‘Makes Your Stomach Churn’: Dana Bash Speaks to Reporters Who Uncovered That Israel Knew of Hamas’s Attack Plan For Over a Year

CNN anchor Dana Bash interviewed New York Times journalists Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman on Friday about their bombshell reporting that Netanyahu’s government had been warned about Hamas’s attack plan many months before the horrific October 7th attack that killed 1,200 people.

“A new bombshell report in The New York Times that Israeli officials knew Hamas attacks, Hamas had an attack planned for October 7th, more than a year before it happened. Here’s part of what that story said,” Bash began before reading from the article:

The approximately 40-page document which Israeli authorities codenamed Jericho Wall, outlined point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to deaths of about 1200 people.

“Ronen, at first I just want to start by reading a little bit more about the report that you did with your colleague, Adam Goldman. It says in part, ‘Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles, and on foot. All of which happened on October 7th,’” Bash continued setting up the interview.

“That is so chilling. This was a report, as you said, a 40-page report. How far up the chain did it get as far as you know, And why wasn’t it? Why didn’t anybody heed to this or think that it was actually possible in the highest levels of the Israeli government?” she then asked.

“This document codenamed ‘Jericho Wall’ was not neglected, on the contrary, massive resources and efforts were put into the operation to get it,” Bergman replied, adding:

And then it was sent to the seniors of Israeli intelligence, defense establishment and to many analysts that work in data coming from Hamas, from the overall efforts of Israeli intelligence to get as much as possible from Hamas and from the Gaza Strip. This war plan, this attack plan is very sophisticated. I don’t remember any document that I’ve read that has so much secrets on Israeli preparation for war. The fortification of the wall, the cameras, the automatic machine gun, that was not written by Israeli defense establishment. It suggests that some parts of that plan coming not from open sources.

But besides that, intelligence saw this document, except for one analyst, thought differently. But Israeli intelligence, all the analysts that saw this document said this is a road map. Yeah, this is and this aspirational, this is something they want to be, but they are not now. They don’t have the capacity or the sophistication to execute such a massive invasion into Israel.

Bash then introduced Goldman and they further discussed Israeli intelligence officials dismissing the report. Goldman drew parallels to the intelligence failures surrounding 9/11 in the U.S.

“So the question is still, why was there this disconnect between the people working so hard on this report and the level of preparedness or lack thereof inside the Netanyahu government?” Bash continued, adding:

And I just want to remind our viewers of something that the prime minister put out there, but then deleted. This was on October 28th. So this was a few weeks after the October 7th attack, ‘At no point was a warning, a warning given to Prime Minister Netanyahu on Hamas’s intention to start a war.

On the contrary, all the defense officials, including the heads of Intelligence Directorate and Shin Bet, assessed that Hamas was deterred. This was the assessment submitted time after time to the prime minister and the cabinet by all the entities in the defense and intelligence community right up until the war broke out. So this is, again, just a few weeks after the October 7th attack by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office.

“Which he deleted afterwards, but gave us in The New York Times the same comment in English. This was tweeted in Hebrew the same day,” Bergman replied, adding:

Our colleague Mark Mazzetti from the D.C. Bureau of The New York Times and myself, we published another story where we learned all the different warnings that Prime Minister Netanyahu received that the enemies of Israel, the members of the so-called axis of resistance, see Israel at its worst time, the political crisis following the so-called judicial reform that Netanyahu initiated. They said to him, they will or they might take the opportunity. They see this as the window in which they can attack Israel, they warned again and again and again to stop this process. And he disregarded sometimes even refused to see them. And we know what what happened next. Let me just say that in hindsight. We all know what happened in real time.

It was not just about the inability to believe that Hamas is closing the gap between the ‘Jericho Wall’ plan as they wanted to be in their competence and where they were. And only one journalist, one woman journalist, veteran analyst, spent years studying Hamas and at a certain point said this is not an imaginative scenario. This is not the dream that they are doing.

“Ronen. I’m sorry. Ronen and Adam, we’re going to have to leave it there. This story is just, it makes your stomach churn. Very, very important reporting. Thank you both for being on. Appreciate it,” Bash concluded.

Watch the full clip above via CNN.