The Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was the “most humiliating day” for Israel’s security forces and the most devastating assault on Jews since the Holocaust, retired Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a former Israel Defense Forces spokesman and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Newsmax on Saturday.
“With the benefit of hindsight and distance, I think we can call Hamas’ attack the most brilliant terror attack against Israel in Israeli history,” Conricus said on “Saturday Agenda.” “It was the largest number of Jews murdered after the Holocaust, and the most humiliating day for Israeli security forces.”
The assault involved at least 3,000 Hamas terrorists who crossed into southern Israel, using years of training and a network of tunnels to strike Israeli towns.
“Hamas prepared at least two years for this in terms of plans and training,” Conricus explained. “Without the tunnels, they wouldn’t have been able to hide and prepare, and they wouldn’t have been able to fight as long as they’ve been fighting.”
Conricus added that while Hamas initially had a short-term success, the attack may prove to be its undoing.
“For Hamas, it may have been the most extravagant Pyrrhic victory in the sense that they had a short-term victory, but long-term it may be their undoing,” he said.
He also pointed to Hezbollah, another Iranian-backed force in Lebanon, which did not join Hamas on Oct. 7.
“Luckily, Hezbollah — we will never know why — they didn’t join in the fighting,” Conricus said. “Since then on, most of the time Hamas fought alone. And as we see now, two years after, they are very, very close to defeat.”
The former IDF officer said the attack revealed how Israel had fundamentally misread its enemy.
“We basically told ourselves that Hamas was not that hardcore jihadi extremist organization they used to be,” Conricus said. “They want to take out the trash, and they want people to have food on the table. And if we only provide that, then they won’t be so extreme.”
However, Hamas proved with the attack that this assessment was “180 degrees wrong, and we paid a very steep price,” said Conricus. “One thousand three hundred Israelis were killed in one day, the bloodiest day in our history.”
Conricus said Israel has shared its lessons with the United States to prevent similar mistakes.
“I can only pray that what we have learned will not have to be learned by other forces, specifically not by Americans in the future,” he said.
Turning to today’s security climate, Conricus warned that anti-Semitism is rising across the West.
“It has become in vogue to be openly anti-Semitic and to hate Israel and Jews again,” he said, citing movements on both the far left and far right. “Even proud patriots are starting to join in that anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli movement.”
He described this wave as a “pincer movement” from both extremes of society and warned that history shows such hatred has always ended in violence.
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