Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, Israeli space chief, Ex-general and head of the Israeli miliary’s R&D wing for 10 years, placed blame on the ‘stupidity’ of Army officials in the lead up to the October 7 attack.
He told MailOnline that the Israeli army ‘stupidity’ is to blame for October 7 attacks, ‘we saw Hamas plan for the attack for years – but some didn’t think they’d do it’.
The head of the Israeli Space Agency admitted that technology couldn’t have stopped the October 7 attack and little could’ve stopped the ‘stupidity’ of IDF officials in the lead up to the October 7 attack.
Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, exclusively told MailOnline that for all the technological achievements Israel has made, it was human error that allowed Hamas terrorists to slip past defences and kill 1,200 people on October 7.
‘Technology cannot overcome human stupidity. We had our hands on Hamas’ plan to do whatever they did on October 7, we have the plans since 2014. That is now 10 years’, Ben-Israel, a former general who led the IDF’s research and development arm for a decade, said.
In the weeks after incursion, it was revealed that intelligence officials failed to take the threat of a Hamas-led incursion seriously.
The New York Times reported that Israeli officials had obtained Hamas’ battle plan for October 7, which saw terrorists kidnap 240 people, only 110 of whom have since been returned to Israel, more than a year before it took place.
While the leaked plans did not have a specific date, Hamas reportedly followed the plans closely, leading to the deadliest day in Israel’s history.
But intelligence officials said the plans were simply aspirational, and were too difficult to actually undertake.
‘[For the] last two and a half years, they are training themselves on models, they built models of Israeli villages. They did this a few kilometres from the Israel border. And we saw it.
‘All these facts were known. Still, somehow, people who were in charge that night of the forces near the border didn’t believe that they would do it.
They believed ‘this cannot be overcome by technology,’ he said.
Even before plans for the October 7 attack, Israeli officials failed to act on intelligence that may have severely weakened Hamas’s ability to operate as early as 2018.
In December, it was revealed that Israeli officials had secured documents that laid out a funding operation worth hundreds of millions of dollars, that included mining operations, chicken farming, road building companies in Sudan, skyscrapers in the UAE, a property developer in Algeria and a real estate firm listed on Turkey’s stock exchange.
The plans were obtained in 2018, and showed that at its peak, the portfolio was worth half a billion dollars.
This money was used to fund the terror group’s sophisticated and well-planned attack on October 7, officials admitted.
Since October 7, Israel has launched a massive offensive against the Gaza Strip, that has so far killed more than 28,000 Palestinians – according to the territory’s health agency. It is estimated that around half of the people killed in the Gaza Strip are children.
Earlier this week, Israeli forces rescued two hostages by storming a heavily guarded flat in the Gaza Strip and extracting the captives under fire in a dramatic raid that was a small but symbolically significant success for Israel.
The operation killed at least 67 Palestinians, including women and children, according to Palestinian health officials in the beleaguered territory.
To assist the rescue forces, heavy airstrikes pounded the area near the apartment in Rafah, a city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where 1.4 million Palestinians have fled to escape fighting elsewhere in the Israel-Hamas war.
The raid was celebrated in Israel as a victory in the sluggish battle to free the hostages, with more than 100 captives still held by Hamas and other Gaza militants, and briefly lifted the spirits of a nation still reeling from the deadly cross-border raid last year.
The two men were pictured, and named as Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70. The pair, both being Argentinian-Israelis, were said to be in good health.
Both men were kidnapped by Hamas militants from Kibbutz Nir Yizhak in the October 7 cross-border attack that started the Israel-Hamas war.
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari gave details of the raid that saved the hostages’ lives, which saw counter-terrorism police using their own bodies as human shields.
‘Overnight, we brought back Louis and Fernando. This was a complex rescue operation under fire based on sensitive intelligence. A professional and accurate operation,’ Hagari said.
‘This is an operation that we prepared for and were waiting for the conditions that would make it possible to carry it out.’
Hagari said that officers from the police’s Yamam unit, known for its counter-terrorism operations, breached a flat in Rafah where the two men were being held at 1:49am.
‘The troops pulled Louis and Fernando out of the apartment and rescued them under fire, until they reached the safe zone,’ Hagari said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined Israel’s military chief and other top officials as the raid unfolded.
