Unacknowledged False Flags: The October 7th Hamas Attack - Part 2

The purpose and scope of the Unacknowledged False Flag Substack series is explained HERE.

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In Part 1 we looked at the official account of the October 7th Hamas Attack. In addition to a rocket barrage on multiple targets and maritime assaults, an estimated 2,900 Hamas-aligned “terrorists” breached the Israeli “Iron Wall” defences surrounding Gaza in 29 separate locations simultaneously. The “terrorists” took out all the vital communication infrastructure and key Israeli strategic positions, thus leaving Israeli defences unable to respond for many hours. The attack surprised the Israeli intelligence community which was taken off guard by the scale and speed of the Hamas Attack.

Before we start to examine the evidence revealing the absurdity of the official account we should pause to think about what the word “terrorist” means.

There is no clear definition of “terrorism” in international law. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism, Professor Ben Saul, points out that the "ordinary meaning of terrorism is simple: extreme fear." So why is the Hamas Attack considered an act of terrorism while the Israeli firebombing of Palestinian children in their schools, refugee camps and hospital beds is called an act of war?

Saul notes that intergovernmental consensus determines terrorism to be “criminal violence intended to intimidate a population or coerce a government or international organisation; some national laws add a further specific intention to advance a political, religious, or ideological cause.” As Hamas represents the government of the Palestinian people of Gaza, the murder of thousands of Palestinian children by the Israeli government is, by definition, “criminal violence intended to intimidate a population [and] coerce a government.” If international law meant anything at all, the Israeli response to the Hamas Attack would also be called an act of “terrorism.”

It isn’t of course because “international law” is just a fabricated stick wielded by the powerful to oppress whomever. It enables governments to claim the “legal authority” to kill indiscriminately. When they can’t obtain that “legal” approval the most powerful governments don’t pay any heed to its absence and murder people anyway.

Over the years, the Israeli government has completely ignored numerous binding and non-binding UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. So What? It doesn’t mean anything. The application and enforcement of “international law” is as arbitrary as the designation of terrorist groups. The intergovernmental consensus on “terrorism,” then, is an overtly political propaganda construct. “Might is right” is the full extent of this international legalese drivel and labels like “terrorist” are stuck on some violent aggressors but not others for purely propagandist reasons.

This does not excuse mass murder, such as that perpetrated by Hamas during its October 7th Attack. It is merely to point out that calling the Hamas Attack “terrorism” but then refusing to call Israeli barbarity “terrorism” is so hypocritical it renders the whole “terrorism” concept moot. We should either apply the terrorist designation to all, including governments, who systematically slaughter innocent people to cause “extreme fear,” or to none.

Hamas Attack: Intelligence Failures?

In October 2024 the Combating Terrorism Center (CTR) at the US West Point military training academy produced analysis of the Israeli Intelligence “failings” that supposedly led to the “surprise” October 7th Hamas Attack. The CTR analysis provides us with a reasonably full official account:

Hamas leaders themselves have noted the group’s surprise at the ease with which its operatives breached the barrier separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, as well as the slowness of the Israeli response. [. . .] Israel misread Hamas’ intentions. [. . .] Shin Bet [Israeli domestic intelligence - ISA] has been primarily responsible for HUMINT [human intelligence] in Gaza and Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate (AMAN) for SIGINT [signals intelligence]. Israel had managed to collect some information that could have been considered indicators pointing to the attack. [. . .] [F]or more than a year before October 7, the IDF had reportedly been in possession of a document, the “Jericho Wall” file, that outlines a plan to invade Israel that largely corresponds to the October 7 events. [. . .] [I]n July 2023, a non-commissioned officer in AMAN’s 8200 SIGINT unit warned that a recent exercise by the group “closely followed the Jericho Wall plan, and that Hamas was building the capacity to carry it out.” [. . .] the Gaza Division subsequently prepared a document warning that Hamas was planning a large-scale invasion and intended to take up to 250 hostages. [. . .] Unit 8200 sent another warning to a number of IDF officers a few days before October 7, urging them to make preparations to minimize the impact of the expected attack. [. . .] [T]he head of AMAN’s “Devil’s Advocate” or “Red Team” unit [. . .] issued four warnings in the three weeks before October 7 that Hamas “would soon launch a confrontation with Israel, because it identified deep processes that were fundamentally changing the strategic situation.” [. . .] [N]either Shin Bet nor AMAN were able to detect additional indicators and suspicious activities. [. . .] Israel’s inability to detect the impending attacks was not the result of a single glaring failure but rather the result of multiple problems at different levels and across the various intelligence services and the top political and military echelons.

The official narrative, then, is that despite the frankly massive amount of intelligence suggesting an attack was imminent, multiple intelligence “failures” combined to enable Hamas to stroll through the Iron Wall [Gaza prison wall] defences and carry out their Attack. The CTR observation that “neither Shin Bet nor AMAN were able to detect additional indicators” is pointless. Both Shin Bet and AMAN operatives gave ample warning and provided quite specific intelligence suggesting an attack was imminent. What need was there for any “additional indicators”?

As reported by the New York Times, and mentioned by the CTR, In April 2022 IDF military intelligence (AMAN) had come into possession of a Hamas strategic plan which AMAN code named “Jerricho Wall.” This was the blueprint for the Hamas Attack. The NYT reported:

Hamas followed the blueprint [Jericho Wall] 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.

On September 12th, four weeks before the Attack, Hamas produced its customary “Strong Pillar” training exercise video. While this was an annual Hamas propaganda event, nonetheless it showed Hamas training for “Jerricho Wall.” The Associated Press reported that the video showed Hamas:

[U]sing explosives to blast through a replica of the border gate, sweep in on pickup trucks and then move building by building through a full-scale reconstruction of an Israeli town, firing automatic weapons at human-silhouetted paper targets.

That no one in Israeli intelligence supposedly took any of this seriously is stretching “failure” plausibility to breaking point. But even if it was attributable to failures, the suggestion that the Hamas Attack came as a “surprise” is idiotic.

The Jewish Virtual library reported that IDF intelligence chief Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash acknowledged that “Jerricho Wall” revealed that “Hamas was not deterred.” Yet, in July 2023, when an AMAN Unit 8200 officer said that training exercises that looked just like “Jerricho Wall” were escalating, adding that they did not look like preparation for “just a raid on a village” but rather “a plan designed to start a war,” that too was ignored by the Israeli chain of command.

It wasn’t just Israeli intelligence that warned of an impending attack either. Menachem Gida, leader of a team of 26 Israeli hobbyists—who routinely monitored Gaza’s communications network—repeatedly warned the IDF about the likely attack. They were openly discussing it on their “Field Security Operational Monitor” WhatsApp group. The civilians reportedly appraised the IDF, in the days leading up to the attack, that Hamas was “practicing the breaching of the fence and arriving from the sea, conquering kibbutzim such as Zikim, Netiv Ha’asara and Nir Oz, seizing hostages and destroying everything.”

Yifat Ben Shoshan, a resident of Netiv HaAsara and a tour guide for Israeli towns and Kibbutzim on the Gazan border, was interviewed by the Kan 11 radio station a few days before the Hamas Attack. She said:

I hope Hamas isn’t planning a second Yom Kippur. [. . .] For years they had been gradually improving their capabilities, especially their rocket system. And they’d been training for weeks right up against the border, sometimes in massive numbers. I tried to warn the officers, but they told me I didn’t know anything about it and that I was safe.

Shoshan recognised that the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, (October 6th 1973) when Egypt and Syria launched a “surprise” attack on Israel, was of particular symbolic significance for Hamas and represented a moment of heightened risk. Yet, we are told, no one in an Israeli position of authority managed to make this mental leap.

Instead, the decision was made to concentrate 25 IDF Battalions in the West Bank and leave just 4 guarding Gaza over the anniversary period. On October 5th 2023, two elite commando companies were moved from Gaza to the West Bank, leaving just 600 regular IDF soldiers (conscripts) spread thinly along the Gazan border.

Supposedly, the policy of arming Israeli settlers is to enable them to defend themselves against “terrorist” attacks, rather than kill unarmed Palestinians as often seems to be the case—especially in the West Bank. Yet, in the years and months leading up to the Hamas Attack, civilians on the Gazan border, such as local security coordinators Rafi Babian, had protested vigorously against the IDF program of removing weapons from southern border communities.

As noted by West Point’s CTR, AMAN Unit 8200 operatives operating in the Gazan Division gave very precise warnings about the looming Hamas Attack, even down to accurate estimates of how many hostages they were planning to take. Military spotters and observers at places like the Nahal Oz observation room, and civilians alike, had evidently been reporting increasing Hamas activity. A Unit 8200 operative sent an email to her superiors just three weeks before the Attack saying:

The sword is coming [. . .] warn the people. [. . .] The other side is determined in its intentions to carry out its plan. If the plan is implemented painful and difficult fighting is expected.

Israeli government officials denied receiving intelligence alerts from Egypt three days prior to the Hamas attack. Post the attack, this led Egypt’s intelligence minister to state:

We have warned them [Israeli intelligence] an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings.

“Underestimated” appears to be diplomatic code for “completely ignored.”

All this intelligence perhaps explains why, the night before the Hamas Attack, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar and Aharon Haliva, head of military intelligence, met to discuss why Hamas was mobilising. Although perhaps it doesn’t because they didn’t alert anyone nor try to strengthen any Israeli defences and took absolutely no precautionary measures whatsoever.

In the weeks leading up to the Hamas Attack what “additional indicators” did any Israeli intelligence chief or military commander need to call for regional defences to be strengthened? Instead the process of weakening them continued.

The Israeli news outlet Haaretz wrote:

The IDF and Shin Bet had no intelligence warning to indicate Hamas’ intention of invading Israel in large numbers. The Southern Command even allowed the transfer to the West Bank of three battalions who operated in the sector, in order to reinforce the troops there over the holiday.

No intelligence warnings?

Haaretz went on to say that on the day of the attack “Southern Command and the Gaza Regiment collapsed completely”—precisely because there weren’t “enough troops in the sector to deploy.” It seems the skeleton cohort of remaining troops—many of them women soldiers—and the Israeli settlers in the region had been left practically undefended at exactly the wrong time.

But the alleged intelligence “failures” didn’t stop there. In the years prior to the Hamas attack, Israeli intelligence capabilities over and within Gaza were eye-watering. Israel operates a fleet of satellites enabling it to monitor Gaza from space. Ofek-13 SAR systems enabled it to view Gazans in all weather and cloud conditions, night and day, with a ground resolution of 0.5m2.

The Hermes 900 drones, with both electro-optical (EO) and infra-red (IR) sensors, thermal surveillance monitors, laser designation targeting and electronic listening devices, were just one of a number of Israeli drone systems deployed over Gaza prior to the Hamas Attack. The Cyclone drone system was used both for spying and for crowd control. In 2021 Israel was the first country to deploy an AI-controlled drone swarm to locate, identify and attack its enemies. Israel’s drone surveillance of Gaza was so pervasive it led Gazans to complain of sleep deprivation due to the persistent “buzz” in the skies above their heads.

Israel’s cyber and electronic warfare capabilities were just as comprehensive. Again, in 2021, the US administration banned the commercial use of Israeli defence contractor NSO’s Pegasus spyware. It was able to hack pretty much any internet-enabled device—particularly mobile phones—through various software vulnerabilities. Pegasus could harvest personal and location data, control a mobile phone’s microphones and cameras—without the user’s knowledge or permission—and transmit data even after the user has switched the phone off.

Israel’s human (on the ground - HUMINT) intelligence prowess was equally formidable. Shin Bet HUMINT led the IDF to frequently intercept and shut down Hamas border tunnels. Shin Bet’s infiltration of Hamas’ literal underground network was so exhaustive, and Hamas so destabilised, that Hamas resorted to mass executions of suspected spies and possible collaborators. Shin Bet’s Mista’arvim counter-terrorism unit and the IDF’s elite Maglan unit were able to conduct targeted assassinations and many other acts of espionage and surveillance inside Gaza .

In addition to all of this, the Palestinians were the most surveilled and searched people on Earth. Everyone who entered or or left Gaza was subjected to the “Blue Wolf” system. Biometric ID, monitored by facial recognition software, combined with strictly controlled entry and exit permits were required at the armed checkpoints that were the only official way in an out of Gaza. The “Blue Wolf” system logged every movement on what Israeli intelligence operatives called “Facebook for Palestinians.” So extensive and intrusive was Israel’s spying on Palestinians that, in 2014, former members of Israel’s Unit 8200 wrote a joint letter to the Israeli government protesting the oppressive surveillance.

All of this electronic surveillance and human intelligence was scrutinised by the IDF Unit 9900. The Gaza-specific battlefield intelligence collection unit analysed the harvested data before deploying units of its Gaza Division, under IDF Southern Command, to strike Hamas and other “terrorist” targets.

There is absolutely no evidence at all to suggest the Israeli authorities decided to stop Satellite, cyber, SIGINT and HUMINT intelligence gathering in, around and above Gaza in the years leading up to the Hamas Attack. If the official narrative of intelligence “failures” is to be believed, however, then all of it must have “failed” completely . . . . . . . . for years.

Ali Baraka, the head of external relations for Hamas, said that preparations for the Hamas Attack took two years. Given the complexity and scale of the Hamas Attack this seems reasonable. If so, it implies that, for two years, Hamas commanders—most of its leaders lived in Doha but commanders like Mohammed Deif operated inside Gaza—met to formulate and communicate Hamas plans as required. Hamas issued the corresponding orders, assembled, trained and equipped its forces, gathered and stored the munitions and equipment needed for the large-scale assault and somehow managed to do all of this without once triggering a single Israeli intelligence alert.

What is even more remarkable is that immediately after the Hamas Attack, Israel’s vice like intelligence grip of anything that moves in Gaza was suddenly working again. By 11th November 2023, Shin Bet operatives were deep inside Hamas territory directing IDF strikes and coordinating assassinations. It seems the monstrous Israeli intelligence machine only failed totally—in every single conceivable regard—in respect to the October 7th Hamas Attack.

Hamas, by comparison, supposedly suffered no such catastrophic intelligence failures. They apparently used the cheap drones they probably bought from Amazon to make quite precise maps and gather targeting information for their October 7th Attack. Flying their little drones over highly sensitive Israeli military installations for days, with ease, they also gathered HUMINT from Israeli labourers who passed to-and-fro, across the Gaza border, without one Israeli intelligence officer thinking to ask any labourer what they were chatting to Hamas about. Or so we are told.

So, it appears Hamas was spying on Israeli military targets with abandon and training out in the open in large numbers next to the wall; Israeli civilians living near the Gazan border knew an attack was likely and, indeed, imminent and said so; numerous Israeli intelligence operatives issued highly accurate alerts; foreign intelligence agencies knew what was about to happen and told Israeli government officials about it; the Israeli government had a dossier outlining the precise plan—Jericho Wall—and Hamas even broadcast a video showing themselves training to execute that plan just weeks before carrying it out.

In addition, Gazan’s were relentlessly surveilled, their movement monitored and controlled. Intelligence operatives were evidently working inside Gaza and it was under intense scrutiny at all times by an almost unbelievable array of spy satellites, drones, bugs, cyber-surveillance and a smorgasbord of Israeli SIGINT tools.

But the Hamas Attack came as a complete surprise and no one in Israeli authority was prepared to defend against it.

One of the excuses given, evidently in hope of explaining the inexplicable “failures,” is that Israel’s over-reliance on technology and AI led it to undervalue information gathered from traditional human intelligence (HUMINT). This is not a plausible argument.

The overwhelming weight of evidence shows that neither Israeli technological surveillance-based intelligence nor human intelligence was lacking. There was no “failure” of human intelligence-gathering. Intelligence operatives, military observers and even civilian volunteers knew what was happening and did everything they could to raise the alarm.

The are only two viable explanations. Either everything that is known about Israeli intelligence capabilities is wrong and Israeli intelligence is actually worse than useless, or high-level decisions were made to deliberately ignore intelligence warnings.

As we shall see in Part 3, the manner in which Israeli forces responded on the day only adds further evidence that indicates the October 7th Hamas Attack was—from the Israeli perspective—at the very least, a LIHOP false flag operation, which appears to have strayed into MIHOP on more than one occasion..