Where were the Israeli Defense Forces, in those long hours as Hamas zealots floated at will around communities near Gaza, some are asking.
" The army fully failed as a quick- response force," one Israeli said, pointing to how some of the communities that came under attack had to calculate on their own mercenary protection forces while they awaited for the service to arrive.
The full answer of why this happed will take some time to crop . But it seems as if surprise, scale and speed overwhelmed defences which were patchy and unrehearsed for what they faced.
Surprise was pivotal in Hamas's assault.
Israeli intelligence failed to get inside the planning by Hamas for the attack. The group seems to have accepted a long- term programme of deception to give the print it was unable or unintentional to launch an ambitious attack.
It also rehearsed good functional security, presumably keeping off electronic dispatches.
Hamas also reckoned on the unknown scale and speed of what came next.
Thousands of rockets were launched as cover. But there were also drone strikes on the monitoring outfit that Israel uses on the border hedge to watch what's passing. Heavy snares and vehicles also created as numerous as 80 breaches in the security hedge.
Motorised hang- gliders and motorbikes were also involved, as between 800 and 1,000 fortified men swamped out of Gaza to attack multiple spots.
These swarming tactics feel to have succeeded in inviting Israel's defences- at least for a while.
Such a range of exertion would have led to chaos within Israel's command and control centres, formerly quiet on a Saturday morning which was also a religious vacation.
Some of the Hamas fighters targeted mercenary communities while others targeted military posts. There has been shock that these posts were so smoothly- defended that they could be overrun, with images posted of Israeli tanks in Hamas hands.
And the holes in the border remained open for long enough to allow hostages to be taken into Gaza before tanks were ultimately used to close them up.
Defences feel to have been patchy- Israeli security and defence forces had in recent months been more focused on the West Bank rather than Gaza, potentially leaving gaps. And Hamas may have counted on the divisions in Israeli society over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's programs to further distract the security establishment.
Israel's service and intelligence capability has long been rated as the stylish in the Middle East and one of the stylish in the world. But they may also have undervalued the capacities of their opponents.
The attacks have been compared to those of9/11 in the US, when no- bone
had prognosticated that aeroplanes
could be used as munitions. That was frequently called a" failure of imagination".
And a analogous failure of imagination may also be one of the issues for Israel, leaving it unrehearsed for commodity so ambitious from its adversary.
Those enterprises will clearly be part of the long- term inquiries that will probably take place. In the short term however, the focus will be on working out what to do coming rather than looking back.