After the devastating failure of the Israeli intelligence to foresee the sudden Hamas assault at the weekend, many Israelis are describing the huge loss of lives as ‘Israel’s 9/11’.
Although the two events cannot be fairly compared, given the attack on Israel came from a country it has occupied and inflicted a deadly and brutal regime of apartheid on for many decades, the assault by Hamas has had a similarly visceral impact.
The Israeli loss of life is actually almost ten times worse than the US’s in 2001, relative to population size. This is despite successive Israeli governments having spent massively on the military, putting a premium on the Jewish population’s security. Security specialists across the world saw Israel as one of the leading states when it came to defence tactics and equipment to control dissenting peoples.
