While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East

by Yaakov Katz, Amir Bohbot

Overview

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"Crisply written... draws on excellent sources within Israel’s military and intelligence services." —The Wall Street Journal

A powerful indictment of the political and military decisions that led to October 7

While Israel Slept tells the gripping inside story of how Hamas, Israel’s weakest enemy, succeeded in launching a surprise attack on one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Through a detailed examination of the events leading up to October 7, 2023, the book exposes the intelligence and strategic failures that enabled this devastating invasion. It takes readers back in time, showing how years of complacency, mistaken intelligence analysis, and a misguided policy of containment enabled Hamas to prepare for an assault that Israel did not believe was possible and that would change the Middle East.

The book unveils the dramatic events of the night before the attack, highlighting the cracks in Israel’s military and political leadership. It provides unprecedented details on how key warnings were missed, and how Israel ignored the growing threat from Hamas, believing that the group was weak and deterred. By exposing these failures, While Israel Slept offers a stark, sobering account of how overconfidence and complacency paved the way for disaster, while underscoring the critical lessons Israel must embrace to safeguard its future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250345707
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/02/2025
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Yaakov Katz is the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post and a senior fellow at JPPI, a global think tank for the Jewish people. He writes regularly for Newsweek and the Jewish Chronicle, hosts the JPPI weekly podcast and is a frequent guest analyst on CNN and BBC. He is the author of Shadow Strike and the co-author with Amir Bohbot of Weapon Wizards.

Dr. Amir Bohbot is one of Israel’s leading military commentators, a lecturer at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and a senior researcher at Bar Ilan University. He is a sought-after analyst on Israeli TV and radio stations, has worked for Maariv, and since 2011 has served as the military and defense correspondent for Walla.

Editorial Reviews

"An important account of Oct. 7 and the road to the disaster.”
—Jerusalem Post

"A worthy contribution to the literature of Middle Eastern geopolitics."
—Kirkus

“A shocking, detailed, and gripping investigation of the Israeli catastrophe of Oct. 7, 2023, by two of the country’s best journalists. A necessary book for anyone hoping to begin figuring out what happened and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again."
—Matti Friedman, author of Spies of No Country and Pumpkinflowers

"A clear-eyed post mortem... Not only are the recommendations critical for Israel's security but the warning about the cost of a divided nation is grist for America as well."
—Wendy Sherman, former U.S. deputy secretary of state

"How could it happen? While Israel Slept tells the gripping, painful story of what led to Israel’s failures on October 7- and what must be done to prevent it from ever happening again."
—Elliott Abrams, former U.S. deputy national security adviser and special representative for Iran

"This searing, sobering, eye-opening book is necessary reading for anyone who wants to understand what happened on October 7 and why -- and for everyone who cares about Israel's future."
—Sarah Hurwitz, author of Here All Along, former White House speechwriter

From the Publisher

2025-05-16
A journalistic investigation, laced with advocacy, into the failure of Israeli intelligence to foresee a deadly attack.

Journalists Katz and Bohbot open by dismissing the idea that the Hamas-led incursion of Oct. 7, 2023, was akin to 9/11. Instead, they liken it to the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor as a sequence of misread indicators that something bad was about to happen. So lax was the monitoring of the Gaza border, they note, that Hamas “didn’t use even a single tunnel,” even as Israeli Defense Forces intelligence assumed that Hamas wouldn’t dare cross the border openly. Another missed sign was the removal of protective fabric from rocket-launch pits within Gaza, a prelude to a rocket attack, although Hamas said that it was a drill. “Israel possessed all the intelligence to piece together Hamas’s plans, but the IDF never connected it into a comprehensive picture to understand what was happening right before their eyes,” the authors charge. One proximate cause of the failure, they hold, was the IDF’s complacency about the “iron wall” that divided Gaza and Israel, “believed to be impenetrable,” but the larger issue was that different agencies weren’t talking to each other and sharing intelligence that might have been stitched into a coherent whole. An interesting point, if untestable, is that the division in Israeli society wrought by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to reduce the power of the nation’s judiciary revealed a weakness that lent itself to attack. Controversially, the authors insist that the IDF’s response to the attack took great pains to spare civilian lives and “refrain from preemptive action that could lead to a wider war.” They close with a set of policy recommendations, including taking care not to alienate the U.S., as happened during the Biden presidency, and enlisting Mossad, which operates internationally, to aid with internal intelligence.

Arguable at points, but a worthy contribution to the literature of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

Kirkus Reviews