Israeli Major General (Res.) Roni Numa spoke about what the Maariv newspaper described as "intelligence failures" regarding the exposure of the October 7 attack, noting that they "do not understand Hamas."
Major General Roni Numa, who was appointed by Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir to head the team investigating the "Jericho Wall" document – Hamas's attack plan that had been in the security establishment's possession for years – explained that the core of the investigation does not focus solely on the question of what happened, but primarily on the question of why it happened and what lessons should be learned for future generations. He said: "I, due to my many sins, am investigating today on behalf of the Chief of Staff why we failed to understand Hamas's plans for almost a decade, plans that were laid out before us." He added: "We failed to realize that we do not understand Hamas. We are trying to investigate in depth what happened, why it happened, and we are beginning to understand, but the most important thing is to know the lessons learned for future generations."
Major General Roni Numa also criticized concepts based on excessive reliance on technology rather than human expertise: “I was quite astonished when I saw that in the units, on October 7, there were very serious people who thought it was possible to replace the radio operators with a technological device called STT – Speech to Text – which converts speech into written text. Instead of having an Arabist who understands the language, understands the culture, and knows how to interpret what he hears… they thought it was possible to replace him with a machine that translates things.”
According to him: "The real story is our ability to understand where we live and what needs to be done to continue to stay here and ensure the future of our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren. I question this argument."
Major General Numa added that the investigation also examines the system's way of thinking: "We are examining how we do more than what is available, how we understand things in depth, and how we sometimes have to know how to improvise. It is good to bring back a little of the spirit of the 'Palmach' (the elite military force of the Zionist movement before the establishment of Israel) to the Israeli army – not in the romantic sense, but in the sense of thinking, initiative, and creativity."
