I was stunned by the early morning headline that appeared in my email. According to The New York Times, Israeli officials had known about Hamas’ plan for more than a year before it launched its Oct. 7 attacks.
This could not be true. The Israel that I have come to know over the past 22 years is a beacon of vigilance, with a hard-bitten approach to threat protection that it has learned through decades of painful experience.
Yet in this case instead of acting, Israeli military and intelligence dismissed this startling revelation as “aspirational.” In New York City, we call this “talking away the job,” and it is a sure sign that a healthy complacency has taken hold.
Complacency comes in a variety of forms — misplaced hope, denial, faith, fatalism — but the results are always the same. It leaves you flat-footed in the face of fast-moving threats. It breeds failure in the form of misery and destruction. It prevents you from doing the things that you need to do to avoid a worst-case outcome.
I have no doubt that the last remnants of Israeli complacency were swept away by the horrors perpetrated by Hamas terrorists on that terrible day. The same cannot be said about the U.S. overall.