The chief of the Shin Bet security agency took responsibility for failing to thwart the ambush Hamas terror attack against Israel on October 7.
Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, catching the country off-guard during a major Jewish holiday. The attack involved thousands of rockets and dozens of fighters infiltrating Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip.
Horrifying footage has emerged showing women being marched into vehicles, bloodied and bruised. Earlier reports showed Israeli civilians including children, being captured and taken into the Gaza Strip, Daily Mail reported.
“As the one who heads the organization, the responsibility for this is mine,” Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar said, according to The Times of Israel. “There will be time for investigations. Now we are fighting.”
10 members of the Shin Bet agency were killed in last week’s surprise Hamas attack. According to media reports, the agency anticipated a smaller scale attack.
The Times of Israel reported:
The head of the Shin Bet security agency says he is personally responsible for the lack of an early warning for Hamas’s murderous attack on southern Israel on October 7.
In a missive to members of the agency, Ronen Bar writes: “Despite a series of actions we carried out, unfortunately on Saturday we were unable to generate a sufficient warning that would allow the attack to be thwarted.”
“As the one who heads the organization, the responsibility for this is mine,” Bar says. “There will be time for investigations. Now we are fighting.”
Several hours before the attack on October 7, the defense establishment identified unusual movement in the Gaza Strip, leading to a late-night phone call between senior officials, but the signs were largely dismissed.
Still, according to Hebrew-language media reports, Bar went to the agency’s headquarters and ordered a small team deployed to the Gaza border, anticipating a small-scale attack.
Biden’s incompetent Secretary of State Antony Blinken last Sunday was a stuttering mess during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” after host Kristen Welker asked him about the intelligence failures that led to the surprise Hamas attack against Israel.
Several Americans were reportedly killed in the ambush terror attack and many have been taken hostage.
This was an unprecedented sea, land and air raid on Israel. Israel’s former Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy, told CNN: “We had no warning of any kind, and it was a total surprise that the war broke out this morning.”
He continued, “This is beyond imagination from our point of view, and we didn’t know they had this quantity of missiles, and we certainly didn’t expect that they would be as effective as they were today. We didn’t have an inkling of what was going on.”
Kristen Welker asked Blinken if the ambush Hamas attack was because US and Israeli intel officials were caught off guard.
“Do you acknowledge that both Israeli intel officials and U.S. intel officials were caught off guard?” NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Blinken.
“This is an attack that I don’t think anyone saw coming,” Blinken said.
“So was it an intelligence failure?” Welker asked.
“We will have plenty of time to look into that,” Blinken said.
