On screw-ups - Melman in Haaretz:

‘If the troubles raining down on the Shin Bet security service because of its screw-ups before October 7 (with Military Intelligence jointly responsible) weren't enough, we now have last week's leak of recorded remarks by the agency's chief, Ronen Bar. This came at a meeting of the war cabinet in the West Bank, at Central Command headquarters near Beit El north of Jerusalem. Settler leaders were also present.
The procedure is that at every meeting of the full cabinet, the security cabinet or the war cabinet, you leave your phone at the door. But someone (not the government secretariat in charge of recording the debate) recorded the deliberations and leaked parts of it.’

(…)

‘"We will assassinate the top Hamas people in Qatar and Turkey," Bar was quoted as saying. Most Hamas chiefs – both political and military – live in the Gaza Strip, but some live in Turkey and Qatar, which support the organization out of ideological affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.’

(…)

‘Presumably the Hamas chiefs in Qatar, who for years have lived in luxury hotels with their fat bank accounts and real estate holdings, will also enjoy immunity – as long as the war is still going on and Israel needs to bring back the roughly 140 hostages and is willing to accept help from anyone.’

(…)

‘For decades now, the intelligence community has been in love with targeted killings. The Mossad has hit select Palestinians in Europe, Syria and Lebanon, not to mention nuclear scientists in Iran. The Shin Bet did this in the past wholesale in Gaza and is still doing it in the West Bank in tandem with elite army units.

But 50 years on, it has been proved that targeted killings aren't the answer. Every person who's assassinated, even if he's very senior – or in the Israeli parlance, "the snake's head" – has a replacement. The 1995 assassination in Malta of Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shaqaqi has been attributed to the Mossad. The group has only become larger and more deadly since his death, as we've seen over the past decade in Gaza.
According to media reports, in 2008 Imad Mughniyeh, "Hezbollah's defense minister," was assassinated in a joint operation of the Mossad and the CIA. That was definitely a harsh strategic blow, maybe Israel's most important targeted killing ever. But Hezbollah is still very much alive and kicking, as we've witnessed in the current war, and in Lebanon, Yemen and Syria.’

(…)

‘Or another metaphor: the old boys' network. It doesn't matter whether you're on the left or the right, your DNA is security establishment. Today you're a division head or some other honcho at the Mossad, Shin Bet or Military Intelligence. Tomorrow you're an analyst in a TV studio or a fellow at a think tank.
Not everyone is like that, but the few who try to challenge the cookie-cutter thinking find themselves on the defensive against the spirit of the times. This also applies, paradoxically enough, to the "devil's advocate" units that were formed after the 1973 Yom Kippur War to ask the kind of "why" questions that children ask.’

(…)

‘The third conclusion is that another intelligence agency must be formed, made up of wise and knowledgeable civilians able to think outside the military box and pay attention to what's literally right in front of us. And in the 21st century, this is that you have to believe what's written and said openly.
In intelligence jargon, this is called "open sources." In a fictional TV series produced by Hamas more than a year ago, the group described what it planned to do. It was nearly one-for-one what happened.’

Read the article here.

So, the highly praised intelligence community in Israel is not corrupted, it’s not yet the PA, but it’s overly opportunistic, and misogynistic and arrogant, see here.

Revenge is always understandable, but rarely wise. ‘Munich’ is a great movie, but did it create long-term security? No, it was a failure.

The same mistake can be found almost everywhere: punish harder, more criminals behind bars, more criminals killed and crime will disappear. No.

If you read Melman’s article closely, the only conclusion can be that the intelligence community in Israel is in bad shape, run by careerists with a lack of imagination, which is often the characteristic of the careerist. All this should not be a surprise, after all the country itself is run by a careerist with almost no moral hesitations, and only one agenda: his own survival.