Ever since Octo­ber 7, 2023, a ques­tion has been asked time and again: How could this have hap­pened? While Israel Slept: How Hamas Sur­prised the Most Pow­er­ful Mil­i­tary in the Mid­dle East by jour­nal­ist Yaakov Katz and jour­nal­ist and pro­fes­sor Amir Bohbot explores this issue in depth. It’s not just a look at that day and its after­math, though — it’s also an exam­i­na­tion of how Hamas devel­oped and gained pow­er, its fund­ing streams, and the road to com­pla­cen­cy that Israel trav­eled until that Octo­ber day. 

Katz and Bohbot orga­nize the book into six chap­ters plus an intro­duc­tion and a con­clu­sion. Chap­ters address the ques­tion of how this hap­pened, the long­stand­ing fear of Gaza, the tun­nels, the ori­gin sto­ry of Hamas, the IDF response, and the issue of pay­ing Hamas to keep the peace. While the mid­dle chap­ters can, at times, feel over­ly wordy and tan­gen­tial, the lev­el of detail in the book is nec­es­sary to show the read­er how com­plex and entrenched these sys­tems and modes of func­tion­ing are in both Gaza and Israel (as well as the over­laps between the two). The authors write, ​“This is why the tough­est ques­tion we encoun­tered dur­ing the work on this book is not how Octo­ber 7 hap­pened but how Israel can ensure it does not hap­pen again, and how the coun­try can avoid falling into a con­tain­ment trap down the road.”

This is not an easy book to read: these are dif­fi­cult top­ics that car­ry sig­nif­i­cant emo­tion­al weight, and the mate­r­i­al can be dense. The text detail­ing the mul­ti­ple fail­ures of the IDF lead­ing up to Octo­ber 7, includ­ing signs that were brushed off in the late night and ear­ly morn­ing of that day, is frus­trat­ing to read, but the writ­ing itself remains fac­tu­al, allow­ing the read­er to project what­ev­er reac­tion they have onto the page with­out the authors inter­fer­ing. That being said, this is not an objec­tive book; the authors have def­i­nite ideas about ways that Israel can help to reduce the risk of anoth­er Octo­ber 7. These are laid out in an exten­sive con­clu­sion that has con­crete rec­om­men­da­tions to address five issues the authors feel are key to Israel’s secu­ri­ty, includ­ing intel­li­gence reform, the US-Israel alliance, and improv­ing pub­lic diplo­ma­cy efforts. 

Those who want a more detailed look sole­ly at the fail­ures of Octo­ber 7 might be dis­ap­point­ed with this book, as the scope of this text is much broad­er. But it’s an excel­lent primer to under­stand how Hamas devel­oped and gained con­trol, as well as how it main­tained pow­er, sur­vived finan­cial­ly, and was able to devel­op the capa­bil­i­ties to pull off Octo­ber 7. At the same time, it also looks at Israeli soci­ety and how mul­ti­ple fis­sures that grad­u­al­ly widened helped to weak­en the coun­try in the lead-up to Octo­ber 7. While Israel Slept is an impor­tant and nec­es­sary exam­i­na­tion of the sys­temic fail­ures that helped lead to that fate­ful day, but it won’t — and shouldn’t be — the only one.