Ghastly videos circulating online in the past few days show Hamas militants infiltrating Israeli military positions en masse, killing numerous unprepared Israeli Defense Forces soldiers in their barracks and terrorizing unarmed civilians in broad daylight.
Following the surprise attack on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We will take mighty vengeance.”
The Israeli air force has begun bombing Gaza, destroying multiple buildings, resulting in at least 200 deaths and many more injured. Israel has also said it would stop supplying electricity and fuel to Gaza, which would be detrimental to Palestinian rescue efforts. There are no winners in this catastrophic bloodbath.
Theories abound about how Israel’s security services, widely known to possess the Middle East’s most advanced intelligence network, failed to predict this offensive, considering the massive stockpile of rockets and numerous coordinated, albeit unconventional, maneuvers by Hamas on an unprecedented scale. Without a doubt, this is the biggest intelligence failure in recent memory.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Mossad and Shin Bet — the intelligence agencies of Israel — received about US$2.4 billion in funding in 2018. Mossad and Shin Bet have continually invested in cutting-edge espionage technology and recruited some of Israel’s best technology experts and engineers. Moreover, Mossad answers directly to the Israeli prime minister, bypassing the many bureaucratic hurdles faced by other nations’ intelligence agencies.
Taiwan’s intelligence agencies are not as well-funded, nor as innovative. Israel’s intelligence failure should serve as a lesson for Taiwan. Even though the National Security Bureau maintains “real-time” intelligence sharing with the Five Eyes alliance of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, there is always the threat of being caught off guard. Overreliance on intelligence could create a false sense of security.
Maintaining vigilance is a slogan of the Taiwanese military, but whether the troops actually follow it is another question. In my conversations with several active-duty officers, I have learned that they are all confident that Taiwan has the ability to predict an imminent Chinese military invasion. This type of thinking usually breeds complacency.
While I was serving in the military this year, there were too many instances when superiors did not take training conscripts seriously. There was much time wasted when instructors scrolled on their phones instead of properly instructing conscripts. An average conscript in Taiwan likely knows nothing about close-quarters combat or new developments in modern warfare. Based on conversations with my peers who have served before me and were assigned to different units, my experience as a conscript is not an exception, but rather the rule. Amid a time of renewed geopolitical tensions, reforms to Taiwan’s compulsory military service need to come to fruition soon. By the time a war actually starts, it might be too late to retrain the troops.
Although China, unlike Hamas, maintains a largely conventional military, the Chinese have increased their contesting in the gray-zone, often utilizing civilian boats in the maritime domain. Large military formations are easy to spot, but the movement of smaller and irregular units are much more difficult to track. Chinese civilian militia or military forces posing as civilians could pose a threat to Taiwan’s outlying islands, like Kinmen and Matsu.
The war in Israel should serve as a lesson for Taiwan’s military — overreliance on intelligence and complacency are a deadly combination.
Linus Chiou is a part-time writer based in Kaohsiung.
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