Among the pantheon of intelligence agencies, Israel’s Mossad probably stands apart. And when one talks of Mossad, one also includes the Israeli military and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service.

As Vikram Sood, former chief of India’s R&AW told StratNews Global on The Gist, there are reasons why Israel is so successful in its intelligence operations.

“They have the full backing of their government,” he said, “and all members of government and bureaucracy have gone through compulsory military service, which gives them discipline and focus. Add to that Israel is surrounded by enemies some of them seeking ‘total annihilation’ of the Jewish state.”

It fosters a mindset where they are willing to put everything if it contributes to the security and defence of Israel.

“The other is planning and execution,” Sood said, “years of planning and execution. It’s not as if you can flip a coin and get rid of a terrorist residing in the palace of the president of another country.”

In his view, it underscored another point: the value of the human element. It cannot be just technology. Dedicated manpower is needed to collect intelligence and carry out covert operations or cyber operations.  There is no morality here, and no ethics, Sood said.  Nobody’s an untouchable.

‘I’m sure they had intelligence on what Hamas was planning, what Hezbollah and conceivably what the Iranians were planning. How did the Israelis know that Al-Shifa hospital was an arsenal of weaponry, and they bombed it.”

He pointed to how Israeli commandos infiltrated a hospital to eliminate a Hamas operative. Mossad may have known about his presence there for some time, they struck at a time they deemed appropriate.

The million-dollar question: did the Israelis have intelligence about the Hamas attack of Oct 7, 2023?

Sood suspects they may have had some information, perhaps not a complete picture which would have enabled them to connect the dots.  They may not have anticipated the toll that Hamas extracted, the taking of hostages or what it has led to: total war.

There’s more. Watch Vikram Sood on The Gist.

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