IDF implements radical changes in its intelligence branch after Oct. 7 failures

As the Israeli military is preparing to present the public with a series of investigations into its failures to protect the country on Oct. 7, Israeli media have begun reporting on some aspects of the probes.

While the largest part of the investigations focused on individual battles in the Gaza envelope, understanding the intelligence failures leading up to the catastrophe could prove to be the most critical aspect for the future security of the country.

On Monday, outgoing Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi convened the IDF’s senior command staff, from battalion commanders and above, to present the results of the General Staff investigations.

According to Walla News, some officers noted that greater weight and importance should have been given to the available intelligence and the decisions made by the army’s top brass during the night before the invasion.

Despite the misgivings, Army Radio on Tuesday reported that several lessons learned on Oct. 7 have already been implemented by the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate (AMAN) over the past months.

To combat the lack of understanding of the enemy and its motivations, AMAN plans a dramatic increase in the teaching of Arabic, Islam, and the Arab culture.

Intelligence officials acknowledged that this area had been neglected over the past years, except for language specialists. In the future, intelligence officers in AMAN, as well as intelligence personnel in the field units and cyber and technology staff, will receive extensive training in these areas.

Despite being seen as one of the Israeli security system’s “crown jewels,” Oct. 7 is already AMAN's second catastrophic failure in the country’s short history, after the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

As part of the lessons learned from that war, AMAN established the “Ifkha Mistabra” department. The name comes from an Aramaic phrase in the Talmud and means, “on the contrary.”

However, the unit’s importance dwindled over the years and on Oct. 7, it only had two officers whose authority was limited solely to assessments of the Research Division, not the whole intelligence branch.

The unit was meant to always present an opposing view to the commonly accepted intelligence assessments and prevent the recurrence of large parts of the security establishment adopting a certain way of thinking that ignores clear threats to the nation’s security.

This is exactly what happened before Oct. 7, when the military and intelligence services estimated that Hamas was not interested in armed confrontations.

Ifkha Mistabra is now being expanded significantly, with its authority extended to all AMAN units and its head being promoted to Brig.-Gen., on a level with AMAN’s top brass.

Another of the intelligence branches much-maligned “concepts” was an overreliance on cyber and SIGINT (signal intelligence) sources before the war.

AMAN is now reactivating many of its capabilities that went neglected in the past, especially HUMINT (human intelligence), and plans to place more emphasis on a diversity of intelligence sources, and increased information sharing between the different intelligence disciplines.

In particular, the HUMINT and OSINT (open source intelligence) capabilities will be strengthened, Army Radio said.

Before the war, HUMINT collection in Gaza was completely left to the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, and AMAN’s Unit 504, which performed admirably during the war, but didn’t operate a single agent in the enclave. Now, Unit 504 is in the process of expanding its operations in the area.

AMAN will also reactivate its OSINT unit, called “Chatzav” (miner), which was closed down some years ago.

Finally, the cooperation and intelligence sharing between the intelligence branch and the intelligence staff posted on field units will be deepened. In the past, field reports often did not reach AMAN’s top brass, fatally skewing its assessments.