October 7 two years on – what happened? Part Four

This is part four of a four-part newsletter. Our first newsletter focused on Hamas jihadi strategies and preparations prior to its October 7, 2023 murderous attack on Israel, as well as to what extent Israeli Intelligence knew about this. The second newsletter examined Israel’s lack of professional preparations, sobering examples of negligent conduct, and the actual timeline of events surrounding October 6-7. The third newsletter considered the context of internal Israeli divisions, and how Hamas exploited those divisions. This fourth newsletter looks into the discovery of a home-grown spy linked to Israeli domestic opposition movements, and then draws general conclusions.

“It’s getting near dawn”

It’s 6:29 am on the morning of October 7, 2023. Hamas jihadis unleash a barrage of over 4,300 Qassam rockets at kibbutzim, small farms and villages, town and cities. Simultaneously approximately 3,800 Hamas Nukhba terrorists breach IDF defenses in 119 locations, followed by over 2,200 Gazan jihadi supporters, who all go on a frenzied pogrom of raping, beheading, torturing, murdering and kidnapping of over 1,200 Israeli kibbutz members, as well as 378 Israelis at the nearby Nova music festival.

As these Israelis are being massacred, violated and tortured, a 31 year old Israeli has just finished getting dressed in an IDF regular service uniform – something puzzling since for the past six years he has no longer been in the IDF. Though he had once been in a classified hi-tech position in military intelligence, his regular service contract had not been extended. According to media reports on his IDF file, there were certain ethical lapses connected to his previous service. This individual then puts on IDF military rank insignia identifying the wearer as a captain (seren), though the highest rank he had previously held was only lieutenant (segen). Such behavior is considered a criminal offense in Israel. Then he steps out of the house, and heads out to a Military Intelligence base in the Negev region of Israel. The name of this man is Assaf Shmuelevitz.

On the cutting edge

Assaf Shmuelevitz grew up on the Sharon Plain, in Hod Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv. His father had been a lieutenant-colonel in the IDF, and saw action in the War of Attrition between Israel and Egypt between 1967 and 1970.

Shmuelevitz seems to have once served in IDF Unit 81, a secret elite technology unit which is part of the Special Operations Division of AMAN (the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate). That unit focuses on the development of cutting-edge hardware and technology for special forces operational use. According to a 2021 report by the Israeli business newspaper Calcalist, in the last decade alone 100 veterans of the unit have founded 50 technology companies, having raised $4 billion USD, with accumulated valuations surpassing $10 billion USD. Unit 81 has no direct public equivalent; it is often compared to corporate R&D labs focused on mission-critical solutions. Up to 2023, that unit was awarded the Israel Security Prize 39 times.

After Shmuelevitz’s IDF service, he trained as a lawyer at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, was admitted to the Bar on August 18, 2021, and then worked as an assistant in the Deputy Attorney General’s office. There he was daily in touch with sensitive legal matters, gaining valuable insight into Israel’s judicial system. Shmuelevitz had connections with Israeli elites, including former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and spoke before Knesset committees on various occasions.

Shmuelevitz describes himself in LinkedIn as a Digital Marketing manager. He became founder, investor, and CEO of Lev Kachol (Blue Heart), a company described as involved in private equity and venture capital (PEVC) and startups, with a specific emphasis on social challenges, humanitarian impact and aiding in humanitarian crises (e.g., coordinating relief efforts during the Ukrainian war). At one point the organization was accused of mishandling donations, with claims circulating that funds never reached their intended recipients. Questions were raised, and support for the company diminished somewhat as a result.

Through the Looking Glass

Shmuelevitz showed up at a Military Intelligence base in the Negev around 7:00 am on the morning of October 7, 2023, but was turned away at the gate by security, since he had no official clearance. IDF reserve soldiers coming into military bases carry a Tzav Shmoneh/Order #8 (an emergency call-up order) which allows them entrance. Just after 3 pm Shmuelevitz used a different method to achieve his goal: he hitched a ride with well-known retired Lieutenant-Colonel Oren Shvil to the main regional base IDF Southern Command (SOCOM; in Hebrew Pikud HaDarom or in military acronymic PADAM).

At the base gate, in the company of the Lieutenant-Colonel, he presented a driver’s license, falsely claiming to be an operations intelligence officer holding a higher military rank than he actually had. Shmuelevitz was given an entry pass from an officer he knew from previous times in the army, and entered the base at 3:45 pm. Shmuelevitz’s disguise was well planned and smoothly executed. He entered with two cell phones in his possession – one would be left out of secure rooms, while the second cell phone did not have a SIM card and thus was able to bypass security detection.

Inside the high-security base, Shmuelevitz moved with casual determination, accessing highly sensitive military meetings, photographing classified data, covertly taking photographs of classified military screens, and recording overheard conversations. He attended a critical high-level briefing where Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (as well as the heads of SHABAK and MOSSAD) was present. After the briefing, he manipulated a senior officer into giving him an authorized clearance to move freely about the base. Based on this document, Shmuelevitz later met with other staff officers who passed on to him other highly sensitive information, which he recorded on his second hidden cellphone. This included the following information: the nature and locations of military call-ups for different brigades; updates on top-secret military programs and weapons; intel on scientific abilities and computer problems which had arisen with command-and-control regarding a specific SIGINT network, etc. Shmuelevitz was able in a short time to gather intelligence information at the highest level of top secret.

On October 8, Shmuelevitz returned to SOCOM again. He approached an assistant to a former commander, requesting a document that would authorize him to carry out specific actions within the IDF Southern Command. The assistant, trusting Shmuelevitz, signed the document without verifying its contents.

On October 9, back at SOCOM, Shmuelevitz met a soldier who had once been under his command and was now a colonel (Aluf Mishneh). Shmuelevitz insisted that he had possession of “solutions to operational challenges” He persuaded the bureau chief to authorize/sign a “letter of appointment” that granted him official authority as kambatz (operations officer – special covert operations and assignments in the war room of Southern Command). This document defined Shmuelevitz as ‘a core actor.’ The Rosh Lishka/bureau chief) signed it without reading it. The officer later realized the mistake but did not act swiftly to retrieve the document. In the meantime, Shmuelevitz was able to attend another top-secret situational assessment session of the Operations Directorate that day. He also was party to a high-level presentation of an overview of the gaps that the Operations Department of AMAN was dealing with.

On October 11, Shmuelevitz was back at SOCOM. He requested expanded authorization from the colonel, granting him broader powers: to open a special cell and to be its commander; authority for that cell to function as a secret long arm; to initiate special operations outside the borders of Israel (i.e. Gaza); to have authority to recruit any soldier and reserves officer from any unit in the IDF; and to use any available methods/abilities to accomplish the task. He then went to the colonel and obtained authorization. The authorization was again signed without having been read. When the document made its way through the appropriate administrative channels, reaching the bureau chief, that officer’s suspicions were immediately aroused. He went to the colonel, who now realized that he had erred in signing a document which he had not read carefully. He ordered his bureau chief to take back the signed order, but the bureau chief didn’t get around to it; there was a full-blown war going on. Between Oct 11 and 15 (five days) Shmuelevitz was thus able to intensively collect intelligence throughout the base.

On October 12, Shmuelevitz returned to SOCOM. He contacted the Amuta (equivalent to an American [501[c][3]) of his original unit’s veterans, stressing that he needed immediate help – specifically, access to specialized personnel. As he was waiting for final clearance from that organization, he was put in contact with some hi-level tech people who were veterans of that unit. Two of these high-ranking reserve officers came to SOCOM – a reserve IAF F-16 pilot and a hi-tech-wiz entrepreneur. These both are members of ‘Achim LaNeshek’ (‘Brothers in Arms’), an anti-Netanyahu organization. All three men participated in top-secret meetings with senior officials on that base without authorization, with Shmuelevitz passing them off them as regular (and not reserve) soldiers.

But when the veteran hi-tech wiz began to discuss the project intensively with Shmuelevitz, he quickly realized that Shmuelevitz was not using proper military terminology which a bona fide officer of the required professional caliber would normally use. He passed his suspicions on to those responsible for war-room intelligence supervision at Southern Command. In the meantime Shmuelevitz was continuing to record many conversations with top commanders dealing with TOP SECRET intel.

On October 15, after 8 days of continuous spying, Shmuelevitz was busted at Southern Command, caught in the act of spying. Though he refused to give his interrogators the code to his cell phone, their cursory exam of accessible photos showed reams of top-secret documents, and his contacts included the names and cell numbers of some rather high-up left-of-center politicians and former politicians. Many recorded conversations were found on his no-SIM cell, dealing with top-secret info. Shmuelevitz’s notebooks were found (one of which later disappeared), also loaded with top-secret info, including the location of the Israeli hostages and of all Hamas’ top commanders. A charge sheet was opened at the Beer Sheva court (Israel 23694-10-23 State of Israel v. Shmuelewitz) on October 16, 2023. Sections 2 and 27 of the indictment against Shmuelevitz indicate that his actions were part of a broader, well-coordinated plan. However, critical details about the plan’s origin, purpose, and those who may have devised it remain undisclosed.

At first Shmuelevitz was suspected of spying for Hamas. His case therefore fell under security rules which allowed him to be subject to harsh ‘necessary interrogation’ by SHABAK. Questions were directed during three days of grilling – what intel had he collected; who was his handler; who got him onto the base; who was the receiver of the intel; what was Shmuelevitz’s incentive here.

After three days it became obvious to his inquisitors that Hamas was not the runner of this spying operation. However, many other parties existed who might want access to such valuable information. The intel that Shmuelevitz was collecting would have been considered a veritable gold mine by agencies like the CIA. The investigators considered two possible responsible parties: the CIA/US State Department; and anti-Netanyahu opposition activists.

But considering that the names and personal contacts of high-profile figures in Israel’s political, legal and intelligence spheres were burning a hole in the pages of Shmuelevitz’s notebook and cellphone, it comes as no surprise that both SHABAK and the IDF would consider it discreet to hush up the matter – especially if it concerned relations with Israel’s most important ally. Would it not be wiser to declare that Shmuelevitz was operating independently, or was subject to delusions of grandeur or narcissism, or was simply ambitious – perhaps even a casualty of a nervous breakdown? All of these declarations of possible motives have been publicly aired by SHABAK and IDF spokesmen. In the meantime, Assaf Shmuelevitz has been locked up in an isolation psychiatric word for close to two years. Yet the conspicuous trail of bread crumbs here calls for a more sober and a less partisan appraisal.

Brothers without arms

One of the flashing red lights of concern which has kept Israeli intelligence and security experts up at night, relates to the unusual involvement in the Shmuelevitz affair of individual members and higher-ups of the anti-Netanyahu political action group ‘Achim LaNeshek’ (‘Brothers in Arms’). This activist group is a movement of IDF reservists – including some pilots and intelligence officers – who have been attempting both to block judicial reforms and to bring down the coalition government of Israel led by PM Bibi Netanyahu. Following former PM Ehud Barak’s cue, they see themselves as the spearhead in these fights.

One of Israel’s top intelligence journalists and strategic affairs correspondents, Yossi Melman, speaks glowingly of Barak’s call to soldiers to refuse to serve in the IDF: “[This] is a military coup for the sake of democracy.” Prime Minister Netanyahu has attacked 'Achim LaNeshek’ for inciting popular refusal to volunteer for reserve duty in the IDF: “What does endanger democracy is refusal to serve. Their refusal endangers the security of all Israeli citizens.

Scholars, politicians and political analysts have noted that the leaders of Hamas had been carefully studying Israeli politics and politicians, and had come to the conclusion that the civil unrest, quasi-violent demonstrations and calls for AWOL behavior throughout 2023 – all had served to weaken the IDF’s and the nation’s combat readiness. They also concluded that these events had downgraded Israel’s fighting spirit. These were some of the factors that influenced Hamas in choosing the date and the time of their jihadi terror attack.

One of the top leaders of ‘Achim LaNeshek’ (and a member of its executive committee) is 52-year old IDF Lieutenant-Colonel (reserves) Oren Shvil. According to the ‘Achim LaNeshek’ website, Oren had joined the organization “to spearhead the fight against the government’s judicial overhaul.” A former battalion commander in Moran (IDF Unit 427 – a classified unit in the IDF Artillery Corps specializing in operating long-range precision-guided missiles), Shvil is also a CEO. ‘Achim LaNeshek’ states that “Oren oversees Achim LaNeshek’s recruitment and training initiatives.” Oren and IDF former Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi are neighbors in Kfar Oranim,” a town near Modi’in.

Shvil has spoken numerous times publicly, both threatening and calling for a reserve soldiers’ walkout (see Knesset TV channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjWvof0V7M8). He has repeatedly called for blocking Ben Gurion Airport and public freeways, while declaring that such actions are totally legal protest measures. Shvil has publicly and vociferously called the government of Israel a dictatorship, lawless, corrupt, irresponsible, evil and crude – stating that it is therefore legal to disobey it.

Shvil was the high-ranking IDF officer who drove Shmuelevitz to Beersheva’s SOCOM on both October 7 and October 12, and his on-site presence seems to have facilitated Shmuelevitz’s entrance to the base.

Conservative political commentator Yisrael Medad noted approximately two months after the October 7 massacre (on December 19, 2023) that “the core factor of [‘Achim LaNeshek’s] protests was the weakening of the IDF through calls to refuse reserve duty in essential military units such as air-force pilots and intelligence drone operators.”

On October 12, 2023, Shmuelevitz brought into IDF Southern Command two people (in the reserves and not on active military duty - a former F-16 pilot and a former officer) both affiliated with ‘Achim LaNeshek.’ Shmuelevitz stated falsely that they were regular soldiers, and the two men thus entered a military base under false pretenses and without proper authorization. The names of these two are blackened out on the court charge sheet. Their participation in meetings with senior officials has fueled speculation about political motives and the protection of influential figures. Their presence at this juncture suggests a potential alignment between their direct involvement and the protest movement’s opposition to Netanyahu’s judicial reforms. The inevitable questions here highlight possible political motivations behind the espionage.

Of the approximately 70 people with whom Shmuelevitz came into contact with at SOCOM during those eight fateful days (of whom 20 are senior IDF officers) – it is estimated by Members of Knesset who have seen the unredacted documents held by the court. that a significant amount of them were soldiers who, before October 7, 2023, had publicly called for reserve soldiers to stop serving in the IDF – in other words, they are also supporters of ‘Achim LaNeshek’.

Other ‘brothers-in-arms’

Israeli Member of Knesset Almog Cohen has made the demand “that the Prosecutor’s office reveal the notebook of the defendant [Shmuelevitz]” in the Southern Command espionage case, claiming that it “contains Yair Golan’s name and number. For 15 months, it and this entire affair have been under a strict gag order. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Yair Golan is a former MK, a former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff, and an IDF Major General (res.). He is far-left in his politics; has drawn parallels between Nazi actions and IDF behavior;” has accused the IDF of “killing babies as a pastime;” is opposed to the annexation of Judea and Samaria; and has called many times for “non-violent civil disobedience.”

Though Yair Golan is not a member of ‘Achim LaNeshek’ /Brothers in Arms, he is highly supportive of their actions and beliefs:

“Brothers in Arms are my brothers and sisters in every sense of the word … They fought shoulder to shoulder to defend the independence of the judicial system and against Levin and Netanyahu’s corrupt reform … We will topple the government. We will unite the camp. We will restore liberal democratic Israel.” (March 5, 2024)

In an August 4, 2024 Instagram post, Yair Golan expressed unequivocal support for ‘Achim LaNeshek’: “If there is something Prime Minister Netanyahu should do regarding ‘Achim LaNeshek’, it is to award them the Israel Defense Prize for their work!”

In October 2024, Golan declared at Tel Aviv University:

“When I look at the messianic threat, the religious and fundamentalist one, that threatens Israeli society, I say to you unequivocally and clearly: if this is the direction that will cause a strike in Israeli society, more and more Israeli youth will ask themselves ‘why get drafted? Those are not my values. That’s not a worldview that I believe in. That’s not the way to build a righteous society. I’m not prepared to serve such a state.’ Anyone who thinks that I am talking now about an imaginary threat – it’s a an extremely real threat. Manpower which is needed and is of quality – this is the foundational ingredient for a qualified army.”

On November 7, 2025, Israeli Member of Knesset Almog Cohen affirmed that Yair Golan’s name and cellphone number are listed in Shmuelevitz’ notebook, and that Shmuelevitz’s cell phone records show that he had talked with Yair Golan between October 8 and 15, as well as conversing with other higher-up politicians past and present during that time.

On June 10 2025, former SHABAK operative and lawyer Noam Viner was declared as being the legal representative of Assaf Shmuelevitz. Viner is one of the founders of ‘M’sarvim Lma’an Israel’ (also ‘Ometz Lesarev’ or ‘Courage to Refuse’; the Hebrew meaning is ‘Refusing to serve for the sake of Israel’) – an organization which encourages IDF reservists to refuse to serve in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Lt. Col. (res.) Ron Sharf, one of the leaders of the ‘Brothers in Arms’/‘Achim LaNeshek’ protest movement, is a highly decorated officer with over 34 years of service in the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit. On July 22, 2023 Sharf read aloud, to the sound of applause, the list of units in which approximately 300 signatures of service refusers were collected:

“Paratroopers Reconnaissance, Navy Combatants, Communications Officers, Ordnance Corps, Military Intelligence, Air Force, Home Front Command, Submarines, Yahalom, 8200, ITN, State Comptroller's IDF Auditor, Duvdevan, Artillery, Shayetet 13, 669, Medical Corps, LOTAR, Sayeret Matkal, Rider of the Skies, Talpiot, Golani – Golani! Maglan – they’re all here!”

On November 13, 2024 the IDF froze ‘Achim LaNeshek’ leader Ron Sharf’s reserve duty status for his advocating reserves refusal. The IDF Spokesman said: “Following quotes that appeared in publications about things Sharaf said regarding reserve service in the IDF, the issue of his reserve service will be examined by his commanders in the Military Intelligence Directorate.”

‘Achim LaNeshek’ members’ names showing up repeatedly in this affair adds a significant layer of complexity and intrigue here. Their opposition to Netanyahu’s government and adamant refusal to serve in the IDF due to the judicial reform efforts is well known to most Israelis. Israeli TV commentator Ayala Hasson points out that, despite the clear and illegal involvement in this affair of IDF higher-ups associated with ‘Achim LaNeshek,’ no charges have been filed against these individuals. This has fueled speculation that ‘Achim LaNeshek’s actions were part of a broader, well-coordinated plan potentially connected to influential political figures, and that these figures are being protected by some in authority. This potential cover-up would include protection of influential political and former political figures connected to the protest movement.

Lieutenant Colonel Marco Moreno (res.), a former top officer and investigator in AMAN’s clandestine Unit 504, has commented that Shmuelevitz’ behavior, planning and tradecraft all indicate that this was a classic intelligence operation – not run for Hamas, but by people in Israel. The fact that SHABAK is not willing to release any information at all about the case, indicates that the operation was real and has ramifications of a geopolitical nature.

Moreno believes that there was CIA involvement here: Shmuelevitz knew where and when to appear – this in itself indicates a prior knowledge and awareness of the Hamas attack. Shmuelevitz was trained to bring in two different types of cell phones, and he performed the task like a classic spy. And every spy has a runner.

The information obtained by Shmuelevitz could have been used to bring down a government, or to ingratiate potential aspirants (to the Israeli Prime Ministership) with the US State Department. The institutionalizing of Shmuelevitz in a psychiatric hospital indicates someone’s desire to ‘bury the corpse and protect the guilty.’ The unfortunate fact is, as MK Almog Cohen points out, that SHABAK and the Israel Police knowingly concealed all information concerning the Shmuelevitz Affair from Israel’s PM, Minister of National Security, and the Head of Israel’s National Security Council. All these snippets of raw intelligence indicate that this matter is not to be taken lightly.

Hold on, I’m not comin’

Over the past year, former Israeli Deputy Police Commissioner Avi Weiss has been speaking out (though in guarded tones, due to censorship considerations) about some of the blowback resulting from Shmuelevitz’ spying. MK Almog Cohen has revealed that the IDF top command was so thrown by Shmuelevitz’s vacuuming up of information, that they were forced to cancel a bold special operation utilizing the Navy’s Flotilla 13 (Shayetet 13) which was preparing for a high-risk special operation to free all the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas and to take out Hamas’ entire High Command (including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar) – all of whom were located under Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital. That operation would have shortened the Israel-Gaza war from 15 months to perhaps 30 days; would have removed the hostage issue from metastasizing; and would have annihilated Hamas’ top commanders (who were thus able to prosecute a nearly two-year-long war against the IDF).

MK Cohen shared these matters on Israeli TV and podcasts on June 1, 2024 and September 10, 2024. MK Cohen revealed that the Gaza war was originally scheduled to begin on a specific date, but senior IDF officers called for its postponement due to concerns that operational plans had been compromised by Shmuelevitz’s infiltration. The discovery of Shmuelevitz’s spying activities (and the initial questions regarding the possibility that he was working for Hamas) occurred at a moment when decisions made in these meetings could have altered the course of the conflict, highlighting the urgent need to act on collected intelligence in the first few hours and days after the Hamas attack.

Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi later denied such a scenario on June 4, 2024. But that denial came hot on the heels of widely covered reports (published that same day) quoting a new book titled ‘Ba’al Habayit’ (literal translation: ‘The Boss’; published in English as ‘Invisible Rulers; the story of Israel’s deep state’) authored by Ido Norden, an officer who had served at the Kirya (Israel’s Pentagon) in ‘The Pit’ (Ha’Bor in Hebrew) – Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center. Norden was ‘there’ – on-site with insight – and had access to real-time information. In his book, Norden claimed that a major operation to rescue hostages was planned by the IDF in the first week of the war, but Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi decided not to execute it. Norden is an Israeli public-policy professional and former IDF combat officer, who served as a senior professional adviser to the Prime Minister’s Office director-general (2012–2013). Throughout the events, the Chief of Staff didn’t share the existence of the spy Shmuelevitz, the planned Shayetet 13 raid, or its cancellation of that raid with the Prime Minister, the Minister of National Security, or the Head of Israel’s National Security Council.

Even the best of friends have bad hair days

To understand the nature of the relationship between leaders in the USA and in Israel going back to October 2023 – the ups and the downs, a little digging into history is required. One good place to begin is to quickly survey U.S. State Department and CIA history vis-à-vis the Jewish state. Here are four recent newsletters which offer interesting and surprising background:

https://davidstent.org/shakings-weighings-and-divisions-syria-annapolis-and-the-return-of-yhvh-part-three-of-three-cutting-israel-down-to-size/

https://davidstent.org/military-witchcraft/

https://davidstent.org/why-are-the-peoples-plotting-in-vain/

https://davidstent.org/bleachers-out-in-the-sun-on-highway-61/

When friends undermine

In an investigative report by Adam Kredo in The Free Beacon dated July 12, 2016, reference was made to a U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee in Investigations disclosure “that the Obama administration provided U.S. taxpayer dollars to the OneVoice Movement, a liberal group that waged a clandestine campaign to smear and oust Netanyahu from office.” American State Department political underminings did not begin during POTUS Biden’s tenure; it has older and more weathered roots.

In a March 26, 2025 letter from the U.S. Congress’ Jim Jordan (Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary) and Brian Mast (Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs) addressed to Dr. Eliad Shraga (Chairman, Movement for Quality Government in Israel), the following was stated:

“Dear Dr. Shraga, According to reports, the Biden-Harris Administration funneled U.S. taxpayer money to certain Israeli entities, including the Movement for Quality Government in Israel (MQG), with the effect of attempting to undermine Israel’s democratically elected government. The use of federal grants in this manner not only jeopardizes America’s relationship with one of its closest allies, but also undermines core civil liberties protected within the United States and Israel. Additionally, the misuse of federal grant funds may, in some cases, amount to a criminal offense . . . This was not the first time U.S. taxpayer-funded grants had been used to support protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or the policies he supports.”

A press release of the US Judiciary dated July 17, 2025 is titled: “Memo Reveals Biden-Harris Admin Misused Taxpayer Dollars to Fund Anti-Netanyahu Organizations.” It uncovers a significant money-laundering scheme, where funds from both the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and from the U.S. State Department were used – both directly and indirectly – to support anti-Netanyahu organizations.

The Israeli NGO Blue White Future received finances which funded the coalition headquarters which oversaw the anti-Netanyahu judicial reform protest. The Biden-Harris Administration provided $42,000 to an Israeli NGO, Movement for Quality Government, to conduct ‘Civic Activism Training’ in Israeli high schools. U.S. nonprofit PEF Israel Endowment Funds provided over $884 million to groups involved in anti-democracy protests in Israel. The U.S. nonprofit Jewish Communal Fund (JCF) provided over $42.8 million to the anti-Netanyahu protest headquarters in Israel and to the protests’ two main funders.

An unprecedented sum of 120 million shekels ($33.8 million) directly funded the campaign and protest demonstrations against the judicial reform in 2023, with the entire amount channeled through a single nonprofit organization. ‘Blue White Future’ distributed funds to various organizations including ‘Achim LaNeshek’/’Brothers in Arms’ – and numerous other protest groups, including those in academia. Documents exposed on the Mida website additionally reveal the organization's engagement of a Washington public relations firm for a three-month period at USD $75,000, specifically to advance its positions with the Biden administration.

Founded in 2009 as ‘Blue White Peace’ before quickly adopting its current name ‘Blue White Future,’ the organization’s stated mission focuses on advancing a two-state solution to preserve Israel’s Jewish and democratic character. Key figures include Orni Petruschka, Attorney Gilead Sher (former chief of staff to Ehud Barak and Oslo/Camp David negotiating team member) and Ami Ayalon, who previously headed the Shin Bet and served in the Labor Party. Corporate donors included Paragon, a spyware company associated with former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

A circular view of history

In October 1973, Israel was bludgeoned by a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria, with several other nations joining in an all-out attempt to destroy the Jewish state: Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Cuba, Pakistan and North Korea. Though Israel received the entire war plan of the Egyptian army in enough time to prepare, the leader of Israel’s military intelligence directorate AMAN, Major General Eli Zeira (who just passed away on November 21, 2025) had an errant conception (‘konceptzia’ in Hebrew) that the Arab world did not have the military means or skill to defeat Israel; and that, even when it appeared clear to much of the IDF, the Mossad and the Israeli government that the Arabs had aggressive intentions, the head of AMAN insisted that the Arabs would not actually follow through with war.

When the head of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, tried to talk to Prime Minister Golda Meir about the upcoming threat, she told him to talk to Minister of Defence Moshe Dayan, who was also stuck in Zeira’s ‘konceptzia.’ The Arab surprise attack on October 6, 1973 on the Day of Atonement (called ‘The Yom Kippur War’) resulted in close to 2,800 IDF soldiers killed; up to 8,800 IDF soldiers wounded, and close to 500 IDF prisoners of war taken.

Exactly fifty years and one day after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War (October 7, 2023), Israel once again came face to face with a deadly surprise. This shocking event was also based on a false and mistaken perception – another ‘konceptzia’ – that Hamas and their Palestinians in Gaza had been deterred by the IDF; that the jihadi terrorists had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t worthwhile to try to destroy Israel; and that the economic benefits of Gazans working in Israel outweighed the meager work prospects in Gaza.

The primarily secular leadership of the IDF, SHABAK and AMAN – indeed, of Israel’s government – did not take the Islamist jihadi perspective seriously or as worthy of consideration. Israel’s generals and intelligence heads unilaterally decided that Hamas would be willing to lay down much of its Islamist jihadi ideology on the altar of accommodating itself to ‘a new reality of peace.’

“It is not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.” (Henry Kissinger, former U.S. National Security Advisor)

How shall we then pray?

Pray for the leaders and elders of Israel – in the domains of politics, in the military and intelligence, and in law – be given the wisdom to draw sound conclusions from past failures and to make wise preparations for the next round of challenges

Pray for the entire people of Israel to seek and find salvation in Messiah Yeshua

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth!

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: https://davidstent.org/give

October 7 two years on – what happened? Part Three

This is part three of a four part newsletter. Our first newsletter focused on Hamas jihadi strategies and preparations prior to its October 7, 2023 murderous attack on Israel, as well as how much Israeli Intelligence knew about this. The second newsletter examined Israel’s lack of professional preparations, sobering examples of negligent conduct, and the actual timeline of events surrounding October 6-7. This third newsletter considers the context of internal Israeli divisions, and how Hamas exploited those divisions. The fourth newsletter will look into the damage caused by an Israeli spy connected to opposition movements, and then some conclusions will be drawn from these events.

A decade of bitterness

Ehud Barak, Israel’s most decorated soldier, has served over the years as head of AMAN (Military Intelligence Directorate 1983-85); Sayeret Matkal (IDF Delta Force equivalent; 1971-73, where he had been Netanyahu’s commander); IDF Chief of General Staff (1991-1995); Minister of Defense (1999-2001; 2007-2013); and Prime Minister (1999-2001). Barak had previously lost the 1996 elections to Netanyahu.

An ongoing historic rivalry between Barak and Netanyahu (also known as ‘Bibi’) has festered over the years, as noted by the Washington Post in September 2016. Barak stated at that time: “Netanyahu’s reckless conduct endangers Israel . . . Netanyahu enabled a militant, nationalist minority to carry out a hostile takeover of his party, Likud – . . . to hijack our national agenda in the service of a messianic drive toward, as it’s often put, ‘a single Jewish state, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.’ This . . . spell[s] doom for the Zionist dream.” He added: “We will all have to get up from our … seats and overthrow [that government], through a popular protest … before it’s too late.”

The themes that have run through Ehud Barak’s campaigns against Bibi since 2016 (and which still guide his political activism to this day) remain the same: de-legitimization of Netanyahu’s rule; a deep personal hatred towards Bibi (thus the slogan ‘anything-but-Bibi’); mass demonstrations aimed at bringing down Bibi’s government; anti-religious attacks on the religious parties who see the Jewish restoration to the Promised Land as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Speaking at a June 2019 press conference in Tel Aviv, Barak called for an end to “Netanyahu’s rule with the radicals, racists and corrupt, with the Messianists [i.e., Orthodox Jews] and his corrupt leadership.” He declared that he was returning to politics in order to “topple Netanyahu.” In July 2019, author and Barak biographer Calev Ben-Dor stated that “Ehud Barak has the energy, the venom and the gravitas to hurt Netanyahu in a way no other candidate seemingly can.”

Shape-shifting protestors

During the Summer of 2016, Barak and his co-laborers worked hard to kindle four criminal investigations against Netanyahu. These four legal moves against Netanyahu have become the mantra of the new protest era: accusing Netanyahu of bribery, deception, and breach of trust. This rallying cry of this protest movement against the Prime Minister sprouted in 2016, bloomed in late 2017 (the Tel Aviv ‘Shame Parade’); morphed in 2018 (the ‘Crime Minister’ or ‘Hoze Hadash/New Deal’ demonstrations) and transformed itself on March 10, 2020 into the ‘Black Flags’ protests (attacking Netanyahu’s coalition discussions). This movement was guided and heavily underwritten by Barak, according to an exposé presented on Israel’s Channel 13. The initial protest was led by three brothers and a sister – Eyal, Yarden, Dekel and Shikma Schwartzman – who organized a convoy to Jerusalem, pushing for legal attempts to remove Prime Minister Netanyahu from office. Shikma Schwartzman-Bressler declared at that time that the group’s focus was against “a coalition agreement that violates the Basic Laws of the State of Israel,” adding that it is the movement’s “stated goal of preserving democracy by ensuring the ousting of ‘crime minister’ Netanyahu.” A Black Flags spokesperson also added a footnote, declaring that “Israeli democracy refused to be subjected to a coup under the pretext of the coronavirus.”

The ongoing mass street demonstrations in Israel, the civil disobedience and blocking of freeways and airports all have deep political roots (detailed in three of our recent newsletters). The ideological origins of this movement go back to the 1930’s during the British occupation, when communists and socialists considered all conservatives to be fascists, and practically excommunicated the pre-Likud movement from participation in political discourse. Today this same worldview thrives on the Left side of the political aisle, as well as in parties of the center-left. Hatred for the moderate right and for Orthodox Jewish parties is openly manifested in Left-wing Israeli political discussions. The demonization of the Likud party and its coalition partners is a regrettable part of normal political discourse here. And over the past 20 years it has been directed especially against PM Netanyahu.

Barak has played a central role in focusing radical attention on the three main events here (criminal investigations against Netanyahu; the protest movement; and the political boycott against the right). He has been instrumental in shaping the framework and development of this protest movement over the last nine years. Barak has been the briefer, the advisor, and the spearheader/funder/catalyzer for the demonstrations.

The focus of the Barak-instigated demonstrations has shifted its shape over the past decade. It began with calls for Netanyahu to resign due to his right-wing and pro-religious emphases. After this, it morphed into the multifaceted emphases of the Black Flags movement; then on to the Crime Minister smear campaign; and then to violent protests outside of the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem. The demonstrations then moved on to oppose judicial reform; then called for a release of all the hostages combined with a call to end the war against Hamas without preconditions. And now, the latest metamorphosis is a call for an investigation (led by anti-Netanyahu judges) into issues concerning the Israel-Hamas war.

Sedition and treason

Amir Oren, a reporter for the Left-leaning Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, interviewed Gilead Sher on his May 9, 2023 podcast. Sher had been PM Barak’s chief of staff from 1999-2001 and Barak’s chief negotiator with the PLO at Camp David. Sher has remained close to Barak ever since. Sher explained that in December 2022, three weeks before Netanyahu’s new government would come to power, Sher met with Yossi Kutchik, director general of former-PM Barak’s Office. Also in attendance were former IDF Chief of General Staff Dan Halutz and high-tech billionaire and far-left political activist Orni Petruschka. They were joined within a week by others, including former deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber and Shikma Bressler (the face of the ‘Black Flags’ Barak-supported protest movement). Their goal was to put together the organizational and financial structure for the mass demonstrations, civil disobedience and violent rioting that Israel has experienced since January 2023 – even before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues had formed their government. This means that “the riots, protests, acts of political violence and intimidation that have swamped Israel since January [2023] were not spontaneous responses to the government’s legal reform proposals. They were planned and financed weeks before Justice Minister Yariv Levin was appointed to his position and well before the government took any position on anything.”

A Hebrew Zoom clip from July 23, 2020 (English sub-titles available here) shows a private meeting Barak held with retired Israel Air Force pilots and navigators (called ‘Forum 555’) who all supported him in his desire to remove Bibi from office. Attending the meeting were Shikma Bressler and Moshe Redman, leaders of the anti-Bibi demonstrations which now have a new morphed name – the ‘Kaplan’ protest demonstrations. In that meeting Ehud Barak stated that it is not Barak but actually Bibi who is heading up “an attempted governmental coup.” A civil uprising against Bibi is needed, Barak states, but it must be presented to the public as an uprising “for the sake of democracy,” rather than an attempt to unseat Netanyahu.

In the Zoom video Barak discusses strategies for a civilian revolt, including the use of slogans, civil disobedience, and both general and ultimate goals of the protest movement. He stated that he would raise the necessary funds to cover all logistics for the project, including flags, banners and PA systems. He declared that the more there are streets clashes with the government, the stronger would the opposition’s resistance become. This would inevitably lead to the government needing to use force against the demonstrators, which would again bolster the protest movement. In Barak’s own words, when an army shoots into a crowd, the government is bound to fall. Barak also declared on that Zoom clip a snippet of revealing information about his own self-awareness: “Objectively speaking, I am the most suitable person in the state to take control of the steering wheel.”

On January 14, 2023 Barak gave an interview to Israel Channel 12, at which time he declared: “This government is legal but clearly illegitimate because of its plan to crush Israeli democracy . . . We are witnessing a coup here. This is an assassination of the Declaration of Independence, and democracy must defend itself . . . It is clearly illegitimate to assassinate the Declaration of Independence. It is not the right of every citizen, it is the duty of every citizen to come and fight for the security of the government and the rights and dignity of human beings, for the security, the future of the country and equality and freedom. Civil disobedience is a very important thing and that means blocking roads, civil disobedience is the duty of citizens when the government has gone mad.”

On April 4, 2023, Ehud Barak posted on Twitter a perspective which dovetailed with former-POTUS Biden’s and the US State Department’s strategies to bring down the Netanyahu government: “In conversations between Israelis and Western diplomatic officials there are deep concerns raised of the possibility that if the coup [i.e., the judicial reform reining in Israel’s present juristocracy] in Israel succeeds, a messianic dictatorship will be established in the heart of the Middle East, which has nuclear weapons, and fanatically wishes for a confrontation with Islam centered on the Temple Mount.”

On June 10, 2023 Barak declared to protestors in Haifa: “To this end, the protest must increase and move to civil rebellion!” At that same demonstration, former-IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Ya’ir Golan proclaimed: “Civil revolt is not an exaggeration . . . and if we have to reach a large-scale and non-violent protest, that is what we will do. I am calling here … to do illegal things as well . . . In the fight for democracy, you have to do non-violent things that are on the fringes of the law – there is no choice but to do it … Shut down their stores, block the streets, bar all services … Friends, against this evil, malevolent government we have only one path: a comprehensive, broad public rebellion . . . From tomorrow, we’re changing things. No more polite Saturday evening protests. No more lamentations and complaints. Just actions. Just results. Businesses will be shut down, services will come to a halt, roads will be blocked, and this arrogant person who presumes to rule, with the help of corrupt, extreme, and dark forces will be made to realize that the people are sovereign.”

On July 6, 2023, Barak called for a refusal of IDF soldiers to show up for reserve duty, declaring on Israeli Channel 12: “When a black flag of extreme illegality flies over an army order, it is not just the right of a soldier to disobey that order; it is his obligation. We are now facing the civilian equivalent of black-flag illegality . . . Our only obligation is to liberal democracy as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. We have no obligatory contract with dictators, and history will judge to purgatory all those who submit to the dictates of dictators . . . We are the right side of history and we are not afraid of anybody or anything.”

The street protests in Israel are part of a long-range program to paralyze and destabilize Netanyahu’s government, with clear plans to weaken and overthrow it. The political opponents of the current government have shaped a narrative – namely, that these demonstrations are really spontaneous and popular opposition to judicial reform, and not a convenient cattle prod to herd Israel’s electorate in an anti-government direction

Israeli Transport Minister Miri Regev sent a letter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara calling for an investigation to be opened against former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and ‘Forum 555’ for allegedly inciting a coup d’état. Regev stated that the video clip “shows without any shadow of a doubt that beginning in March 2020, former officials began concocting a plan for a coup d’état and civil disobedience, with detailed and careful planning.” According to Hebrew media reports a few days later, an official task force would investigate if Barak and Golan could be charged with incitement or sedition, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison,

On June 11, 2023, correspondence publicized by Channel 14 News from a closed WhatsApp group protesting the ‘judicial reform’ revealed that the real goal of the protests, which are being funded by deep pockets, is to topple the right-wing government headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The group’s members include former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert; former IDF chiefs of staff Dan Halutz and Moshe ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon; the founder of the anarchist ‘Crime Minister’ movement Yishai Hadas; and leaders of the ‘Black Flags’ movement Roy Neuman, Shikma Schwarzman-Bressler, and her brother Eyal Schwarzman. Former PM Ehud Olmert texted at that meeting: “At the start of the protest, I said that a battle is not seminars and academic speeches. We need head-to-head and hand-to-hand combat. So there were reservations about the wording because it sounded too aggressive. It seems to me that my statements still hold true. Without violence and violating the law but in war as in war.”

A false witness spreads strife among brothers (Proverbs 6:19)

On July 6, 2023 on Channel 12 TV, Barak upped the ante, calling on “air-force pilots and Special Forces” to warn Bibi that if he succeeded in passing his legal reforms, these elite soldiers “would refuse to serve a dictatorship, period.”

The founder of the 555 Pilots Forum testified that Barak advised him: “You are a strong role model in Israeli society, you need to find a group among you that is ready to carry out protest actions on the border of legality that will attract public attention and ignite a wave of mass demonstrations.” The Air Force ignited that wave when many of its pilots refused to show up for reserve duty in protest of the judicial reform. Barak said at that same forum that he is doing everything he can “including helping to raise funds so that this protest will succeed.”

Achim LaNeshek (‘Brothers in Arms’) is a movement of IDF reservists – including some pilots and intelligence officers – who stated their refusal to serve should judicial reforms be passed. Following Barak’s leadership, they see themselves as the spearhead in the fight against the judicial reforms that the Netanyahu coalition is attempting to legislate.

One of Israel’s top intelligence journalists and strategic affairs correspondents, Yossi Melman, spoke glowingly on July 20, 2023 of Barak’s call to soldiers to refuse to serve in the IDF:

“A military coup is underway in Israel. This is the unvarnished truth . . . Rather than stating unequivocally that there is insubordination among many Israel Defense Forces reservists, they refer to it instead as ‘ceasing to volunteer’ . . . It’s more comfortable for all involved not to explicitly use the phrase ‘military coup,’ but if the issue is to be effectively addressed, the reality must be faced head-on and called by its rightful name… [This] is a military coup for the sake of democracy.”

On July 18, 2023, Chief of Staff Lieut.-Gen. Herzi Halevi addressed a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting, attacking Achim LaNeshek and saying that “anyone who calls for refusing to report for duty these days is harming the IDF, and harming the security of the state.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu also attacked Achim LaNeshek for inciting popular refusal to volunteer for reserve duty in the IDF. On July 20, 2023 he said, “What does endanger democracy, is refusal to serve. Their refusal endangers the security of all Israeli citizens. In a democracy, the army is subordinate to the government; the government does not bend to its will. When officials in the army try to dictate the government’s policy using threats, this is wrong; that is the end of democracy.”

The next section presents captured Hamas intelligence which backs up these conclusions 100%

Know your enemy

According to The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (March 13, 2025), Hamas documents brought back by the IDF during the Gaza Strip War showed that Hamas was monitoring and discussing Israeli media and sources daily, “especially in light of preparations for implementing the practical plan for the vision of ‘the destruction of Israel.’” Hamas intelligence department reports extensively covered the developments surrounding the government's proposed ‘judicial reform’ and the protests, and the possible effects on the IDF’s functioning in light of the reservists’ protests.

Document 8: Excerpt from Haniyeh’s speech before the executive committee, January 14, 2023

“The [Israeli] government, as much as it threatens the Palestinian people, carries within it the seeds of the entity’s internal explosion. The contradictory and opposing statements we are hearing and the demonstrations indicate that the entity is in an unprecedented internal state. Yesterday, [Ehud] Barak issued an extraordinary statement: ‘We must fight everywhere to bring down this government.’ There is a demand to arrest the opposition leadership. The factors behind the internal explosion of the entity have become clear, in accordance with the words of Allah ‘and their hearts were divided’” (Qur’an, Sura 59, Verse 14).

Document 3: Communiqué from al-Sinwar to Ismail Haniyeh, March 6, 2023

Sinwar dealt with the preparations for the “campaign of liberation, return and destruction of the entity.” Al-Sinwar noted that the “internal situation of the enemy” should also be addressed in the discussions, although only in a focused manner. The internal situation of the internal enemy, its disagreements, conflicts and crises must be given a place, focused even if small.

Document 2.1: Conversation between Yahya al-Sinwar and Muhammad Nasr, April 4, 2023

[Muhammad Nasr (Abu Omar) was part of the Hamas Politburo, based in Beirut.]

The conversation dealt with the state of the Hamas movement, preparations for the future campaign against Israel, and with the protest within Israel and its possible impact on the confrontation. Nasr noted that the internal Israeli division was an opportunity for Hamas and the Palestinians, but only if the Palestinians overcome their own internal division. “There is a real opportunity for the [Palestinian] cause and the [Hamas] movement, and herein lies the danger of division in the political position or in the political line. The internal division in Israel is the greatest destructive force that can destroy Israel, and any [Palestinian] internal division delays the achievement of the goals. – This is an opportunity for us to reap the fruits, as the balance of power has now shifted in our favor, and we must seize the opportunity. The obstacle facing us is the internal division on the political issue.”

Document 2.2: Conversation between Yahya al-Sinwar and Muhammad Nasr, April 4, 2023

Al-Sinwar agreed with Nasr’s assessments regarding the “state of the enemy.” He noted that although a certain calm could be observed in the protest within Israel, it was only temporary and it was a “severe crisis” in the foundations of the “entity” … The general line is 100% correct and the assessment is precise, whether it concerns the situation of the enemy, the region or the existing opportunities. – The [political] calm among the enemy is temporary, only an apparent calm, and the crisis is greater and deeper …The crisis strikes the depth of the entity. From interviews in the media with enemy leaders, the picture becomes clear. The crisis in the entity is deep, not just a civil war, but a disintegration of the glue that holds the entity’s components together, and a breakdown of the formulas that preserve the entity's existence and continuity. Anyone familiar with the enemy’s affairs notices that if this situation continues for some time, it will lead them to a condition more serious and dangerous than Harb al-Ghufran [the Yom Kippur War].

Document 5: ‘Yasser’ (apparently the head of Hamas’ military intelligence, Muhammad Odeh) sent to Yahya al-Sinwar a classified assessment of “the impact of protests in the ranks of the ‘enemy army’ on operational readiness and the security situation on the fronts.” July 25, 2023

The enemy army is in the midst of a crisis of increasingly serious protests among reserve soldiers and officers, who are considered a key pillar in the army's operations, especially in the Air Force. This will negatively affect the army's operational capability if the intensity of the demonstrations and refusals escalates and reaches more significant levels. It will also affect the army’s offensive capability and its preparedness to deal with the challenges existing on the front. The demonstrations have so far focused on several sectors [of the army], the most prominent of which are the Air Force and Intelligence

Document 6.2: A Hamas military intelligence report sent to al-Sinwar, July 25, 2023

The enemy army has received a letter signed by 1,142 soldiers and officers in the Air Force reserve, threatening to stop their voluntary service if the “reasonableness clause” is finally approved. The data shows that the number has increased to 1,194 officers and soldiers. The number and distribution of air force soldiers and officers refusing to serve, follows.

The effects of the crisis depended on the number of soldiers and officers who did not report for service, their roles and the difficulty of the command echelon in maintaining cohesion within the army and separating the army from the social and political crisis. The greater the number of those avoiding service, the greater the direct impact on operational capability and readiness for conflict, especially a multi-sector conflict. Pilots were considered the most influential because “their number was modest compared to other specialties and their role was extremely important.”

Document 6.5: From an intelligence report issued by Hamas’ military wing and sent to Yahya al-Sinwar, July 25, 2023

The enemy is faced with the increasing offensive spirit from the ‘resistance’ forces, especially Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and with their desire to exploit the internal situation within the Zionist entity to their advantage. The commanders of the Zionist intelligence community are spreading the information to push the political forces in Israel to reach internal understandings, since preoccupation with the political crisis weakens strategic deterrence.

The IDF would still be capable of managing a confrontation with the Gaza Strip unless more than half of the reserve pilots did not participate, whereas the lack of a quarter of the reserve pilots would impair readiness for a multi-front confrontation.

“The assessment: The number of soldiers and officers refusing service does not yet significantly affect the army’s operational readiness. However, the refusal crisis may worsen … As a result, the military command will face extensive challenges and there will be a direct, though partial, impact on its level of preparedness and operational readiness regarding confrontation and large-scale war. The enemy’s readiness will not be damaged unless more than half of the reserve pilots refuse service. However, refusal by a quarter of the reserve pilots would constitute a significant blow to its ability to cope with a multi-front confrontation. The crisis could become fundamental (a state of general chaos, significant weakening of military strength and a basic strategic decline in army readiness). In the event of a flare-up on any front against the enemy, some of the soldiers and officers will regret their refusal and return to military service.”

“The recommendations: 1. Avoid entering a military confrontation based on the development of the internal crisis within the enemy. The crisis should be allowed to deepen further, since if it does not become a severe crisis, the benefit of the internal crisis in any military intervention will not be significant. 2. Coordinate with the comrades [other ‘resistance’ organizations] to conduct psychological warfare, and focus on disseminating information that will inflame the internal situation. 3. Invest in demonstrations to promote the issue of the captive soldiers and present it to the enemy’s public as one of the matters Netanyahu has failed to manage. 4. Continue to make the connection between the collapse of the political entities of the Jews due to internal disagreements and the exploitation of the current situation by the enemies. 5. The movement’s leadership [Hamas] should respond to the political situation within the enemy entity before the [Palestinian] public and the national forces, and present the situation as an opportunity to achieve the goals of the Palestinian people.”

The activities of Israel’s most decorated soldier Ehud Barak – specifically, the protests he funded and managed – have caused significant harm to the military readiness of the Israel Defense Forces prior to October 7, 2023. Hamas understood that the demonstrations which Barak catalyzed and his calls for pilots and Special Forces to go AWOL – in their eyes, these were a strategic influence which weakened Israel and left it less protected and less prepared for battle. And all the while, day by day, the D-Day for the jihadi massacres of October 7, 2023 drew closer.

How shall we then pray?

Pray for the leaders and the nation of Israel to embrace the gift of repentance toward the God of Jacob, to humble ourselves as a nation, and to learn the lessons we need to grasp

Pray for the leaders and elders of Israel – in the domains of politics, in the military and intelligence, and in law – be given the wisdom to draw sound conclusions and make wise preparations for the next round

Pray for the entire people of Israel to seek and find salvation in Messiah Yeshua

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth!

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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October 7 two years on – what happened? Part Two

Our previous newsletter focused on Hamas jihadi strategies and preparations prior to its October 7, 2023 murderous attack on Israel. Also considered was how much the IDF, SHABAK (Israel's General Security Services) and AMAN (IDF Military Intelligence) were aware of Hamas intelligence, and how much the IDF relied on the accuracy of its own intelligence findings.

This newsletter will offer some background on two issues related to the October 7 atrocities; first, some highly unprofessional and negligent conduct (specifically on the part of the IDF/AMAN); and second, the actual timeline of events surrounding October 6-7. Most of this information is found in OSINT (open-source intelligence), but most reporting of events leaves out or spins many of the available facts.

Drop your guns

After the Israeli army completed its hi-tech anti-tunnel barrier along the seam between Gaza and Israeli kibbutzim and farms in April 2021, the IDF concluded that the chance of terrorist incursions from Gaza was now “close to nil,” and that kibbutz rapid response squads of only 5-10 armed warriors would be sufficient as the last line of defense for these communities. The locals were deeply concerned, but “as much as we banged on the table, it didn’t help,” said one local security coordinator.

On October 7, 2023, Kibbutz Nahal Oz’s civilian emergency response team was forced to defend their community against up to 180 Hamas terrorists. However, they were faced with an insurmountable problem. The IDF had decided a few years back that it was too much of a security threat for rifles to be ‘hanging around the kibbutz.’ So all the M-16’s were collected and deposited in a kibbutz armory. But when Hamas broke into Nahal Oz, the armory instantly became inaccessible as it was covered in a hail of bullets. And the man who held the key to the armory was murdered by Hamas, leaving the squad unable to access the weaponry.

Said team leader Barry Meirovitch. “If we had weapons on October 7, then some of [the response team] would have been killed, but we would have saved more people. We found ourselves in the most absurd situation. When it came down to it, I had all the gear, including a radio, a flak jacket, and magazines, but I didn’t have a gun.” Sixty soldiers and 15 kibbutz members were murdered in that attack.

When Hamas terrorists rolled into the Negev town of Sderot on white Toyota pickup trucks, the 22 members of that town’s civilian alert squad also had no semi-automatic weapons – they had been returned to IDF armories. The squads were equipped only with personal handguns, severely limiting their ability to engage the dozens of Hamas terrorists who stormed the town. The mayor of Sderot Lyor Davidi was entirely unaware that members of the town’s alert squad lacked automatic weapons. He only discovered this fact on the day of the attack. A total of 53 people were killed in Sderot: 37 civilians, 11 police officers, 2 firefighters, and 1 IDF soldier

“His watchmen are blind, … ignorant and dumb” (Isaiah 56:10)

At age 27, Israeli ham-radio enthusiast Rafael Hayun began to intercept Hamas communications and to send the processed information to Unit 8200 (AMAN SIGINT). The IDF thankfully provided Hayun with monitoring equipment. According to IDF testimonies, Hayun’s SIGINT often reached units in the field before official army channels, saving lives and foiling Hamas terror attacks and ambushes.

In late 2019, Hayun began reporting on Hamas training exercises involving plans to invade Israel, penetrate the security fence at multiple points, take over communities, and commit mass murder and kidnapping. Over time, the Hamas training became more intense and detailed. Hayun alerted the units he was working with about Hamas’s activities in real time.

In late 2022, a senior IDF officer (Col. G.) who headed the Military Censorship and Information Security Department under AMAN decided to block Hayun’s direct contact with field commanders, arguing that the IDF did not require such civilian assistance. A recording of this conversation was released in September 2024 by journalist Almog Boker.

Colonel G., head of the Security Department in the IDF, “appealed to the Ministry of Communications to revoke [Hayun’s] license. Hayun was called for a hearing on April 3, 2023, and “the Director General of the Ministry of Communications told me to close down my system and stop listening to the enemy. I did as I was told and in June [2023] they informed me that my license had been revoked. Two months later, on August 20 [2023], inspectors came to my home to make sure I had complied with orders.” Five months before the October 7 assault, in May 2023, AMAN was ordered to seize all of Hayun’s equipment and stop working with him. Around the same time, the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate Unit 8200 SIGINT unit also stopped monitoring Hamas’s communications.

Hayun said that his military colleagues told him that the order to cut him off came from “senior leadership,” and they had no explanation for the decision. Hayun told reporters he is convinced that if he had been listening in the weeks before Oct. 7, the invasion would have been prevented.

Hayun says that on May 23, 2023 he sent a message to Colonel G., after Hamas fired on Sderot and several residents were injured, “I wrote him a very poignant and direct message, saying ‘You should know that the victims’ blood is on your hands.’ ‘G.’ answered and warned me not to write to him again.”

Hayun says that an examination of the radios Hamas’ Nukhba terrorists had when entering Israel were all calibrated to frequencies that he had been listening to until his devices were taken and his license revoked. “I met a number of senior officers in different military units. We went over the frequencies. I had all these frequencies in my devices that were confiscated six months earlier. I would have heard everything.”

As for the explanations for what happened before and on October 7^th (including the confiscation of his ‘electronic ears’) Hayun responds: “A lot of things that I know about don’t fit properly into the puzzle. I won’t say that it was something intentional or someone from the inside. I’ll just say that there are many things that I couldn’t fit properly in the huge puzzle of that day.”

“The pump don’t work”

IDF spotters and commanders in the AMAN border units monitoring surveillance balloons along the Gaza perimeter conveyed to their superiors in the weeks before October 7, 2023 that three observation blimps were grounded and out of action. As a result, the soldiers who operated them – concentrated in a small number of operations rooms – were unable to relay information and warn troops on October 7 as 6,000 jihadis swarmed across the bulldozed security barrier. At the IDF Nahal Oz base, a balloonist and his four comrades engaged Hamas in a lengthy battle, managing to kill ten terrorists. But the IDF soldiers were outnumbered and were all found dead inside a mobile shelter at 14:30, October 7, 2023.

On your walls, O Jerusalem

In April 2021, a hi-tech barrier wall was completed by the IDF along the cease-fire line between Israel and Gaza. It was considered a groundbreaking defense project, utilizing autonomous systems, robotics, and advanced surveillance – all to stop Hamas infiltration from Gaza.

Yet a senior officer said, “They told residents the above-ground fence would prevent infiltration, but it wasn’t even built for that. It was only meant to delay attackers by 15 minutes. It didn’t respond to explosives, not even to a tractor.”

The Philistines have invaded

The IDF have a order-of-battle code-named “Parash Pleshet” (‘the Philistine has invaded’). It is intended to block enemy invasions. Unfortunately Israel was not ready for the magnitude of this invasion. The IDF’s Gaza Division had not adequately prepared for the most extreme potential scenario.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Uri Sagi, a former head of Military Intelligence, explains that SHABAK is an organization focused on terrorism. “It speaks about ‘infiltrations,’ about ‘terrorist attacks,’ not about war, which is the language Military Intelligence speaks . . . The problem began long before this tragic night; namely, senior military officials were unfamiliar with Hamas’ plans and could not even imagine them.”

The IDF intelligence consensus was that Hamas would not be attacking. As a result, troops were thinned out and sent home for Shabbat furlough. Two companies of troops from the IDF’s Commando Brigade, which had been deployed to the Gaza border during the Jewish holiday season in September and October, were sent to the West Bank just two days before the October 7 massacre. The IDF’s failure to grasp what was about to happen was based on “a lot of arrogance,” says Gen. Israel Ziv. The thought was that “Hamas wouldn’t attack, wouldn’t dare, and that even if so, they are not capable. We went to sleep on the 6th thinking there’s a cat over there, and we woke up on the 7th and there’s a tiger.”

At 05:30 on October 7, 2023, IDF Golani soldiers were preparing to start out on their dawn jeep patrol along the Gaza Strip, on the Israeli side of the fence – a regular morning activity. But suddenly they were instructed by their superiors to delay the patrol and to stand back because of a threat from anti-tank missiles, three of these soldiers told the BBC. “There was a warning. It was forbidden to go up the route next to the fence,” one recalls. Golani soldier 21-year-old Shimon Malka, said such a warning was unusual but not unheard of, so they gave it little thought.

IDF Gen. Israel Ziv says it is standard IDF protocol to ‘stand soldiers back’ during suspected attacks like this so they can “avoid being exposed as a target.” But, he says, “Hamas realized that and used it” to their advantage.

The timeline of October 6, 2023

21:00 SHABAK (also known as the Shin Bet security agency) starts to identify SIGINT that Hamas was beginning to activate specially pre-positioned Israeli cell-phone SIMs – at first, a handful of SIMs, but exactly at midnight, 1,000 SIMs are activated simultaneously by Hamas. SHABAK updates IDF Gaza Division chief Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld and Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman via WhatsApp at 21:30. Top Hamas commanders and their families begin to descend into the rat’s nest of tunnels spread throughout Gaza – more extensive than that of the entire London underground,

23:00 SHABAK chief Ronen Bar (who is then at his home) briefs IDF Gaza Division chief Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld and other IDF and AMAN officers about “unusual indications” in the field.

23:30 Various Hamas activities are detected (also at 00:00, 02:30 and 03:00), considered and then dismissed. AMAN officials continue to look into activities, and their conclusion is that nothing unusual is occurring.

The timeline of October 7, 2023

00:00 One thousand Nuhkba terrorists simultaneously activate Israel SIM cards in their cell phones. The purpose of using the Israeli SIM cards is for the jihadis to improve their ability to communicate with each other while moving through the territory of Israel and carrying out their attacks.

01:00 SHABAK issues an intelligence report: “A sequence of concerning signs indicates Hamas is preparing for an attack. At the same time, field indicators suggest routine and restraint, with the background of a recently agreed ‘understanding’ leading to the assessment that Hamas is not interested in escalation or starting a campaign at this time.”

01:30 IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi’s office manager is updated about the latest SHABAK report, and then by the IDF Maj. Gen. in charge of Southern Command.

02:45 SHABAK Southern Region sends out an intelligence summary to high-ranking officers and officials: “Today and yesterday there were SIMs in certain areas of Gaza. This is not unusual, since similar tests were carried out by Hamas last year as well. According to the division and the command, Hamas has not changed its routine. The information is preliminary and there are routine activities in Hamas. A discussion on the matter will be held by the Southern Command Intelligence Officer at 08:30 and by the Southern Command heads at 10:00.” The head of IDF Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, asks, “Are we on alert?” He is answered in the negative.

02:58/03:03 SHABAK sends out an urgent alert to several official bodies including the Israel Police and the National Security Council. “We have an indication of activation and activity of Hamas’s communication network across several brigades. We lack details on the nature of the activity, though the cumulative unusual activity, alongside additional indicators, may point to an offensive action.” At most, the Israeli intelligence agencies think there might be an attempt for a minor kidnapping of a small group of Border Patrol soldiers

03:12 SHABAK says that the chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, then-head of Unit 8200, Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, and then-head of the Research Division, Brig. Gen. Amit Saar, IDF Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman are alerted via WhatsApp for the first time by an AMAN officer in the IDF Southern Command identified by the initial “Aleph” to what he recognizes as “something extremely unusual going on – heightened readiness on the other side [in Gaza].” In actuality, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, head of AMAN (the Intelligence Directorate) is not involved up to this point, as he is vacationing in Eilat. He is later updated by his office manager that a call had been received.

03:21 IDF Chief of Staff Halevi, who is also at home at the time, is awakened by the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Col. Matan Feldman. IDF Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi, who once served as head of bureau for former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon, notes: “If the Chief of Staff gets up at night, it’s because we're on the brink of an abyss. You don't wake the Chief of Staff for nothing” Halevi immediately understands that he is about to receive intelligence that will require his full attention, so he asks Feldman to arrange a conference call in a few minutes.

03:30 HaLevi, IDF Operations Directorate head Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk and head of IDF Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman are now all updated on the signs of an imminent attack. Halevi requests more information. He also orders that the intelligence information be checked – including from a perspective skeptical of the prevailing assumption that Hamas is not interested in war. He orders an update sent to the Israeli Air Force. Halevi requests to arrange a telephone consultation with Finkelman in order to make a situational assessment, but Finkelman is mid-assessment with his intelligence officer. They decide to hold a call at around 4:20 a.m. While he is waiting, Halevi writes on a paper: “Don’t convince ourselves that this is nothing.”

Maj. Gen. Finkelman does most of the talking during the call. He tells Halevi and Basiuk the details and emphasizes the dilemmas – namely that the intelligence establishment believes Hamas is merely conducting a drill, but the stricter interpretation argues that there is a real intention to carry out a pin-point infiltration, although not in an immediate timeframe. The conference call with Halevi takes place sometime between 03:30 and 04:00 and lasts no more than fifteen minutes.

04:00 SHABAK holds a meeting (though the head of SHABAK is not yet present). No alerts are passed on to PM Netanyahu, to the head of Israeli Police, to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (a former head of the Gaza Brigade and subsequently of Southern Command), to IAF chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar or to Navy chief Vice Adm. David Saar Salama.

A former Shin Bet official interviewed on Professor Gadi Taub’s Hebrew podcast said that the Shin Bet thought Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had embarked on a path of moderation to improve the living conditions in Gaza. In the context of that mindset, they interpreted the signs of increased Hamas activity as preparations for a possible Israeli incursion. Bar and the top SHABAK brass feared that any upping of the level of alert would trigger Hamas and start a war. Alternatively, they feared the IDF might launch a preemptive strike with the same result.

The head of SHABAK Ronen Bar “did not awaken the prime minister because he feared that Netanyahu would make the wrong decision and trigger a major war with Hamas. Instead, he decided to make the [decision] himself – one of the most fateful in the history of Israel – rather than leaving it to the duly elected prime minister.”

04:00 Hamas begins to gather its forces. Nukhba terrorists are told to go to mosques for morning prayers. There they receive precise orders, passed on by word of mouth, to report at certain points along the border fence at 06:00. At the staging points, the terrorists receive weapons, ammunition, maps, and written orders. It is only then that most of them realize, for the first time, that they are headed to war.

04:20 The ‘Chief of Staff situational assessment’ takes place by encrypted phone calls. These meetings can last between 15 and 60 minutes. The participants in the situational assessment are COS HaLevi, OC Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Finkelman, and the head of the Operations Directorate, Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk. Halevi asks during the conversation why there is no Military Intelligence official on the line, but does not insist on a MI representative being present. Halevi brings up potential actions by Hamas, including infiltrations from the sea, from the air, or using tunnels. He gives orders to increase surveillance on Hamas, and states that a new assessment would be convened at 8:30 a.m. or earlier if new information is received. From 3:30 a.m., there is no new information coming from the Gaza Strip.

04:00 to 05:00 Numerous calls are held between Southern Command and the IAF regarding the deployment of drones. It is decided to move one helicopter to the Ramon Airbase in the Negev Israel, to shorten the distance it needs to fly to the Gaza Strip.

4:30 SHABAK chief Ronen Bar arrives at SHABAK HQ in Tel Aviv and convenes a meeting with regional heads. Possible scenarios discussed include Hamas staging a localized surprise raid or a kidnapping. Intelligence and operational responses are prepared. A ‘Tequila’ Special Forces team composed of SHABAK fighters and Israel Border Police’s Yamam National Counter-Terrorism Unit, designed to deal with localized raids, is sent out after 4:30 am..

04:30 to 05:20 Another meeting is held at 4:30 a.m. chaired by head of the Operations Directorate, Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk. The directorate, responsible for mobilizing and reinforcing IDF forces, reinforces aerial reconnaissance by sending one combat helicopter and three reconnaissance UAVs with no offensive capabilities. These UAVs would later look down from above at Israeli civilians being abducted into Gaza, unable to respond.

05:15 Ronen Bar writes in the protocol that he issues orders to brief Maj. Gen. Avi Gil. (Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military secretary). But Maj. Gen. Avi Gil notes that he was briefed on the still ambiguous situation only at 6:15 AM, He didn’t have time to wake Netanyahu up and called him only at 6:29 a.m. when the attack had already commenced

05:30 Israel Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar is updated. Navy chief Vice Adm. David Saar Salama is not updated

05:30 to 06:29 IDF calls and assessments continued up until 6:29 a.m., when Hamas launches 4,300 rockets at Israel and 7,000 terrorists infiltrate the country. The ‘Tequila’ Special Operations SWAT team arrives on site at this time.

Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud! Jaish Muhammad soufa yaʿoud

The above Arabic chant is a rallying jihadi battle-slogan which is translated as “Khaybar, Khaybar, o Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!” It refers to the Battle of Khaybar of 628 AD, where the forces of Muhammad defeated, subjugated, massacred and expelled the Jewish community living in the Khaybar oasis (present-day Saudi Arabia). Today this slogan is chanted primarily at public anti-Israel demonstrations, and has been invoked during Islamist terrorist attacks as well. The chant has been categorized as antisemitic by (among others) the American news broadcaster PBS and the British advocacy group Muslims Against Antisemitism.

The murderous wave of Hamas’ jihadi attacks breached the Gaza–Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in 21 communities, including the kibbutzim Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Netiv Ha’asara, and Alumim. The convoy was led by white Toyota pickup trucks filled with Nukhba terrorists, accompanied by motorcycles, bulldozers, speedboats, and powered paragliders. The jihadis 6,000 terrorists breached the border in 119 locations into Israel; this included 3,800 from the commando Nukhba forces, as well as 2,200 Gazan pro-Hamas civilians and other jihadi groups. Additionally, the IDF estimates that 1,000 Gazans within Gaza fired rockets against Israel, bringing the total number of participants on Hamas’s side to 7,000.

On recordings of Hamas commanders during the attack, one commander is heard saying: “Document the scenes of horror, now, and broadcast them on TV channels to the whole world! Slaughter them. End the children of Israel”

08:00 PLO/Palestinian Authority terrorists belonging to Fatah/al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades come down from Judea and Samaria, camouflaged in Israeli police uniforms and having flashing blue ‘Kojak’ lights on their cars. They redirect fleeing Israelis into Hamas ambushes (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPJTeI1RMnE video clip at 0:00 – 0:20).

Trapped by the lawyers

Israel has been in the throes of a battle between conservative/traditional political parties on the one hand, and a woke/Left-wing juristocracy (also known as ‘judicial activism’) on the other. Judicial activism holds that courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider broader societal implications of their decisions (which are usually Left-leaning and anti-religious). It usually implies that judges make rulings based on their own views rather than on precedent.

Prior to the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, opponents of the present government attempted to overthrow PM Netanyahu’s coalition through hostile legal moves. Some oligarchs and previous Left-leaning Prime Ministers and Military/Intelligence heads have been co-opted into this movement targeting judicial reform.

The judicial figureheads of this anti-government movement include the Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara (who has been fired by the Knesset but refuses to quit). In the IDF, this role has been led by Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Military Advocate General (MAG). They continue to manifest an anti-conservative, anti-religious and anti-traditional tendenz. They are at loggerheads with much of the IDF and the government, insisting on enforcing novel legal interpretations which place a stranglehold on the IDF and prevent it from decisively defeating Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Republic.

On the morning of October 7, 2023 Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Chief Military Advocate, goes straight to the Kirya (Israel’s Pentagon) and sends out approximately 100 of her IDF lawyers in the regular and reserve ranks. These quickly arrive at all the important combat hubs: the commands and divisions, the Air Force and Navy, the operations and intelligence wings. They show up between 07:00 and 08:00.

At 08:10 the MAG overturns PM Netanyahu’s legal prerogative to call in the IAF and declare war. Instead, the military juristocracy forbade the IAF from bombing anywhere in Gaza. It took the Air Force 12 hours before it was able to act and seal off the border from Gazans rushing in and Hamas fighters taking hostages back.

At 11:30 PM Netanyahu again orders the IAF in, but his orders are overturned three more times by the MAG. The MAG also forbids approving open-fire orders to the IDF – which explains why soldiers and pilots refused to fire on Hamas terrorists for many hours, while Israelis were being slaughtered, raped, burned to death and kidnapped. One such example is Yair, an IDF soldier on a rapid response team, who calls up the IDF Central Command and pleads for reinforcements against the 50 Hamas terrorists he is fighting. He is told by an IAF fighter pilot “We don’t have legal permission to shoot in populated areas.” The fear of facing ‘lawfare’ attacks at the International Criminal Court in The Hague has blunted the sharp sword of the IDF. Most of the casualties on October 7, 2023 are integrally connected to this criminal policy of the IDF’s military juristocracy. Somehow the IDF has deferred to the courts. “The legal advisors were more concerned, apparently, with the lives of Gazan ‘civilians’ plundering southern settlements than with the lives of those dying of asphyxiation in their bomb shelters, being murdered in cold blood, or being assaulted.”

At 20:10 the Security Cabinet of the Israeli government gathers and retroactively approves the declaration of war and the open-fire orders. The MAG and the Attorney General then have no choice but to approve those declarations.

On October 9, 2023, two days after the murderous attack on Israel, Hamas terrorists were found near the Sde Teiman camp, a three minute drive from Be’er Sheva, where they were apprehended by the Duvdevan Special Forces unit.

What has been described in this newsletter is simultaneously sobering, infuriating and depressing. The IDF is world-famous for amazing acts of bravery, daring, courage and inventiveness, but occasionally it too has feet of clay – like other armies. The key to Israel’s victories must lie in its dependence on and faith in YHVH, the God of the armies of Israel.

“Through God we will do valiantly, and it is He who will trample down our enemies” (Psalm 60:12)

“The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to YHVH” (Proverbs 21:31)

“How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and YHVH had shut them up?” (Deuteronomy 32:30)

How shall we then pray?

Pray for the leaders and the nation of Israel to be given the gift of repentance toward the God of Jacob, and the humility and courage to follow through in these areas

Pray for the leaders and elders of Israel – in the domains of politics, in the military and intelligence, and in law – be given the wisdom to establish godliness, righteousness and truth in these spheres

Pray for the entire people of Israel to seek and find their salvation – Messiah Yeshua

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth!

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

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To donate online visit: https://davidstent.org/give

October 7 two years on – what happened? Part One

A 1978 speech in the British House of Lords quotes an informal chat between the French Ambassador Ambassador at Paris’ Vietnam peace talks (1972-73) and the Chinese representative (most probably Premier Zhou Enlai). The French Ambassador said: “Tell me your Excellency, what has been the effect of the French Revolution on the development of your country?” After a brief pause, the Chinese gentleman said: “It is too early yet to say.” It seems that sometimes it takes time to fully comprehend events.

Two years have passed since the murderous terror attack by jihadi Hamas forces against Israeli families and farms. Though the full extent of what transpired may not yet be completely understood – some information, of course, is still subject to censorship – there is enough OSINT (open-source intelligence) available to piece together a fairly comprehensive appraisal of what went on that day. Immediate and general contexts are available from media reportage; jihadi combat strategies and Islamist perspectives are available from the Hamas Charter and published Israeli intelligence findings; SIGINT (signals intelligence) information from American sources (NSA and CIA) and from Israeli sources (AMAN [Agaf Ha-Modi’in] and its Unit 8200) – some of these have been leaked to media outlets – all these help in filling in many of the blanks.

“For by cunning stratagems you will wage war” (Proverbs 24:6)
“Prepare plans by consultation, and make war by cunning stratagems.” (Proverbs 20:18)
“Where there is no cunning stratagem, the people fall” (Proverbs 11:14)
“The heart of man plans his way, but YHVH establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9)

Context is everything

The State of Israel was birthed in 1948 into a matrix of constant pressure. Since then, superpowers have been bullying, aggressively focusing on issues like the dividing of Jerusalem; the handing over Judea and Samaria (also known as ‘the West Bank’) to Islamic dictatorships or jihadi terror groups; and pressuring Israel to consent to the establishment of an enemy state in Gaza and Ramallah (interchangeably run either by Hamas or by the PLO/PA). These goals are still observable principles guiding the US State Department.

Operating on these foundations, the US has trained, supported and encouraged the PLO terror group and, in recent times, has also been an advocate for Hamas’ continued rule in Gaza. The America-sponsored ‘peace accords’ (Camp David, Oslo) are pushing for a Palestinian terror state. Over the past fifteen years there has also been a collateral push to remove Israeli PM Netanyahu from office. These agreements (including the Abraham Accords and the Qatar-funded Gaza peace deal spearheaded by POTUS Trump) are all fated to collapse if Israel ‘spoils the party’ by insisting to hold onto Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem – lands promised by the God of Jacob to His people Israel by irrevocable covenant. The above anti-Abrahamic agendas should be kept in mind as current events unfold.

Hamas dress-rehearsals between 2016 and 2023

Hamas’ jihadi terror invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023 involved much planning. Here is a brief layout of what was involved.

On Wednesday April 19, 2017 Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu presented to the Knesset State Control Committee that AMAN (Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate) had come across evidence that Hamas was planning a multi-pronged invasion of Israel – along the lines of the terrorist group’s ‘Walls of Jericho’ battle plan (which was later intercepted in April 2022).

On November 27, 2023, the BBC aired video confirmation and investigative reporting of Hamas’ preparations for the October 7 attack:

In 2018 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) set up a structure to coordinate Gaza's armed factions under a central command. On December 29 2020, Hamas's overall leader Ismail Haniyeh declared the first of four drills codenamed ‘Strong Pillar’ a “strong message and a sign of unity” between Gaza's various armed factions. This was the first of four joint drills held over three years, each of which was documented in polished videos posted on public social media channels. Ten Palestinian factions participated in a war games-style exercise overseen by a ‘joint operation room.’ These included PIJ, Mujahidin Brigades, al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, and Omar al-Qasim Forces.

The second Strong Pillar drill was held almost exactly one year later on December 26, 2021. Ayman Nofal, a commander in the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades - the official name for Hamas’ armed wing - said the aim of the exercise on 26 December 2021 was to “affirm the unity of the resistance factions” and “tell the enemy that the walls and engineering measures on the borders of Gaza will not protect them.” The joint military maneuvers were designed to “simulate the liberation of settlements [i.e. kibbutzim] near Gaza.”

In May 2022 Hamas TV aired a drama series featuring footage from the Strong Pillar drills. Included were simulated attacks on Israeli communications, and the targeting of kibbutzim and IDF bases – including the Re’im base where the IDF Gaza Division is located. Later in 2022 Hamas aired a televised ceremony in which Yahya Sinwar (Hamas’ head) handed out awards to the show’s producers, declaring: “This series is an inseparable part of what we are preparing – the great preparations we are making with our brothers in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades [i.e., Hamas’s military wing]. They are absolutely planning for the liberation and return.”

The third Strong Pillar drill was carried out on December 28, 2022. Videos were released of fighters clearing buildings and overrunning tanks on a replica of a military base. This exercise took place 2.6 km (1.6 miles) away from the main Erez crossing into Israel

Fourteen training sites at nine different locations across Gaza were located using satellite intelligence. One site was less than 1.6 km (1 mile) from the United Nations’ aid agency distribution center, visible on an official video published by the UN in December 2022.

On September 12, 2023 the fourth Strong Pillar drill took place. Hamas jihadi commandos were filmed riding in white Toyota pickup trucks, raiding mock Israeli communities, going room to room killing people, blowing their way through gates painted yellow like those in border kibbutzim, and taking civilians and soldiers hostage.

The ‘Walls of Jericho’ battle-plan

In October 2021, Hamas’s attack plan against Israel was issued. It was obtained by Israeli Military Intelligence (AMAN)’s SIGINT UNIT 8200 in April 2022, translated from Arabic, and code-named ‘Jericho Wall.’ This plan laid out in painstaking detail the exact actions of Hamas on October 7, 2023.

This report was then passed on to and seen by the following army top brass: IDF AMAN chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, UNIT 8200 commander Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel; IDF Gaza Division commander Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld; IDF Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Eliezer Toledano.

However, the report was not shared with the following top brass: IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi; IDF Deputy COS Maj. Gen. Amir Baram; Israel Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar; senior IDF operations officers Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk and Brig. Gen. Shlomi Binder. It was also not shared with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, or the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Sinwar’s secret blood-drenched instructions

On August 24, 2024 a computer was found in an underground Hamas complex in Rafah, Gaza Strip, where Yahya Sinwar (leader and chairman of Hamas) had been hiding out from the IDF.

A scanned document of Sinwar’s handwritten order-of-battle was located on a computer unconnected to any other network. This document detailed his instructions to Hamas, written before October 7, 2023. Sinwar laid out the jihadi group’s deceptions in the weeks before the invasion; he described how the invasion would be prosecuted, based on the understanding that the Israeli defense measures along the border would not be able to stop the waves of attacking terrorists. Sinwar wrote that the window of opportunity for the success of the attack was between six and ten hours, during which Hamas forces had to firmly establish facts on the ground.

He then declared what he was looking for in equipping his terrorists with GoPro body video cameras:

“Explosive images: Images must be released which will trigger a surge of euphoria, frenzy, and momentum among our people, especially among the residents of the West Bank, the ‘internal’ [Israeli Arabs], Jerusalem, and our entire Islamic nation. This is meant to spur them to respond to the calls to rise up and revolt, while simultaneously sowing fear and terror among the enemy. It must be emphasized to the unit commanders that these things are to be carried out deliberately. That is, to document and broadcast the images as quickly as possible: stepping on the heads of soldiers, point-blank shootings, slaughtering people with knives, blowing up tanks, prisoners kneeling with their hands on their heads, and the like.”

And so it was done: a Hamas commander from Gaza City (Abu al-Baraa) instructed his operatives in the area of Kibbutz Sa’ad, (according to a message intercepted by Unit 8200): “Document the scenes of horror, now, and broadcast them across TV channels for the whole world to see. Slaughter them. End the children of Israel!”

Another routine day at the office

IDF tatzpitaniyot (tower observers adept at VISINT or visual intelligence) were sending very concerning reports for nearly three years (since the first Strong Pillar drill in 2020) to their IDF commanders about worrying signs indicating Hamas preparations for a full-bore invasion of Israel. They were nearly totally ignored and told to stop such reporting.

One such example was Noa Melman, a tatzpitanit who finished her mandatory IDF service in January 2023. In a post-army interview with Israel’s Channel 12, she recounted the many indications of what was to come, including a mock border fence set up by Hamas in order for the terrorists to practice, again and again, blowing up the border and crossing over to the other side. She explained: “Our commanders told us to report what we saw, but everyone treated it like it was normal, like it was routine.”

Death in the kibbutz, at any cost

On July 6, 2023, a female Non-Commissioned Officer and Israeli intelligence analyst in Unit 8200’s Gaza Division emailed a presentation titled ‘Death in the kibbutz, at any cost.’ The PowerPoint charted out Hamas’ mass invasion plan, describing in detail a May 2023 Hamas training session that began in the early-morning hours and lasted late into the evening. The training included jeeps and motorcycles, and a scenario of shooting down an aircraft. In a response sent six days after the warning, on July 12, 2023, an unnamed IDF commander acknowledged the analyst’s good work but decided that Hamas’ training session was for show, an ‘imaginary scenario’ and not a concrete battle plan.

The Unit 8200 analyst responded with a stark warning: “This is a plan designed to start a war.” One of her male colleagues backed her up on the same email thread: “I emphasize that we completely and emphatically disagree with the assumption that this is an imaginary scenario.” According to the female analyst, Hamas militants were chanting, ‘Prepare to kill the Jewish pigs’ and ‘Prepare to go in and decapitate.’ She added: ‘They are training, with large forces, for a big event... this is preparation for the real thing.’ She noted that the Hamas commandos were continually quoting from the Quran (Surah Al-Ma’idah; Surah 5; Ayat 21) that begins with the words: “My people! Enter the holy land which Allah has ordained for you. And do not turn back, for then you will turn about losers!” That was when the non-religious Israeli analyst realized that, for Hamas, this was not a culture clash, a clash over territory or a desire to better their economic status, but rather an Islamist rallying cry to war – she understood belated that what was coming down the pike was actually religious war, an Islamist jihad, one which would involve all the murder and rapine described in Quranic jihadi passages.

Hiding in plain sight

On August 25, 2023, Hamas leader Saleh Arouri stated on Hezbollah’s Al-Mayadeen channel: “We are preparing for a comprehensive war and are discussing this in closed chambers with all the elements and components [i.e., of the jihadi ‘resistance’ axis] that are connected to this war.” He added that the resistance axis has “the presence, the motivation and the desire for a regional war to occur, and has an interest in this.”

The chief watchmen were sleeping

On September 19, 2023, IDF Intelligence Unit 8200’s Gaza Division distributed the document ‘Detailed End-to-End Raid Training’ to senior intelligence officials, at least those within the Gaza Division. It described the training Hamas units had been undergoing – practicing raids, kidnapping, and holding hostages in Gaza. The terrorist forces were now divided into four groups; each group trained on a simulated outpost. Clear plans showed that Hamas was planning to take hostages en masse. The document estimated the target number of hostages at 200-250. During the actual October 7 attack, 251 hostages were taken, while over 1,200 others were killed, mostly civilians. The document was ignored. The decision-makers in the IDF, both in military and intelligence, believed that Hamas had made a philosophical decision not to go to war; that Hamas was unable to carry out such an operation; and that it was actually Hamas which was merely defending itself against a prospective Israeli invasion of Gaza. Hamas’ deception tactics successfully blinded the eyes of the watchmen. It had conducted a years-long campaign to fool Israel into thinking the jihadi armies could be placated with economic incentives in order to maintain relative calm.

Not listening to the devil’s advocate

As a result of the near-bone-crushing defeat of the IDF in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, AMAN established a unit called ‘Ipcha Mistabra’ – the Devil’s Advocate Unit. Their job was to rigorously challenge the politically correct expectations of Army Intelligence on emergency issues.

The head of that unit wrote in late September to all senior decision-makers in both the IDF and in the political echelon, challenging the widespread assessment that Hamas was deterred. The officer continued that he twice ‘presented this thesis’ in writing, on September 21 and 26, 2023 and that these two notes ‘were widely distributed among all decision-makers in the military and the political echelon.’ He also set out the thesis in a speech at an annual Intelligence Branch strategic assessment session on September 26, 2023 and again, on September 27, 2023, at the weekly debate before the head of military intelligence. His warnings were ignored by the head of AMAN, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva.

When the watchmen don’t listen to the watchwoman’s warning

Another Non-Commissioned Officer (code-named ‘Vav’) in Unit 8200, sent an email sent to the Gaza Division’s AMAN intelligence officers and others unnamed, a day or two after the Unit 8200 dossier ‘Detailed End-to-End Raid Training’ (sent on September 29, 2023).

‘Vav’ warned that, due to the apparent imminence of whatever Hamas was planning, Israel’s intelligence would likely not have enough time to ‘prevent the incident’ altogether. Instead, ‘Vav’ suggested that relevant parties begin “formulating plans for dealing with the incident, should it actually happen, in order to reduce the damage . . . The other side is determined in its intentions to carry out its plan. If the plan is implemented, painful and difficult fighting is expected.” ‘Vav’ noted that the exercises Hamas had been observed carrying out were “very reminiscent” of the plan … to destroy the Gaza Division’s defense system [i.e., ‘the ‘Jericho Wall’]. It is no longer a plan only on paper.”

She concluded her dire warning by paraphrasing Ezekiel 33:6:

“But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the shofar and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away for his wrongdoing; but I will require his blood from the watchman’s hand”

‘Vav’ stated in conclusion: “This email constitutes a blowing of the shofar, because the sword is coming – the hour is ripe to warn the nation!’ The email was dismissed by the Gaza Division’s top intelligence officers. On July 5, 2024 it was reported that “tempers are fraying” in the AMAN Directorate because the officers who had failed to heed ‘Vav’s warning had not been fired.

An American postscript

Two US intelligence warning were also passed on to Israel, and a third was circulated to those paying attention. On September 28, 2023 an NSA SIGINT update warned, based on multiple streams of intelligence, that the terror group Hamas was poised to escalate rocket-attacks across the border. On October 5, 2023, a CIA wire warned in general terms of the increasing possibility of terrorist violence by Hamas. On October 6, 2023 US officials began to circulate reporting from Israel indicating unusual activity by Hamas – indications that an attack was imminent.

I don’t see, therefore I don’t believe

The IDF’s Gaza Division had never prepared for a situation where more than several dozens Hamas terrorists would possibly attack and breach the border. In the end, over 6,000 Hamas jihadis (and a few thousand other pro-jihadi Gazans getting in on the pogrom) stormed into southern Israel on October 7.

Various commanders in Unit 8200 have come under fire for dismissing and ridiculing lower-level mostly female officers who accurately conveyed that Hamas was plotting a large-scale attack. Other AMAN officers no longer felt comfortable relying on HUMINT – traditional intelligence-gathering methods – and preferred to put all their eggs in the basket of SIGINT and its technological innovations.

A high-ranking officer within the IDF’s Intelligence Corps reduced Unit 8200’s manpower in 2021 after concluding that their intelligence-gathering methods would not help detect a threat from Gaza in real-time. “An alert in the Gaza arena will not come from the classic sources,” the officer was quoted saying. This decision significantly downgraded the unit’s operational activities and effectiveness in the Gaza border region. Part of this decision involved ceasing SIGINT operations entirely overnight and on weekends

In our next newsletter, the timeline of the October 7 events will be presented, as well as the contexts surrounding those events. The third newsletter will deal with the mostly concealed role of an Israeli spy, his Israeli handlers, how his involvement affected the outcome of the Israel-Hamas war in a major way, and the highly relevant political background here. The fourth newsletter will draw conclusions from the events, and offer prayer guidelines.

How shall we then pray?

Pray for discernment, clarity of thought and revelation be given to those standing with and praying for Israel and the Jewish people

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth!

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: https://davidstent.org/give

The ghost of Manhattan

There’s a new sheriff in town. New York City – known as ‘the City that never sleeps’ and ‘the Big Apple’ – has a new mayor, Zohran Mamdani. He now oversees the world’s premier financial and fintech center, the largest metropolitan economy in the world, with a gross metropolitan product of over US$2.16 trillion, larger than all but nine countries in the world. His shadow is now cast over the home of the world’s two largest stock exchanges: the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. His stewardship extends to Fifth Avenue, the most expensive shopping street in the world. New York City is also home to the highest number of billionaires, individuals of ultra-high net worth (greater than USD $30 million), and millionaires of any city in the world. His is a great responsibility, and perhaps in God’s eyes NYC could well be called (as was Nineveh in Jonah 1:2) ‘that great city.’ Will this new mayor of the world’s largest Jewish city outside Israel be able to “be his brother’s keeper” (see Genesis 4:9), or will he end up falling under the curse which falls on all those who dishonor Israel (see Genesis 12:3)?

The world’s largest Jewish city outside Israel

Jewish people make up approximately 12% of NYC’s population – the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel. As of 2023, over 960,000 Jews lived in the five boroughs of New York City, and over 1.9 million Jews lived in the New York metropolitan area – approximately 25% of the entire American Jewish population. Judaism is the second-largest religion practiced in New York City. Nearly half of the city’s Jews live in Brooklyn (see ‘Brooklyn, the most Jewish spot on earth’. The world headquarters of some branches of Hasidism (Chabad, Bobover, and Satmar) are also located in that borough.

The ghost of anti-Semitism at the foundations

The first Jews to set foot on the soil of New York in 1654 (then called ‘New Amsterdam’ or ‘Nieuw Amsterdam’) were 23 Sephardi Jews (four couples, two widows, and thirteen children) fleeing persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition, just after Portugal conquered Dutch Brazil. These descendants of Jacob came face-to-face with Peter Stuyvesant, the Director General of New Netherland (Nieuw-Nederland), under the control of the Dutch West India Company (Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie).

Stuyvesant seized the Jewish families’ belongings and attempted to evict them from his city. He stated in a letter to the directors of the Dutch West India Company )dated September 22, 1654( that these Hebrews (which he called) “the deceitful race – such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ – be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony to the detraction of your worships and the dissatisfaction of your worships’ most affectionate subjects.” He referred to Jews as evil moneylenders – “their customary usury and deceitful trading with the Christians were very repugnant to the inferior magistrates”, and insisted that “Jewish settlers should not be granted the same liberties enjoyed by Jews in Holland, lest members of other persecuted minority groups, such as Roman Catholics, be attracted to the colony.”

George Washington’s declaration to Jacob’s seed

President George Washington declared a foundational premise regarding safety and protection for Jews in America in a letter penned August 21, 1790, The President was responding to a letter of blessings sent to him by Moses Seixas, the warden of the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island (Congregation Yeshuat Israel):

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens . . . May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Jeremiah’s prophetic counsel

The God of Jacob spoke a prophetic promise over the exiles of Israel in Babylon nearly 2,600 years ago. He told the Jewish people to “seek the prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to YHVH in its behalf; for in its prosperity will be your prosperity”:

“This is what YHVH of armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ‘Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and father sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may give birth to sons and daughters; and grow in numbers there and do not decrease. Seek the prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to YHVH in its behalf; for in its prosperity will be your prosperity.’” (Jeremiah 29:4-7)

And this is how the Jewish people lived in their new exile in America – in George Washington’s words, “demeaning themselves as good citizens.”

The Statue of Liberty’s Jewish promise

Born in New York City on July 22, 1849, Emma Lazarus – a Jewish American activist and poet – wrote a sonnet in 1883 which would have deep prophetic significance. Titled ‘The New Colossus’ and it was inspired by the arrival in America of the French-casted Statue of Liberty. Its lines are inscribed on a bronze plaque, fixed to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus was much involved in aiding Jewish refugees fleeing anti-Semitic pogroms in eastern Europe. She saw her sonnet as a way to express her empathy for these refugees. Here are a few lines from that poem:

“A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning,

And her name – ‘Mother of Exiles.’

From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome;

Her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she with silent lips.

‘Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’

Many of these masses, these immigrant exiles seeking refuge from persecution – in Emma’s mind – were certainly Jews – those who like Tevye’s family in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ sought shelter in America’s New York or elsewhere in that great country. In the God of Jacob’s sovereignty, He was opening up another country – another temporary shelter for His Chosen people, just before Hitler’s dark shadows began to fall across the threshold of Europe. That doorway of hope for the sons and daughters of Jacob was situated on Ellis Island, in New York Harbor.

The virus of anti-Semitism – still alive and well in America the beautiful

A new national survey from the Pew Research Center (September 22-28, 2025) among 3,445 adults charts the present metastasizing of anti-Semitism throughout the USA. 48% of all Democrats surveyed had an unfavorable view of the Israeli people, but 67% of all Republicans had a favorable view of the Israeli people. 77% of all Democrats had an unfavorable view of the Israeli government (and of these Democrats, 46% said they had a very unfavorable view). When one combines the numbers on both sides of the aisle, a total of 59% of Americans have an unfavorable view of the Israeli government. These red flashing warning-lights reflect a jolting shift in the heart of America towards Israel, the nation described in Psalm 148:14 as “the people close to His heart.”

Anti-Semitism in the Home of the Free

Many Jewish people worldwide have thought of America as an exception to the rule of Jewish history: they assumed that the USA will never again be faced with anti-Jewish pogroms, exiles, concentration camps or genocidal slaughter. There has been a lightness of spirit for many North American Jews – that perhaps once and for all they have broken free from the anti-Semitic chains of Europe and the Middle East. “Persecuted Jews?” they say. “That won’t apply to North America! That view of Jewish history was written for another time – a more ancient period when things were different!”

Yet the eruption of anti-Semitic lava across the Western world, the attacking of Jewish students at American universities, the dastardly murder of Israeli Embassy staff in the nation’s capitol – and now the enthroning of a mayor in New York who dangles Palestinian Islamist hooks and communist economic agendas from his electoral fishing line – it must be said that it is no longer business as usual.

Years ago a dear prophetic friend shared with me that a day was coming when the gates of Russia would be opened for Jewish emigration but that, contrary to expectation, a day would come when New York City would close its heart and its gates to the Jewish people. That day has now stepped out of the prophetic fog.

Like father, like son

The Mayor-elect of New York City is named Zohran Mamdani. He was born on October 18, 1991, in Kampala, Uganda. Zohran is an Arabic word meaning ‘the first star in the sky’ while ‘Mamdani’ is a composite of two roots: an Indian Gujarati word ‘Mām’ meaning pride or courage; and ‘Māmadō’, a local Gujarati version of the Arabic name Muhammad, often appearing in Hindu surnames of converts to Islam.

The Mamdani roots trace back to the Khōjā South Asian Muslim merchant caste (southeastern Pakistan and Kachchh), who converted to the Shi’ite Twelver Community. According to the U.S. State Department 2019 Report of International Religious Freedom: Iran, “the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran defines that country as an Islamic republic and specifies Twelver Ja’afari Shia Islam as the official state religion.” Zohran Mamdani identifies as a Shi’ite, and specifically as a Twelver Shi’ite, according to his November 26, 2019 tweet: “Got mad love for my Ismaili’s but I’m actually Ithna-Asheri” [Arabic for ‘Twelver’].

Mamdani’s middle name is Kwame, given in honor of Kwame Nkrumah (first president of Ghana). Nkrumah was a communist revolutionary, according to intelligence documents released by the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Historian: “Nkrumah was doing more to undermine [U.S. government] interests than any other black African … [known for] his strongly pro-Communist leanings.” In 1961, Nkrumah went on tour through Eastern Europe, proclaiming solidarity with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. In 1962 Kwame Nkrumah was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union.

Zohran Mamdani’s father Mahmood, was born in Uganda to an Indian Khōjā merchant family. Mahmood was exiled from Uganda in 1972 (along with many other Asians) by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin at the age of 26, though he eventually returned to Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, setting up the Institute for Social Research (2010) and eventually becoming chancellor there (2020). He is also Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and a professor of anthropology, political science and African studies at Columbia University in New York City.

On December 6, 2001, Mahmood Mamdani gave a speech on “Making Sense of Violence in Postcolonial Africa” at the Nobel Centennial Symposium in Oslo, Norway. In that speech, he argued that the roots of postcolonial African violence lie in the institutional legacy of the colonial state. Mamdani claimed that violence was an acceptable and understandable ‘resistance’ response to colonialist powers.

In his 2002 academic book (written post-9/11) ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror’, Mamdani applies his theories justifying African terrorism to America and al Qa’eda. He states that calling al Qa’eda ‘bad Muslims’ masks a failure to make a proper political analysis of modern times. According to him, ‘political Islam’ (his term for jihadi terror) “has emerged as a result of a modern encounter with Western power, and that the terrorist movement at the center of Islamist politics is an even more recent phenomenon, one that followed America’s embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam. America will need to recognize that it is not fighting terrorism but nationalism, a battle that cannot be won by occupation.”

Noam Chomsky, maverick Marxist and anti-Israel/anti-America enfant terrible, spoke highly of Mamdani’s message: “This provocative and thoughtful inquiry raises hard and serious questions. It is a valuable contribution to the understanding of some of the most important developments in the contemporary era.” Chomsky is a long-time member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), as is Zohran Mamdani. The DSA is taking much credit for Mamdani’s recent victory in New York City.

The DSA Anti-War Working Group accidentally released an internal document on November 2, 2025 which reflects its dedication “to countering U.S. imperialism and resisting U.S. regime-change operations and interventions in foreign wars and conflicts.” Here is its list detailing how the NYC DSA branch (to which Mamdani belongs) intends to pressure the Mayor-elect to enact extreme anti-Israel policies for the governing of New York City:

Divest City pension funds from Israeli bonds and securities
Withdraw City funds from banks that lend money to Israel or do business in Israel
End City contracts with companies that do business with Israel
Operate City-run grocery stores free from Israeli products
Investigate real estate agents hosting illegal sales of stolen lands in the West Bank
Evict weapons manufacturers and transporters from the NYC Metro Area
Remove non-profit status from charities that raise funds for IDF
Divest CUNY endowment and reinstate wrongly fired professors
Dismantle Eric Adam’s NYC-Israel economic council
End NYPD training with IOF End repression of demonstrators and the SRG
Arrest Netanyahu and active IDF soldiers for war crimes

These are some of the spiritual and political foundations of New York City’s new mayor.

The Mamdani Family on the record

Zohran has come by his unrelenting hostility to the Jewish state and its supporters honestly: he imbibed it from his mother’s anti-Israel films and from his father’s anti-Semitic lectures and participation in anti-Israel activities. Zohran’s wife Rama Sawaf Duwaji, born in Houston to Syrian Muslim parents from Damascus, publicly mourned the death this week of Hamas influencer Saleh al-Jafarawi (who cheered for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 atrocities as they happened).

Zohran’s mother is India-born filmmaker Mira Nair, whose film-making career and stage projects have been avidly bankrolled by Hamas-supporting Qatar. The sister to Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani, and the state-funded cultural institutions she controls, have supported Mira Nair and her creative projects since at least 2009. Since June 2025 Sheikha Al-Thani has also been promoting Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy on social media.

“For Zohran Mamdani, Mom Mira Nair’s Films Were a Formative Influence” shout the headlines of the July 1, 2025 New York Post. The article focused especially on her movie The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which “seeks a balance between honoring the understandable American reactions of anger and grief to 9/11 and its aftermath while also platforming a more global perspective where those events played very differently . . . [It is suggesting] to consider how a radical was made, and that mistreatment and bias in the West can be a contributing factor.” Over the years Zohran’s mother and father have stressed the same theme, as they attempt to justify Hamas jihadi violent muqawama (Arabic for resistance). Their son Zohran’s has repeatedly made use of the same talking points.

In a December 2, 2014 lecture at Columbia University, Mahmood Mamdani (Herbert H. Lehman Professor of Government) clearly called for the dismantling of the State of Israel (video clip location at 6:22- 6:55; ‘Palestine's South Africa Moment?’ Part 2):

“The Palestinian challenge is to persuade the Jewish population of Israel and the world that - just as in South Africa - the long-term security of a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine requires the dismantling of the Jewish state. Jews can have a homeland in historic Palestine, but not a state.”

On December 7, 2014, Mamdani ‘turned up the volume,’ accusing Israel as being the successors of the Nazis, while declaring that jihadi atrocities against Israel are not actually terrorism:

“We live at a time when political violence has been conflated with criminal violence, when all forms of resistance are being redefined as terror, when repression is embraced as a war on terror. It is a tribute to the tenacity of the Palestinian people, led by those in Gaza, and the political work done by the Palestinian resistance, including BDS, that Israel and the United States have been unable to tar popular resistance in historic Palestine with the brush of terrorism. More than ever the world is convinced that the cause of the Palestinian people is just.”

In 2020 Mahmood Mamdani called for the ‘de-Zionization’ of the Jewish state of Israel:

“The Nazi political project, by creating a Germany without Jews [laid] the groundwork for an Israel without Palestinians …I point to de-Zionization, which would sever the state from the nation. The heart of de-Zionization is the realization of Israel as a state for all its citizens [i.e., not a Jewish state]”

In his own words

For more background here, see my June 27, 2025 newsletter https://davidstent.org/may-all-who-hate-zion-be-put-to-shame-psalm-1295/.

Zohran co-founded Bowdoin College’s branch of the anti-Israel radical group Students for Justice in Palestine. In 2021 Mamdani told a rally that he identified as an anti-Zionist (relevant video clip starts at 39:30).

YouTube shows Mamdani clearly stating on September 11, 2023 (less than a month before Hamas’ October 7 pogroms) that advocacy for Palestinian/Hamas resistance and BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions of Israel) is “central to his identity.”

The anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace has warmly endorsed Mamdani in his NYC mayoral run.

On October 8, 2023 Mamdani tweeted the following: “Statement on ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine: I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours. Netanyahu’s declaration of war, the Israeli government’s decision to cut electricity to Gaza, and Knesset members calling for another Nakba will undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering in the days and weeks to come. The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”

The deception involved here is clear: less than 24 hours before, the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust had occurred. Mamdani sidesteps that, and calls it “ongoing violence” rather than jihadi terrorism. He states that in the last 24 hours the violence occurred “in Israel and Palestine.” Actually it only occurred in Israel – over 1,200 Jews murdered at the hands of Palestinian jihadis. The fault (according to Mamdani) is not jihadi Hamas carrying out their murderous jihadi Charter, but something called ‘Netanyahu’s declaration of war.’ Mamdani defines a ‘just and lasting peace’ as the expulsion of all Jews from Israel, referring to an ‘apartheid’ that simply does not exist.

Mamdani has vowed that if elected, he would arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York.

Mamdani publicly advocates for boycotting Israel and cutting off all ties between NYC and the Jewish state. When asked by The Bulwark podcast host, Tim Miller, if the phrases ‘Globalize the intifada’ and ‘From the river to the sea’ make him uncomfortable, Mamdani explained that he doesn’t support banning language, and then drew a moral equivalence between the anti-Nazi Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Uprising and Hamas’ jihadi anti-Jewish October 7 attacks. Elisha Wiesel, son of author and survivor of the Holocaust Elie Wiesel, stated that “globalizing the intifada is code switching for ‘kill the Jews’ . . . We need to keep antisemites out of the mayor’s office.”

The Jewish community sees the threat of Mamdani as a clear and present danger

Jonathan S. Tobin of Jewish News Syndicate, in his article ‘What would a Mayor Mamdani mean for American Jews?,’ discusses Mamdani’s willingness to endorse antisemitic tropes and his support for anti-Zionist agitation:

Mamdani’s support for the virulently antisemitic mobs that took over campuses at major New York institutions like Columbia University, New York University, various branches of the City University of New York (CUNY) and smaller-scale but consistent demonstrations at the New School is at the heart of his political identity. He stands for a point of view that delegitimizes and demonizes mainstream Jewish life. For him, only Jews who are willing to deny an essential element of Jewish identity, ethnicity and faith by disavowing Israel and Zionism deserve to be treated as worthy of being allowed into the public square and to be defended as equal citizens.

That’s why so many in the Jewish community are treating this as a crisis. It’s also why more than 700 rabbis and counting from across America have signed a letter sponsored by the Jewish Majority anti-extremist group calling for Americans “to stand up for candidates who reject antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric, and who affirm Israel’s right to exist in peace and security” and for “our interfaith and communal partners to stand with the Jewish community in rejecting this dangerous rhetoric and to affirm the rights of Jews to live securely and with dignity.” This potentially puts New York’s Jews in a position that is virtually unprecedented in modern American history.

Mamdani’s vision of the future, both in terms of socialism and antisemitism, is something that ought to scare any sensible American. And it presents a clear and present threat to American Jews, who have already been affected by the surge of Jew-hatred impacting their lives and security post-Oct. 7, 2023. Those who claim to support the Jewish community shouldn’t stand on the sidelines right now; they should do whatever is necessary to ensure Mamdani’s defeat. Their failure to do so is a sign that they don’t understand the nature of the crisis and is nothing less than an unconscionable failure of moral courage.

Zvi Klein of The Jerusalem Post adds:

“Sociologically it feels like a turning point. Part of the shock is symbolic. For decades, the mayor of the world’s largest Jewish city outside Israel made a point of standing with the community. Mayors lit menorahs, walked in the Fifth Avenue Celebrate Israel Parade, and spoke fluently about the city’s Jewish life.”

Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli writes on X (Hebrew; English):

“The city that was once a symbol of global freedom has handed over its keys to a Hamas supporter – someone whose views are not far from those of the jihadist fanatics who, 25 years ago, murdered three thousand of its own people. This is a critical turning point for New York City. The choice New York has made shakes the very foundations of the place that once granted freedom and opportunity to countless Jewish refugees since the late 19th century – a city that became home to the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel. All of that ended this morning. It didn’t happen overnight – it began with the anti-Zionist atmosphere on campuses taken over by Qatari money, continued with the violent demonstrations of Hamas supporters at CUNY, NYU, and especially at Columbia University, which became the fortress of Hamas support in the United States. It reached its peak this morning, when the last of the bullies, a supporter of Hamas’s rapists and murderers, was elected mayor. New York will never be the same again, especially not for its Jewish community. The city is walking with open eyes into the same abyss that London fell into. The torch of liberty in this beautiful city has gone out, and there’s no point in wasting words pretending everything will be fine – nothing will be fine in this city. I call on the Jews of New York to seriously consider making their new home in the Land of Israel. The Eternal One of Israel does not lie.”

Mamdani’s election will be a potential turning point in American Jewish history as anti-Semitism not only becomes endemic but becomes an accepted part of mainstream political culture. While such views were confined to the fever swamps of the far left not so long ago, they have gone mainstream in the wake of the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the last decade, coupled with the surge of international antisemitism since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Lessons for Europe as well

Hungary’s European Union Affairs Minister János Bóka points out a sober warning:

“Even political actors are now using a language that is anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist on the surface, but very deliberately, they are balancing on the edge of being antisemitic. I think they are very consciously using a terminology that could be interpreted both ways. Those who are in favor of the European civilization and European culture, as we know that is based on Judeo-Christian roots or is rooted in a Judeo-Christian tradition, then we must reinforce our efforts so this process will not result in a Europe that is not a welcoming environment for Jewish communities anymore.”

The Rabbi speaks in the Big Apple

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove is the highly respected leader of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City’s Upper East Side. On Shabbat October 18, 2025 he stepped up to the bema and gave what might be the most important derashah (sermon) in his life. Here are some brief excerpts:

To be clear, unequivocal, and on the record: I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of New York Jewish community. Mamdani’s refusal to condemn inciteful slogans like “globalize the intifada,” his denial of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, his call to arrest Israel’s Prime Minister should he enter New York, and his thrice-repeated accusation of genocide in Thursday’s debate – for these and so many other statements, past, present, and unrepentant – he is a danger to the Jewish body politic of New York. For those of you who heard what I said over the High Holidays, my words should come as no surprise. For those of you who have heard what I have said over the last eighteen years, my words should come as no surprise whatsoever.

Zionism, Israel, Jewish self-determination – these are not political preferences or partisan talking points. They are constituent building blocks and inseparable strands of my Jewish identity. To accept me as a Jew but to ask me to check my concern for the people and State of Israel at the door is as nonsensical a proposition as it is offensive – no different than asking me to reject God, Torah, mitzvot, or any other pillar of my faith.

One need look no further than the events of the past week (or, for that matter, the past two years) to understand the shape and substance of the Jewish soul – how bound up we have all been with the plight of the hostages and our jubilation at their release. In our highs and in our lows, in our tortured angst and our fragile hopes, in our prayers and our protests, we feel our connection to Israel and its people. It is the invisible string that has tugged at our hearts since the very beginnings of our people.

Mamdani’s distinction between accepting Jews and denying a Jewish state is not merely rhetorical sleight of hand or political naivete, though it is, to be clear, both of those things. His doing so is to traffic in the most dangerous of tropes, an anti-Zionist rhetoric that, as we have seen time and again – in Washington, in Colorado, in ways both small and large, online and in person – has given rise to deadly antisemitic violence. This past summer, you may recall, at the Glastonbury Music Festival in England, the crowd erupted into chants of “Death to the IDF.” Where exactly would a Mamdani administration stand should that happen next summer in a concert on Governors Island, or in Central Park? I am not one to play the politics of fear. The entire thesis of my career is to play offense, not defense. But today, as I have before, I am throwing a flag on the field and calling out a threat to the Jewish people five minutes early rather than risk being five minutes too late. … It is, by a certain telling, a story as old as the Garden of Eden itself. We stand here – staring at that Big Apple, if you will – wondering what is in our long-term best interest.

Stand up and be counted!

On November 5, 2025, the excellent organization StandWithUS posted a riveting wake-up call:

At a time of rising antisemitism and extremism in the United States and around the world, Zohran Mamdani’s election as Mayor of New York City should serve as a wake up call.

Mamdani has promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory falsely blaming Israelis for cases of police brutality in New York, openly supports the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divest and sanction) movement calling it the “core of my politics,” made excusesfor dangerous and violent slogans such as “globalize the intifada,” and promoted campaigns to strip away the rights of Jews to self-determination in Israel. His closest political allies, including the Democratic Socialists of America(DSA) and Linda Sarsour, have long records of antizionism. He has refused to say Hamas should lay down its arms. His campaign has tokenized Jews by using Satmar Hasidic Jews and the far-left self-described Jewish Voice for Peace to deflect criticism and avoid accountability.

CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) donated significantly to the Mamdani campaign. CAIR’s leader said he was “happy” about October 7^th Hamas invasion and massacre.

This is especially alarming in an environment where Jewish communities already face unprecedented levels of hate crimes, harassment, and intimidation. Now more than ever, leadership matters. When elected officials normalize or excuse violent bigotry, they embolden further discrimination and physical attacks.

Fueling antisemitism will not help make New York a better or more affordable place to live. It will only poison the city and make it harder to solve its biggest problems. We hope the incoming Mayor will have the humility to abandon the destructive ideas and toxic allies he has embraced throughout his political career.

As Mamdani assumes office, StandWithUs will use all the tools at our disposal to defend the rights of Jewish New Yorkers. We will educate and speak out against antisemitism and anti-Israel extremism in all their forms. We will hold Mayor Mamdani accountable, and we expect civic leaders, the media, and the public to do likewise, toward making New York a city where all Jews, and all people, can be safe and welcome.

How shall we then pray?

Pray for Bible-based courage, discernment, clarity of thought and revelation be given to leaders and decision makers, Jewish and Christian, involved in these issues.

Pray for Christian pastors, teachers and spokesmen and women to take a stand

Pray for the bolstering of the Jewish people’s prophetic courage and discernment

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth!

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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