Bannon`s War Room
WarRoom Battleground EP 894: How Hamas Surprised The Most Powerful Military
18 Nov 2025
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What led to Hamas's surprising attack on Israel?
This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people. I got a free shot on all these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that. I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.
And where do people like that go to share the big lie? Mega media. I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bann.
Okay, welcome back. Tuesday, 18 November, Year of the Lord 2025, quite a busy day. Also, there's going to be this formal dinner tonight, so Real America's Voice will be covering all of it. Brian Glenn, our White House correspondent, maybe we'll dip back over there in a while. Yakov Katz, thank you. What brings you to the United States?
Here at a conference, General Assembly of Jewish Federations in North America. Were you presenting?
Presenting, yes. Okay, so the book is... While Israel slept, I cannot give a higher recommendation to read, I think, an even-handed yet shocking account of October 7th and what led up to it. The intelligence failures, although you'll see individual stories of heroism and bravery. and then the military part, which we'll get into. When you present this, because, look, you know, I'm not Jewish.
Our audience is kind of split. We have a big contingent, very pro-Israel. We have other people who are questioning some of the relationships now. This is, I believe, as an outsider, so brutal in its assessment that Number one, how has the book been received in Israel? I know our audience that bought it from the first time we spent an hour with you have loved it, and I've gotten great feedback.
And as I've told people around town, because the details are not really talked about anywhere, they've gotten it. The feedback I've gotten is like, how is this not like the number one book that everybody's talking about? What has been the response in Israel and what has been the response when you come to a conference like this?
Well, I think it depends where. People are still very much intrigued and want to understand what happened and how this very powerful military that I think we all recognize is really one of the most powerful and strong militaries and intelligence apparatuses in the world, how it failed so miserably. Because at the end of the day, Stephen, I think you get this.
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Chapter 2: How did intelligence failures contribute to the attack?
What I love about the book, you go strategic operational level to the tactical level, right? And you talk about
the failures and as you see strategic failures can kind of overwhelm you right when you're totally caught by surprise and then you've got you're trying to turn around operationally and then in the tactical that's where you see some of the individual heroism of people and and tactical you'll always see them in israeli people are incredible american people are incredible people always stand up
If they see something bad happening and they'll go out there and they'll race down to southern Israel, take a sidearm and go out and try to fight to save people they don't even know. That's the beauty of Israel, right? And that's something that's incredible. But beyond that, and you're asking how it's been received, look, it's still a very painful moment in Israeli history.
It's one that while a lot of the people in the military and in the intelligence agencies have been replaced in the government, same government, same ministers, same people who are still in their roles.
And now that the war has winded down, there's a lot of talk and a lot of demand of commission of inquiry on a national level that will look into what happened here to get to the bottom of it and study. Let's go.
What are your bona fides? This book is... has been received, particularly at a professional level, as something that's got to be read, given your and your co-author's background. So just give the audience... Both of us are longtime journalists.
I've been doing this for about 25 years, covered military affairs. Amir, my co-author, continues to cover military affairs in Israel for about 20 years. I was the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, one of
daily newspapers big english language papers in israel for about eight years up until two years ago this is my fourth book i've written about uh israel's bombing of syria's nuclear reactor back in 2007 what happened in the bush years i've written about israeli military technology i've written about iran a lot uh actually here at this conference i'm at speaking on a panel about iran and the fear for example that the next round is not a question of if but it's more of a question of when
and that you're hearing from the intelligence folks both here and in Israel. So really been in this space of Israel-U.S. relations and of Israeli military and intelligence operations.
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Chapter 3: What were the immediate military responses to the attack?
There was things going on with their communications that Israel was picking up on. All of that was information that was flowing in in real time. Some of it was getting caught in bureaucracy, was not moving from one agency to the next. That's always going to be a problem in the world of intelligence, as you know. But that was there. That's level one. And that was misinterpreted.
Israel was in a debate. The commander is on the ground. In real time. In real time. Is this a drill or is this an attack? That's what they were not sure about.
And the tension is if it's a drill, we can't be too quick to respond because then they'll know all the intelligence we have.
We'll tip them off.
It's the Coventry in England situation where you have the code system, Ultra, the cold breaker, and you've got to let this town be bombed. Otherwise, you'd let the Luftwaffe know you had their bombing schedule.
Right, so you will know that they'll know that you know, and then they'll reverse engineer how did you find out, or they'll think that you're doing something and they're just planning a drill, but now because they see you doing something, they might actually attack. So why instigate it? So that's the debate throughout the night.
The second layer, which goes back a few months, is those women soldiers and others who are seeing things happening on the ground, the surveillance people who watch Gaza, watch the border, seeing training, seeing more senior Hamas commanders come near the border. And they're shut down by their commanders who say, listen, you don't get it. Hamas does not want war. You're misunderstanding.
And then the third is going back even further in time. was this report called Jericho Walls, a reference to the biblical walls of Jericho that came tumbling down.
Tell me about that report, that report, because it comes about halfway through the book.
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Chapter 4: What strategic mistakes did Israel make during the conflict?
It wants to be like the rest of the Western world. And that puts it into this frame of mind
kick the can down the road don't deal with it if you can avoid the war avoid the war look you talk about this bureaucratically and socially yeah but you know appeasement also to some extent if there's a way to buy off your enemy as opposed to confront your enemy go that route first because we don't want we just want to have a good life and and the problem is israel is in a region and a neighborhood that you can't just have a good life how much is when you read this how much and you're the technology guy how much is it
the belief that we're so far technologically superior because here, one of the first things in the evening at six o'clock, you have a surveillance system that's even the name of it's classified. So you don't go in a lot of detail. That system went down and people are arguing, hey, that's either been taken down and guys always got glitches in it.
But there was you could tell from the institutional response you depended a lot on technology. You thought you were so technologically superior and had such a detailed surveillance system, nothing had happened. The other at the strategic level was a belief that it looks like so much of the focus had been on Tehran.
that not just Hezbollah and the proxies, but that the regime itself and a lot of the strategic resources or time and focus was on the Persian situation versus the wolf that happened to be at the door. How much did that go into it? Technology is a huge piece of it.
You know, we had Iron Dome, Arrow, David Sling, multi-layered missile defense technology. So their missiles, they can lob them at us. We can shoot them out of the sky. They don't, they're not an issue. They try to tunnel into Israel. We'll build an underground tunnel and sensors to detect when they're digging tunnels. We'll build a multi-layered barrier to stop them.
The technology also in the SIGINT and signal intelligence, we can listen to all their conversations. So we don't need to have human assets on the ground inside Gaza. Why waste your time in cultivating an asset and having an informant? But Steve, thousands of people ended up crossing the border.
Not one could pick up the phone and call their Israeli handler and say, listen, this is in the works, get ready, because we didn't have those assets. You can't just rely on technology. And I think that's a big wake-up call.
So this is the reality, because one thing that jumps off here, you think, being a Westerner, that whether it's Mossad or Shin Bet or Aman, whoever it is, that half of Gaza is on the payroll.
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Chapter 5: How did the international community respond to the conflict?
Let's talk. OK, so we get to the three o'clock in the morning and the attack comes by three o'clock a.m. Everybody's kind of on alert. You basically put the nation on alert militarily and militarily. I mean, the nation's still militarily.
Those commanders are something was they know something's happening. They're waiting to see what's going to happen. You got the head of the shin bet. That agency sends some. And you can't tip it because if it's not happening, you don't want to give away the fact that you know what's going on. The tragedy comes. They kidnap 251 people. They murder 1,200. Right out of the box.
Pretty much out of the box. Let's go through the hour because what happens then? One of the other questions here besides the intelligence, the IDF is kind of legendary, right? Why did it take the IDF? I mean, so many of the heroes here
Our old school IDF guys have fought in previous wars or older guys are just hearing this and they're getting in the cars and driving down with whatever weapon they could grab. And and they're going to kill some, you know, they're going to shoot some bad guys. But the institutional, you know, you got the strategic, the operational, tactical.
Why did it take so long for the tactical or operational piece to kick in to have a more organized response?
Yeah.
This was probably... Am I right?
That's basically... No, it's a great... This is one of the more painful questions and issues that come up here because, okay, they'll try to invade. Here they're invading. Where is the army, right? You have an intelligence failure. The barrier fails. You're defensive. Your line of defense fails, right? Now they're inside Israel. The whole military should be flooding the south, right?
And that doesn't happen. So I'll say a couple of things. Number one is this was a very sophisticated, although very low-tech attack. What did they do, Hamas, essentially? They had studied for years the way the Israeli military is deployed along the border. They understood what happens when, for example, they fire rockets. So what did they do? They fire a massive barrage of rockets.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of the attack for Israel's future security?
So we got no eyes on the border. Then they're going to those frontline positions. They're cutting communications. So they're going to make it difficult for one frontline position to talk to the other. And then they're raiding those bases themselves. They're not going. The assumption of the IDF had been they're going to go to the communities, the kibbutzim, right?
No, they're going first to the bases. And also to the kibbutzim at the same time. But once they bogged down the commander, so you got a story, for example, in the Gaza division headquarters near a kibbutz called Reim, big base. He's on the base over this holiday. It's a Saturday. He's there in the command center. Rockets are flying. He's inside. His base comes under attack.
He's a former commando. He used to be the commander of the Shaldag unit, one of the most elite commandos.
He's got a tremendous track record.
He's, do I go out and fight or do I stay here? So he's got to have his soldiers are fighting for survival in their own base. How can he actually send troops to the kibbutzim? He's got to fight in his own base. So they managed very successfully to cut communications, cut the eyes, and bog it down.
Let me stop right there. Because as a, you're a professional in this area, I'm not. But when I read this, The level of detail they have about the kibbutzes. Yeah. Like they have a map of the kibbutz. Who lives in what home? Who lives in what home where the safe space is, who the key people are in the kibbutz, who are the leaders of the kibbutz. Does this home have a dog or not? Right.
The level of the base, what they know about the bases, the tactics of the Israelis. It leads a civilian to say ā or a former naval officer to say they had to have inside information. There is no way they could just garner this from particularly Hamas. I mean they don't have the reputation of being the most organized folks in the world.
They don't have the reputation of being people that have put together ā
a strategic plan like this that can be operated over such a wide you know it's paramilitary they got gliders they've got it's over 40 miles but the level of detail down at the what you call the center of battle is so detailed i'm sitting there going not only did they not have human intelligence on the hamas side hamas somehow has human intelligence on the israeli side
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Chapter 7: How has the perception of Hamas changed after the attack?
It starts to allow in Gazans... from Gaza into Israel to work inside Israel, work mostly inside these kibbutzim, agriculture jobs, factories, along the border. These people, we now know, go back to Gaza. They were intelligence assets. Well, maybe... Willingly, maybe some unwillingly. Who controls Gaza, Hamas? So these guys cross back into Gaza after a day's work or a week's work.
They get pulled aside at the crossing by Hamas security forces. Tell us what you know, who lives here, who lives there. Gather for us information. Whether they did it willingly or unwillingly doesn't make a difference.
And you're saying over time, that's how they knew like the maps of the kibbutzes. That's how they had the maps. That's how they knew exactly. Who the leaders were, where the safe rooms are, all of that.
But they were also very sophisticated in gathering intelligence on the military bases, watching them, watching the deployment, seeing over time what happens when they do X, what does the IDF do?
Do you think that in this inquiry,
that could be quite painful do you think that it's going to come up the potential that they're actually israelis that sold out their nation and gave information to these guys particularly the military bases i i i pray that that's not the case i i you're a professional though i know you i know it'll be heart-rending to anybody in israel particularly given the the smallness of the nation and you surround it but and a very patriotic nation super patriot but
You have to come to the conclusion that something there is deeply wrong given the level of detail they knew. They had such an advantage tactically in going because they kind of knew the whole thing, right? And that's where they knew where to go, what to do.
I can't say it's impossible because we just don't know. And there's no evidence yet to show that way?
The Israeli people are going to demand to get to the bottom of this and find out everything that went on.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from the conflict for future military engagements?
And just mow down anyone who's crossing in from Gaza. Why don't they do that? I spoke to pilots who boarded their aircraft and flew out to protect gas rigs in the Mediterranean. Who gives a shit about a gas rig right now? We got people who are flowing into the communities. This is what you got to do. So there's a couple of things you got to say here. Number one is...
We have this attack in the south. How do we know it's the last? Maybe they're coming from the north now. Maybe you got Hezbollah that's gonna come across the border. And if Hezbollah comes across the border. You got a big problem. You got a big problem. They are double.
That's light infantry coming across. That's double the size.
Not a bunch of paramilitary guys. These are serious people. So you can't just send the whole army down south.
Although these guys, it's interesting to me, I don't call them terrorists. I mean, these are paramilitary. I mean, they're training in Hamas. is pretty impressive for how they hit their marks about what they had to do.
This was their elite force, what they called the Nuhba force. This was their elite Nuhba force. They were also lower level people, just random people who decided to come across and pillage once the border was wide open. But Hezbollah, different caliber. And if we send everybody down south, it's just... What time is that decision made? So 6.30 is when the attack potentially commences.
Only about 9, 10 o'clock do they start to understand, okay, we see what's going on down there. Can we safely assess that Hezbollah is not coming as well? But that's two, two and a half hours. Right, so that's two, two and a half hours in, three hours in. But what time is the political higher-up, Netanyahu and the senior command?
They're already at this point at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv. And they're making those decisions and they're gathering the intelligence to understand that for sure, Hezbollah is not coming and they're beefing up forces on the North, just in case they're misreading that situation too. At the same time,
They're trying to assess what's happening in the south, but because of the lack of communication, because of what the success of Hamas is low tech attack, it's hard to understand what's happening. And here was a problem with the military, right? The air force, for example, which is very painful because they could have made the difference. They don't know, or they didn't know then how to function.
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