The gruesome bombardment of the Gaza Strip is continuing into its seventh month and there’s no signs that the carnage is stopping anytime soon.
Just last week, Israel rejected a ceasefire and intensified its bombing attacks on Rafah — conducting almost hourly aerial strikes.
Back on October 7th, armed with AK-47s and motorcycles, Hamas managed to breach the Gaza fence slaughtering and capturing hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians in southern Israel — they called it Operation Al Aqsa Flood.
So what did the Israeli government know and when… its a question almost no one in media is asking.. but we are… I’m investigative Journalist Ben Swann and this is Reckoning… Israel and Gaza.
7 months ago on October 7th, Hamas was able to carry out its shocking terror attack against Israel, despite Israel’s intelligence, military and security apparatus commonly considered the best in the world.
Bearing in mind Israel’s incredibly sophisticated and capable defenses and brigades of trained IDF soldiers stationed near the Gaza border, the scale and operational success of the Al Aqsa Flood attack surprised even Hamas.
Hamas representative Ali Barakeh explained to the Washington Post the ease with which Israel’s entire security apparatus disintegrated: “We were expecting to get a smaller number of hostages and return [to Gaza], but the [Israeli] army collapsed in front of us, what were we to do?”
In response to the Al Aqsa Flood attack, the Israeli military’s retaliatory efforts, code named Operation Swords of Iron, has resulted in the deaths of over 100 journalists, 190 United Nations staff, thirty four thousand Palestinians, including 13,000 children, displaced nearly the entire Gaza population of 2 million people and cost the United States almost $50 billion.
So how did October 7th happen? Well the entire mainstream media was quick to call it an “intelligence failure”.
The Guardian told its readers on the afternoon of October 7th that “Hamas’s murderous attack will be remembered as Israeli intelligence failure for the ages.”
While the attack was still technically ongoing, on October 7th, Politico quoted Israel’s former deputy National Security Adviser David Frielich as saying, “It’s a failure in terms of intelligence, operationally. It’s clear we were caught totally unprepared by this.”
And on October 8th, Jonathan Panikoff, former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, who’s now at the Atlantic Council think tank” firmly educated the public: “This was an intelligence failure; it could not be otherwise.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself tweeted and quickly deleted a statement denying any foreknowledge of the October 7th attack.
“Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas…” the tweet said, before it was promptly deleted.
Why did Netanyahu’s team delete that tweet? Did he in fact have intelligence that there would be an attack by Hamas? Well, the evidence seems to point to… yes.
Foreign security services, Israeli security services and the Israeli public all knew that Hamas was planning a violent, cross-border incursion where they would attempt to over-run and attack the kibbutz communities in southern Israel and take prisoners back to Gaza. And they also knew when. But it happened anyway.
Ten days before the attack, and then again three days before the attack, Egypt intelligence officials passed “repeated warnings” to the highest levels of Israel’s government.
In one of these warnings, Egypts premiere intelligence minister General Abbas Kamel personally called Netanyahu and warned that Hamas was about to do “something unusual, a terrible operation..”
Unnamed Egyptian officials told YNET News that they were shocked by Netanyahu’s “indifference to the news.”
But Israel didn’t have to trust or believe Egypt, because actually, most of the warnings of the October 7th attack came from Israeli civilians and the Israeli military itself.
The civilians and soldiers who brought these emergency warnings to the military were ignored and in some cases, strangely enough, threatened with legal action.
Let’s start in 2022 and work our way up to the days before October 7th.
In 2022, the IDF, through confidential sources, or spies, in Gaza, actually obtained the detailed Hamas Al Aqsa Flood attack plans.
Codenamed “Jericho Wall” by Israel, the excursion plan called for a barrage of rockets to begin the attack and for gunmen to pour into Israel en masse via paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot and take hostages back into Gaza — all of which happened on October 7th.
Hamas followed the blueprint that Israel already had — with shocking precision.
So Israel had the attack blueprints, but were they taken seriously by the IDF? Yes.
The plans were diligently studied. A presentation on the planned attack was given to senior officers in the IDF’S Gaza division.
The presentation concluded with this sentence:
“This invasion constitutes the gravest threat that IDF forces are facing in the defense [of Israel]”
So in response to this, did Israel’s security establishment beef up and enhance their surveillance of Hamas militants on the other side of the border? No, stunningly, they actually did the exact opposite.
They decided to entirely stop monitoring Hamas’s handheld radio traffic. Because they saw it “as a waste of effort” — even though during that same time in 2022, Israelis living in the kibbutz communities near the Gaza border, most of whom have some type of military training due to Israel’s mandatory IDF service laws, were, according to Israeli media, picking up clear evidence that Hamas was “practicing the breaching of the fence and conquering kibbutzim and seizing hostages and destroying everything in their path.”
Then, In April 2023, 6 months before the attack, again according to Israeli media, the IDF “restricted the ability” of Israelis living near the border “to monitor Hamas’ wireless traffic.”
In September 2023, less than a month before the attack, the head of the IDF’s “Devil’s Advocate” intelligence unit, which challenges prevailing narratives within Israel’s military, twice alerted senior decision-makers in both the army and political spheres about Hamas’ plans for a large-scale cross-border military operation.
He reiterated these warnings in person at Intelligence Branch strategic assessment sessions on September 26th and 27th. Just days before the attack.
During this period, just days before Al-Aqsa-Flood, Israeli civilians residing in the kibbutzim near the Gaza border were witnessing with their own eyes and ears constant and enormous Hamas training exercises. The army reportedly turned a blind eye.
One of these Israelis, Ben Shoshan, worked as a tour guide in the south eastern Israeli region surrounding Gaza.
In a radio interview just days before October 7th, she remarked, “[Hamas has] been training for weeks right up against the border, sometimes in massive numbers. I tried to warn the officers, but they told me I didn’t know anything and that I was safe.”
On October 3rd, a journalist for Israeli Public Radio tweeted and made it crystal clear that the bizarre and violent Hamas drills on the Gaza side of the border were evident to all Israelis who live there, let alone the military.
“The Islamic Jihad organization started noisy exercises very close to the border [with] missile launches, [simulating] breaking into Israel and kidnapping soldiers…Dedi Fuld, a resident of Netiv HaTara [said] `It was significantly closer than previous times. The children wake up and ask what’s going on, there are explosions, booms. It is not similar to previous exercises.”
So it was clear to everyone that Hamas wasn’t only planning to do something horrible, but it was also clear *what* that “horrible and evil” thing was.
According to a female IDF soldier who spoke to Israel’s channel 12 news program, she was constantly trying to warn her superiors about the gravity of Hamas training exercises. She was threatened with legal action.
“We were told that if we continue to harass on this issue, you will stand trial.”
So, Egypt knew, the Israeli military knew, and the Israeli civilians knew.
Yet, two days before October 7th, the Israeli military took two entire commando brigades, or around 100 soldiers, away from the the soon-to-be breached locations of the Gaza border and sent them to the other side of the country, to the West Bank village of Huwara despite no Hamas presence being in Huwara and despite there being giant Israeli dance parties taking place right along the same border fence where violent, escalating and obvious Hamas drills of breaching and kidnapping were taking place.
Does that make any sense?
Have you heard about these dance parties? It turns out there’s bizarre and inexplicable narratives surrounding the planning of these now infamous dance parties in Israel along the Gaza border.
What has not been widely reported is the fact that there were actually two, back to back dance parties at Kibbutz Re’Im, which is also the location of the IDF’s Gaza division and only 3 miles from the Gaza border.
The first party, planned months in advance, was a party called the “Unity Festival” which took place on October 5th and 6th.
The Nova Festival, the October 7th party, was actually added last minute, only a few days in advance of the event.
For obvious reasons, any significantly large gatherings near the Gaza border require Israeli military approval.
Again, this is a part of the story that virtually no American media network will talk about. According to Israeli media reports, Lt. Col. Sahar Fogel, an operations officer at the IDF’s Gaza Division, opposed the approval of the Nova Party based on the last minute nature of its event application and the intensifying Hamas drills at the border and because if something were to happen, more soldiers were on holiday. It was the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
The Lt. Col. explained his opposition to the party’s approval to his superiors. He was instructed to allow the event.
Israeli Newspaper Haaretz reported that other Gaza division officers privately “told of irregular conduct and pressure surrounding the approval of the party.”
In February 2024, Elkana Federman, the head of security for the Nova festival gave an interview to Israel’s Channel 14 where he made a statement that hasn’t been reported on by any American media.
“I had a guard at the festival who had served in the Re’im Division [near Gaza border], and a week before the festival he sent me a voice message … basically warning me, saying, ‘Elkana, something is going to happen over Sukkot. I just wanted to let you know, there are a lot of warnings..I passed the voice message on [to local IDF officials], and they told me everything was all right.”
After the attack, Federman called his friend in the IDF to ask him exactly what he knew.
“You were speaking in code. Tell me exactly what they showed you. He told me ‘Elkana, they told me there was going to be an invasion, and that they were planning to take over settlements. I just wasn’t allowed to tell you that.’ And that’s what happened. If he knew what he knew, a driver on the Gaza border…what did those above him know? Because he’s a small screw in the system.”
The Hamas attacks were violent and brutal. They have been likened to tragic events such as September 11th and the Holocaust, so it comes as a surprise that Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his Likud party have at times described the attacks as somewhat of a political gift.
Nissim Vaturi, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party in the Knesset, referred to the attack as sort of gift from God because they are being used to justify the current ongoing war, stating:
“We were meant to fight this war against Hamas, as is happening now, and luckily for us it came from the heavens.”
Back in January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained that Israel didn’t have domestic or international support to invade or destroy Gaza. He said the October 7th Hamas attack solved both of those problems for him. Listen to this.
“We couldn’t get the domestic consensus to make…a definitive solution to the problem of Hamas. That is, no one would agree across the Israeli public to go in and basically destroy Hamas—go throughout Gaza and destroy Hamas. We didn’t have the international consensus either; nobody would understand why we are doing it. Both conditions were created because of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th.”
All of this information, which has been reported in isolation and without context, until now, in no way excuses the brutal and sadistic October 7th Hamas attack that took the lives of so many innocent people but It does raise an important question, a question that brave people have to consider.
Did the Israeli military, the Israeli intelligence community, and the political leadership of Israel allow this ghastly attack to happen to justify wiping out the population of Gaza? And it raises big questions for us. What type of war is the Biden Administration and U.S. taxpayer supporting? A war of self defense? Or is it genocide justified by an attack that Israel likely could have stopped had they wanted to.
These are heavy questions. But rather than simply dismissing what we are saying, prove us wrong.
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Check them ouT for yourself and stay tuned as we continue to unveil the truth around Israel’s war on Gaza.
