"Those To Whom Violence Is Done, Do Violence In Return"

JMM:

Obvious but worth saying. An operation of this magnitude required large numbers of people to be read into preparations if not operational planning. And yet Israel appears to have been caught entirely unawares and unprepared.

2/ Israel has historically had very dense networks of informants and collaborators in the territories and that's surely layered over by all sorts of signals intelligence and other kinds of surveillance and yet there's no sign they had any awareness that this kind ...

3/ of audacious attack was in the offing let alone that it was happening when it did. That has be very, very sobering for the people in Israel's security establishment.

Fair response in the moment:

It's impossible to escape the impression that Netanyahu was so focused on fighting a culture war against internal Israeli opponents his government failed to detect a very real war rapidly approaching. An astonishing intelligence failure on the scale of 1973.

Because:

The Israeli army warned Netanyahu for months that his push for government overhaul put Israel at great risk of a multi-front attack. He dismissed their warnings by accusing the military of "joining the left-wing protesters" against him. His ministers said army could go to hell.

And:

Israel is famed for being the birthplace of world’s most powerful surveillance software. It has eyes & a blockade on Gaza, that is only 42km long. In Gaza the one constant is the Israeli observation drones in the sky. But no one saw this coming.

The inevitable outcome is still more violence, including an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. Inevitable commentary in America (in DougJBalloon style, which is having a hard time staying ahead of reality):

Netenyahu is suffering for a massive failure in intelligence and the defense of Israel.  So why does it feel like Joe Biden failed?

Besides:

Be nice during this time of crisis if we had a fully staffed JCS.

Alabamians, if you insist on saddling the rest of us with GOP senators, can you at least elect one who isn't a goddamn idiot? 

I don't hold the rest of the Senate harmless, either.  There's nothing in Art. I about "personal holds." (And why it actually matters.)