For a sneak attack of the size Hamas launched against Israel to have happened (5,000 rockets, parachuters, towns infiltrated, Iranian and, possibly, Ukrainian involvement), there must have been an absolutely epic intelligence failure both in Israel and, to the extent the U.S. helps Israel with information, here in America, too. I have two ideas about how that could have happened, both of which are premised on significant problems within the two country’s intelligence services (especially Israel’s). I’ll start with the one that bespeaks actual evil and then get to the more likely one, which reflects human nature.

Some suggest that the Mossad is no longer working with the Israeli government but is, instead, doing whatever it can to undermine it. I’m perfectly ready to believe that. If you’ve been following the news about the reforms Netanyahu wanted to make to an out-of-control leftist judicial system in Israel, you know that many in the military and the Mossad were against Bibi’s actions. We’ve already seen in America that Deep State members cease to feel loyalty to their country as a whole and, instead, will use their government positions solely to advance one political party over the other.

Thus, it’s possible that anti-government personnel in Israel and anti-Israel personnel in the State Department in America (the ones who maybe could have helped prevent the attack) didn’t pay too much attention to chatter about a Hamas attack. They may have thought it would be like others before, with a little death here and a little death there. That would be enough to harm Netanyahu’s government without seriously harming Israel.

Image by DCStudio.

That’s a very scary idea. But here’s something that’s just as disturbing: Nobody caught what was about to happen because of institutional incompetence. Whether at home or abroad, our “intelligence” types may no longer be that intelligent.

In America, in the 60 years between Pearl Harbor and 9/11, our intelligence agencies fell prey to institutional rot. That didn’t change when they missed the Soviet Union’s collapse because, except for the humiliation, there was no real downside to America’s intelligence failure.

Entropy is inevitable in all systems, whether natural or manmade. When it comes to national security, whether we’re talking about the whole bureaucracy or individuals within the bureaucracy, the trend will be to entropy. When nothing happens, it’s hard to remain endlessly vigilant. Indeed, even when bad things happen, humans eventually become inured. Constant adrenalin is impossible.

The same must hold true in Israel. As I wrote yesterday, it’s been 50 years since a full-scale state-military attack on Israel. Even though Israel’s been on the receiving of endless smaller attacks, humans find it incredibly difficult to maintain a constant high level of vigilance.

Vigilance requires imminent fear, and Israel put systems in place that she thought would protect her and her citizens. She could have instilled imminent, panicky fear into her frontline workers only by having told them that any failure on their part, no matter how small, would mean that they and their families would be summarily executed by hungry dogs, as they do in North Korea.

Eventually, fear gets calloused over, you get used to things, and you let your guard down. This would mean that every single person in Israel’s intelligence services was doing his or her best work without any intention to harm the government, but each person’s best work just wasn’t that good.

I’d prefer to believe in entropy over evil. Both would have exposed Israel to the events that occurred, but entropy can be fixed now that fear is again resurgent. Evil is a corrosive rot that is almost impossible to root out.