Was the Oct 7 attack a pre-emptive strike?
In incendiary leaked comments, the former head of Israel's military intelligence disclosed plans to assassinate the leadership of Hamas and initiate war months before October 7.
By Max Blumenthal
In comments leaked by Israel’s Channel 12 this August 16, the Israeli army’s former head of military intelligence, Aharon Haliva, called for a “new Nakba” against the Palestinians and declared, “50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations.”
“For everything that happened on October 7, he proclaimed, “for every person on October 7, 50 Palestinians need to die. It does not matter now if they are children.”
Haliva’s remarks offer further proof of Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza, and provide fresh evidence in future prosecutions of the country’s military and political leadership for crimes against humanity.
While social media users reeled in horror at his fascistic rhetoric, few noticed a revelation by Haliva which should cast the Al Aqsa Flood operation on October 7 in an entirely new light.
According to Haliva, “After the holidays [in the Fall of 2022], we were opening a joint reorganization with [Israel’s General Security Services] Shin Bet to collect intelligence on [Al-Qassam Chief of Staff Mohammed] Deif and [Hamas Secretary Genera Yahya] Sinwar in order to kill them, because every time we prepared a plan, they moved, and you have to re-collect on them.”
In other words, Israel was planning to violate its ceasefire with Hamas and launch a major decapitation strike against its leading figures, much like the one it deployed against Iran’s military leadership this June 13, when it assassinated 8 major IRGC officials without provocation. The killings would have touched off a major war, but unlike after October 7, Hamas would have been left without any negotiating leverage, as it would have had no Israeli captives in its possession when hostilities began.
When seen in this light, Al Aqsa Flood was a preemptive strike. Sinwar and Deif almost certainly understood that Israel was plotting their assassinations as the opening blow of a punishing assault aimed at snuffing out Palestinian resistance in Gaza once. Deif had already survived four assassination attempts, losing his family, an eye and use of several limbs in the process. As Haliva acknowledged, he and Sinwar were constantly on the move to evade their would-be killers.
And so, as the sun rose on October 7, 2023, Hamas took the initiative, denying a far more powerful adversary the devastating opening move it had methodically planned.
Funny how the U.S. is always on the wrong side of any war or conflict. The U.S. is the chief provider to Israel of the weapons and money to commit genocide. I was born during the Second World War and grew up in the fifties and sixties. In those days the U.S. was spreading Agent Orange and other severely poisonous defoliants throughout the jungles of Vietnam. This while they were killing somewhere between one and two million Vietnamese. Since then we've had the totally unnecessary Iraq War. As former inspector Scott Ritter tells us, Iraq had no "weapons of mass destruction." What they had was a lot of oil, which our oil industry wanted. And whatever Big Oil wants, Big Oil gets. On and on it goes. The CIA and other covert entities did a coup in Ukraine and pulled it away from its Russian ally, making it into a cat's paw for the U.S. and the rest of the West, whose purpose was to "weaken Russia." And now the U.S. is the chief enabler of the Palestinian genocide. What the U.S. shares with Israel is settler colonialism. In that endeavor, the purpose is to degrade indigenous people to non-persons in order to kill them and take their land. All the colonial powers, including Israel do this as a matter of course. It would be good if instead of the usual toxic greed, we could ascend to a more generous level. Individuals can do this, but settler colonial nations states (Israel, U.S.) apparently cannot.
Come on, Max. Here you are hypothesizing that Hamas was aware before Oct. 7 of specific plans hatched in 2022 to assassinate its leading figures. But you so far have not explored that Israel was aware before Oct. 7 of Hamas's plans, which is much more certain, especially given the established fact that Israel received notice from all kinds of reliable sources of Hamas's plans.
For some reason, you would rather speculate that Oct. 7 was a pre-emptive strike, rather than recognize that Oct. 7 was allowed to happen by Israel.
On Jan. 23, 2025, Judge Napolitano's podcast guest was Col. Douglas Macgregor. At about 14:00 of their exchange, Macgregor in a matter-of-fact tone stated: "I think eventually it will come out that 7 Oct. was allowed to happen, that 7 Oct. was not a surprise. There's plenty of evidence on the street right now. And if that evidence comes out I think Mr. Netanyahu and his friends are going be in very serious trouble at home. [Oct. 7] was used as an excuse to practice arson through the region." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8VAEiuv7Cw
Why no follow-up?
To this day, the Zionists rely on Oct. 7 as the explanation for what has followed. To establish that Israel allowed Oct. 7 to happen on purpose would eliminate its viability as pretext even for most Zionists. It immediately does away with the "right to defend itself" smokescreen.
I have not seen the GrayZone cover the recent statements of IDF soldier Shalom Sheetrit in which he testifies that at 5:20 AM on Oct. 7, 2023, his battalion commander conveyed the order that there would be no patrols at the Gaza fence until 9:00 AM. https://www.inn.co.il/news/643371 Given that Hamas breached the Gaza fence beginning about 6:30 AM, this order amounted to a stand-down.
Also see Jimmy Dore's coverage of this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhEN14luMHI
Also see The Young Turks coverage at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK_h1C3X2sc
Also see the Steve Bannon Show in which Former U.S. National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn Says Israel's October 7 was Inside Job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLQ7JFVkr6I
THIS NEEDS TO BE BROADCAST.