The brutal Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel earlier this month have led to the age-old question: How did this happen? That question has placed new scrutiny on the intelligence capabilities of both Israel and the U.S. And it raises larger concerns moving forward about whether Israel or America can prevent the next terrorist attack.
The attack by Hamas was stunning not only for its brutality and brazenness, but for the fact that it appeared to catch Israel off guard. As a constant target of threats of annihilation by terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as state sponsors of terror like Iran, Israel has earned a reputation as the gold standard for intelligence. Thus, the 'surprise' element of this attack has experts scratching their heads. "Obviously, this was a major intelligence failure," says Retired Army Gen. David Perkins on Fox News. "We've got to reestablish situational awareness and understanding...where are the gaps, and how do we fill that in?"
"They (Israel) are world-class when it comes to intelligence collection," he continues. "I think this could have been more a shortcoming of intelligence analysis, than it was collection of data."
What or how much Israeli intelligence knew about the possibility of the Hamas attack is already a subject for debate. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) told Fox News that Egypt had warned Israel. The White House would not comment on that report, and when asked about intelligence failures in general, National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby told reporters, "There is going to be a time for that...but now is not that time."
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has his own theory on why the U.S. was caught off guard by the attack. Ratcliffe tells Fox News the Biden administration has failed to maintain the intelligence priorities of the Trump administration. "We (in the Trump administration) focused on the eradication of the ISIS caliphate, which we achieved, and we focused on the Islamic terrorist regime in Iran and minimizing their influence, " he says. "The first thing Joe Biden did when he came into office was to scramble all of that, and state that the intelligence community would focus on our top national security threat---climate change."
"The intelligence enterprise is very good at focusing on what the administration wants, and in this case we had them focusing on the weather instead of Hamas, so I don't think anyone should be surprised at this kind of an outcome, unfortunately."