Yaakov Amidror has never been shy about saying exactly what he thinks. The former national security adviser talks like the officer he once was, blunt and unsentimental, shaped by decades of watching what hesitation can cost. His warning now is straightforward: Israel cannot leave its work in Gaza unfinished. Hamas must not be given space to regroup, to rearm, or to dig itself back into the ground. The remedy he lays out is equally stark—surround Hamas, keep striking, and make certain it cannot rise again.
That kind of clarity cannot stop at Gaza’s edge. The same hard standard Amidror demands for Hamas must be applied inside Israel’s own ranks. October 7 was not simply an intelligence slip. It was a collapse of judgment. Hamas trained openly. The IDF even held in its possession a document that spelled out the attack almost line for line. Yet officers dismissed it, persuading themselves that it was exaggerated. The price of that illusion was the bloodiest day in the country’s history.
The timeline tells the story. In April 2022, Unit 8200 intercepted what came to be called the “Jericho Walls” plan, a Hamas playbook for invasion. It described exactly what later unfolded: rockets to swamp defenses, drones to blind cameras, and fighters pouring across the border by paraglider, motorcycle, and foot. By August 2023, as one officer was finishing his post, he passed on a warning that Hamas was preparing something far larger than the IDF had prepared for. That report landed on the desk of Lt. Col. “A,” sometimes identified publicly as Aleph, who also happens to be Amidror’s son.
What followed is almost beyond belief. Rather than sound the alarm, Lt. Col. “A” brushed the plan aside as a “pompous and unrealistic scenario.” He then ordered that a sanitized briefing be prepared for Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—one with the critical warnings stripped out. Israel did not fail because it lacked information. It failed because an officer chose to bury it.
On October 7 Hamas carried out that blueprint nearly word for word. This was not bad luck or the fog of war. It was catastrophic misjudgment, bordering on criminal negligence. Yet Lt. Col. “A” remains in uniform.
Here is where Amidror’s public counsel runs headlong into his own institution. He insists that Hamas must be denied safe havens in Gaza. The same logic demands that the IDF deny safe havens to incompetence. To strip Hamas of its tunnels while shielding officers who erased warnings is to repeat the blindness that made October 7 possible. It is to grant negligence the same protection Hamas once found in reinforced concrete.
Reform must be pursued with the same seriousness as any war plan. Intelligence should not be measured by daring raids after the fact but by whether threats are stopped before they ignite. Skeptics must be protected, not sidelined. Red-team contrarians should be built into the system so dissent cannot be snuffed out. And accountability must be universal. Soldiers have been court-martialed for dozing on guard duty. Yet an officer who erased the clearest warning in decades has faced no consequence. That double standard eats away at morale more than any punishment ever could.
Some say harsh discipline for senior officers would weaken the army. They have it backwards. Strength comes from institutions that hold themselves accountable. Trust comes from fairness, not indulgence. Citizens and soldiers can forgive honest mistakes. What they cannot forgive is denial, cover-ups, and immunity for the well-connected.
October 7 was the deadliest day in Israel’s history because the truth was not acted upon. The warnings were there. They were detailed. They were ignored. If those responsible remain untouched, Israel has not learned.
Amidror says Israel must finish the job in Gaza, and his words must be weighed seriously. But the country also cannot afford half measures at home. To disarm Hamas while leaving incompetence untouched is to invite the next calamity. Reform must begin with all those whose failures enabled October 7 and compounded its aftermath, and it cannot avoid starting with Lt. Col. “A.”
The bitter truth is this: one year and ten months later, not a single official has faced charges for the disaster that left roughly 1,200 dead and 251 taken hostage. Not one. A nation that rightly insists Hamas must be destroyed has yet to hold its own guardians accountable. That failure is unsustainable. Amidror is correct that Hamas must never be allowed to rise again. The same must be said of the negligence that let October 7 happen. Until Israel disarms itself of that, the job is not finished.
The rot of the high brass in the IDF was all too obvious in its proclaiming its belief in a smaller smarter IDF reliance on high tech and disdain of hum as m intelligence all of which led to 10/7 and unwillingness to fight to win