In 1973, the idea held by the leading Israeli intelligence analysts about the intents of Egyptian leaders was badly mistaken. As in 1973, however, the power of preconceived ideas may have prevented the intelligence from being put together-especially given the toxic relationship between a far-right government and the intelligence services. But there’s a strong chance that Israeli intelligence had the pieces it needed to detect an assault that involved the dispatch of perhaps 1,000 or more militants and more than 2,000 missiles. Israel’s much-vaunted intelligence services failed to anticipate the Hamas attack-prompting comparisons between today and the similar failure 50 years ago to predict the Egyptian attack that launched the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
