Hamas’s attacks are also being ascribed to an intelligence failure, just as 9/11 was. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the 9/11 attacks, which were not so much an intelligence failure as a policy failure. Intelligence distributed to officials in the George W. Bush administration included warnings entitled, “Bin Ladin Planning High Profile Attacks,” “Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent,” and “Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delay.” (“Bin Ladin” was the spelling used by the US government at the time.) Certainly, the Hamas attacks in Israel were a surprise, just as 9/11 was, but it is premature to label it an intelligence failure. Right now, we have no idea if there were signals amid the “noise” coming into Israeli intelligence about a likely Hamas attack.

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