Israel received a last-minute intelligence warning less than 24 hours before Hamas launched its devastating October 7, 2023 attack, but the alert was brushed aside.

On October 6, 2023, Israeli intelligence gathered information suggesting Hamas was planning an operation the following morning, Kan reported Friday. The intelligence was collected during a drone-based surveillance mission over Gaza focused on Hamas guards operating near a tunnel where Israel believed hostage Avera Mengistu was being held.

The information obtained during the operation was fragmentary and unclear, according to the report, but significant enough to trigger alarm bells. Kan said the intelligence was passed to the IDF’s Southern Command, where it was ultimately dismissed as likely evidence of a Hamas training exercise rather than preparations for an imminent attack.

Within hours, Hamas launched its unprecedented cross-border assault, killing some 1,200 people, kidnapping 251 others, and igniting the Gaza war.

The October 6 intelligence operation does not appear in official IDF records and has not been referenced in any of the military’s investigations into the failures surrounding the October 7 onslaught, Kan reported. The broadcaster said it remains unclear why the episode was omitted from internal probes.

Kan first revealed the existence of the drone operation earlier this month, initially citing a source who said it yielded no breakthrough regarding either Mengistu’s location or an impending Hamas attack. The fuller details disclosed Friday suggest the intelligence, while ambiguous, was more consequential than previously acknowledged.

Mengistu, an Israeli civilian suffering from mental illness, crossed into Gaza voluntarily in 2014 and was subsequently detained by Hamas for nearly a decade. He was released in February as part of a ceasefire agreement.

The report lands amid mounting scrutiny of Israel’s intelligence establishment and its handling of warnings about Hamas in the years leading up to October 7. Just two weeks ago, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir appointed an independent panel of experts to examine the military’s failure to act on intelligence reports dating back to 2018 that warned Hamas was preparing a large-scale assault.

Those warnings — collectively referred to within the IDF as “Jericho’s Walls” — were notably absent from the army’s initial investigations into the October 7 disaster.

The move to launch a deeper probe followed a blistering review by a separate team of former senior officers, which found many of the IDF’s internal investigations to be incomplete and inadequate. The reviewers concluded that some of the most critical intelligence failures — including repeated reports outlining Hamas’s attack plans — were never fully examined.

In February, the IDF released the findings of its internal intelligence probe, acknowledging that the military had, over several years, received detailed information describing Hamas’s intention to launch a broad, coordinated assault on Israel. Those plans were repeatedly dismissed as unrealistic and unworkable, even as Hamas quietly trained, armed itself, and built the operational capacity to carry out the October 7 attack.

The newly revealed October 6 intelligence episode appears to fit a broader pattern: warning signs that were either misinterpreted, minimized, or ignored outright.

While it remains unclear whether the information gathered that day would have been sufficient to prevent the attack, its dismissal — and subsequent disappearance from official records — is likely to intensify public and political pressure for a full accounting of how Israel’s intelligence and military leadership failed to anticipate Hamas’s move.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)