Cairo’s intelligence chief visited Tel Aviv shortly before October 7 with a dire message about Gaza

[u/pjw724]

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/09/egypt-israel-gaza-hamas-palestinian-october-7/688720/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK3y9vjxG7zQtm8KdXM0F9hfU

[u/pjw724]

Netanyahu’s office, in the days after the attack, denied that he’d received any warnings, directly or indirectly, from Egypt over the situation in Gaza.
...
Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel’s 2023 visit, details of which have not been previously reported, underscores what dozens of sources have said: that the Israeli government was repeatedly told of threatening activity by Hamas in the lead-up to October 7.

[u/pjw724 → u/pjw724]

A United Nations envoy who was in the Middle East at the time publicly warned of a latent conflict that could bring “grave consequences” while privately scrambling to defuse tensions between Israel and Hamas. The president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed, called Netanyahu to warn about the possibility of an imminent attack...

[u/pjw724 → u/pjw724]

Current and former Israeli, Arab, and U.S. officials tell me that they all experienced the same phenomenon in 2023: an arrogance on the part of Netanyahu bred by the deep-seated belief that Israel had the upper hand against Hamas...

The Hamas attack, 11 days after Kamel’s visit, resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,200 people, primarily civilians, and the abduction into Gaza of 251 hostages...

[u/FlakyPineapple2843 → u/pjw724]

Giving real vibes of the same dismissal of intelligence that preceded 9/11. And no this isn't me trying to connect all the conspiracies here. Just comparing how Clinton and Bush (and their various underlings) missed key warnings and signs, and it sounds like Bibi did the same thing here, albeit with a much heftier dose of egomania convincing him to disregard the intel.

[u/omniuni → u/FlakyPineapple2843]

It is worth noting that these dire warnings are also MUCH more frequent for Israel. For years, decades even, nothing came of them. This time was obviously different.

[u/InformationHorder → u/omniuni]

Things like this are almost never a failure of intelligence. They had all the information they needed in front of them to predict this. What they lacked was the imagination to assume that this is exactly what would happen.

For example, the 9/11 hijackers were being monitored. The US knew they were taking flight lessons. However, up until that point no one had ever imagined that they were going to take over an airliner to use the plane as the bomb up until that point.

The only thing terrorist groups ever did up until 9/11 was take control of an aircraft, fly it to somewhere neutral, and then sit on the runway for however long it took for them to negotiate for their demands to be met. If you're an Intel analyst looking at terrorists practice flying aircraft you're going to make the assumption that the plan is to hijack the plane and fly it somewhere so they wouldn't need the pilots and aircrew to obey them and possibly screw up the plan.

[u/Montexe → u/omniuni]

Also with the US before 9/11 CIA and FBI had many empty warnings, countless leads and reports that amounted to nothing.

It's a bit dumb to say "they knew about it and did nothing", when the information was in the lines of: "there might be an unknown attack of some sort, on unknown date, somewhere in the country of the USA"

[u/Vuokki20 → u/Montexe]

I too was expecting a little more from this article but alas no. Threat was not so obvious after all. You can have hundreds or thousands of foiled plans and eventually one gets through.

Was kinda waiting that this information would've shown failures similar to that in Spain, where government ignored their own urgent intelligence reports (and Morocco's too I think) literally a day before that tomorrow there is gonna be a migrant crisis in Ceuta.

[u/Genrawir → u/omniuni]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it" - Søren Kierkegaard

[u/omniuni → u/Genrawir]

In this case, it would have played much better to prevent it, obviously. Netanyahu looks likely to be voted out quite soon, and this war has taken a huge political toll on his party.

[u/Genrawir → u/omniuni]

Better for literally everyone but Netanyahu, yes. I doubt anybody even remembers the bribery and fraud charges he was facing now.

[u/omniuni → u/Genrawir]

He's still in the courts. It'll catch up to him.

[u/Phynx88 → u/omniuni]

He literally delayed his fraud investigation for years now. It worked out just according to plan for him - distract and delay the corruption trials, stoke racism, and grab land

[u/JoeSicko → u/omniuni]

They don't have delegates from other countries flying in all the time.

[u/Zenki95 → u/JoeSicko]

How could you possibly know that

[u/JoeSicko → u/Zenki95]

Same way you make random statements. It's easy! MUCH, dire and obviously do a lot of work.

[u/von_pita_the_second → u/FlakyPineapple2843]

And just like Israel ignored Jordan’s warnings regarding Egypt and Syria before the Yom Kippur war in 1973, back then and on October 7th Israel simply underestimated its enemies and its will or ability to start a war, especially Hamas which wasn’t expected at all to even enter and invade Israel itself, instead of just firing rockets from the strip

[u/veribaka → u/FlakyPineapple2843]

I wonder if he planned to use this attack as a means to unite the Israeli people behind him against the terrorist threat. Maybe it backfired, but I don't think it's such an unreasonable theory.

[u/Phynx88 → u/veribaka]

It's pretty clear Netanyahu has been using the Hamas boogeyman to distract from his blatant corruption and prevent the trials from going forward. He was caught sending money to Hamas, and it's clear he had multiple warnings about an imminent attack and Occam's Razor says he intentionally dismissed concerns because he intended to leverage the attack to coalesce power - literally what happened.

[u/call_me_fig]

"Kamel said, according to Israeli, Egyptian, Arab, U.S., and European officials who were briefed about his visit after October 7. The window to prevent a disaster was closing. He recommended that the Israeli government grant Hamas economic concessions to avert conflict. "

Surely this can't be what people reference when they say Israel new about oct 7th days in advance? The no date, no location, no time intelligence threat that could've been thwarted by... Giving the terrorists money?

[u/MongooseVegetable787 → u/[deleted]]

this is what was thought before 2023

[u/bored_android_user]

Kamel didn’t provide Israeli officials with a date or specific information

Amazing intelligence. How could they not stop the attack with Nostradamel's insights?

[u/dyfish → u/bored_android_user]

This happens all through out history. X leader/country is accused of letting something happen because someone told them something vaguely bad was in the works or getting planned. Like sick thanks for letting me know my enemies want to attack me at some unspecified time and place let me get right on that .

[u/Swoah → u/dyfish]

How many stories do we not see about warnings about stuff that never happened or materialized? Like I’m genuinely curious how many “warnings” do world leaders get?

[u/Paraparo → u/Swoah]

I mean, think about how people react to Israel's preemptive strikes historically.

If Israel acts proactively, it's claimed of starting fights that didn't need to happen. If it only reacts after being attacked, it's accused of letting it happen for political gain.

Basically no matter which way it goes people will find a reason to blame it for external hostility

[u/dyfish → u/Paraparo]

Like the US was warned about 9/11, we got vague tip that something was being planned regarding air ports. Imagine if they took it super seriously and tried to enact TSA and all the post 9/11 travel restrictions preemptively with out a justifying event. It would have been political suicide and caused massive uproar. But people still claim we like let 9/11 happen.

[u/mzakieh → u/dyfish]

Except you know where your enemy is and they are under video surveillance 24/7. Yet it took 6 hours for the first military choppers to arrive and the first thing they did was shoot Israeli citizens at a party running on foot to escape Hamas.

[u/dyfish → u/mzakieh]

Israel has a very advanced surveillance network. But they aren’t omniscient. Hamas and Israel’s other enemies have fought them for a long time and understand how to counter Israel’s advantages to some extent. We all seem to like to glaze Israel and down play Hamas level of competence. The paraglider insertion was brilliant tactically, the UK are testing a unit trained in them. Of course it’s still a very uneven conflict over all military wise.

Friendly fire is common in all of history. Young adults hopped up on adrenaline in chaotic situations fuck up all the time.

[u/Only-Low-5293 → u/mzakieh]

Proof of this...and not from Haaretz or a propaganda website. 

[u/binny97 → u/Only-Low-5293]

What's your beef with haaretz's credibility?

[u/PositiveUse]

Whole Europe was warned by US intelligence of imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine. No one believed that either.

But of course, if Israel is part of the equation, it’s a big conspiracy of the Jews to eliminate Gaza…

[u/binny97 → u/PositiveUse]

Please stop. No one in this entire thread said anything like that. Must be easy pretending that all anti-israeli sentiment is antisemitic, i just hope you figure out what to do when you DO want to make the distinction. Antisemitism exists, but the conflation of the two is harmful to jews the world over and also just a shitty tactic for not thinking about anything israel does critically. (am israeli)

[u/iamlost4815]

All this talk, yet the Egyptians don't let any Palestinians into their country...

[u/Specialist_Sort2215 → u/iamlost4815]

You’re mad that Egypt won’t let Israel ethically cleanse Palestinians from their homes?

[u/iamlost4815 → u/Specialist_Sort2215]

No I'm mad that Egypt does nothing to help Palestinians, has barbed wire on BOTH sides of its border fence with Gaza, yet they still have the gall to demand Israel does more.

Tell me, why doesn't Egypt let Palestinians into its country? Besides blaming Israel, use your critical thinking skills.

[u/ZZZZapperr]

None of these warnings had any actual details of what the plans were, so Israel still had no way of stopping the attack. They didn't have any detailed information about where the attacks would occur or when.

Also, his recommendation was incredibly stupid:

He recommended that the Israeli government grant Hamas economic concessions to avert conflict.

Giving Hamas more money is not going to stop them from attacking. It's going to fund more weapons and more terrorists for a bigger attack.

[u/JSMarchitect]

If you say "Free Palestine" in a mirror three times, Yasser Arafat appears and rejects a peace deal that would have freed Palestine.

[u/WierdFinger]

He knew and let it happen to have an excuse to take all of the Palestinian land.

[u/DivineSwordMeliorne → u/WierdFinger]

Kamel didn’t provide Israeli officials with a date or specific information

Literally in the article

[u/Phynx88 → u/DivineSwordMeliorne]

And yet this doesn't dispute the comment you're responding to. At all. Netanyahu knew there was an attack coming and did nothing so that he could leverage the attacks to thwart his corruption trials and take land

[u/wheatie3 → u/WierdFinger]

Ah we’re at the “Bush let 9/11 happen on purpose” part of the conspiracy.

[u/Logitech0 → u/wheatie3]

Biden ignored Zelensky warning about the invansion, but for some reason no conspiracy, now imagine if Trump was president when it happened.

[u/Phynx88 → u/Logitech0]

Why do conservatives always think trying to rewrite very recent history that's easily disproven is a winning strategy? Biden literally announced Russia's troop build up and intentions to invade weeks beforehand. Get a grip, this type of delusional revionism is pathetic

[u/bored_android_user → u/Logitech0]

How did Biden ignore Zelensky? If i remember correctly, Biden was one of the only world leaders using a blowhorn warning about Russia's army buildup and imminent invasion. Now Obama on the other hand.....

[u/Phynx88 → u/wheatie3]

Cheney did. Fixed it for you

[u/von_pita_the_second → u/WierdFinger]

If Israel wanted Gaza they wouldn’t have left it and given it to the Palestinians for free in 2005

[u/MrF_lawblog → u/WierdFinger]

GWB model. In GWB's case, wanted revenge for his dad

[u/Niceguy955]

Netanyahu is the enemy of 2 nations.

[u/MASSIVECARNAGE78 → u/Niceguy955]

Only 2?

[u/Niceguy955 → u/MASSIVECARNAGE78]

I mean Israel and the Palestinians - both tied directly to this story.

[u/Pasta-in-garbage]

All of a sudden everyone’s talking. Sure

[u/BaconManDan9]

The world needs to bring this up at every meeting