THE GENERALS’ REVOLT In my view, the Israeli left’s fear that a war would derail its fight against the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform and threaten its grip on Israel’s judicial system explains why senior generals and the head of the Shin Bet failed to alert the prime minister or the political leadership to the warning signs flashing throughout the night of October 6-7. The Shin Bet’s deployment of special forces teams tasked with thwarting terrorist infiltrations into Israeli communities shows that this possibility was already on the table that night. What they failed to grasp was the scale of the invasion, the massacre, and the abductions. Not one location. Not one or two communities. More than 100 breach points along the border fence, with over 6,000 terrorists carrying firearms, alongside civilians armed with machetes, knives, axes, and whatever else they could get their hands on. At the Nova music festival, armed terrorists and civilians consumed by lust lingered to commit horrific acts of rape, abuse, and murder. They could not resist the temptation. Their obsession with sexual gratification is hardly surprising among fanatics indoctrinated to believe that the reward for dying as a “martyr” fighting “infidels” is 72 virgins in paradise. That delay would later work against them. The head of the Shin Bet feared that putting the IDF on alert for a possible attack would cause Hamas to miscalculate, while he and the generals on the General Staff were the ones miscalculating! In my view, arrogance, stupidity, blindness, and a criminal cover-up have characterized their conduct ever since. Perhaps what we witnessed wasn’t treason. But a complete misunderstanding of democracy? That much is certain! In a normal country, elected officials decide whether to go to war - not generals or intelligence chiefs. In a normal country, the prime minister is briefed on alarming warning signs hours before an invasion - not minutes after it is already underway. In a normal country, the very judicial system the generals sought to protect cannot also be the body entrusted with investigating their catastrophic failure. My hope is that the right wins the coming elections by such a landslide that no one will even question the need for a complete overhaul of both our security apparatus and our judicial institutions!