Blaming military echelon, Smotrich says he didn’t know what Nukhba unit was before Oct. 7

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says he didn’t know there was such thing as a Nukhba Force before October 7, referring to Hamas’s special forces unit.

The far-right minister blames what he says was the poor relationship between the political and military echelons, which left the former “isolated” and uninformed about Israel’s security challenges.

Press stories about Hamas’s Nukhba unit have gone back years, though.

“I did not know that there was such a thing as the Nukhba unit before October 7, and I am one of the people who invests in my position on the security cabinet and regularly read and review materials. I did not know a quarter of the infrastructure that existed in Lebanon for Hezbollah’s Radwan force. This was not brought to our attention. There are huge information gaps,” he says during an appearance at a conference of the Yesha settler lobby group, claiming the military echelon’s leaders regularly disobey the political leadership.