Israeli military intelligence is often thought to be the best in the world. Given the neighborhood Israel lives in, it needs to be. Nonetheless, at key junctures in its history, it made critical failures. It can ill afford one now.

In October 1973, Israel was taken by surprise by the combined Arab assault on its borders. In the 2006 summer war in Lebanon, Israel failed to grasp Hezbollah’s strategy of drawing it into a fight against a network of heavily armed bunkers in the villages of southern Lebanon for which it was ill prepared.