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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> good evening, l i'm jake tapper and you're watching special cnn coverage of israel as war. israel's cabinet convenes later this evening after a terrorist assault by hamas who has left at least 300 israelis dead and 1500

injured. prments prime minister benjamin netanyahu went on to say quote the first phase ends by the destruction of the majority of the enemy forces, end quote, we will restore security to the disins and we will win -- citizens and we will win. >> towards israel although they have slowed down, we had at least five or six rounds and had rockets exploding overhead here but it's been quieter for those in t tel aviv. israel authorities have confirmed, that situation has

been cleared. they were holed up apparently in the police station there. this was hours long gun battle with the militants there it will it is not clear yet whether the israel authorities have cleared all the israeli towns and villages near the border. this has been their number 1 priority is to clear all the militants. as we have been hearing and seeing there residents there it is just the harrowing experience of militants, entering israel, infill traiting those towns. shooting indiscriminately on the street, going in and holding hostages and taking some israel citizens and back into gaza. we don't know exact number how many of these hostages were taken about into gaza but likely dozens. the israel officials have not confirmed a number.

they have taken them to strategy locations across the gaza trim. we have seen several buildings that have been destroyed by air strikes. leave certain areas and seek shelter elsewhere. we know that tens of thousands of israel military reservists have been called up. no ground are incursion has happened yet. i can't imagine this will all be conducted from the air as we have seen in previous conflicts. because we are at a different level of war here and because there are israeli soldiers and civilians, some as young as three years old allegedly being held by palestinian militants in the gaza strip, they have also decided to cut off electricity to the gaza strip. this provides most electricity

to the gases strip. it affects the civilians there as well. the death toll on both sides are in the hundreds, the injuries are in the thousands, we expect those to rise for both israelis and palestinians in the coming hours. jake. >> thank you stay safe. as carkts casualties are rising, in iran, the cancer of the usurper zionist regime will be, resistance forces throughout the region. he did that with a video of palestinian terrorists, hamas attacking if memory serves, attendees of a peace concert, attending just revolting, the words of iran's supreme leaders. thousands gathered on the streets of tehran to celebrate

the innocent civilians murdered as iranian state media showed, death to israel. obviously that doesn't represent the iranian people at large who are as many ways prisoners in their own country but it is also true that long held hatred of israel has only grown as israel has inched towards normalization of saudi arabia, the two sect are at odds quite often. as the washington post's max boot noticed earlier, indeed we don't know for sure why hamas decided to strike anonymity, this could be a alarmer attempt by iran and its proxies to secure between ryad and saudi

arabia. max thanks so much for joining us. u.s. officials say, it is still too early to say definitively if iran was directly involved in this attack. but we do know that iran funds and arms hamas. we know that iran does not like the idea of israel and saudi arabia forming any sort of diplomatic alliance. put this into the larger perspective if you could. >> well, the larger perspective is that, jake some can that you basically have two blocks competing for power and influence in the middle east. on the one hand you have iran and the so-called shiite crescent with its proxy $being very prominent, and also in the palestinian territory, in particular hamas receives major support and arms and money from iran. and on the other side you have israel and the sunni state, with

u.s. backing who are very much attempting to contain iranian influence and power and that is what responsible for this historic reconciliation which has already handy between israel and the uae and bahrain and now in the process of occurring between israel and saudi arabia. but clearly iran with its brute am proxy wars is able to became of gum up -- basically gum up the works, and that's what their trying to do is prevent this horrific war in israel's backyard that will inflame the entire region. >> iran obviously funds hamas, wanting hamas to carry out terrorist attacks. i'm not sure of this relationship how much iran would know in terms of the dames what hamas was -- details what hamas was planning on carrying out. what can you tell us about that? would hamas say hey, this is

what we're planning on doing, or is it more just like a relationship where iran just gives them the funds and expects that they will use the funds for no good? >> well i would in general i think iran does provide the funds and munitions and expects them to be used for no good. for a major major operation like this my guess would be that the irgc, the iran yah revolutionary guard corps was involved in signing off of this. they exercise a fair amount of control for organizations like hezbollah, less so hamas. there is a relationship but again we can talk about iranian complicity but the question is jake what do you do about it? we have a lot of sanctions on iran, we could try tithe thing those sanctions but the reality is that it doesn't take that much money to sponsor terrorism. you can never cut off all the money that iran uses to support

these extremist groups and of course the only option you're 11th with is to go to war with iran which is the last thing that anybody wants. >> you point to 2017 rand study in your column noting that israel wanted hamas from attacking but not to the point where israel was l willing to -- willing to topple hamas, the regime. what was the calculation then and i assume this war, what happened this morning, changes that calculation. >> i would assume so. i mean up until now the israeli calculation has been that they will retail yaitd for hamas attacks but they don't want to go to the attack of actually destroying hamas because they don't know what's going to come after hamas and basically the israel position has been better the devil you know rather than the devil that will come down the road. could you have an even more militant organization, hard as that might be to believe but

there could be crazier organizations like al qaeda that could take over. the worst thing from israeli perspective is to go in and reoccupy the gaza strip because israel occupied gaza strip in 2005. most citizens desire a more brutal occupation. but if you destroy hamas, there is no more effective authority over the gaza trim, someone has to rule. the egyptians, jordanian, saudi, to pacify gaza, basically at the end of the day, israel is going to be left with this terrible dislem ma. whatever military operations they take they can overcome hamas, there is going to be horrible, terrible, brutal fighting that's going to go on and there will be heavy casualties on both sides. at the end of the day, i don't

dodoubt that the israelis will prevail. but is there peace and order going forward in gaza if they completely eliminate hamas? that's been the question that last held israel back in the past. but israel is finding out the status quo is not as sustainable as they thought. they had clearly not deterred them and they are running out of options and kind of going on in a military campaign without a clear end game. >> whatever comes next will be worse for the innocent palestinian people, the people, there are 2 million in the gaza strip and their lives have been miserable. and they're about to get worse. >> absolutely. and hamas leadership shows no sign of caring at all about the people that it rules over. because if they did care they would know that this would bring catastrophe and horror to the people of gaza.

but that's clearly what hamas wants. because they derive political and military advantage from war with israel. but there is no advantage for the ordinary people of gaza who are ready some of the poorest and most suffering in the world and they're going to suffer some more just as you have been seeing now israel suffer. there is no ending heartrending cycle of violence with no end in sight. >> max boot thank you. how did hamas pull this off, u.s. military official said america was not tracking any sort of imminent attack on israel. our intelligence analysts next stay with us.

>> a senior u.s. intelligence official tells cnn that hamas's ability to coordinate these terrorist attacks on israeli towns without detection raises concerns about blind spots by the the the u.s. and its allies. >> i'm joined by john miller and youth elle kayam. juliet, the big question in washington now among intelligence analysts how did israel not remotely see this coming? >> right. it's the right question to ask even amongst this tragedy, and one asks it for israel's own

protection because obviously terrorists will take advantage of what's clearly intelligence, and preparedness gaps. what i couldn't believe when we started to hear the news, was the extent of the astack by hamas. the -- the attacks by hamas. the thousands or hundreds of bombs, the physical excursion, the drone excursion, that paragliding excursions, the water excursion, everything simultaneously that was neither detected nor as significantly responded to as quickly as you would have thought the israelis were able to do. and so that kind of organization which looks, seems to me more like mumbai and the attacks in india a decade ago is actually without getting picked up through signal or human intelligence is a gap. i just don't know how israel lost that story line of at least getting some understanding of what hamas might have been up to

and the coordination that it would have taken this successful of an attack into israel. >> john you spent the last 20 years working in intelligence. what juliet points out there is exactly right. not just -- i mean the planning had to have been extensive to have such a successful operation. but then beyond that, the inadequate response in terms of how long it took. for the idf to get to some of these towns and cub united states. -- kibitzes. not just a intelligence failure but a readiness failure. i can't hear, john, okay, i didn't know if that was just my ear piece or john ware having trouble with your sound. i don't know what the problem is.

you seem to be muted. juliet let me go to you while we figure out john's sound. >> okay. >> how long would an operation like this have had to have been in the works? i mean this -- the extent of the planning. >> yeah. well, it's the manufacturing and the requisition of -- and/or the requisition of the bombs which does not happen overnight. it is the hiding of them. it's the ability to plan that many individuals, simultaneously. i mean, these things, and let's put right on israel's border. we're not talking about a foreign terrorist organization in afghanistan planning an attack in the united states. israel is well-known for its signal intelligence. it's well-known for its infiltration of hamas, paying members of hamas to get enforcing. and so the planning would have been months. they clearly also targeted a particular day. the anniversary of the yom kip

pukippur war, and an anniversar, this is not an uprising, this is a coordinated attack. to what you're saying, this is not just an intelligence failure, it is an everything failure. it is before it happened, while it's happening and the hours after, for a country that everyone had looked at as being, you know, choose your verb, right, the harshest, the best counterterrorism efforts in that area. >> and we had beth saner, the former deputy director of national intelligence on earlier, why she thinks the hostages taken, all these civilians in addition to members of the israeli military. kids. we had a mom on earlier who had two of her kids were taken hostage and she's just beside herself. why do you think they took all

these hospital stages? we don't know -- hostages? do you agree with beth saner is that it's just an act of terror, it's just about terrorizing the israeli people. >> yes, it's similar to 9/11. they want a lot of people watching. they wanted those videos of those individuals, the young women, the children being taken the horrifying five that is probably in store for them if they are still alive. they want to have to make -- they want israel to have to make a calculation that no country wants to ever make about how aggressive you go and the possibility that your own civilians will be killed in that process. and knowing what we know now about potentially israel's lack of intelligence about what's going on in gaza. and with hamas. means that they may be going in without much clarity about where people are. this is exactly why they did it.

they wanted to put some sort of barrier some sort of check on what's clearly going to be. because it's already been announced a very aggressive air and eventually we assume ground war by israel. so that's the nature of it. look, they want people watching horrified. that is the nature of the kind of terror that israel and the world faces. >> john i'm told your sound is now working. where do you think the u.s. and intelligence communities going to be most directly looking at in terms of trying to figure out the blind spots that they had? >> well, i think they're going to be looking at what did we miss? how did we miss it? and, you know, as general clapper pointed out earlier, we have been there before. the real thing is now is not the time. this is the time when we need orefocus on collection, analysis and finding actual intelligence. that's what the israelis need to

do which is not time to get into the blame game. they got to keep their intell people focused, they have got to get to that later, they will and it's important but over the next few days what they have to be looking at is we've got this problem we're focused on in the souse by the coast, we have to watch out for a potential hezbollah incursions as an iranian proxy from the north and we need to make sure that we have forces that are available to be up there without stripping everything to one location. they've got to be looking at their punishment operation that they are organizing in retaliation for this surprise attack but they also have to be mindful of as juliet pointed out a minute ago, what about these hostages? and where will they be held? and will they be used not just as bargaining chips but as human shields at places that are the new or alternate command and

control locations for hamas. so they have a lot on their plate in the next few days. >> how much do you think the iranians played a role in planning this operation? >> that's a really interesting question. because by doing nothing, the iranians have a role in it. they bankroll hamas by, you know, amounts of $100 million a year. they give them the design for these missiles. they teach them to build them in factories. so iran's hand is always there. the real question is, because of our intelligence collection on iran, which is usually pretty effective, the operational security of this operation given the scale of it by land by sea by air, by incursion into israeli towns was on such a scale that secrecy here on the hamas part was paramount. it's not just annal intelligence fail gr -- failure on israel,

jordan, united states, all that pool intelligence, but a success on the fact of operational security, bringing iran in operationally could have added to that risk. so i'm sure iran is poised to do help right now with cyber attacks if they haven't already been involved in the cyber attacks and in other ways especially with their proxies like hezbollah. >> thank you, appreciate it. as many as a thousand took place on the attack, we'll be back in a second on military perspective on how israel might respond. stay with us.

>> good evening, i'm jake tapper, bark with our special coverage of israel at war. friements benjamin netanyahu declared war after hamas terrorists launched an attack an the jewish holy day. shoot being civilians, kidnapping many civilians along with israeli soldiers. the death toll is expected to rise, at least 300 descraims

were killed and 1500 injured. israel has been firing back overnight with strikes in gaza in the region, day is now beginning to break. the state of israel since its founding in 1948 is widely known to have some of the most sophisticatemilitary and intelligence capabilities of any country in the region. it has thwarted museum russ plots over the years and with american funding assistance its iron dome has given israelis some sense of security from air attacks. this time of course hamas went decidedly low tech in many ways, using bulldozers, gunmen using paragliders, motorcycles, a multipronged attack as we know, where they didn't see coming in any way. let's bring in military senate cedric lydon and orrin leaderman. who was our israeli

correspondent. orrin, one of the reasons for the response of idf israel defense forces, took so long was that so much of the idf is on the eastern part of israel in the west bank, protecting settlers, you know, and a whole geopolitical part of that. instead of on the western part of the country, and i mean this -- what's your response? is that accurate? >> i can't say exactly where the idf has positioned their forces. they are not about to say we have x number here and y number here. but where we have seen the idf, they have deployed rently, that's where we have seen their focus. and now when you ask the question do they have the forces to stop this on gaza that answer is a resounding no. and it wasn't just the failure

of intelligence to see it coming, it was the failure of military to stop it once it started and the failure of the military to respond. sure there are israel air strikes in gaza but, the forces simply aren't there. >> and we see reports from israelis on the ground, saying it took hours and hours and hours before the idf was there to rescue them. and they only recently were able to take back some of these towns and kibitzes. >> from what we are seeing, that gets to quickly how hamas struck, and how up to a thousand hamas terrorists could cross the boarder across what was sossed to be a smart border, with motion detecters and motion sensors, stop tunneling, they came together with bulldozers and paragliders and by the sea.

>> we don't know how it started, where it's going to end or where it's headed right now. israel is -- i don't know if you heard the israeli military spokesman earlier today, said, netanyahu said, any innocent palestinians get out of gaza or from the areas that hamas hides. hamas is embedded in the civilian population, palestinians in gaza there is nowhere to go, they can't get out. it's an open air tbriz on. -- friz on. >> it's unrealistic. what that seems to indicate to me jake is the descraims are planning some kind of attack that will go after what they think are the command and control nodes of the hamas leadership. now as you absolutely correctly said all those command and control nodes, all those places where they have their offices where they live it's all among the rest of the population. >> he said it too. >> they are all there.

there is no way that they can avoid civilian casualties in a scenario like that. so what the israelis could be doing is they could try to at least threaten this. there will be air strikes for sure. there could be some ground incursions into gaza. they may try to seal off the tunnels. they may try to do some other things there but the tunnels weren't what was used in this particular case it looks like right now. and so what they'll have to do is they'll have to perhaps have some limited incursions but the thing they're going to have to really watch for is how are they going to get the hostages back? that is going the to be i think one of the most difficult things for them to deal with on the israeli side at this point. >> egypt could help at this point but per ush not any of the other arab countries want to be a solution. >> what we saw were much smaller escalations, egypt stepped in along with the eun, they could

be ended pretty -- u.n, how plays that role now, secretary of state antony blinken is trying. but i don't know if diplomatic calls are cutting offer in some fashion. >> you were our jerusalem guy now you're our pentagon guy. have you heard? >> where this goes from here, i don't know that the u.s. knows that yet, trarchgly i don't know that israel knows that answer yet but it all depends on what's your goal in gaza and that's incredibly difficult and israel knows that and as colonel layton pointed out, any calculation you trite itry to make. >> the goal is they want to get rid of hamas. they no longer containing hamas,

they want to end hamas. >> i think that's an impossible goal frankly jake. hamas is embedded in gaza, you also have a situation where the whole educational structure, the whole social structure is really interwoven with hamas and other groups like it and those groups this connections to places like iran, connections to places beyond that so it's going to be a real problem for them to do anything like this. this is going to be a sociological way. >> we are in israel next on how the country is retaliating on the attack unlike any it has ever seen before. stay with us.

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the duckduckgo browser has privacy built-in. it comes with a private alternative to google search, which doesn■t spy on your searches, and it blocks cookies and creepy ads. and there's no catch. it's free. we make money from ads, but they don't follow you around. join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on mobile and desktop today. >> today's unprecedented terrorist attack was market by hamas crossing israel's southern border with gaza, storming israeli towns and kibitzes and killing soldiers and civilians alike. towns such as zikim. nick robertson is in zikim right now, you can see it in the map

there, it is the northern most dot on the map north of gaza. nick, it's sunrise there in gaza north of gaza. what is the situation like there as the new day begins? >> yeah, there's a sense that we're seeing a little more buildup of the israeli military forces. we've seen the tanks gone in. we've talk about that. we have seen a few howwitzers, military tanks going. in. with daylight there are people here come here to see their team. a gentleman standing right behind me here is he wants to get in touch with his son and his former partner, his former wife, who are in the communities close to gaza. these are areas that the israeli defense forces believe that they have secured, the police station this sterot was secured a few

hours earlier. it's still hard to get in touch with their loved ones. we see a few people showing up at this checkpoint asking for permission to go through. that isn't happening yet. this is still a controlled zone jake. >> have you heard from people there what they've been through? >> we haven't been able to get in there yet. we believe that some people have been coming out on buses, the israeli defense torses helping them evacuate the area. we do hope to be able to get into some of those communities later but it is not clear when we'll get the access. at the monetize we haven't talked to the people who have gone through the horrendous and horrific experience, about 24 hours ago this all unfolded. >> nick robertson.

thank you so much. let's bring in ted deutsche, the ceo of the american jewish committee, a tomorrower democratic congressman from florida and a lifelong pro-israel activist. we're not going to show the video because it's so disturbing, it shows an unconscious israeli woman being paraded around by hamas terrorists. one of the terrorists has his leg draped over her waist, another holds a clumplet of her -- clump of her hair. he is heard yelling, ala akhbar. i'm sure you've seen some of these horrific videos on social media and other media outlets today. what is your reaction to any of the others you've seen.

>> thanks jake i have seen a video and i've seen a number of the others. look, what happened in israel is nothing short of a pogrom. you know what that is, i know what that is, throughout the history of the jewish people. these are massacres of jews, this terrorist group went into israel and slaughtered 300 israelis. for perspective, israel is a small country you know that. in perspective, that would be if 10,000 americans were slaughtered. and the barbarity and the brutality that we witnessed in videos like this, and in the stories that we've heard from friends and relatives in israel, and again, small country, small jewish community around the world. so many of us have been in constant contact with people that we know across israel.

this horrific action was carried out by a terror group that has no -- that was intent on trying to do something horrific and slaughtering jews. i'll just say this: what that shows is the difference between this terror group and what we're going to see in the coming days and as i'll point out jake, the fact is that going forward israel is going to take the necessary action to protect its citizens just like any other country in the world would. just like any person around the world would expect from its leadership. and every, every casualty, everywhere fatality in that battle as a result of what happened by hamas is hamas's fault. but the israeli soldiers will regret every loss of life these hamas thugs, these terrorists, these disgusting awful attackers, they relish in it and the desecration of bodies and the threement of live bods, the

hostages that are now in gaza and the parading around of dead bodies as well, it's disgusting, it is something that every person who has some sense of decency around the world should look at. the reason why so many world leaders are standing firmly and clearly with israel as we all should. >> when you were a member of the house of representatives, you were senior member of the house affairs committee, you would have been privy to some u.s. intelligence. what do you make of the fact that neither u.s. nor israeli intelligence had any idea this was coming? >> jake, when i chaired the middle east subcommittee or the ten years i would have responded exactly the way i've responding now. there will be plenty of opportunities to try to figure out what happened here. but i'm respectfully going to suggest that this isn't that time. this is a moment when one of our closest allies, a country that

sits in a place that is exposed to dangerous regimes, is under attack. that's what happened yet. again, i think there will be lots of -- i know throughout the day there have been people trying to figure out exactly what happened here. it's a really important exercise but we need to focus on what's happening at the moment and that's the fact that this terror army came in, has now launched over 5,000 rockets all across israel, 1900 plus the 2,000 people already acknowledged to be injured and reservists from around the country. some multiple generations within the same family being called up in the citizens army that israel has to defend their country. that's what we're focused on at the moment. >> what do you think congress can do without a speaker of the house? obviously, israel is going to want aid, help, additional supplies, the former ambassador

michael orrin was on earlier saying that one of the things that the u.s. often does in situations like this is help with ammunition. replenish, help israel replenish ammunition and then israel pays it back at a later point in time. but right now there is literally no speaker of the house and it is unclear how congress, which the house obviously as you know needs to be the first one to begin the process of authorizing any aid package to any other country. what happens? >> yeah, i -- obviously, obviously i don't know exactly how that will work out. i do know, a couple of things, though. in terms of how congress and the white house are approaching this. we heard in congress from greg mitz, i think he made clear in your conversation with him in

ongoing discussions he is having with leadership i have no idea how, but i do know that the statements from a huge number of members of congress, the house and senate, just like leaders around the world have been incredibly supportive of israel in the face of this horrific attack. and most importantly secretary austin and the president of united states made clear at the commitment of the united states to israel security. i don't know. there are a lot of things i don't know about what's happening in congress. jake, we're all trying to figure that out. there's never been a moment where the speaker of the house has been kicked out. that's something that the integral politics of which they'll have to figure out. but at a moment like this when a close ally is facing the kind of risks in the aftermath of this -- this really terrible massacre, we're going to have to figure out how to do that, and

congress will have to figure it out, and i look forward to the conversation i'll be having with former colleagues, republicans and democrats alike, who are dedicated to doing what's necessary to stand with our allies. >> former congressman ted deutsch, thank you for your time. appreciate it. coming up next it was supposed to be an all night dance party celebrating the jewish holiday but it turned into a dawn of terror. our coverage of israel at war continues. stay with us.

in a matter of just minutes the citizens of israel went from enjoying their lives to fleeing in terror as dawn broke today. hundreds of young people were attending a music festival on some rural farmland near the israel gaza border. you can see in this cellphone video the confusion as they began hearing sirens and then rockets. confusion that quickly turned into panic. a frantic dash for their lives. it was supposed to be an all night dance party celebrating the joyous holiday. instead you see cars packed with

terrified young people snarled in traffic. the woman who took this video tells us she's still trying to get in touch with friends who were at the festival. and just a few moments ago we heard new explosions in gaza city just before 7:00 a.m. take a listen. our reporters on the ground are working to get the latest details in cnn's continuing coverage of what's going on in the region. we'll have much more after this break.