronan, You've said that Israel got completely enchanted by the
elaborate security measures in the wall that separated Gaza and Israel.
Did that add to this false sense of security with
no doubts.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Together with two other colleagues, Markmzeediet the Patrick Kings League,
The New York Times reported what happened after the fence
was erected. No, this is the fence that goes a
few meters above ground, one hundred meters that's very deep underground.
It was directed mainly to stop Hamas from building, from
(27:13):
digging tunnels underground into Israel. This was for years was
the main fear, the main concern from Israel, and it stopped,
but it forced Hamas to be more sophisticated, more robust,
and instead of going underground which is hidden, going above ground,
which is overt everybody can see, and being much more sophisticated.
(27:33):
But the Israelis thought that the defense with all the
different electronics and robots and drones and submachine guns, control
from afar and camera, this is invincible. And it made
the Israeli say military sleepy, lose their sharpness, not waking
every morning as they did every morning for years at
(27:56):
five o'clock, because this is the time. Between five and seven,
they knew that there's a morning fall, don is coming,
the sun is in the eyes of the Israelis. This
is when Hamas attacks and guess what they attacked at
six thirty five, and the Israelis many of the soldiers
were killed in their sleep. And everybody who knows Ramasi
(28:20):
this is like, this is inconceivable, it's inbearable. They did
not follow protocol. Defence made them think that they.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Don't need When all is said and done, how do
you believe these revelations and your reporting will impact the
Israeli intelligence infrastructure and the way it's run and the
people in it.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Look, everybody understand that in the second time, or fifty
years after to the day, is really intelligence failed to
supply exactly what it was established for. And it's not
just about some kind of you know, exotic alert from
(29:06):
the secret world. It led to the brutal violation of
the contract of the agreement between Israel, the state and
the Jewish people, which is to supply a security and
safety that Holocaust style days will not repeat itself. This
(29:28):
is a major watershed moment in the history of the
country and the Jewish people, and the intelligence community is
going to rebuild some parts of it, I'm sure, with
some hopefully mechanism that would make sure that this doesn't happen.
It's going to take the resignation of the leaders of
(29:49):
the military and the intelligence. Unlike Prime Minister Natanielle, they
said already that they take full responsibility and they in
other words, we will resign. This will go for a
very thorough investigation and re establishment of some of the
(30:10):
main agencies and expertise to make sure this is the
last of those of those as disastered.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Adam, do you think net Yahoo is toast?
Speaker 3 (30:27):
You know, many of Israelies have asked me what I think,
and my response is, but I don't know. They believe
that Nannaho is toast. But you know, I just came
from a country, United States, which saw the former president
of the United States indicted for seditious conspiracy. Right He's
accused of basically trying to overthrow the government, and now
(30:48):
he is the leading GOP candidate and could potentially president
of the United States again. So excuse me if I
feel little contrary in these days.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Well, gentlemen, Ronan Bergman and Adam Goldman, you all are
really kind to spend this time with me. Thank you
so much, and keep us posted. I'm sure we're going
to be reading developments as this story evolves, and it
would be great if one day you could talk to
this woman v And actually, do you think that just
(31:18):
would never happen?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Ronan, No, I'm finding what positivits will.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I've tried to speak with Maya, She's not interested.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
But you're right, there are some uncanny similarities between their stories,
except for, as you said, no one advocating for her
at a higher level.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Well, gentlemen, thank you both so much. I really appreciate it.
Thank goodness, Thank you Gay, Thanks for listening. Everyone.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
If you have a question for me, a subject you
want us to cover, or you want to share your
thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out.
You can leave a short message at six h nine
five point two five five five, or you can send
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from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and
(32:12):
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(32:34):
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wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is next question.
As the war between Israel and Hamas enters its second month,
nothing is certain, but even as we look forward to
the end of this conflict, its origins have a lot
to tell the world. The latest revelation comes from New
(00:26):
York Times reporters Ronan Bergmann and Adam Goldman, reporting from
Tel Aviv on the developing story of an Israeli intelligence
failure that, if acted upon, may have stopped this war
before it even began. Bergmann and Goldman have discovered that
Israeli intelligence had Hamas's battle plan for October seventh in
(00:48):
hand nearly a year before the attack. In this episode,
they outlined the intelligence Israel had and when they had it.
They also provide insightful analysis of how a threat like
this could be dismissed as imaginary and what this grave
misstep means for not only this conflict, but Israel's idea
(01:10):
of itself in the larger world. Ronan, I know when
you first started asking your sources within Israel's intelligence community
about the attack, everyone told you they had quote no
idea and were completely blindsided. In retrospect, do you believe
they were telling the truth.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Some of the WS some of them, I'm not sure.
And this is also this almost spontaneous, immediate sort of
admittal to a major failure. We're talking about maybe three
thousand people preparing for a moment, and Israel doesn't know anything.
So I started to think maybe the middle is too
(01:54):
fast to hide another much more problematic truth. I don't
want to say that, I don't believe how I know
that there was no deliberate hiding of information that could
bring Israeli force us to be ready for this horrific attack.
(02:17):
At the end, this will take the lives of many,
and of course those who are in charge of the
Israeli defense establishment and the intelligence community, they already took
responsibility and said that when this is over, I mean
the war is over, they will conclude, they will come
to the conclusions, which in Israel in Hebrew means they
(02:38):
will resign. But it's not going to be the first
time that things that happened, that signs were not interpreted
in the right way. So to say nothing came through
our channels, it's embarrassing. It means that this intelligence officer
or agency admit they had nothing The coverage was not right,
(03:01):
not accessing the right places in Hamas, But to admit
that there were signs that were not regarded as signs
for preemptive attack, that's more embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Ronin not long after those initial conversations began, you started
hearing stories about the existence of something called the email
threat with the Southern Command and a woman who got
it right. Can you explain what you started to hear
circulating about those things?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
So this story is taking place mainly in something called
Unit eight two hundred. That's the biggest, one single unit
in the Israeli defense establishment. It's bigger than MOSAD. These
really foreign intelligence agency, or she'd bet the is really
domestic intelligence agency that are more famous. But this is
(03:58):
just one unit of military into religious is the equivalent
to the American and issae of the British GCHQ in
charge of the collection of singand sigular intelligence and cyber intelligence.
If there is an expectation that Israeli intelligence would bring
an alert, would bring sufficient intelligence to notify Israeli leaders
(04:21):
that the creative strike from the enemy's coming, it's mainly
on the shoulders of this Unit eight two hundred, and
something was happening there.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
So this very elite group of Israeli intelligence officials, military
intelligence officials started to get word that something was going on, Adam,
can you explain what the email thread with the Southern
Command and the woman who got it right was.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well, I believe in July of this summer, this veteran
AMAS analyst who had spent her career studying a mo
she knew the voices on the walkie talkie, she knew
the families, intimate details of the people who she would
eavesdrop on. She had learned that there was a belive
(05:13):
a training exercise two months prior, and so she came
to the conclusion, based on her expertise and her knowledge
of the people involved in the training and some of
the things they did in the training, that this was
no longer in fact a training exercise. It was the
last moment of preparation for these particular Nuukba or Hamas commandos.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
And this was in July, Adam. And in this thread, Ronan,
she also said the drill is quote in complete overlap
with a forty page document called Jericho Wall. Tell me
about that document.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
She just said, it's incomplete overlap with Jericho Wolves. Was
just the word. This term Jericho Wall repeats itself throughout
the thread, and it's clear that this is a code
name for something else, for something that happened before this thread,
for something that is the reference to everything she says
(06:17):
in order to prove her point in the debate that
follows her email with seeing most senior officers.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
So what is jericho wall ronin?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So this is what I was trying to find out.
Bottom line, Jericho Wall is the code name for a
copy of around forty pages of Hamas Attack Order. It
was obtained more than a year before October seventh, during
twenty twenty two. It's a top secret Hamas document that
(06:49):
details how to destroy how to break through the front,
the southern israelly front, the Gaza is really border in,
fix different places and smuggle through this dispatch through those
holes in the fence some two thousand Hamas gunmen. Now,
(07:12):
just to give a proportion, Israel believed this is why
this document was regarded as they called it a compass
to building of the force, meaning where Tamas wants to
be in its competence and capabilities, where not the reflection
of where Hamas was. This is the core of Israeli
(07:33):
failure to anticipate what happened.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
We have to take a quick break, and then Ronan
and Adam will share more context and details about Jericho
Wall's origins and purpose. If you want to get smarter
every morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating
takes on health and wellness and pop culture, sign up
(07:59):
for our daily news wake up call by going to
Katiecuric dot com. And we're back with Ronan Bergman and
Adam Goldman of The New York Times. So Jericho Wall
was a Hamas document outlining how it would wage an
(08:20):
attack an invasion of Israel. When was that discovered?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Well, it's by understanding that dating back years, Israel had
versions of that document, and I think the last most
updated document they got was in mid twenty twenty two.
I think one way to think of the Jericho Wall
document is to think of the D Day invasion of Normandy.
That's what that was.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
It was a blueprint basically with.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
An invasion blueprint. Like I said, I imagine it is
the invasion of Normandy. It's the break through the wall.
The Jericho Wall is the Jerusalem Wall. It's literally a
battle plan to break through the wall or the fortifications
Israel had a massed around the.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Gossars trip Ronan.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
The report was meticulously detailed in terms of its knowledge
of Israeli security and defense information. How do you believe
Hamas was able to have access to such critically important information?
Speaker 4 (09:20):
That?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I think the first question I had when I read
that a few weeks ago. It's such a detailed information
that I believe at least part of that dealing with
the exact nature location of all the different fortification israll
put on the wall, the town, they cell phone towers,
the fortress with the automatic controlled machine guns, the communication hubs,
(09:46):
the cameras that drop everything.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
How did they know all this?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Some of that clearly does not come from open media,
open sources, or the social network, or even a gardener,
a palaestinan garden that went to work in one of
the keeble seamen maybe well possibly was recruited by Ramas.
This is a question, maybe a task for our further reporting.
I assume that this is also one of the questions
(10:10):
that Israeli authorities are dealing with now. But it's not
just the intelligence, but how the intelligence is translated into
a detailed plan of attack with the aim of breaking
the fence, letting hundreds of teams of Ramask gunmen storm through,
(10:30):
each one with a different plan to a different location.
Would the first location be the division headquarters in the Inn.
This is the base from where they control the whole front.
All of that done at the same time when power
glides and drones are sent over to explode those towers
(10:51):
and communication hubs, when a massive bombardment of motors at
missiles and rockets is rained all over to create diversion.
All of that create intelligence and operational folk to the
extent that it took many hours until the idea if
sad Koman in Central Kouman realized what was happening, Adam.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
How many people knew about this forty page document? For example,
was Netanyahu aware of it? Were other top political leaders
aware of it?
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I'll let run and speak to that. But I would
also add one of the keys to success for Hamas
was ensuring that few people within Hamas's senior ranks knew
about that. And it's clear only a handful of people
within hamas its most senior ranks signore the leader Mohammed
(11:48):
diff These people, basically the shure of Hamas knew about that.
In fact, today I was at a very sensitive briefing
with the Israeli intelligence and they they themselves believed that
very few of the people who the fighters who were
actually sent to Israel knew what was going to happen
that day, and they only learned about it within the
(12:11):
first few hours of the attack.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So you're saying it was a very small circle of
Hamas leadership that had access to this highly sensitive information.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Part of the plan was using deception and surprise. They
knew they had to deceive the Israelis into thinking that
they were not going to attack, and of course they
needed the element of surprise to do that, and they
succeeded on both fronts. And that's because they kept the
circle small. Right is they used to say in World
War Two, loose lips sink ships. Right, So they had
(12:45):
the discipline to ensure that their plans didn't leak. Though
to Israel's credit, they had the plans and ronan how
many people knew of this blueprint?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Bb net and Yahoo top political leader who was aware
that this existed.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So again this is another question we are looking at,
but clearly this is from many documents that we review.
The top leadership of the military and the intelligence community
where part of the loop who saw the document back
in twenty twenty two. This was not hidden from anyone,
(13:24):
This was not disregard. It was wrongly analyzed. That's the mistake.
This state was shown and it's you know, and that mistake,
though very hard to measure, has also these same scenes,
bad scenes of failure that led to the Yoki puh
blunder fifty years and a day before October seventh, vanity hubris,
(13:49):
feeling or certainty that the enemy is just uncapable and
stupid to perform strategic deception. And it's unbelievable how much
similarities we don't at the time, but how many, how
many similarities there are between those two fists.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Not only that, but I know, Adam, you've compared it
to the intelligence failure that preceded nine to eleven. Do
you think that really is an accurate parallel? It was
hubris that really led to it or was it a
lack of communication? I mean, how do you see these
two things comparing?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
They have a few things in common. One is that
nine to eleven wasn't a failure of intelligence collection, right,
nine to eleven was a failure of imagination, like the Americans,
like the Israelis, had developed information that al Qaida was
going to attack the US. President Bush was made aware
(14:47):
of that in August of two thousand and one. I
think the title of the membo that went down and
the President's dailian briefing was blinking red, right. So it
wasn't a failure of collection. They knew they needed to know.
But there was a lack of urgency and a.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Lack of communication among agencies. I mean, I covered that,
and I remember that was the big thing, that none
of these people were talking to each other.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
The big blunder was the FBI was only told later
that to al Qaeda operatives. Midhart Hamsey had actually entered
the United States, putting the FBI on their heels, right
and reacting whether they had to find them and then
figure out what they were doing. You know what seems
to be, and we don't know this for sure, is
(15:35):
that I think Israeli authorities think that there were Palestinian
workers on the ground in Israel collecting intelligence, so imagine
midharn Hamsey, but you know many more midharn Hamsey's and
Israel was gathering the work for Hamash right under the
noses of the shin Bet, which is the equivalent of
the FBI. You know, I also think that Israeli intelligence,
(15:56):
at least it seems at this point that it was
effected by confirmation bias, and confirmation bias can be deadly.
We saw it happen on January sixth, right with the insurrection,
right with the sacking of the capitol. There are many
many red flags that were apparent to the FBI, which
is in charge of thwarting domestic terrorists in this country.
(16:18):
And at the end, it's sort of like Hamas the
FBI didn't think that anything would happen, and these people
were going to do exactly what they did, and they
had forecasted even though it was only rhetoric. So I
think they're parallels too with j six and what happened here,
though obviously less fatalities.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Ronan, can you elaborate on some of the wrong analysis
that happened with all these warning signs, because I know
you've written about others as well. So you have this
senior female intelligence analyst raising concerns, you have this Jericho
Walls forty page document that's a blueprint, what other factors
(16:58):
Ronan were at play that made Israeli officials not take
these threats seriously.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
There are three main reasons for the failures. The first
one was a total misunderstanding of intent. Israel thought that
Jeja Sinumar, that the leader of Hamas is they said
contained or detered and in any case, is looking for
sort of a ceasefire. He's not looking to esculate, he's
(17:30):
not looking for all out war. Just five days before
this happened, in a public radio interview, the National Security
Advisor to Letaniao said Hamas has learned the lesson from
the previous rounds of hostilities with Israel. The Cutteries were
mediating between Israel and Hamas, and I would say not
just Israel and Hamas. Caamas is an anxiety leadership based
(17:53):
in Doha in Kato, but it was the Israelis knew
that the cutterarist are calling Sinuar to get his approval
to reduce the violence of oblos close to the border
in exchange for Israel giving more working permits inside Israel.
Working permits meaning money coming from Israel to Gaza. That
means a lot of people dependent on money from Israel.
(18:16):
Israel thought all of that as a very good sign.
Even that analyst she said, what I'm saying is not imminent.
She accepted the point of view that there's no clear
indication of intent to launch that attack. The other one is,
of course a total misjudgment of their capabilities, which we discussed,
(18:37):
and the third one is not having any reliable intelligence
any signs suggesting that Hamas is going to attack at
that day. The first sign was received at half past
Bidnet in the night between the six and the seven.
It led the chief of Shibat deployed Takila is the
(19:00):
secret unit, that is u Okuda, Jervis and unit. But
because everybody thought that Haramaskn only deployed two teams of
up to seventy, they sent te Quilla that can confront
up to two teams. But we're talking about an all
out invasion to Israel. It's not a rain, it's war.
And so or that together just created this unbelievable fiasta.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
You say the senior intelligence officer, the woman didn't think
it was eminent, but when she was told this plan
was imaginary, she responded by saying, quote, I utterly refute
that this scenario is imaginary. It is a plan designed
to start a war. It's not just a raid on
(19:46):
a village. So while she might not have believed it
was imminent, she obviously believed it was extremely serious.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
And she expressed with a very clear and shock wards
replying to that officer, which she might interpret it as
a little bit chauvinistic or you know, paternalism, he said, basically,
Hamas doesn't have the capability to execute Jericho Wohl. She said, no,
I am the one who monitored Hamas and military exercise.
(20:19):
It's serious. They do have the capabilities. She was she
to call it, but the only ones that realized Hamas
narrowed the gap between what it could do and Jericho Wohl.
And now Hamas is capable, though they didn't know if
it's happening, but it's capable of launching this massive, horrenderous
(20:42):
invasion into Israel.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
When we come back more with Ronan and Adam about
how these intelligence failures happened, and we're back with Ronan
Bergman and Adam Goldman of the New York Times, Do
(21:09):
either of you think sexism might have played a role
in this, because a lot of people that I've spoken
with said, you know, it was because it was a woman,
her concerns were dismissed.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Well, there had been stories in the Israeli media about
women who were on the border and observation post running balloons,
who were dismissed. And in fact, you know, I got
an email from somebody after our story ran too, you know,
basically accused as well of sexism. You know, there's another
parallel with the CIA and al Qaeda was zero dark thirty. Yeah,
(21:44):
it was zero dark thirty. And you know this intelligence
analyst who worked for eighty two hundred at the end
of the day, she had a strong hunch based on
her expertise, right, she couldn't articulate to her bosses, who
would then after artic to the leadership of the IDF
and the country. You know, Nan Yahoo that an attack
(22:04):
was imminent. Right, But if you look what happened in
zero dort thirty, it was a woman, right, It was
women who drove the reporting on al Qaeda in and
it was a woman Maya, I know her real name.
She drove this reporting on bin Laden where he might be.
And let's remember that was essentially a hunch, right, there
was you know, there was a guy they didn't see.
(22:26):
They thought he was tall, and there was a courier
right who was close to bin Laden who was working,
but they never knew Ben Lauden was there, right. But
I think the difference here with Israel is that she
had an advocate, and her advocate was the director of
the CIA, and the director of the CIA, Liam Panetta,
pushed this. I think it was Panetta who who gave
a fairly optimistic rating. What did he say? There was
(22:49):
a ninety percent chance that bin Laden was in that
compound and because she had she had an advocate like
liamp Panetta, that raid got done. It doesn't happen without
the big boss. And I'm not sure this woman who
Israeli media described to me had those type of advocates.
And when you look at the email chain, you don't
(23:09):
see that, right. They describe what she says as imaginary.
And you know, Ronan has made a great point. It's
not that they dismissed this, It's not that they didn't
take this seriously. Imagine the time and effort Israel invested
in me getting these plans. This is a serious intelligence operation.
Even get your hands on these plants. And one of
the officials acknowledged in the email chain there was some
(23:31):
gold in here, right, But at the end of the day,
she didn't have a strong enough advocate who went to
the leadership of AIDF and said, listen, at a minimum,
we need to lose some forces to the border, right.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Gronan, Have you met with her at all?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
No? No, No, she's an active duty non officer commander.
She cannot meet with journalists. But I think the tragedy
here is that she goted rights. I'm sure that parts
of this email exchange will end up in the pages
of the inquiry investigation panel that will be established to investigate.
(24:10):
The tragedy is that it was left in the capsule
of few analysts and few officers up to the rank
of the connelly. None of those took that as other
indicated and said, okay, let's write a memo, let's take
it to someone more senior. And this was just left
(24:33):
sort of in the air of this thread with no
further investigation to substantiate it or dis orbit.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Well, it sounds to me that Israel was lulled into
a false sense of security by these other factors that
were transpiring, sort of more soft intelligence, kind of a
sense that Hamas was either incompetent or had been less adversay.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
They thought Hamas Sinua included, is more interested in being
the governor of the states mostly but the state, the
Gaza Strip, taking care of the water, the electricity, the
health services, and not jeopardizing everything they already achieved with
(25:21):
all out war with Israel because they those don't work together.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
You know, Hamas was obviously much more sophisticated militarily but
also psychologically in terms of the signals they were sending
Adam to Israeli intelligence about their intentions.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
It was a grand deception plan and as I said,
they needed to pull off. The deception. Part of this
is essentially a false flag. You know, they gave a
false they were providing false signals to Israel and Israel
bottom and you know, Sineoir as somebody said somewhre out
Israeli the israelis right and studied his adversary and was
(26:07):
incredibly patient. And you know, as I said earlier today,
I was at a military base with a unit that
exploits information or documenting computers found on the battlefield, and
we were able to look at that information and it
was extraordinary. The amount of preparation that they put into
this attack was really really, really extraordinary, and it shows
(26:31):
a level of patients that these people had to pull
this off.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Ronan, You've said that Israel got completely enchanted by the
elaborate security measures in the wall that separated Gaza and Israel.
Did that add to this false sense of security with
no doubts.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Together with two other colleagues, Markmzeediet the Patrick Kings League,
The New York Times reported what happened after the fence
was erected. No, this is the fence that goes a
few meters above ground, one hundred meters that's very deep underground.
It was directed mainly to stop Hamas from building, from
(27:13):
digging tunnels underground into Israel. This was for years was
the main fear, the main concern from Israel, and it stopped,
but it forced Hamas to be more sophisticated, more robust,
and instead of going underground which is hidden, going above ground,
which is overt everybody can see, and being much more sophisticated.
(27:33):
But the Israelis thought that the defense with all the
different electronics and robots and drones and submachine guns, control
from afar and camera, this is invincible. And it made
the Israeli say military sleepy, lose their sharpness, not waking
every morning as they did every morning for years at
(27:56):
five o'clock, because this is the time. Between five and seven,
they knew that there's a morning fall, don is coming,
the sun is in the eyes of the Israelis. This
is when Hamas attacks and guess what they attacked at
six thirty five, and the Israelis many of the soldiers
were killed in their sleep. And everybody who knows Ramasi
(28:20):
this is like, this is inconceivable, it's inbearable. They did
not follow protocol. Defence made them think that they.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Don't need When all is said and done, how do
you believe these revelations and your reporting will impact the
Israeli intelligence infrastructure and the way it's run and the
people in it.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Look, everybody understand that in the second time, or fifty
years after to the day, is really intelligence failed to
supply exactly what it was established for. And it's not
just about some kind of you know, exotic alert from
(29:06):
the secret world. It led to the brutal violation of
the contract of the agreement between Israel, the state and
the Jewish people, which is to supply a security and
safety that Holocaust style days will not repeat itself. This
(29:28):
is a major watershed moment in the history of the
country and the Jewish people, and the intelligence community is
going to rebuild some parts of it, I'm sure, with
some hopefully mechanism that would make sure that this doesn't happen.
It's going to take the resignation of the leaders of
(29:49):
the military and the intelligence. Unlike Prime Minister Natanielle, they
said already that they take full responsibility and they in
other words, we will resign. This will go for a
very thorough investigation and re establishment of some of the
(30:10):
main agencies and expertise to make sure this is the
last of those of those as disastered.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Adam, do you think net Yahoo is toast?
Speaker 3 (30:27):
You know, many of Israelies have asked me what I think,
and my response is, but I don't know. They believe
that Nannaho is toast. But you know, I just came
from a country, United States, which saw the former president
of the United States indicted for seditious conspiracy. Right He's
accused of basically trying to overthrow the government, and now
(30:48):
he is the leading GOP candidate and could potentially president
of the United States again. So excuse me if I
feel little contrary in these days.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Well, gentlemen, Ronan Bergman and Adam Goldman, you all are
really kind to spend this time with me. Thank you
so much, and keep us posted. I'm sure we're going
to be reading developments as this story evolves, and it
would be great if one day you could talk to
this woman v And actually, do you think that just
(31:18):
would never happen?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Ronan, No, I'm finding what positivits will.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I've tried to speak with Maya, She's not interested.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
But you're right, there are some uncanny similarities between their stories,
except for, as you said, no one advocating for her
at a higher level.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Well, gentlemen, thank you both so much. I really appreciate it.
Thank goodness, Thank you Gay, Thanks for listening. Everyone.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
If you have a question for me, a subject you
want us to cover, or you want to share your
thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out.
You can leave a short message at six h nine
five point two five five five, or you can send
me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear
from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and
(32:12):
Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me Katie Kuric
and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and
our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller
composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
(32:34):
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
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