October 7 attack was a pre-emptive strike against Israeli war plans
The former head of Israel’s military intelligence recently revealed plans to assassinate Hamas leadership and launch a war months before October 7. Hamas was aware of these plans.
Recently, another Israeli official went viral for spewing typical genocidal bile against the Palestinians. On August 16, Israel’s Channel 12 leaked remarks by the Israeli army’s former head of military intelligence, Aharon Haliva, in which he called for “a Nakba from time to time” against the Palestinians, and added that “50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations.”
Furthermore, he advocated the killing of 50 Palestinians for “every person on October 7.” Even children — as is typically the case with the Israelis — were fair game for Haliva. “For everything that happened on October 7, for every person on October 7, 50 Palestinians need to die,” Haliva said. “It does not matter now if they are children.”
While those genocidal diatribes drew a lot of attention on social media, a recent report in The Grayzone has highlighted that Haliva made further revelatory remarks which, in the words of Max Blumenthal, “should cast the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7 in an entirely new light.”
Haliva revealed that there was a plan in place by the end of 2022 to launch decapitation strikes in Gaza in order to kill Al-Qassam Chief of Staff Mohammed Deif and Hamas’s chief in the Gaza Strip Yahya Sinwar:
“After the holidays [in the Fall of 2022] we were opening a joint reorganisation with [Israel’s internal security service] Shin Bet to collect intelligence on Deif and Sinwar in order to kill them, because every time we prepared a plan they moved, and you have to re-collect [intelligence] on them.”
Haliva is not some random Israeli just blabbering on a hot mic. He is a former Israeli Major General, who notably served as the head of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Military Intelligence Directorate (known by the Hebrew acronym Aman) until he resigned his position on April 22, 2024.
It is safe to say he had first-hand knowledge of the Israeli plans to kill the resistance leadership in Gaza.
Hamas was aware of the Israeli plans.
Hamas explicitly said nearly a year ago that October 7 was “a massive pre-emptive strike as the enemy’s plans for a big strike against the resistance in Gaza, involving all its factions, reached their final stages.”
On October 7, 2024, in a video speech marking the first anniversary of Al-Aqsa Flood, Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida made explicit the Palestinian resistance’s reasons for launching the operation at the time that it did.
Here is how Abu Obeida began his speech, after the customary greetings:
A year has passed since the most professional and successful commando operation in modern times, all thanks be to Allah, which targeted a criminal military division, reinforced with all combat and intelligence systems.
It was an operation that shook the Zionist enemy and changed the face of the region, in which we struck the enemy with a massive pre-emptive strike as the enemy’s plans for a big strike against the resistance in Gaza, involving all its factions, reached their final stages.
Abu Obeida then proceeded to highlight the other reasons which necessitated Al-Aqsa Flood from the Palestinian perspective:
After the aggression on Al-Aqsa reached an unprecedentedly dangerous stage, and after the enemy went too far with its settlements, Judaization, aggression against prisoners, violation of all taboos, and the complete siege imposed on Gaza. After all this, the decision was made to conduct the strategic historic attack against the Gaza Division, its military garrisons, and its abhorrent settlement envelope that is weighing on the heart of our people, besieging us, and committing against us, for decades, all crimes known to nations.
Nearly a year ago, Hamas clearly laid out its reasons for the October 7, highlighting self-preservation as its primary motivation. Had it not launched pre-emptive strikes, there’s every chance that the major resistance factions inside Gaza would have lost their key personnel — similar to the devastation faced by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran during the 12-day war when their major figures were wiped out in a series of precision strikes — without holding any leverage over the genocidal Israelis.
Before the Israelis could launch a war on Gaza, the capture of over 200 Israeli military personnel in the October 7 attack gave the Palestinian resistance some leverage once the Israeli barbarism began. Hamas’s move on the morning of October 7 took the initiative away from the Israelis.
While Haliva’s admission marks the first time an Israeli official has acknowledged plans for decapitation strikes as part of yet another unprovoked barbaric assault on Gaza, Hamas had already made clear nearly a year earlier that October 7 was a pre-emptive strike to prevent exactly such an operation. However, the privileging of the Israeli genocidaires’ narratives in the media has meant that the resistance’s voices do not receive the same attention, despite the fact that the latter have consistently stated nothing but the unvarnished truth.
Abu Obeida’s speech from October 7, 2024 in full:
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"On August 16, Israel’s Channel 12 leaked remarks by the Israeli army’s former head of military intelligence, Aharon Haliva, in which he called for 'a Nakba from time to time' against the Palestinians, and added that '50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations.'”
In other words, no change here from the Dec. 2008 - August 2014 Operations Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, and Protective Edge under the "mowing the lawn" strategy to instill fear in the Gazans, to keep them in line, except ramped up now. Killing, the mono-thematic modus operandi of the Israelis/Zionists.
My main ME informant saw it as a preemptive strike.