Analysis: What links Israel’s Oct. 7 and America’s Pearl Harbor and 9/11 disasters?

October 7, 2026 / 6:30 AM EDT / CBS News

Tel Aviv — With the first Israeli election since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack just three weeks away, the country is grappling with conflicting accounts about whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warnings from regional allies that a massive attack was coming, even if there were no specifics on the timing or location.

Netanyahu has denied getting any warnings, and the fierce internal debate about it may be overshadowing a wider problem — with clear precedent — of overwhelming intelligence signals being misinterpreted or underestimated at the cost of thousands of lives.

Israel is not the only country to have failed to take action despite ample intelligence suggesting a catastrophic attack was imminent. The phenomenon has a name in intelligence circles: strategic intelligence failure. It happened 84 years ago at Pearl Harbor, and on Sept. 11, 2001.

Israel had in its possession Hamas' own secret plan for the attack a year before it occurred, according to Israeli officials. In the months and weeks before the invasion, Hamas both talked about it in public statements and shared videos showing them practicing for it.

In the hours leading up to the…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/world/