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Did Hamas’ Innovation — or Israel’s Complacency — Lead to October 7 Massacre?
Hamas terrorists kidnapping Israeli women at the Nahal Oz base near the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Screenshot
Israel possesses one of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence capabilities with which to obtain and provide information on its adversaries’ capabilities, intentions and actions. That intelligence serves to guide Israel’s policymakers in deciding on courses of action. Yet on October 7, Hamas was able to carry out an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil with devastating consequences.
What core intelligence challenges did Israel fail to meet in the run-up to this event?
Critically, Israeli intelligence failed to grasp the disruptive changes in Hamas’ approach to Israel — a failure that was facilitated by a related failure of organizational implementation. Explicit advance knowledge of a Hamas attack at the unit level of the intelligence apparatus was not considered valuable, so it was not translated into a competitive advantage. Drawing on public information distilled through Yakov Ben-Haim’s info-gap theory, this article analyzes these two intelligence challenges related to the October 7 attack. It also discusses a means of managing uncertainty that seeks to reduce the impact of surprises on policy outcomes.
Some elements of human affairs are fundamentally unknowable because of the vast uncertainty inherent in human behavior. Scholars of economics apply the concept of Knightian uncertainty, which addresses the difficulty of forecasting in view of the unknowability of all possible events and market innovations. But when it comes to intelligence, predictive errors can also arise from deception and denial.
If a change in the adversary’s camp is truly innovative, there is no prior experience from which probabilities can be deduced. Shackle-Popper indeterminism (SPI) is a concept in which human behavior depends on what we know. When we do not have a prior incident from which to learn and draw conclusions, undetermined elements interfere with our attempts to predict future human behavior. Since policymakers must make critical decisions in contexts that are both uncertain and limited in resources and time, intelligence is needed to reduce the uncertainty as much as possible. The question thus arises: Did Israeli intelligence fail in its core task to reduce uncertainty to the greatest extent possible in the run-up to October 7, or did we witness a disruptive terrorist “innovation” by Hamas that was almost impossible to predict?
This analysis draws on info-gap theory, which originally comes from engineering design and safety analysis. An info-gap is not simply a gap in one’s knowledge or information. It is “a gap with significant consequences for the outcome of a decision.” It describes “the disparity between what is known and what needs to be known in order to reliably and responsibly make a decision.”
Accordingly, the intelligence services’ task of reducing uncertainty has two meanings. The first is to reduce uncertainty (ignorance, ambiguity, and the potential for surprise) by increasing knowledge and understanding of situations or actors. This is the traditional understanding of intelligence. The second is to reduce vulnerability to uncertainty by managing the negative consequences of ignorance, ambiguity, or surprise on the outcome of a policy or decision.
Info-gap theory argues that uncertainty is not negative per se as long as the adverse consequences of a defined policy can be reduced. It proposes the concept of robust satisficing — a term that combines the words “satisfy” and “suffice” — which aims to enhance the robustness of policies against info-gaps with significant consequences. In such a scenario, policymakers define the minimum requirements necessary to achieve a defined goal while intelligence is tasked with constantly evaluating this policy “in terms of how large an info-gap it can tolerate and still achieve the policymaker’s stated goals.” Ideally, intelligence regularly assesses the degree to which current data, knowledge, and understanding can err or change such that a policy will continue to meet the policymaker’s defined outcome requirements. A policy is considered robust when only large surprises would have negative consequences. It has low robustness when even minor surprises affect the outcome negatively.
Concerning Hamas, Israeli policymakers’ minimum outcome requirement would have been to contain the terrorist organization in Gaza and avoid direct combat friction to the greatest extent possible to protect Israel from harm. To achieve this, Israel pursued a policy of maintaining technological and military superiority vis-à-vis Gaza concurrently with bribing Hamas to keep it “weakened and deterred.” According to the principle of robust satisficing, intelligence should have evaluated these policies against info-gaps. How much could Israel err in its understanding of Hamas’ behavior, capabilities and intentions? To what extent would Israel’s policy of technological and military superiority paired with bribing Hamas still ensure the minimum outcome requirement of containing Hamas in Gaza?
Since leaving Gaza in 2005, Israel was largely successful in mitigating the negative impact of repeated rounds of violence and rocket attacks by using Iron Dome and conducting limited military operations. We also now know that Hamas actively deceived Israel by exhibiting restraint over the years as a pretense that it was satisfied with the status quo. Thus, based on prior experience and knowledge, the policy of technological and military superiority plus bribery was considered robust. This presumably led Israeli decision-makers to tolerate info-gaps concerning unusual Hamas behavior.
Recurring conflict patterns and Hamas deception over the years reinforced a common and, in retrospect, wrong understanding by Israel’s intelligence and policymaking echelons that the country’s policies to control Gaza were sound. This ultimately made them blind to the disruptive change in Hamas’ intentions and approach that a practice of robust satisficing might have helped to counteract. As a consequence, this blindness appears to have caused them to lower the level of what needed to be known to ensure the minimum outcome requirement of containing Hamas in Gaza.
Paradoxically, when you lower the level of what needs to be known, the commitment to a policy increases and the tolerance for info-gaps grows. In an illustration of this tendency, Israeli policymakers decided to shift resources away from the Hamas problem to other areas. This included, for example, reducing the military presence at the Gaza border and halting the practice of eavesdropping on hand-held radios of Hamas militants, which was considered a waste of time. Both decisions would prove to have devastating consequences on October 7.
Israel’s “blinded” understanding of Hamas rendered new intelligence on unusual activities at the Gaza border more “tolerable,” which in turn facilitated the second failure in the run-up to October 7. Israeli intelligence failed to organizationally implement new knowledge because that knowledge was not considered sufficiently valuable to be deemed worthy of translation into a competitive advantage. Reports show that at the unit level of the Southern Command of 8200, explicit information of a pending Hamas attack existed based on the previously obtained “Jericho Walls” operation plan and mounting evidence of unusual events in Gaza. However, not only was this information dismissed “top-down” by the responsible superiors, but the highly sophisticated technological tools of Israeli intelligence failed to identify the existing signs as strong.
To return to the two meanings of reducing uncertainty: The bottom-up elements of Israeli intelligence did indeed work to reduce uncertainty and ambiguity concerning a pending attack, as described by the term’s first meaning. Tragically, they were not successful at implementing this information beyond their unit for further use. That is because Israeli intelligence failed to evaluate and reduce the negative consequences of a potential surprise on policy outcomes, which is the second meaning of reducing vulnerability to uncertainty.
Some form of organizational “top-down” barriers, facilitated by a “blinded” understanding of the situation, impeded a process of robustly satisficing the existing info-gap about unusual Hamas behavior. Again, the question is whether this organizational tolerance for non-implementation of new information for further use was facilitated because policymakers and top security officials lowered the requirements of what needed to be known to ensure the minimum outcome requirement concerning Hamas in the first place.
The Israeli security establishment and policymakers came to consider their policies of technological and military superiority vis-à-vis Gaza plus bribery of Hamas as very strong, based on prior experience and understanding. This led them to tolerate larger and larger info-gaps and eventually made them blind to the disruptive change in Hamas’s intentions and capabilities. October 7 thus arrived as a catastrophic surprise — a terrorist “innovation” that disrupted existing policies.
The top-down tolerance for info-gaps concerning Hamas seemed to contribute to the second intelligence failure of organizational implementation, by which explicit and mounting knowledge about a pending Hamas attack was not acted upon. As discussed, the practice of robustly satisficing info-gaps can help manage uncertainty and surprise, including deception by adversaries, to ensure minimum policy outcomes. A robustness question in the run-up to October 7 could have been, “How much could our knowledge and understanding about our technological superiority over Gaza and Hamas’s capabilities err without altering the final assessment of the unusually aggressive military activities at the Gaza border and, more strikingly, the obtained ‘Jericho Walls’ plan?” Had the relevant policymakers and intelligence echelons regularly challenged their understanding of existing policies, the evidence of unusual Hamas activities might have been interpreted quite differently. An attack could have been identified as not only possible but even plausible.
Stefanie Kirchweger…Stefanie Kirchweger is a PhD student at the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University, in a cotutelle agreement with the Department of Political Science at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Her research is focused on international intelligence relations and foreign policy. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
The post Did Hamas’ Innovation — or Israel’s Complacency — Lead to October 7 Massacre? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly

US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis

Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.