David Ignatius on Israel Intel Failure: What Else We Don’t Know?

EXCERPT:

IGNATIUS: "Joe, the only thing I've really been able to focus on clearly is our own experience after 9/11, when we realized that every indicator that an attack was coming was in the system, but our intelligence analysts didn’t see it. In the famous phrase, they couldn’t connect the dots, they didn’t see what was in front of their eyes. There must be some of that going on in this case. I think the biggest surprise for the Israelis and for analysts looking from outside is not the intense hatred that Hamas has, the terrorist tactics — we knew their level on feelings about Israel — it’s their competence in executing this operation, their ability to keep secrets. The operational secrecy that preceded this is extraordinary. There are reports that even the head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, may not have known the details of this operation in the weeks before. It was done with that degree of caution. I’m also struck, Joe, by the question, if the Israelis didn’t know this, with their incredible focus on Gaza and Hamas, what else didn’t they know? I think intelligence services all over the world are going to be asking themselves in the wake of this, if our Israeli brothers and sisters, who were supposed to be the best of the best, missed this, what are we missing now?”