Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, is preparing to establish a dedicated Islamic studies school, after its own investigations into the failures surrounding October 7 concluded that years of sophisticated surveillance had not produced a sufficient understanding of Islam, Palestinian society or the ideological worldview of Hamas.
The development is striking.
For years, Israeli intelligence invested heavily in monitoring Palestinians through intercepted communications, cyber capabilities, informant networks and signals intelligence. Yet according to an Israeli report by journalist Amir Bohbot for Walla, internal assessments concluded that the security establishment still suffered from a fundamental weakness in understanding the very religion, culture and ideological currents it was attempting to analyse.
Now Shin Bet wants its personnel to study Islam more systematically.
The proposed institution will operate alongside the agency’s specialist Arabic-language training programme and is expected to bring together lecturers, researchers, centres of expertise and current and former intelligence officials.
For an intelligence establishment built around surveillance, infiltration and technological superiority, the conclusion emerging from its own investigations is difficult to ignore:
Israel could collect extraordinary amounts of information about Palestinians, yet still failed to understand the people, beliefs and worldview behind that information.
Shin Bet Wants Officers to Study Islam, Not Simply Monitor Muslims
According to the Israeli report, Shin Bet director David Zini is leading the initiative to establish a dedicated Islamic studies academy inside the agency.
The project would expand beyond Arabic-language training and focus on Islam itself, including its religious schools, ideological traditions and the wider cultural and political environment shaping developments in Palestinian society and across the region.
The curriculum is expected to be adapted to the different operational arenas handled by Shin Bet.
That distinction is significant.
Learning Arabic allows an intelligence officer to understand words.
Studying Islam, religious thought and Palestinian culture is an attempt to understand the ideas behind them.
Israel’s own post-October 7 investigations appear to have concluded that the difference between those two things had been badly underestimated.
Israeli Investigators Admit They Failed to Understand Islam
One of the most significant conclusions reportedly reached during Israel’s investigation into the October 7 failure was a deficiency in understanding Islam, its different religious currents and Palestinian culture, particularly in Gaza.
Israeli intelligence was not operating blindly.
According to the account cited by Walla, intelligence services possessed an unprecedented quantity of high-quality information concerning Hamas and its intentions.
Yet that information did not produce an accurate understanding of what Hamas was preparing to do.
The failure therefore appears to have gone beyond intelligence collection.
It was also a failure of interpretation.
Israeli analysts reportedly struggled to sufficiently understand the ideological evolution of Hamas, its organisational worldview and the longer historical influence of figures such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Particular attention was reportedly given to developments following Yahya Sinwar’s release from Israeli prison and the way Hamas’s strategic thinking subsequently evolved.
In other words, Israel had accumulated data about Hamas while failing to fully understand the religious and ideological framework through which Hamas interpreted its own actions.
Technology Could Hear the Conversations, but Not Explain the Worldview
The internal review also raises a broader question about the limits of technological intelligence.
Israel developed highly sophisticated capabilities in signals intelligence, cyber operations and electronic interception.
These systems could monitor telephone conversations, digital communications, emails and messaging applications.
But Israeli intelligence sources reportedly concluded that as these tools became more advanced, the institutional emphasis placed on specialist knowledge of Islam and Palestinian society declined.
The assumption appears to have been that better surveillance would compensate for weaker cultural and religious understanding.
October 7 shattered that confidence.
The episode illustrates a basic limitation of intelligence technology:
A system may intercept a message perfectly and still misunderstand what that message means.
Knowing which words were used is not the same as understanding the religious beliefs, historical memory, political experiences and ideological assumptions shaping the person who used them.
Israel’s Own Intelligence Official Says the Warning Signs Were Visible
A senior Israeli intelligence official quoted in the report offered one of the clearest admissions of the problem.
The official said Israeli security institutions had underestimated Hamas’s motivations, capabilities and readiness despite the presence of visible warning signs.
“We did not realise the extent to which Hamas hated Israel, how unwilling it was to accept any compromise, or how strong and prepared it was before October 7, even though the warning signs were plainly visible.”
The importance of that statement is not simply that Israel misjudged Hamas.
It is that the warning signs were reportedly already there.
The information existed.
The interpretation failed.
Israeli intelligence had developed extraordinary capabilities for observing Palestinian society, but observation alone did not necessarily produce understanding.
From Surveillance to Studying Islam
There is a wider irony in Israel’s growing institutional interest in Islamic studies.
Sunna Files previously examined another unusual Israeli initiative involving the creation of what was described as a Tel Aviv Islamic University, reflecting a broader Israeli interest in formally studying Islamic thought, Arabic culture and Muslim societies.
The Shin Bet initiative now gives that trend a distinctly intelligence-driven dimension.
This is not Islamic scholarship being pursued for religious understanding in the traditional Muslim sense.
It is Islam being studied by a security agency because its own investigations concluded that failing to understand Islamic thought and Palestinian society contributed to one of the most consequential intelligence failures in Israel’s history.
That distinction matters.
For Muslims, Islam is a religion, civilisation, intellectual tradition and way of understanding the world.
Within an intelligence institution such as Shin Bet, however, Islamic studies are being introduced largely because Islam and Palestinian political thought are regarded as subjects that must be better understood for security purposes.
The contrast itself says much about the relationship between knowledge and power.
Palestinians Were Watched in Extraordinary Detail, Yet Still Misunderstood
Perhaps the most revealing conclusion is the simplest one.
Israeli intelligence reportedly possessed immense quantities of information about Hamas.
It monitored communications.
It operated intelligence networks.
It developed advanced cyber capabilities.
It trained specialists in Arabic.
Yet after October 7, its own internal investigations concluded that it still lacked sufficient understanding of Islam, Palestinian culture and the ideological foundations shaping Hamas.
That should challenge the idea that superior surveillance automatically produces superior understanding.
A society cannot necessarily be understood simply by monitoring its communications.
A religion cannot be reduced to intercepted messages.
And an ideological movement cannot always be understood through technical intelligence alone.
Israel’s decision to establish an Islamic studies school inside Shin Bet therefore represents more than an administrative reform.
It is an implicit acknowledgement of a much deeper failure:
Israel spent years learning how to watch Palestinians. After October 7, its own intelligence establishment concluded that it still had much to learn about how Palestinians and Muslims understood themselves.
