Veteran Israeli defense correspondents Katz and Bohbot seek to identify and explain the process that led to Israel’s failure to anticipate the Hamas attack from Gaza on October 7, 2023, and then the government’s inability to prevent the massacre of some 1,200 civilians and members of a severely undermanned military deployment who found themselves near the border that day.
In part 1, the authors depict the attacks and their consequences. Part 2 describes how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rallied and weeks later, carried out a large-scale ground invasion. Part 3 traces in detail the process by which the entire Israeli system failed to acquire intelligence and produce an analysis that grasped Hamas’s true nature and intentions. For the first time, Katz and Bohbot provide a book-length account of this systemic breakdown.
Vividly written, While Israel Slept presents substantial new information on the evolution of the thinking that led to October 7, as well as on the near ubiquity within the official system of mistaken assumptions. The book is particularly interesting in its treatment of Qatar’s role in facilitating Israel’s prewar appeasement of Hamas and its attempts to buy the movement’s quiescence through material inducements. The question of the extent to which Qatar itself was, or was not, privy to Hamas’s plans, however, remain unanswered.
Perhaps due to time pressure, the book contains minor flaws. The IDF codeword signaling a border breach is Parash Turki, or “Turkish Horseman,” not the more dramatic “Turkish Horsemen.” The Nahal Brigade is a line infantry unit, not “one of the IDF’s elite infantry units.” Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar did not establish an entity called the “West Bank Terrorist Command” in the Gaza Strip, nor do Hamas leaders and members describe themselves as terrorists. Though minor, such errors reflect the difficulty of translating Hebrew terms into English.
This being a well-conceived and executed first draft of history, the book should engage analysts and historians for many years to come. One hopes it will also inspire subsequent accounts to fill in its inevitable gaps.
