It must have been quite a shock for the beloved football commentator to wake up in the morning to two strange pieces of news.
In the last eight months, Israeli government and military officials, along with a large host of media analysts and retired generals, have spoken repeatedly about the collapse of Israel’s military intelligence on October 7.
The admission of failure, however, was largely contained within the specific events that took place on that day, namely the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation.
Palestinians, on the other hand, have argued that Israel was squarely defeated on that day, and that its defeat would have taken place regardless of the failure or success of Tel Aviv’s intelligence apparatus.
Time, however, has supported the Palestinian viewpoint, as Israel’s intelligence continues to experience even a greater degree of failure in Gaza, 232 days after the start of the war.
Israel has yet to achieve any serious military objective in the Strip, and has also been defeated both in the military field and on the information war front.
But the intelligence failure remains Israel’s greatest setback. The latest episode took place in recent days in Gaza when Israeli media, citing officials, said that the army has failed to ‘liquidate’ a top Palestinian Resistance commander.
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The leader in question is Mohamed Shabana, believed to be Al-Qassam Brigades’ commander in the Rafah area.
The alleged liquidation or rather the failure to do so, however, had reportedly taken place in northern Gaza.
The story would have appeared ordinary if it were not for the fact that Mohamed Shabana, listed by Israel as one of Gaza’s most wanted militants, was a well-known Egyptian sports analyst, and a parliamentarian, also by the same name.
It must have been quite a shock for the beloved football commentator to wake up in the morning to two strange pieces of news: one, that he is the head of Al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza, and that Israel has tried but failed to assassinate him.
Interestingly, the photo of Shabana was not randomly selected by a lazy journalist in some Israeli newspaper, but by the notorious Shin Bet, Israel’s supposedly powerful internal intelligence.
Quickly, the Israeli media moved past the story, with photos of the Egyptian sportsman being quietly deleted from various media platforms.
Palestinian, Egyptian, and Arab commentators, however, gave the story a whole new life on social media.
“Today is a scandal and new evidence of the fragility of these fools and the stupidity inherent to them,” a popular Egyptian social media influencer, Mahmoud al-Jindi, wrote.
لا يمكن أن تمر فضيحة نشر الشاباك صورة الإعلامي الرياضي المصري «محمد شبانة»، بدلا من صورة قائد لواء رفح في كـ ـتـ ـائب القـ ـسـ ـام الذي يحمل نفس الاسم.
دون تعليق وتكرار نشر….🔴 الموساد والشاباك وأجهزة الكيان الصهيوني
الذي طالما قالوا وقلنا…
👈 قالوا انهم يملكون التكنولوجيا… pic.twitter.com/soFCy1furK— مَحْمُودْ سَالِمْ الْجِنْدِي (@DrMahmoudSalemE) May 24, 2024
“A Zionist scandal”, wrote Mohammed Salah, “the Israeli internal intelligence Shabak (Shin Bet) is distributing a photo of our colleague, Mohamed Shabana, a journalist and also a member of the Egyptian senate, as a leader in Hamas. (…) The strongest intelligence in the world, indeed.”
فضيحة صهيونية:
جهاز الاستخبارات الداخلية الإسرائيلي " شاباك " يوزع صورة الزميل محمد شبانة الصحفي وعضو مجلس الشورى المصري والإعلامي الرياضي المعروف باعتبر أنه هو القيادي في حركة حماس محمد شبانة😂
أقوى جهاز استخبارات في العالم 👎🏿 pic.twitter.com/lKMJvNzecX— mohamed salah (@SalahAlhayat) May 24, 2024
“Imagine Mohamed Shabana walking in a European country and saw a Zionist who believed the Shin Bet (story) that this is the leader of Hamas who was supposedly assassinated??,” wrote another.
One user wrote that the latest episode is “further evidence of the confusion and incompetence of Israeli intelligence, contrary to what it always promotes.”
وضع الموساد صورة الصحفي المصري محمد شبانة على أنه أحد قادة المقاومة الذي يحمل الإسم نفسه هو دليل آخر ليس على ارتباك المخابرات الإسرائيلية فقط، بل افتقادها إلى الكفاءة، على عكس ما تروجه دوما، وانطلى على كثيرين.
منذ ٧ أكتوبر وإسرائيل تنكشف، جيشا وأمنا وأداء سياسيا وتماسكا اجتماعيا.— عمار علي حسن Ammar Ali Hassan (@ammaralihassan) May 25, 2024
As for the Egyptian Shabana himself, he shared his own photo, as the number six most wanted Hamas commander in the Strip, with a short phrase: “The dysfunctional entity”.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
Israel seems to have been training themselves to be fools – that’s the other message I take from Simon Louvish’s novel “City of Blok”, where one of the characters, a peace activist, tells other reservists: “Palestinians can fly! Every time the IDF shoots into the air to disperse protests, Palestinians get bullet wounds in legs and torso.” Come to think of it, it’s the same sort of mistake they made earlier, in 1973, according to Colonel John Hughes-Wilson, in his book “Military Intelligence Blunders” – contempt for Arabs being prevalent in Israel.