“Where was all this eavesdropping capability while Hamas was preparing a massive assault that wound up killing over a thousand people?”
By Caitlin JOHNSTONE
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Another strange thing about Israel’s claim that its intelligence services didn’t detect preparations for the Hamas attack on October 7 is the fact that it is now releasing what it claims are intercepted conversations of Hamas fighters talking to each other about matters of high importance.
Israel has released an audio clip of two voices which it claims belong to Hamas militants speaking about the hotly disputed explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday. The IDF had previously told the press that it would be releasing intercepted conversations which prove Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not Israel, was responsible for the blast.
Here’s a transcript of Israel’s English translation of the dialogue:
Hamas Operative #2: I’m telling you this is the first time that we see a missile like this failing and so that’s why we are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Hamas Operative #1: What?
Hamas Operative #2: They are saying it belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Hamas Operative #1: It’s from us?
#2: It looks like it
#1: Who says this?
#2: They are saying that the shrapnel from the missile is local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel
#1: What are you saying (name bleeped)?
#2: But God bless, it couldn’t have found another place to explode?
#1: Nevermind, (name bleeped), yes they shot it from the cemetery behind the hospital
#2: What?
#1: They shot it coming from the cemetery behind the Al-Ma’amadani Hospital, and it misfired and fell on them
#2: There is a cemetery behind it?
#1: Yes, Al-Ma’amadani is exactly in the compound
#2: Where is it when you enter the compound?
#1: You first enter the compound and don’t go towards the city and it’s on the right side of the Al-Ma’amadani Hospital.
#2: Yes , I know it.
You can make of this transcript what you wish. I’ve seen plenty of people on the pro-Palestinian side of the debate disputing the veracity of the recording for a variety of reasons, from claiming Gazans don’t speak in the accent used in the clip to claiming Hamas fighters don’t communicate such information over the phone or without using codes for locations. But I personally am completely unqualified to make such assessments, so I’ll leave that question alone for the time being.
All I’d like to highlight at the moment is the fact that it sure is interesting how Israel suddenly claims to have all this visibility into conversations between Hamas fighters about combat operations against Israel. Where was all this eavesdropping capability while Hamas was preparing a massive assault that wound up killing over a thousand people?
It’s certainly possible that Israeli intelligence services are phenomenal at spying on Hamas communications, and it’s certainly possible that Israeli intelligence services had no idea Hamas was preparing its attack. It’s also possible that both are false. But it’s very difficult to believe they’re both true.
It’s very hard to believe that Israel had all this insight into what Hamas fighters are communicating about but somehow missed preparations for a highly sophisticated multi-pronged attack involving motorboats, drones and motorized paragliders in an area the size of Philadelphia. It’s even harder to believe it when you learn that Egyptian intelligence warned Israel of a coming attack shortly before it happened. It’s harder still when you learn that according to CNN, US officials were circulating “reporting from Israel indicating unusual activity by Hamas” on October 6. Even harder when you learn that Hamas itself was reportedly greatly surprised by how many Israelis they were able to kill and how many hostages they were able to take.
One of the many problems with the bizarre mainstream consensus that it’s fine for nations to go on a murderous rampage whenever something bad happens to them — as we saw from the US after 9/11 and are seeing again in Israel — is that it gives sociopathic intelligence agencies an obvious and undeniable incentive to let bad things happen in order to advance pre-existing agendas that can only be advanced by mass-scale military violence. Whether that’s happening in this particular case or not, it would be wise to remove this incentive by insisting on cool heads and rational responses to attacks when they occur.
