'We always think of Israel as this force all capable of dealing with things, but I think the main takeaway from this is the catastrophic intelligence failure'
‘We always think of Israel as this force all capable of dealing with things, but I think the main takeaway from this is the catastrophic intelligence failure’
“It also has the main holy sites in it, particularly the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Western Wall,” explains Mr Helm, who filmed Hamas rockets being intercepted by Israel over the mosque, which is “The situation is obviously totally chaotic. Security forces are really jittery and suspicious, the whole thing is up in the air,” he says. Mr Helm said he heard from sources that a good friend of his, an Arab, was subjected to “really horrible treatment” on the part of the Israeli security services, despite clearly working as a journalist.
Mr Helm says he is hearing an increasing number of Israeli experts say that Saturday was “perhaps the darkest day in the history of Jerusalem”. Worse even than the critical intelligence failure which resulted in the Yom Kippur War, 50 years ago on Friday, when Egyptian and Syrian forces launched an attack on Israel., there is no escape for civilians. “Gaza will be ‘flattened’ – that’s the word everyone is using,” says Mr Helm. “People in Gaza don’t get out.