Edward Luttwak is the author (with Eitan Shamir) of The Art of Military Innovation: Lessons from the Israel Defense Forces. City Journal associate editor Daniel Kennelly spoke with him about the Hamas attack, Israel’s culture of innovation, and the Ukraine war.
What was the nature of Israel’s failure with respect to the Hamas attack? Was it an intelligence failure, overconfidence in technology, or something else?
It was a straight intelligence failure. The last news before the fighting broke out was that the Ministry of Defense in Israel had granted another 17,000 labor permits for Gazans to cross over into Israel. Israel had calculated that this would lift the standard of living of more than 100,000 people, with many more to come. This was based on the reality that Hamas was not launching rockets at the time. The theory was that Hamas was joining the other Sunni Muslims from Morocco to Saudi Arabia in making peace with Israel.
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