Abridged from an article by journalist Dr. Tzvi Sadan in Israel National News, translated by Hillel Fendel.
One can read on the website of the IDF Intelligence Wing quotes from top army officials at a recent "Intelligence Wing Day" gathering. It was held this year, just 25 days before this past Oct. 7th, and the topic was "50 Years Since the Yom Kippur War" – the war that Israel almost lost because of major intelligence failures. Leading Israeli military figures spoke of the lessons that had been learned since then:
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said there, "Even today, 50 years later, the lessons we learned then are seared deep into our flesh. We must be ready for war, even if it comes by surprise."
Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Hertzy Levy said, "The past 50 years have brought us inestimably strong and precise Israeli intelligence."
Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliwa said, "In order to prevent another intelligence failure, IDF Intelligence has turned Yom Kippur into a professional and profound day of reckoning."
These three men, those who were responsible for fulfilling the words "Never Again!" for the State of Israel, were, simply put, totally blinded. Their remarks proved, just 25 days later, to be totally inaccurate and detached from reality.
Some explain this colossal failure as rooted in "hubris," arrogance that leads to catastrophe.
But the inclination to place total blame on one body (Intelligence) and on one person (the head of Intelligence) is actually very dangerous. This is because it is liable to overlook and free of responsibility all those others who were party and partners to the formation and acceptance of the false intelligence evaluation. But neither can the responsibility borne by the Intelligence Wing be made light of: The Intelligence Wing and its head serve as a type of military oracle, whose evaluations are accepted as a form of prophecy.
In truth, blame for the colossal failure of Oct. 7th can be placed upon the idea known as idée fixe, i.e, described correctly by Wikipedia as follows: "A preoccupation of mind believed to be firmly resistant to any attempt to modify it."
Wikipedia in Hebrew adds: "This refers to a sickly condition in which one is not aware of his blindness, rejects all criticism, and even blames his critics." This is not the same thing as a misconception or being entrapped in the conception of a particular ideology or outlook. The problem of a wrong "conception" becomes an idée fixe when people insist on retaining their conception even after it has been proven wrong.
The IDF's conception of reality before Oct. 7, which unfortunately seems not to have changed since then, is based on a twisted ideology. Inter alia, it sees the murderers of Jews as normative people deserving of all civil rights based on the foundation of "Human Dignity and Liberty."
How did this IDF ideology begin? It began when philosopher Prof. Asa Kasher wrote the IDF Code of Ethics, a dogmatic document of principles of faith that, apparently, are never to be doubted or questioned. One of the ideals promoted by this Code of Ethics – unparalleled in any other army in the world – is that the IDF "and its soldiers… must maintain and preserve human dignity of every person" – even if that person was captured after having murdered, raped, burnt, and captured Jews from ages 10 months to over 80 years.
The Code instructs IDF soldiers "never to use their weapons or strength to harm people who are not warriors or who are prisoners, and to do everything possible [emphasis added] to prevent harm to their lives, bodies, dignity, and property."
In short, the IDF Code of Ethics with its emphasis on "the supreme importance of human life," instructs our soldiers to do precisely the opposite of what an army is supposed to do: to kill the enemy and harm his health and property. The Code tells the soldier that he must "endanger himself and his comrades to the extent necessary to fulfill this mission." Again, this includes those who claim to be "innocent bystanders" yet actually supported, in many ways, the above crimes of murder, rape, kidnapping and the like.
It was apparently this Code of Ethics that led to the hospitalization in Israel of the very terrorists who carried out the massacre, adjacent to several of those who were wounded there! This happened within days of the massacre, and a stop was put to it only after an outburst of public outrage.
Returning to the military idée fixe, we must recall the many times over the years that IDF experts reassured us that Hamas was "deterred" from starting up with us. In fact, after every one of the 16 operations or mini-operations that the IDF carried out in Gaza since 2005, the General Staff boasted, "We have succeeded once again, and Hamas is deterred." [Translator's note: Precise quotes are provided in the original Hebrew article.]
The famous unparalleled-ethical spirit of the IDF, and its adherence to the idee fixe that its approach to Hamas is the absolute truth, especially after the "Holocaust in the Negev," is now seen to be a spirit of evil that needs to be expelled and eradicated. Until this happens, someone - perhaps the Minister of Defense - should demand that someone - perhaps the Chief of Staff – finally wake up and realize that what it thought was the unbridled and unchallengeable veritable truth, might not be quite that.