Understanding the Strategic Surprise of October 7

Peloni:  Brigadier General (Res.) Itai Brun and Hoover Institute’s Dr. Michael Doran discuss the developments and factors which coalesced to bring about the October 7 Massacre.  See Detailed Summary below.

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Summary:

– Competing Narratives of October 7th

– The Collapse of Israel’s Strategic Perception was based on fundamental assumptions which were false, ie Hamas was deterred, Israel’s military strength provided strategic deterrence, creating the “Gap Between Perception and Reality”

– Hamas’s developed a new Operational and Strategic Concept: massive, multi-pronged ground invasion to replace the concept of tunnel infiltration.

– 2021 May War was key in providing Hamas with the confidence of victory that it could coordinate in a multifront war with Iran and the other proxies.

– The concept of victory evolved from that of survival towards pursuing a decisive victory

– Growing Perception by Hamas that U.S. Weakness as China/Russia aligned more with the “Resistance Axis” would deter the US from intervening in an attack on Israel

– Illusion of certainty led to Israeli strategic collapse requiring the development of a culture on which all hypotheses are routinely tested rather than accepted as factual

– Lessons for Intelligence & Decision-Makers

  • Reality is more complicated than intelligence frameworks can describe.

  • challenging assumptions must become routine for policy makers and intelligence analysts

  • institutionalized skepticism and competing hypotheses employed to avoid self deceptive blind spots.

– Post-October 7 & Regional Implications

  • The Resistance Axis is now reassessing its own “theory of victory” after mixed results and internal tensions.

  • Israel’s current operations in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran are an effort to dismantle the Axis’s belief in decisive victory.

  • Hamas’s success, though temporary, reshaped regional strategic landscape due to Israel’s assumption which misjudged technological dominance in place of strategic understanding.

November 12, 2025 | 18 Comments »

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18 Comments / 18 Comments

  1. The IDF leadership was entirely Leftist and their focus was on fighting Netanyahu not Hamas. Same with the Mossad leadership.

    95% of non military, non law enforcement Israeli Jews are still not allowed arms to protect themselves. They need “permits” to shoot Muslims raping their wives and daughters. They are not allowed to have them.

    Stuck on stupid from top to bottom.

  2. The core difference between the military philosophies associated with the Maginot Line and Charles de Gaulle was a conflict between a static, defensive strategy and a mobile, offensive one.
    The Maginot Line: This was a massive, state-of-the-art system of fixed fortifications built along France’s border with Germany (and Italy). The underlying strategy, popular among French military leadership, was to deter a direct invasion and force any German attack through Belgium, where the French army could meet it on a prepared line with British and Belgian support. The goal was to avoid a repeat of the devastating trench warfare of World War I in French territory and allow time for French mobilization.
    Charles de Gaulle’s Philosophy: As a junior officer and military theorist, de Gaulle was a prominent critic of relying solely on static defenses. In his 1934 book Vers l’Armée de Métier (Toward a Professional Army), he advocated for a professional, highly mechanized army built around mobile armored divisions and close air support. He argued for a strategy of movement and decisive counter-attacks, recognizing the potential for new offensive “blitzkrieg” tactics that were being developed and later successfully employed by Germany.
    The Contrast and Outcome
    The French military establishment largely ignored de Gaulle’s arguments, favoring the orthodox, defensive mindset embodied by the Maginot Line. Tragically for France, the German army in 1940 largely bypassed the main Maginot fortifications by attacking through the poorly defended and supposedly “impassable” Ardennes Forest, a region where the line was weak. This maneuver rendered the costly Maginot Line largely irrelevant to the outcome of the Battle of France and validated many of de Gaulle’s concerns about an over-reliance on fixed defenses.
    The “Maginot versus De Gaulle” dynamic thus represents a historical case study in the debate between defensive and offensive military doctrines, with the outcome of the 1940 invasion solidifying de Gaulle’s reputation as a visionary strategist, at least in this regard.

    AI Overview

    And Germany had its own equivalents originally, the Hindenburg Line and the Siegfried Line.

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    • @Sebastien
      Don’t forget the Bar Lev line too. It was overrun in two hours in 1973, though it served its purpose in the war of attrition. The two wars were very different but an important distinction which led to the Bar Lev line collapsing so quickly in 1973 was the intelligence failures which led to misunderstandings about the intentions of the Egyptian forces as well as the capabilities of the Egyptian forces. There were other factors involved as well, but intel failure I believe was the greatest distinction.

        • @Sebastien,

          If Israel had mobilized and attacked pre-emptively in response to the Egyptian forces massed on the border, would that have mattered?

          If it had done so, it would have preserved freedom of the skies, something which they lost as they scrabbled to deal with the dilemma of a two front war. The plan to deal with the Egyptian SAM missile batteries had been well planned in advance, but it was cancelled just before it began after the Egyptians had begun their attack. The IDF command, Dayan,, judged that the greater threat was on the Syrian front, so a hodge-podge attack plan against the Syrian SAMS was cobbled together with devastating results. The consequence of this can not be overstated, such that when the IAF finally moved against the Egyptians, they were unable to achieve the affect which could have been had if the original mission had not been scrapped.

          The attack plan on Egypt’s SAMS was called Tagar, and the one against the Syrians was Dogman, or something close to that, in case you want to read more on the topic.

          If Israel had struck first, the Egyptian SAMS would have been devastated, and the IAF would have taken far fewer losses. The consequence of this is that Israel would have dominated the war, instead of trying to hold on til Nixon pushed Kissenger to send Israel badly needed support. The war would almost certainly have been shorter, with far fewer Israeli casualties, but the political fallout would have been hard to judge for certain. To be certain, it wouldn’t have been pretty.

          The Americans wanted to use Israel as bait to get Egypt to cut its ties with the USSR and come to support the US in the Cold War, which is ultimately exactly what happened. If Israel had spoiled that moment for the US, it is hard to know for certain if the US would have cut its ties with Israel or simply given them a time out. The US project with Egypt, like Trump’s peace plan in the Middle East today, was a VERY VERY big deal. So this part is hard to answer with any certainty, IMHO, of course.

          But I am well convinced that Israel would have won the war quicker and with far fewer losses if they had attacked first in ’73. The only concern Israel really had going into the war preemptively is that it would rely heavily on the accuracy of Israel’s intelligence, which had been too reliant upon the Americans which is why they were led to believe that there would be no attack. So this is something to consider. Israel would have had to have concluded in advance of the Egyptian attack that the Americans, their allies, were lying to them, something which they did not come to grasp til long after the war had ended. If they had made that deduction, many things could have been different, but I am not convinced that they would have been. Golda was quite dependent upon the good will of the US, and I don’t think she would have been easily swayed that they were using Israel as bait. It would have been a really hard pill for her to have swallowed, again IMO.

  3. Hamas militants trained for its deadly attack in plain sight and less than a mile from Israel’s heavily fortified border

    Paul P. Murphy Tara John Oren Liebermann
    By Paul P. Murphy, Tara John, Brent Swails and Oren Liebermann, CNN
    5 min read
    Updated 11:17 PM EDT, Thu October 12, 2023

    CNN
    —
    The footage is from the last two years, but it is chillingly prescient. In a December 2022 video, Hamas fighters can be seen flooding a training area, shooting rockets and capturing pretend prisoners as they surround mock Israeli buildings.

    The camp, CNN analysis shows, had just been constructed, and was very close to Erez Crossing, the pedestrian passageway between Gaza and Israel that Hamas fighters ultimately breached last weekend in a bloody attack which killed over 1,200 people in Israel.

    Another video taken more than a year ago, shows Hamas fighters practicing take-offs, landings and assaults with paragliders – the same unusual assault mode that Hamas deployed with lethal effect in the same Oct. 7 attack.

    A CNN investigation has analysed almost two years of training and propaganda video released by Hamas and its affiliates to reveal the months of preparations that went into last week’s attack, finding that militants trained for the onslaught in at least six sites across Gaza.

    Two of those sites, including the arid training site shown in the December video, were a little more than a mile from the most fortified and patrolled section of the Gaza-Israel border. Of the remaining sites: one is located in central Gaza, and the other three in far south Gaza.

    Two years of satellite imagery, also reviewed by CNN, show no indication of an offensive Israeli military action against any of the six identified sites.

    Not only was there activity in the last several months at the camps, but some camps also absorbed surrounding farmland, converting it from agriculture to barren area for training in the last two years, according to satellite imagery.

    the stunned aftermath of Hamas’ ruthless incursion – where militants abducted 150 people, overran Israeli military bases, and laid waste to towns and farms – questions are being raised about the intelligence and operational failures by Israel’s security apparatus.

    The fact that Hamas trained for the attack in plain sight for at least two years raise further questions as to why Israel, home to the Middle East’s most sophisticated military and spying operation, was unable to pick up on and stop the October 7 attack?

    When CNN reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment, its international spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the findings were “nothing new.”

    He added that Hamas has “had many training areas” and Israel’s military had “struck many training areas over the years in the different rounds of escalation.”

    Conricus noted that Israel has not had a major escalation with Hamas in over two years, in reference to when hostilities between Israel and Hamas erupted in 2021. It followed weeks of tension in Jerusalem, where a group of Palestinian families faced eviction from their homes in East Jerusalem in favor of Jewish nationalists.

    Conricus also said that Hamas may have made the facilities “look civilian.”

    However, five of the sites – the sixth is a landing strip – do not have civilian features and are nearly identical in how they are constructed and arranged.

    They are all surrounded by massive earthen berms, which are taller than the buildings in the camps. The buildings – most have no roofs – are nearly all made from cinderblocks and cement.

    Some camps have gates and fences, while others have street curbs but no paved roads.

    Asked about the camps, Conricus said they could not answer CNN’s questions “since they relate to the complex analysis of intelligence at the same time that we are fighting a war.”

    “This topic, together with numerous other issues, will be investigated by the IDF at the end of the war,” he added.

    In plain sight
    Senior Hamas official Ali Baraka, the head of the Lebanon-based Hamas National Relations Abroad, told RT Arabic following Saturday’s attack that the terror organization has been preparing for the attack for two years.

    Metadata analyzed by CNN indicates that Hamas conducted the trainings for months, sometimes over a year, before releasing the propaganda montages on their social media channels.

    The videos also foreshadow the events of October 7.

    In one clip, militants are seen practicing take-offs, landings and assaults with paragliders. The metadata showed it was filmed over a year ago. The shadows and position of the sun in the video also indicates that filmed training sessions either lasted for hours, or took place on multiple days.

    During the October 7 attack, paragliders took off at dawn close to two training camps geolocated by CNN that are near the Gaza-Israel border.

    The videos show that the same practice take-off location the paragliders used had also been used to test Hamas’ own homegrown drones. Metadata indicates those tests took place months before the paragliding montages took place.

    Hamas terrorists are also seen in propaganda videos practicing with the type of weaponry they would use to attack on October 7. They created mock Israeli buildings and streets and are seen executing a number of different assault tactics on them.

    At a training site hundreds of feet from the Erez Crossing, a wall of a building has a drawing of two palm trees and an animal figure that looks similar to Israel’s Erez Crossing battalion’s insignia.

    The video shows them even practicing taking prisoners and zip-tying their hands at the camp.

    Satellite imagery shows that the camp was constructed within the last year and a half.

    In three of the training camps, they even created fake Israeli tanks consisting of what appears to be a large outer shell surrounding a truck. Fighters are seen practicing an attack against it, launching RPGs and other explosives.

    https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/12/middleeast/hamas-training-site-gaza-israel-intl

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  4. I just read the IDF is introducing new and upgraded technology to the Gaza border. They had people, all female soldiers, warning their male superiors repeatedly over time who were threatening them to keep quiet! And one middle level official was actually prosecuted for going over his superior’s head to report crucial, time-sensitive intelligence to Bibi that had been kept from him!

    If enemy forces mass on the border, that should be a red line for war as it was in ’67. The observers reported them doing training exercises!

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      • @Peloni Yes, I hope the IDF is planning in prepartion for war with Egypt as Egypt is planning to go to war with Israel. It won’t be under Trump but presidents only serve for 4 or 8 years. Imagine AOC in the oval office in 2029. Or Tucker Carlson.

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  5. IDF officer who ignored massacre warnings returns to service
    An intelligence officer who called the scenario of a Hamas incursion “entirely imaginary” and ignored warnings that contributed to the failure, has returned to active service in the IDF Intelligence Department.
    Nov 13, 2025 at 10:40 AM (GMT+2)

    “Sources familiar with the matter said the officer “refuses to go home. Many people tried to show him the way out, and he does not agree – he wants to remain in the army.”

    An IDF spokesperson confirmed the report’s details.”

    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/417730

    My Comment: Oh, well if he doesn’t want to go home. What is this, kindergarden? I’m shocked he hasn’t been brought up on charges and that I should even have to say that!

    “Hello, hello, anybody home?” – “Back to the Future” (1985)

    https://youtu.be/JhJGOYJo9mM?si=vWY1pIHrzorXB_Pk