IDF spy chief resigns, citing Oct. 7 failures

The Israeli military and intelligence community wrote off the threat of an attack by Hamas as aspirational — despite earlier intercepting a 40-page document that described a plot similar to that eventually carried out by the militant group on Oct. 7, The New York Times reported in November. Israeli intelligence believed Hamas did not have the capability to carry out the attack. Its decision to ignore the warnings has been described as the worst intelligence failure in Israel’s history.

U.S. officials are expected to announce sanctions on an Israel Defense Forces battalion based in the occupied West Bank for human rights abuses, the first time such sanctions have been applied to the IDF, Axios reported. The Netzah Yehuda battalion, which is composed of ultra-orthodox men, has been investigated by the U.S. State Department for years over allegations of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Israeli lawmakers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have decried Washington’s plans as “absolute madness,” Haaretz reported. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich claimed that sanctions will “continue to the [rest of the] IDF and the entire State of Israel,” adding it’s an attempt to “force Israel to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Netanyahu has faced growing criticism over his government’s failures surrounding Oct. 7 — and it is possible that many of his decisions about the ongoing war are a calculation to hold on to his political power. Some believe that his vow to eliminate Hamas entirely, something he has repeatedly claimed is Israel’s main objective in its war in Gaza, is part of his attempt to burnish his reputation and safeguard his legacy. “For Netanyahu, from a historical point of view, this is something he must do. It doesn’t matter what other people think, the US or the Europeans,” Aviv Bushinsky, a former chief-of-staff to Netanyahu, told the Financial Times. That’s “why he will continue the war no matter what.”