Stunning Failure

 For decades, Israel's intelligence service and military were undeniably the most powerful in the Middle East. From being a marginal state beset by enemies, Israel is now incredibly stronger than its neighbors. 

Today, the reputation of the intelligence services was shattered. The ability of Hamas to carry out such a wide ranging terrorist attack without Mossad knowing has already been compared to the intelligence failure of the Yom Kippur War.

The difference between this and the Yom Kippur War is that the IDF isn't really challenged by this action. They retain all their capabilities and those capabilities dwarf whatever Hamas has. This was textbook terrorism, but every outrage visited upon Israelis will be repaid twice against Palestinians. As awful as today was, the coming weeks promise to be worse. 

What was Hamas thinking? Generally, terrorist attack like these are done to provoke a response. The response from Israel is likely to be massive and Palestinians in Gaza are going to suffer for it. Unless they have some super secret plan, the IDF is going to roll over them like a steamroller.

Of course, we have to examine the political implications of this action. I saw a poll that had Trump leading Biden on foreign policy which is absurd, but this likely won't help, if it drags on. Trump and the GOP are staunch allies of Netanyahu and Likud, and they are going to hit Biden on the cash payments to Iran whether or not there is a link between Hamas and Iran or not.

More immediately, the future of the Netanyahu government is at question. Some opposition leaders have called for a unity government to prosecute what Netanyahu is calling a "war". At some point, however, the accountability moment might occur. I say "might" because we saw what happened after 9/11. The Bush Administration oversaw the greatest intelligence failure since at least Pearl Harbor...and his approval ratings shot up. 

The endless "wag the dog" conspiracies are already percolating: that Netanyahu let the attack happen to shore up his government. On the other side, they argue that Netanyahu's desperate clinging to power has created a shadow Mossad made up of hard right ideologues that can't do their job properly. I can't claim to know enough about Israeli politics to speak to that. Hell, I've seen a claim that Putin was behind it to distract the West, but that seems very unlikely.

This is not an existential threat to Israel the way that the Yom Kippur War was, but it might be for Gaza. I could see Netanyahu giving the green light to some pretty horrific reprisals to placate the far right of his coalition. This is going to get rough, and sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza is going to be in short supply.