The aura of Israeli intelligence prior to Oct. 7, 2023, was unquestioned, with many of its dramatic operations becoming the stuff of legend in the national security world and even being dramatized in Hollywood movies. Israel’s spies enjoyed admiration from their friends and a fearsome reputation among their enemies for their bold operations, their long reach, and their even longer memory.

That reputation was destroyed last year. Israel’s intelligence leaders are trying to rebuild it. But while spectacular intelligence operations make for captivating headlines, it’s not clear whether Israel’s spies are also providing best-in-the-business support for diplomacy or strategy.

Prior to the Hamas attack, Israeli intelligence had a culture of accountability for when the inevitable intelligence failures did happen, but it appeared to be at the top of its game. In September 2023, on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Herzl Halevi—the Israeli military’s chief of the general staff—reflected on what was then the country’s biggest intelligence failure, missing the Egyptian assault that began the 1973 war, and the lessons learned.

In 1973, the dominance of “the concept”—the firm, but entirely mistaken, belief that the Arab states would not initiate another war against Israel except under very specific conditions—caused the Israeli government to repeatedly miss clues about the invasion. Israeli intelligence believed that it had learned from those mistakes, which had resulted in numerous resignations and firings after the war.

But its hard-won reputation, like Israel’s sense of security, was about to be shattered.

The failure of the Israeli intelligence community on Oct. 7 to anticipate and disrupt Hamas’s brutal assault was so shocking that it overshadows the failures of 1973. The lack of organization, missed indications, and ignored warnings dwarf the U.S. intelligence failure on 9/11, where the intelligence community was warning of an imminent al Qaeda attack before the plot succeeded.

Like the American “failure of imagination” in which the U.S. intelligence community could not envision the novel vector of the 9/11 attack, Israeli intelligence’s failure was also based on ignoring what the enemy’s leaders were saying. And with the country unprepared, it took the Israeli military agonizing hours to mount a response.

The similarities between the 2023 and 1973 intelligence failures are striking: Then, as now, both the political and military leaders were captive to the “concept” of an enemy—misjudging its intentions and underestimating its capabilities. In this case, Israeli leadership believed that Hamas, for all its bloody rhetoric, was essentially comfortable with the status quo of its control of Gaza. And, again echoing 1973, lower-ranking intelligence personnel tried to warn their dismissive superiors.

On Oct. 7, when Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security service) considered the possibility of an impending attack or an attempted kidnapping, it sent a single elite intelligence “Tequila” team of just seven operatives to the Gaza border to assess the situation. That team were some of the initial defenders, fighting back against overwhelming odds. Several died in action during the early hours of the incursion. Military intelligence (Aman) remained unconvinced that something new was afoot despite multiple warnings from observers from a women-only military unit posted on the southern borders as well as those of an Israeli civilian listening to Hamas’s chatter who had his equipment confiscated by the Ministry of Communications because “senior security officials were fed up with his warnings,” in journalist Efrat Fenigson’s words.

The warnings of the “Devil’s Advocate” team, which had been established by the Israeli military following 1973, were similarly rejected. It appears that the recommendations of the Agranat Commission, which investigated the situation leading up to the 1973 war, were forgotten, leading to a strategic culture that had a tendency to ignore dissent, promote groupthink, and discount outside expertise. Despite these weaknesses, Israel’s spies had managed to punch far above their weight for decades, but it is possible that their success in part bred overconfidence, contributing to the failure of Oct. 7.

Israel’s intelligence apparatus could hardly sink lower following the Hamas attack, seemingly underscored by the resignations of Aman’s director-general and the commander of Israeli military’s signals intelligence-collection agency, Unit 8200.

If the Oct. 7 attack showed Israel’s enemies that its intelligence and security agencies were not omniscient, that message was also received by a shaken Israeli body politic. The mystique that the Mossad—the country’s foreign intelligence agency—always remained one step ahead of its adversaries was a foundational pillar of Israel’s sense of security, but its public’s confidence in the national security state was likewise injured on Oct. 7. Heretofore, Israel’s national security apparatus was able to intimidate its opponents based on a qualitative and quantitative edge in military might and intelligence. This was always part of the Israeli brand, tarnished on that dreadful day.

The operations carried out over the past year against Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah offered an opportunity to rebuild that reputation. Hezbollah and its Iranian backers had been the primary focus of Israeli intelligence for years, in stark contrast to the near neglect of Hamas. Israel had scored successes such as stealing the Iranian nuclear archive, assassinating numerous Iranian nuclear scientists to delay their enrichment programs, and repeated strikes on Iranian weapons shipments via Syria.

Those actions, however, were small potatoes compared to the post-Oct. 7 demonstrations of Israeli intelligence prowess. Palestinian militant leaders became chief targets for assassination, including Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy political head of Hamas, and many other senior leaders. Hezbollah were also the targets of successful Israeli strikes, but what was to come was of a different scale.

In February 2024, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah became increasingly concerned about operational security and warned his subordinates about Israel’s capabilities to exploit their smartphones. The group switched to pagers by the thousands. At precisely 3:30 p.m. local time on Sept. 17 the pagers of thousands of operatives across Lebanon and Syria exploded simultaneously. The next day, another wave of explosions rocked the remains of Hezbollah’s communication capabilities as hundreds of walkie-talkies and fingerprint analysis devices exploded, killing at least 20 people and wounding hundreds more.

Israeli experts settled on a small number of concealed explosives within the pagers, which were triggered by a message. In a twist on the classic supply chain attack, instead of tampering with pagers before their shipping, it appears that Israel had established a front company that manufactured the equipment via a licensing agreement. Without explicitly admitting responsibility, it appears that Mossad and Aman carried out the operation, displaying a level of creativity and operational patience to bring to fruition an operation that was, perhaps, years in the making.

After, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ fear of Israeli control of communication equipment was so great that it issued an order to stop using all communication devices. The attack, in addition to instilling a psychological fear of such devices, has severely impacted Hezbollah’s communication abilities, as thousands of its operatives had to revert to the use of runners.

While Nasrallah promised that a “severe reckoning” was coming to Israel for its “act of war” in the form of the pagers and walkie-talkie attacks, his speech did not take place in front of a big audience, as usual. Just 10 days later, he was assassinated in a “secret” underground command center during his meeting with the remnants of Hezbollah’s leadership as the Israeli Air Force dropped multiple bunker-busting bombs and more than 100 munitions thanks to what it said were precise coordinates provided by multiple sources of intelligence collection.

Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s presumptive replacement, was quickly assassinated too, leaving the organization disoriented and lacking a leader. This string of tactical successes against Hamas and Hezbollah was privately described by one former senior U.S. intelligence official as “stunning.”

While the Mossad and Aman were on the offensive in Lebanon and Iran, Shin Bet was busy at home uncovering Hezbollah attempts to get even by assassinating a significant Israeli figure, with possible targets reportedly including Moshe Yaalon, a former defense minister and former chief of general staff; Aviv Kochavi, another former chief of general staff; and even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Shin Bet counterintelligence also uncovered an Iranian honeypot network aiming to collect intelligence, and the agency interdicted weapons smuggled to terrorist groups in the West Bank.

After their darkest hour on Oct. 7, 2023, a year later, Israeli intelligence appears to be on a relentless campaign of lethal success and carrying out operations that reburnish its legend. The methodical and systematic decapitation of Hamas and Hezbollah probably contribute to a feeling among remaining militant Islamist leaders that Israel must always have them in their sights and will pull the trigger at a time of its choosing. The feeling that one’s fate is controlled by one’s enemy is not conducive to attack planning.

Beyond the violence, however, the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the supply chain operations, when considered together with the assassination campaign’s ability to strike unexpectedly (in what were previously considered “secret” or presumably safe locations) likely conspire to create an impression that the Israeli intelligence community is even more powerful than it really is.

But hunting high-value targets and conducting technical operations, however brilliantly executed, are not the totality of intelligence acumen. Israel’s operational successes must be considered alongside the broader application of intelligence as a lever of state power.

While Israel’s success in manhunting, covert action, and supply chain operations have been clearly demonstrated, it is an open question if Israel’s spies are also providing analytical insights that might aid their policymakers in creating wise foreign policies. Assessing the restoration of any intelligence community also requires a consideration of intelligence assessment beyond the use of violence. Without knowing what analytical judgments at the coalface of policy look like, any assessment must be careful.

Given some of the broader fundamental weaknesses of the strategic culture of Israeli intelligence that led to the failure of Oct. 7, a full recovery would include a reckoning with gender bias and analytical anchoring from senior leaders in the intelligence agencies and beyond in a similarly exhaustive process as the one that occurred following the 1973 investigation, and with the hope that the lessons identified would be more durably implemented for future generations of Israeli intelligence professionals and their citizens.

The purpose of intelligence—in its fullest sense—is to inform statecraft, to challenge policy assumptions, to help decision-makers ask the right questions, and to assist them in thinking through second- and third-order effects of policies that ripple through the region and the international system.

Drama and lethality aren’t enough. Israel’s spies need to provide insight, too.