In this episode, Daniel J. Levy speaks with Yaakov Katz about his latest book While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East, co-authored with Amir Bohbot. They discuss the events of 7th October, the failures within Israel’s political and security establishments and the lessons Israel must draw to prevent such a catastrophe from recurring.
Yaakov Katz is a journalist and the author of four books on the Israeli military. He is also a former Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post, having also served as a senior foreign policy advisor to then Minister of Education and Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett.
Transcript
(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)
00:00:06:24 – 00:00:31:01
Hello and welcome to the BICOM’s podcast. I’m Daniel J. Leavy, programs Manager, and today is 25th of September, 2025. My guest today is Yaakov Katz, formerly editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. He is also an author. And his latest book, well, Israel Slept How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East, was released early this month, coauthored with Amir.
00:00:31:07 – 00:00:54:12
But and that’s what we’re really going to be looking at today. So first of all, thank you for joining us. If we view 7th October 23rd, Hamas’s surprise attack on southern Israel almost two years ago now is the starting point. Maybe you could talk us through your 7th October yourself. And what was the journey from your experiences on that day to writing this book?
00:00:54:14 – 00:01:13:07
Well, Daniel, it’s great to be with you. My 7th of October was it was a holiday, as we all remember, in the Jewish world with Simhat Torahhere in Israel. I was home in Jerusalem. We had, the night before, been by my in-laws who live in the Old City of Jerusalem. We had danced with the Torah.
00:01:13:07 – 00:01:33:07
We had, maybe a bit too much to drink, came back home to our apartment, went to sleep, and woke up at 830 in the morning with the siren going off, which is very strange. And that Saturday went down to the bomb shelter, came back, looked at the phone, turned on the TV, and right away, I’ll never forget.
00:01:33:09 – 00:02:04:07
Obviously, those images of the white Toyota pickup trucks with the Hamas guys on the back in the city of Sderot. And I remember turning to my wife and saying, if this isn’t stay wrote, if they’ve gotten to Sderot with pickup trucks, this is something completely different. As the day progressed, our daughter, our oldest daughter, who was then just in officers training on her way to becoming an IDF officer, was called back to base and I drove her to the bus that would take her back to base.
00:02:04:07 – 00:02:27:12
And that was although not combat. That’s definitely a moment you remember as a father, when you’re taking your child and driving her or him to whatever is going to take them off to war. My wife said to me at one point, I remember this clearly. Does she have to go? And I don’t blame her for saying that, obviously, like any mother or parent.
00:02:27:14 – 00:03:03:22
But I said to her, of course, you know, this is clearly we are at a war that potentially has existential significance. So that was October 7th, that the book itself actually started a few months earlier, when I had stepped down just a couple months prior to the war as editor of The Jerusalem Poster for about seven and a half years, I, immediately signed a book deal with St. Martin’s Press, which had published my prior two books, and Amir and I were going to do a sequel to a book that we had written that came out back in 2017 called Weapon Wizards.
00:03:03:22 – 00:03:28:00
And we had a theory of how Israel had created the new precision strike capability. And we were going to talk about the intelligence and the tactics and technology, and it was going to be like, another follow up to the weapons and the development and innovation that you see in the Israeli defence industry space. We started working on that book and comes October 7th, and obviously that was no longer relevant.
00:03:28:00 – 00:03:59:21
And we pivoted and pitched our publisher, who was already contractually, I guess, committed to us that we should write a book about how this happened. That is how the book happened. I mean, as a side note, I would just say that for anyone who follows at all, the book publishing industry and the difficulty that Israelis today and definitely people who are writing about this war from an Israeli perspective, have been getting published.
00:03:59:23 – 00:04:06:02
That’s the answer. Why? Because we were already in a book deal, and we pivoted on that book deal in the middle.
00:04:06:02 – 00:04:34:20
Thank you for that. And given the enormity of 7th October and subsequent war in Gaza, which had offshoots into Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen now as well, how did you structure the book, sort of given how difficult it would be to sort of decide how to approach such projects? With so much going on, what was your thought process with Amir as well to just categorizing this book, make it a good readable product for general audience?
00:04:34:22 – 00:05:07:15
Yeah, no, it’s a good question. The I mean, the, the, the, the reality is such that October 7th, if we think about it for a moment, is really this crisis of faith for the Israeli people. And I think for a lot of people around the world who viewed Israel and viewed the Israeli military as, oh, super powerful, as one of the best in the world, this is intelligence agencies, the Mossad, the Shin Bet, military intelligence as being some of the most competent and capable.
00:05:07:17 – 00:05:29:17
I mean, look what Israel did against Hezbollah with the beeper pager attack. Look what it did against Iran back in June. In in eliminating the top scientists, the top military leadership, and taking out the, the nuclear uranium enrichment facilities, I mean, wow. Right. So how is it that Israel, which is so powerful and so capable, how did it fail so miserably?
00:05:29:19 – 00:05:53:01
And this leads to what I call, a crisis of faith, because it leads people to start to not understand, to be mystified. How is it possible that Israel messed up in such a way? What we wanted to do was try to answer that question in the best way possible, or try to present a question in answer to that question and the the.
00:05:53:06 – 00:06:34:12
There is no easy answer, but when we looked at how to go about it, the the process was we want to go back in time to when Hamas was created and look at what signs, what hints might have come up along the way that could have given us insight into something the likes of October 7th. So when we when we started to, put the book together and think about what is the potential outline of this, it was definitely what happened the night between October 6th and October 7th.
00:06:34:12 – 00:07:02:07
So obviously, what happened when those alarm bells were going off within intelligence agencies and people saw things that were happening, heard things that were going on in Gaza, but did not put the pieces together? That’s obviously a big piece of it. But also, if I go back to the late 1980s, when Hamas was officially established, what happened in the 35 years almost since then, what did we see?
00:07:02:09 – 00:07:25:15
Where did we go wrong? And how did the state of Israel, a country? Also, let’s admit, Daniel, a country that everyone around the world would say, what do you mean? There’s no country more vigilant about its security than Israel, right? Israel is the most vigilant in the world. So how did this country fall asleep? How did this country believe in a fairy tale that it could co-exist side by side with the genocidal terrorist group?
00:07:25:21 – 00:07:55:08
What happened? And that is, I think, that mystery is, is really powerful. And and we do the best we can a mirror and I in trying to give an answer and shine some light and explain something about the how this happened. Absolutely. One of the things that struck me when reading the book was the access that you had with a range of, serving figures from across the gamut of the Israeli security establishment.
00:07:55:10 – 00:08:33:02
Could you possibly elaborate for the podcast listeners that haven’t read the book yet, who some of those personalities. Well, and how you able to get access to them as well as what challenges that may have posed? Well, you know, a lot of people spoke to us, and I can’t really name necessarily the names of everyone who did speak to us, but but we did have access to everyone, I would say within the military command, within the intelligence agencies, including the different directors within the government, the, the top, all the ministers, pretty much.
00:08:33:02 – 00:09:06:07
We spoke with who members of the security cabinet in its different iterations. And we also went back in time and went to meet with, for example, the officers who were on the ground inside Gaza in 1986 and 87 when Hamas was created. And we we spoke to the different heads of the Shin Bet and the heads of the military over the years, back from 20 years ago, when Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza, up through the different operations that took place in the year since, and and the other defense ministers that were there all throughout the years.
00:09:06:09 – 00:09:40:20
Obviously not everybody wants to talk and not everybody wants to talk willingly. And, not everybody also, you know, people were very cautious and very hesitant because many people, for example, are concerned that there will one day be a commission of inquiry and they want to make sure a state commission of inquiry, and they want to make sure that their version is protected and that they will be able to provide it at the commission of inquiry, which will could carry with it legal consequences for them.
00:09:40:20 – 00:10:11:02
Definitely. For those who were involved on the in the run up to the actual attack on October 7th. But what I’ve learned over the years and I’ll I’ll tell you a story, from a different book that I wrote called Shadow Strike, which came up back in 2019 about Israel’s bombing of Syria’s nuclear reactor. Because I think I’ve told the story before that, Ehud Barak, who was the defense minister back when that story took place in 2007, did not want to meet with me.
00:10:11:04 – 00:10:28:23
And at some point I reached out to him once again and I said, listen, he was like the last guy. And I said, it’s not a problem, don’t worry about it. He said, why? Why are you suddenly changing gears? And I said, Because Ehud Olmert, the prime Minister, spoke to me. And Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of staff, spoke to me and all the other ministers in the cabinet spoke to me.
00:10:28:23 – 00:10:53:16
So I’m fine without you speaking to me. And what do you know? Right away he said, when can you come commit? So I mentioned that is just a tool that journalists often use, that, you play one person against the other, and when they understand that you’ve already met with and heard the version of events from a number of key players, if they are a key player, they definitely want their version to be heard.
00:10:53:18 – 00:11:20:18
One of the things that struck me when reading was the introspection and the honesty from most of the security establishment figures you interviewed when you’re speaking with the political establishment, was that replicated from anybody in government who was that’s predominantly absent. You ask a very good question, Daniel. Tragically, to answer is no. And, it is sorely absent.
00:11:20:18 – 00:11:48:20
And it’s painful, by the way, as an Israeli citizen, as someone who lives here, raises children here, children who serve in the army here, to see that my political leadership has no remorse or at least does not express it publicly or not even privately, you know, in meetings with, with, with ministers, I would often ask, you know, what was the what’s your regret or what would you have done differently?
00:11:48:20 – 00:12:14:00
Or what have you learned from October 7th? No one said, you know, we we we we we failed miserably. And, you know, you don’t hear those words from politicians. It’s it’s as if it’s like a curse. It’s it’s blasphemy, heresy. And the other hand, people in uniform and definitely also people in the intelligence agencies like the Shin Bet, I mean, they have paid the price of the failures, right?
00:12:14:00 – 00:12:32:09
They’ve stepped down as they should, by the way. I mean, you know, we don’t have to feel sympathy for them. These are people who had one job, and that was to keep Israel safe. Romain is the head of the Shin Bet, who I personally think is is a nice guy, is a good guy, a man who has dedicated his life to the security of his nation.
00:12:32:09 – 00:12:57:24
But he had one job and he failed. It hurts. Yeah. Levy had one job as chief of staff and he failed. The same goes to the our own Khalifa, the commander of military intelligence. One job. So when they fail and they they they go home, that’s being held accountable. That is what is supposed to happen right in, in any organization.
00:12:58:01 – 00:13:26:03
And therefore the fact that no one in our political leadership has willingly stepped down. Right. We had a change of a defense minister, but he was fired. Yoav gallant, nobody has stepped down. Speaks volumes to the I don’t even know how to describe it to just the the complete blindness and and this, this feeling of, you know, we’re above what happened.
00:13:26:03 – 00:13:36:18
I mean, this happened on their watch. And the fact that they don’t feel that they need to take responsibility is deeply disturbing in my eyes.
00:13:36:20 – 00:13:48:24
And between both the political and the security echelons, what kind of failures were you seeing as themes that kept repeating themselves between the interviews, as well as your own research around the subject?
00:13:49:01 – 00:14:20:01
Well, look, I think that, you know, I could tell you that the failure was how we we what we write in chapter one of the book where we describe the events and the sequence of events through the night between October 6th and October 7th, when there was intelligence coming in that something was happening and the chief of staff together with the head of Southern Command, together with the operations director, to everybody together, couldn’t see it for what it was and were caught in a dilemma.
00:14:20:01 – 00:14:42:05
Is this a drill or is this an attack? And if it is an attack, what type of attack? But they were so certain was a drill that they they missed it. And I could tell you that that’s the mistake, that’s the failure. But I think that’s a tactical failure. I can tell you that the failure was the way Israel, the military, had been deployed along the border, but that was the failure.
00:14:42:07 – 00:15:06:17
Not enough troops, not enough reinforcements, not enough tanks. The Air force didn’t respond correctly. All true also. But again, I see that personally as a tactical failure. What I see as the strategic failure is how we as a nation and I intentionally use the word we because I really think it was everyone. It went from the Prime Minister down to the soldiers on the border, including, by the way, journalists.
00:15:06:17 – 00:15:28:17
I was at these briefings for years with chiefs of staff, heads of military intelligence, heads of the Shin Bet. And we were always told that that Hamas does not want war. The Hamas is deterred. The Hamas wants economic prosperity. That was the prevalent assessment. And that is what built the policy of containment. And everything was viewed through that prism.
00:15:28:17 – 00:15:53:01
So the strategic failure as the way I see it was the belief in that fairy tale, and that belongs to everyone. So I think it is obviously it starts somewhere up at the political echelon, and it works its way down and trickles down because it has to be backed and supported by the evidence in the in the field has to be supported by the intelligence, has to be supported by what commanders are seeing on the border.
00:15:53:03 – 00:16:10:19
So everyone was a was a was an accomplice so-called in this failure. And that’s why, you know, to say it was Benjamin. It’s I mean, I’ve had people who have said to me, why did you need to write, you know, 80,000, 90,000 words. You could have just written. Bibi, I mean, funny, right? But that’s obviously missing the story.
00:16:10:21 – 00:16:23:16
I know other people who said, wait a minute, it’s not Netanyahu. He was just wasn’t woken up. Right? They didn’t wake him up in the middle of the night. Had they woke him up, he would have been able to stop it. I also don’t think that’s reality, because had he been woken up in the middle of the night, what would he have been told?
00:16:23:18 – 00:16:42:16
We see them uncovering rocket launchers, but we hear them telling Islamic Jihad that it’s a drill. It’s not for an attack. We see them preparing bunkers, but they also say it’s part of a drill. We see the SIM cards that are being switched from Palestinian to Israeli and yeah, it’s a lot. But they did the same thing last year at the same time.
00:16:42:16 – 00:17:07:05
So maybe it’s just the annual drill. So what would he have said? Maybe you know, keep a keep be vigilant, keep keep a bigger eye open I don’t know, would he have said launch a preemptive strike? Probably not. Especially if his commanders aren’t saying that. Although we’ll never know. But again, it’s missing the bigger picture. It’s going into the political narrative of it all, but we want it to really do is stay above that.
00:17:07:07 – 00:17:28:02
You know, I’ve had people who have also said to me because at the end of the book we list, we outline some, recommendations. And I’ve had people have said to me, well, you’re missing a very important recommendation. I said, what is it? We have to replace the government. So my answer to that is, while even if I personally agree that we need a new government in Israel, that’s not what this book is about.
00:17:28:04 – 00:17:50:00
Because what this book is about is how does a strategic surprise happen? How does a policy of containment get created, incubate and become policy? How does it become the prism through which everything is seen, and how do we prevent it from happening again? Because that’s the big concern. That’s my personal biggest fear when I think about the future.
00:17:50:00 – 00:18:14:04
We’ve spoken. You’ve written at length about the Israeli failures, but maybe looking at Hamas and the other Palestinian groups that participated in 7th October, you lay out in a very detailed manner how Hamas transformed over the years, how it transformed from a charity through the group we know today. How has the war changed Hamas? What does the Hamas in September 25th look like?
00:18:14:04 – 00:18:40:06
And what do you think the group is going? I mean, it’s a great question. It’s interesting because you’ll have some Israelis who will tell you, you know, if Hamas knew, if Sinjar knew that this is what would happen, he never would have launched the attack. And I’m not sure that’s true. I think that to some extent, especially when we look at where we are right now, when this moment in time on September 25th, if I am Hamas today and I, God forbid, of course,
00:18:40:06 – 00:18:45:08
but if I am Hamas and I look at where I am in this war, I still have 48 hostages.
00:18:45:10 – 00:19:14:16
I have Israel, you know, in literally stuck in the mud of Gaza or in the sand of Gaza. I have Israel isolated like never before in the international stage. I’ve countries like Britain, France, Canada, Australia and others who are recognizing the establishment of a Palestinian state, something that they never have done until now. And it took me, Matt, me being Hamas, massacring 1200 Israelis, abducting another 251 to get them to do that.
00:19:14:18 – 00:19:38:06
Am I losing the war or am I winning the war? Let’s also remember Hamas does not care about its people. Hamas doesn’t care about the tragedy that has fallen over Gaza. I mean, I think you and I care more about the people of Gaza than Hamas does 60 plus thousand people who have been killed, according to the Hamas health ministry, which there’s no reason I should believe it.
00:19:38:06 – 00:20:00:21
But if I do and I’ll take their number, that’s true tragedy. But that’s Hamas’s fault. But they don’t care. This is what they want to happen. They create these military targets they embed in under civilian infrastructure so that Israel kills people. That’s what they want, so that they get the sympathy of the world so that Israel becomes isolated.
00:20:00:21 – 00:20:25:14
So they get the recognition of the Palestinian state. The whole world falls into their trap without knowing. So when I think about where Hamas is today, I think they’re riding high and I see no reason at all why Hamas would say to itself, we should end this war. We have the world on our side. Israel is embattled, is isolated, is ostracized, is facing sanctions, you name it.
00:20:25:16 – 00:20:28:14
Who’s winning? Hamas?
00:20:28:17 – 00:20:53:21
And given your view that Hamas is in fact winning the war, why Israel, sort of what kind of calculus do you think is, informing Prime Minister Netanyahu and Minister Strategic Affairs dumb with how they’re conducting the negotiations towards a ceasefire, or rather, forming negotiations, given they’ve now stalled? Well, we have to recognize that Hamas got us really good.
00:20:54:00 – 00:21:16:24
I mean, that’s the I hate to say it, but that’s the truth. They didn’t just kill 1200 people on October 7th by abducting 251 with the insured. What happened is where we are right now stuck. Because even if Israel were to want to end the war right now, it wouldn’t be able to because it wouldn’t be able to end the war without the resolution of the hostages.
00:21:16:24 – 00:21:41:01
It could it could say, listen, I’ve I’ve destroyed Hamas. I’ve degraded them sufficiently. I’m able now to declare a, a victory because they no longer pose or present a military threat. But without the hostages, Israelis will not be able to heal without the hostages, Israelis will not be able to move on. And that’s going to that puts us on a very difficult position.
00:21:41:01 – 00:22:02:13
So Israel could say, listen, we’re ready to end the war, give us back our hostages. But if Hamas doesn’t, then how can Israel end the war? And if we think about it rationally for a moment, the rational person in me would say, look, there’s a nation here. We have to prioritize. We have to end the war, get back on track.
00:22:02:13 – 00:22:30:04
We have to rebuild. We have to heal. We have to allow for these divestment of the new governing entity in Gaza. And the hostages might be the price we have to pay. But the, the, the Israeli in me, who knows that they, these people who are languishing in Hamas captivity were abandoned by Israel, by my government, by my military in the years up to October 7th and on October 7th and have been abandoned since.
00:22:30:06 – 00:22:49:17
I can’t I can’t say something like that. I can’t agree to something like that. So it’s a very difficult situation. I think what Israel’s trying to do is put enough pressure on Hamas that Hamas will make the decision that it is in its interest to end the war and give back the hostages. Hopefully, that can happen, but there’s no assurance or guarantee that it will.
00:22:49:17 – 00:22:59:12
This everything you’re seeing playing out right now is a gamble, with the hope that somehow Hamas will be brought into a deal that could end this war.
00:22:59:14 – 00:23:38:22
Thank you for that. Probably my favorite chapter was about the terrorist financing, digging into how Hamas received its funds, and partial Israeli attempts to break the funding cycle. I was just really surprised at how little attention that issue has broadly received, both from the Israeli government as well as wider audiences. Why do you think that is? Well, I mean, I think it’s a very disturbing chapter, as a matter of fact, because you don’t have to be a genius to understand that all of these weapons, all of these capabilities, all of these terrorists, all these tunnels had to be paid for somehow, right?
00:23:39:00 – 00:24:05:10
The money came from somewhere. It didn’t just fall out of the sky. And where did the money come from? And where were we? Israel as a country, as intelligence agencies? Why were we not doing more to undermine the the budget and the money going to Hamas? I mean, I can’t I can’t describe to you enough and we mentioned this in the book that there was a PowerPoint presentation that the Shin Bet had created for foreign visitors.
00:24:05:12 – 00:24:28:22
And on it, it had this whole description of what Hamas was and its its structure, etc.. And then it had some budget and it was like a fraction like 150, $160 million or something like that. And I and I got someone leaked to me this, this presentation, I got my hands on it. And it was literally the presentation that the Shin Bet responsible for covering, watching over Hamas, collecting intelligence.
00:24:28:22 – 00:24:50:00
Hamas was, was, was the one that they were showing people up until October 7th. That was the relevant most up to date. And I look at this thing and I just couldn’t believe it. We know that Hamas had a budget of over $1 billion. What were they saying? How was this written on this PowerPoint presentation? And when you look at it, we were telling ourselves stories.
00:24:50:00 – 00:25:21:19
We were saying, no, there’s Hamas’s military wing. The tunnels are not always for the military wing. Sometimes the other thing we feed ourselves fairy tales. And it’s deeply disturbing when we think about it, how much more we potentially could have done to undermine the transfer of that money. And by the way, if I told you, Daniel, today, that the war will end and it will end by us asking the Qataris to give Hamas $30 million every month, and we will buy quiet.
00:25:21:19 – 00:25:44:09
You will think that I should be institutionalized, because that’s insanity. But the truth is, that’s what Israel did for five years, literally. That was Israeli policy. So when you look at the money, you say one second Israel was giving Hamas money, maybe not Israeli cash, it was coming from the Qataris. It doesn’t make a difference. And we tell a story in the book, another one that that makes you want to cry.
00:25:44:09 – 00:26:09:11
If not laugh, probably laugh and then cry. But, Naftali Bennett becomes prime minister in the summer of 2021, and he makes a promise. No more suitcases of cash. I’m putting an end to it. Every month, a suitcase with cash would come to Gaza, would cross into Gaza, be given to the Gaza authorities. In other words, Hamas and supposedly 100 or $200 would be given to poor, needy Palestinians.
00:26:09:13 – 00:26:30:13
Now, everyone knew that if Hamas had an extra $30 million to give to needy Palestinians, even if that money was actually going to need the Palestinians, it meant that 30 million other dollars was opened up to go towards terrorist activity. Right? That was happening. So Bennett comes in and says, no more suitcases of cash. Great. Great idea. He then holds a meeting.
00:26:30:13 – 00:26:57:04
There is a whole draft policy planning team that was, you know, thinking of what to do. And they come up with this idea we’re going to do direct deposits in Palestinian bank accounts in Gaza. Great. So it won’t go to Hamas. We’ll go directly to the Palestinians. Amazing comes the day that it’s presented to the Prime Minister by the his foreign policy advisor, head of National Security Council’s military adviser, and sitting at the table is also his spokesperson, young guy.
00:26:57:06 – 00:27:24:23
And the spokesperson had served in his military service. And this coordinator of government activities in the territories, CogAT, the civil administration that the authority of the IDF that coordinates with the Palestinian Authority. And they’re talking about these direct deposits. And he says, hold on one second. Palestinians don’t have bank accounts. They’re right. Muhammad Mustafa, Yousef Ibrahim. They don’t have bank accounts to cash economy.
00:27:25:00 – 00:27:40:16
Bennett gets upset, sends everyone back to the drawing board, and they come up with the plan that they’re going to give the money to the U.N.. Who’s going to give it to the bank? Who’s going to print basically gift cards or debit cards and give those out? In other words, the same thing just looked a little different. It wasn’t in a suitcase.
00:27:40:18 – 00:28:13:07
We told ourselves stories all to achieve this idea, or to serve this idea that Hamas could be bought off of Hamas could be deterred. I think that not enough is spoken about it because people are truly embarrassed. Not enough is being spoken about it because they’re the people who want to remain in power and those who plan to potentially run, whether it’s Naftali Bennett or whether it’s the former head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, who was one of the architects of the Qatari cash scheme, or Prime Minister Netanyahu for that matter.
00:28:13:07 – 00:28:17:16
They were all part of the idea that this is something that could work.
00:28:17:16 – 00:28:44:11
And probably final question before we wrap up, unless you have anything to add, you close the book with five recommendations that you’d be making to the State of Israel, ranging from proper investment in public diplomacy through to overhauling the intelligence systems with the installation of a the equivalent of the US Director of National Intelligence. Have you seen any movement towards those recommendations in the Israeli government?
00:28:44:13 – 00:29:09:07
And some yes and some no. I mean, you know, when it comes to intelligence reform, a lot has happened. There have been structural changes. There’s much more, coordination and sharing of information between the various intelligence agencies, something that was sorely missing and lacking because when we looked into what happened, we discovered that there was information that didn’t make its way up to the top chain of command, in the IDF or to different units on the ground.
00:29:09:07 – 00:29:26:04
People just didn’t know what other agencies had. So we need do we need the DNI? It was an idea that was floated, and I think there’s some legs to it. But whatever it is, we need to come up with a better structure and not have a situation where the Shin Bet and the Mossad are under the authority of the prime minister.
00:29:26:08 – 00:29:53:13
Military intelligence, the biggest of the three is under the defense minister. And you could have political jostling or jockeying. We can’t afford that kind of stuff. The other thing that’s changed is we the the preemptive strike policy that we also call for to be come in, instituted as the official national defense doctrine of Israel. We see this play out in Lebanon, in Syria, and of course, still in Gaza, when Israel sees the threat emerging, it doesn’t wait anymore.
00:29:53:19 – 00:30:14:14
It takes on the threat immediately. That, unfortunately, is going to have to be the reality we won’t allow or we cannot allow for a situation that Hamas or Hezbollah or someone else will be able to rebuild, reconstitute, rearm and amass tens of thousands of missiles like these terrorist groups were allowed to before. But other problems we still remain with.
00:30:14:15 – 00:30:43:04
There is no public diplomacy in this country. We still don’t have an exit strategy, which is something that we should have before we even embark on a war. And I think the most important, which is cohesion and the national unity this country needs there, too, we are failing. And I’ll tell you something, Daniel, one of the the lessons I’ve learned from this war from October 7th is how crucial or critical unity is for national security.
00:30:43:04 – 00:31:04:16
I do not realize that until October 7th. And I realize that today, and I still see our politicians failing us and or we failing ourselves when it comes to that, so we can do much better. And the truth is, we have to do much better because we owe it to the victims, we owe it to the soldiers, and we owe it to the future generations of this country.
00:31:04:20 – 00:31:08:14
Yaakov Katz, thank you so much. Thank you.