Doron Kadosh: Why the Shin Bet October 7 investigation is a sham

Veteran military reporter Doron Kadosh posted a long analysis tonight (Tuesday) on X, harshly criticizing the Shin Bet investigation of its conduct before October 7 as an attempt to dodge responsibility for its failure, as if to say "we failed, but" in every instance.

Kadosh began his post by giving his general overall impression of the investigation:

"The Shin Bet cleverly utilized its status as a clandestine organization to publish a "key investigation" document to the Israeli public, which is mostly about blaming other parties, and only minimally detailing the organization's failures, deep flaws, and an honest and true presentation of the full facts. The document published by the Shin Bet this evening is a collection of facts, which, without questioning their credibility, clearly shows an effort to draw one bottom line: "We failed, but..."

He then gave a few examples of what he considered to be this sort of avoidance:

"We failed, but the political echelon is more to blame because it led a policy of containment towards the Gaza Strip.

"We failed, but the political echelon did not listen to us all these years when we pushed to carry out neutralizations in the Strip.

"We failed, but we are not at all suitable to provide a war warning and this should have been the IDF's responsibility from the beginning.

"We failed, but we had no choice because our freedom of action in Gaza was impaired and we could not properly recruit sources.

"We failed, but Military Intelligence is more to blame because it did not share information with us on the night of 10/7.

"We failed, but actually, we did warn all agencies about Hamas's offensive intentions at 3 AM!"

Kadosh saved his fiercest criticism for last, noting the complete failure of an intelligence agency designed to do proper security clearances and operate agents to detect a plan to send thousands of armed terrorists into Israel:

"Why does the Shin Bet not even mention in its investigation the issue of workers entering from the Gaza Strip? Let's recall: The Shin Bet's role was to security-screen every worker entering the country and approve it. To this day, the Shin Bet has not provided any information on the remaining open question: Did the workers who entered Israel help Hamas and gather intelligence? Right under its nose, and with Shin Bet's approval, did these workers become Hamas agents in Israeli territory?

"Regarding human intelligence (HUMINT), the Shin Bet mentions the difficulties in operating agents from the other side in the Strip, but still claims that the Shin Bet held many sources in the Strip even before 10/7 and does not answer the following questions: Did these sources provide false information that misled the Shin Bet? Could some of these sources have served as double agents for Hamas? How is it possible that in one night, three thousand Nukhba fighters leave their homes, organize, move, and despite so many movements in the Gaza Strip – none of the Shin Bet's sources knew to pick up the phone to their handler and tell them about any unusual occurrence? Unfortunately, the investigation does not solve this mystery."