The Critical Unasked Question: Why Was The Gaza Border Left Virtually Undefended?

Mere incompetence or something more sinister and premeditated?

Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink

Things are moving so fast since the October 7th breach of the Israeli border wall in Gaza by over a thousand Hamas terrorists and the wholesale slaughter of at least 1,000 innocents, that the origin story of this disaster has been smothered in the smog of war.

In the Oct. 17th broadcast of their DarkHorse podcast, Brett Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying ask obvious — much neglected — essential questions about what the hell happened on that bloody day.

How was it possible that the much vaunted and feared Israeli Defense Force (IDF), undergirded by a vast and sophisticated global intelligence service and cutting edge surveillance system was caught so completely unprepared. How could it be that such a well-oiled military machine left thousands of settlers and young people at a music festival completely stranded without help for up to eleven hours after the initial border breach and first shots fired?

In fact, why had most IDF and other security forces been withdrawn from the Gaza border, leaving the area essentially undefended on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War? Tel Aviv is less than 50 miles north of the Gaza fence with military airbases located nearby, yet no helicopter gunships were ordered into the air, or troop helicopters to quickly shuttle troops to the scene.

Both United States and Egyptian intelligence services gave the Israelis multiple warnings of a possible attack, yet no IDF unit was on heightened alert?

Many survivors reported no cell phone service. Really? Along one of the most electronically hooked up surveillance areas in the world.

Heying brings up an interesting “skinsuit” analogy of why the credibility of so many of our institutions have collapsed, leaving one to wonder to what — or whom — those institutions now answer.

They both identify a number of troubling questions that need addressing, but — at least at this point — they are lost in the manipulated smog of war.

Oversight? Arrogance? Bureaucratic bungling? Unfortunate stupidity?

Or something else. Something darker?

“It is the lack of curiosity about the oddness of that pattern that really tells the story, I suspect,” Weinstein notes.

It should be a top priority to figure out just what happened before the world tumbles into global atrocity, but neither Israel nor the United States government will do that and the press has dropped the question entirely.

Weinstein and Heying put the questions that need answering to light. Our fate could hang on the answers.

Mark Taylor

DeMOCKracy.ink

*****

What Real Security Would Look Like For Israel

“But military aid and aircraft carriers do not offer long-term security, just as walls, tanks and the world’s most advanced surveillance systems do not – as we Israelis all painfully learned when Hamas broke out of Gaza earlier this month. After showing condolences and sympathy, Biden – and any influential friend of Israel, for that matter – should really be focusing on three basic tasks: holding Israel to account for its own war crimes against Palestinians; reflecting on how those crimes contribute to the lack of security for Israelis themselves; and demanding that Israel go back to peace negotiations, this time ensuring equal footing for Palestinians in a way that would truly guarantee an end to apartheid.”

— Israeli journalist Haggai Matar, “A real friend of Israel would be making it face up to some uncomfortable truths”, The Guardian (10/19/23)