Piers Morgan is asking the wrong question about Mossad!

Since the horrible attack on Israel on October 7^th one question seems to remain unanswered for many people:

 “How did Mossad fail so badly?”

On the surface it is a good question and one that deserves an answer. Unfortunately it doesn’t help that this question has been hijacked by a bunch of conspiracy theorists who use the tactic of “Just asking question” while implying that the Israeli leaders or even “the Jews” actually wanted the massacre on October 7^th to happen, in order to achieve their evil goals.

Even credible journalists like Piers Morgan are falling for this conspiracy. In the aftermath of the Israeli attacks on Iran, Piers posted on X:

“What’s baffling to me is how Mossad can plan the Hezbollah pager attack, and now this extraordinarily precise attack on Iran’s nuke sites/experts – but had no idea Hamas was building a tunnel terror network for 18yrs on its doorstep, nor planning October 7.”

Piers’s post frames the issue as if Mossad is either incompetent or selectively competent, which oversimplifies the complexity of intelligence operations.

In this type of situation, the burden of proof lies with the person “just asking the question,” especially when those questions carry an implied accusation. Still, I will try to explain why Mossad failed on October 7^th and why they are so effective in fighting Hezbollah and Iran.

To understand why this happened we need to examine the full context of the situation that Israel was in before October 7^th.There are 4 overlooked facts that contributed to the horrible outcome on that day and the war in general:

1. Israel did have intelligence that was available, just not to the level that they had about Hezbollah or Iran
2. The country was in a complicated domestic political situation(protests, judicial overhaul, division in the military reserve system)
3. They were over confident in their “smart” border wall with Gaza
4. The intelligence that Israel did have was used to the maximal extend to minimize civilian casualties in an urban war

Let’s look at each of this points one by one.

1. Israel did have intelligence that was available, just not to the level that they had about Hezbollah or Iran

Contrary to the popular belief, Israel and Mossad weren’t in a complete information blackout. There were multiple red flags:

• Egyptian officials had given the Israelis high-level warnings of a pending attack.
• Israeli and American intelligence had noticed an unusual activity of Hamas near the border with Israel.
• Furthermore about a year before the attacks Israel had obtained the Jericho Wall document. This document detailed the plans of Hamas to use paragliders and drones to breach the border wall.

Okay, so why didn’t they act? Doesn’t this prove Piers’s point? Well, not quite.

Before October 7^th Hamas was treated as a contained problem. In contrast to Hezbollah with their arsenal of over 100,000 rockets and Iran with its nuclear program, Hamas was seen as incapable of hurting Israel. After all in both conflicts in 2014 and 2021 when Hamas did attack Israel, it was always easily contained. This created dangerous overconfidence. Israel didn’t feel the need to develop the deep infiltration and surveillance in Gaza that they had in Lebanon and Iran. If they did, it would have allowed them to better understand what Hamas is capable of.

2. The country was in a complicated domestic political situation(protests, judicial overhaul, division in the military reserve system)

In early 2023 Israel was consumed by a domestic political turmoil. Netanyahu’s government tried to pass a massive judicial overhaul which was very controversial. By some accounts it sparked the largest protests in history of Israel. Furthermore many Israeli servicemen and women had refused to arrive for military reservist duties, which is a big deal in Israel. This even brought international news coverage and pressure on the government. With the domestic situation so chaotic, Hamas who was guarded by a smart border wall was probably not even an afterthought in the minds of many Israeli leaders.

3. Israel was over confident in their “smart” border wall with Gaza

The Israeli smart border with Gaza was another major factor in the failures of October 7^th. The barrier was completed in 2021 with a steep cost of $1.1 billion. It featured underground sensors, radars, cameras and a large steel fence with advanced detection systems. At the time it was considered one of the most advanced border security projects in the whole world.

Hopefully by now, you’ve seen why Mossad and the Israeli public felt overly confident in their capabilities to contain Hamas. Nobody believed that such a high-tech system could be breached at a high scale. However Hamas didn’t try to sneak through the cracks, they overwhelmed the system altogether using drones, bulldozers and sheer numbers.

Israel operated on the assumption that the border was impassable. This assumption resulted in the deaths of over 1200 innocent lives and more than 200 being kidnapped and taken to Gaza, many are still in the hands of the Hamas terrorists to this day.

4. The intelligence that Israel did have was used to the maximal extend to minimize civilian casualties in an urban war

Piers’s post also suggests that Israel was incredibly precise in its targeting of Iranian and Hezbollah fighters, but were not when fighting Hamas.

In reality Israel has targeted Hamas leaders with incredible efficiency. Almost all leaders of Hamas who were involved in the October 7^th massacre are now dead. The misunderstanding occurs because Hamas is deliberately hiding behind its own civilians as shown by the latest assassination of Mohammed Sinwar who was hiding bellow a hospital. This reflects Hamas’s broader strategy of embedding itself with civilian population, use them as human shield and complicate the Israeli operations.

This creates confusion in the west and fuels the narrative that somehow Israel is not precise in Gaza. However the opposite is true. The civilian death toll in Gaza is lower than in many other conflicts in the region, such as the battles for Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa. This is because Israel uses its intelligence not only to eliminate its targets, but to minimize collateral damage. Throughout this war Israel has warned civilians and delayed or even cancelled airstrikes in order to save the lives of the Palestinian civilians.

The October 7^th massacre was the worst attack in the history of modern Israel. Young kids, mothers and holocaust survivors were killed in mass and were taken hostage in Gaza, many are still there. But, this horrible day wasn’t a result of a conspiracy. The October 7^th massacre was the outcome of strategic miscalculation, political distractions, technological overconfidence and a misreading of Hamas’s intensions. Israeli intelligence remains one of the most advanced in the world, but it is not infallible.

Comparing the attacks on Iran and Hezbollah with the ones on Hamas is like comparing peaches to oranges. This operations were done with different goals in a very different environment.

Rather than indulging in conspiratorial speculation, we should aim to understand the reality of modern intelligence. Hopefully I was able to help you better understand the failures of Mossad on October 7^th and the reasons why they happened. Let’s hope those mistakes won’t be repeated and that no more innocent lives are lost to complacency or misjudgment.