The Military Censor's Office declassified Monday more information on the apparent lapses before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, showing the degree to which actionable signal intelligence had been received in Israel indicating massive preparations for an unusual event.
It is still unclear whether this critical information set off alarm bells that were ignored by officials or if it was misinterpreted or mishandled.
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What is known from the newly released information is that on the night between October 6 and 7, the Israeli intelligence apparatus picked up data showing that potentially hundreds of cellular devices using Israeli SIM cards were activated within the Gaza Strip, apparently after terrorists took out their Gaza SIM cards so that they could operate their devices in Israeli territory after their invasion. The IDF and the Shin Bet security agency immediately issued a clarification saying that the reports were misleading and that there were only several dozens SIMswere activated and that in fact this was not the first time they were used (meaning the activation was in fact the act of swaping Gazan SIMs to Israeli SIMs that were in use before).
According to the initial investigation, hours before the attack intelligence information was received at the Shin Bet headquarters regarding an important event in the Gaza Strip. The agency chief Ronen Bar arrived at the Tel Aviv headquarters, received updated information about a suspicious occurrence in the Gaza Strip area, and held security consultations with professional bodies around him. After the consultations, a dedicated team dubbed "Takila" was sent to the Gaza area as an advance force to figure out the unusual information, although it is unclear if this refers to the data released for publication on Monday or some other indications.
Days after the start of the fighting, the Prime Minister's Office stressed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not received an early warning regarding the Hamas surprise attack and only at 6:29 with the outbreak of fighting and many alarms across the country received an initial update on what was happening.
On October 16, nine days after the outbreak of fighting, Bar took responsibility for the events and stated: "Despite a series of actions we took, unfortunately on Saturday we failed to generate sufficient warning to thwart the attack. As the head of the organization – the responsibility for this lies with me. There will be time for investigations. Now we are fighting."
Four days earlier, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi also took responsibility for the failures and stated: "The IDF is responsible for the security of the state and its citizens and on Saturday morning in the Gaza periphery we did not deliver. We will learn, and investigate, but now is the time for war."
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