Is this the end of the Israeli intelligence service's vaunted reputation?

For years, Israel's national security apparatus — a nebulous sphere of domestic, international, and military intelligence agencies — has been held as one of the premier practitioners of its trade. From daring global raids to dubious inter-species operations, Israel's Mossad, Shin-Bet, and other clandestine services have earned a near-mythological reputation that is both feared and revered across the secretive world of spycraft and within popular culture at large. 

Less than one week ago, Hamas fighters crossed into Israel, murdering hundreds of civilians and soldiers alike before returning back to Gaza with dozens of hostages in tow. In response, Israel has launched an all-out aerial assault on the densely populated Gaza strip, killing and injuring thousands as troops mass on the border ahead of a planned ground invasion. While the scale and scope of this latest war have dominated much of the world's attention in terms of the ongoing humanitarian crisis and shifting geopolitical realities, there has been a growing drumbeat of questions as well into how this latest flashpoint occurred. Allegations that Israeli officials had been warned in recent weeks by their Egyptian counterparts that "something big" was coming, coupled with the revelation that Hamas militants, officially designated as terrorists by the United States, had publicly shared "video of mock attack weeks before border breach" according to The Associated Press, have led to a sense that the famed and feared Israeli intelligence apparatus is responsible for a perhaps once-unthinkable failure of its raison d'etre. And if so, can it ever regain the prestige it once enjoyed within the global national security field?

What the commentators said

Though it's "hard to overstate the magnitude of this failure," the Hamas attack is "precisely the kind of worst-case disaster scenario" intelligence agencies like Israel are meant to "worry about, plan for, and prevent," Foreign Affairs reported. The most pressing question then is whether this was "primarily a failure to warn or a failure to act." 

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Regardless of whether that failure was operational, communicative, or both, it is "potentially damaging" to Israel's "reputation in the region as a reliable military partner," according to The New York Times. There is a perception now that "Israel is not an asset," former Israeli National Security Council member Yoel Guzansky said, lamenting the "billions and billions" spent by the country on its intelligence operations which ultimately "collapsed like dominoes." Though there have been failures in the past, Israel's national security apparatus' "aura of invincibility" has been predicated on "a string of achievements" that have maintained that reputation to date, The Associated Press reported. This latest lapse, however, "plunges that reputation into doubt."

That reputation may be at risk domestically within Israel as well, where Foreign Policy noted that a "pervasive lack of trust within society" portends a "significant shift that challenges long-standing Israeli norms and beliefs, among them the apolitical nature of its military and intelligence community and the former trust of the politicians."

What next? 

For the immediate time being, Israel seems disinclined to probe the specific intelligence-gathering failures that allowed last week's attack. Although government officials speaking with BBC have promised an investigation that "will go on for years," Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told AP that "first, we fight, then we investigate." 

Already, though, some critics have pointed to the Israeli security system's reliance on a complex technological operation as a potential weak spot in need of reform. The failure of Israel's "use of artificial intelligence and high-tech surveillance" to correctly predict the recent attack is "likely to be studied and discussed for years," Reuters reported. In this context, Israel's offensive in Gaza is a means to "reassert the reputation of the Israeli security state and high-tech industry that supports it." 

Other countries will undoubtedly be watching if and how Israel's security apparatus is able to regain its footing following the cascading failures of this past week. Not only is Israel's reputation as an ally to — and source for — Western intelligence agencies at risk, but as Foreign Affairs noted, "Washington must study Israel’s failures so that it does not repeat them."