How Hamas Caught U.S. and Israeli Intelligence Unaware

Hamas’s attack on Israel should be a wake-up call to U.S. intelligence services. That a terrorist attack of this magnitude—with seismic implications for global security—came as a surprise to many in Washington shows that we need to reassess our own operations sharply to ensure that America has a comprehensive threat picture that can provide early warnings and prevent national-security tragedies.

The Israelis will no doubt examine this lapse thoroughly. Several possible reasons come to mind for why Israel and its allies, including the U.S., failed to report on the exact nature, timing and scale of the attack.