The Collapse of Israel’s Hamas “Conceptzia”

Whether deliberate or a cruel historic irony, it is remarkable that the Hamas’ barbaric massacre on October 7, which killed 1,400 and injured over 3,300 Israelis, came fifty years and a day after the 1973 war. That war was defined by strategic surprise: Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the holiest day of the year. The postwar Agranat Commission of Inquiry investigated not just the operational surprise but the conceptual failure. This became known as the “conceptzia”: the governing assumption that convinced key Israeli military figures Egypt, unable to engage in the necessary deep penetration bombing of Israel, would not start a war it could not win.

Read the full article on the National Interest website.