Did Israel Possess Foreknowledge of Recent Attacks?

Suspicious Stock Market Activity and Ignored Warnings Abound

Photo by Raimond Klavins via Unsplash

Over the last century or more, a clear pattern has emerged each time a significant war breaks out, particularly one in which the West chooses to intervene either directly or indirectly.

First, we are bombarded with propaganda, usually showing atrocities and rhetoric meant to ignite righteous indignation in the masses, all while key context is completely ignored.

Second, our tax dollars inevitably fund an unacceptable number of civilian casualties in whichever region the given conflict is occurring in. As one example among many, consider the murder of two Reuters reporters by a US Apache attack helicopter, as revealed by Wikileaks.

Third, once sufficient wealth has been generated and whatever unspoken goals are achieved, the media begins to shift its reporting from high-intensity war propaganda to a more balanced perspective, and eventually, when the public has reached a point where the anti-war rhetoric is palpable, the media starts to subtly become critical of the war, acting as though they were never the engine that fueled public support.

And we’d be remiss not to mention the fourth phase, where all the big-money vultures start circling the war-torn region, raking in extremely lucrative contracts for the rebuilding process.

This is exactly the phase that the conflict in Ukraine is heading into.

Aleksander Soros recently met with Ukrainian President Zelensky to reaffirm the commitment of his Open Society Foundations, Ukraine’s largest independent financier.

In addition to the Open Society, prominent Wall Street financial institutions, including BlackRock and JPMorgan, are reportedly preparing to “mobilize capital from private and public sector investors toward rebuilding the Ukrainian economy” in anticipation of a lucrative windfall when post-conflict reconstruction endeavors commence.

Almost every significant conflict that the West has intervened in has followed the pattern I've just outlined. The taxes paid by the already downtrodden citizens of the United States fund the killing of innocent people, the sending of young soldiers to their deaths, and the devastation of towns and cities. All of this goes on while the ruling class—which upholds Western hegemony—is totally protected from the negative impacts of the conflict.

Many in the America First group are fully aware that war is a racket and a very powerful tool in the hands of any nation's governing class. I foolishly believed that the Right had learned from the mistakes of the War on Terror when there was strong opposition from modern republicans at the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, but for some reason, cries to ‘flatten Gaza’ and the same crazed zeal that emerged after 9/11 are still present.

Why should we treat the war between Israel and Hamas any differently than any other recent war? Why do House Republicans believe that the effective genocide in Gaza is more worthy of our tax dollars than Ukraine? Is it because the Bible doesn’t say that Ukraine will expand to include Crimea?

In the days leading up to the massacre that claimed more than 1,400 lives, Egypt reportedly warned that “something big” was coming, yet no precautions were taken by Israel to bolster defenses. It is said that Israel maintains one of the most fortified borders on the planet, but somehow, amidst warnings, they allowed a massive breach to occur at the expense of hundreds of innocent lives.

In the days following the attack, Israeli forces took their revenge many times over. Calls from United States neoconservatives like Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham to “flatten Gaza” and to “finish them” stoked age-old fires of animosity between Israel and Palestine, and allowed Israel the perfect pretext to engage in something they’ve long planned, expanding itself throughout the Middle East.

The parallels between October 7th and September 11th abound, as most recently, we’ve seen evidence that financial elements in Israel likely had either the devils luck, or had prior knowledge of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

It was reported that their success surprised even Hamas operatives. After a certain point, they essentially ran out of plan because they had not anticipated being able to advance so far into Tel Aviv.

Since October 7, numerous reports have emerged that unequivocally demonstrate that Tel Aviv was the recipient of numerous warnings and possessed intelligence; thus, its extensive security and military apparatus responsibilities could have – and should have – anticipated the attack. This raises the evident question of why it was allowed to happen, regardless.

Suspicious Israeli Stock Market Activity

The results of a recent academic study are startling and controversial, to say the least.

The precarious Israeli stock market activity observed in the days leading up to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 suggests that a specific, nameless entity possessed knowledge of the impending assault and exploited the ensuing hysteria for personal gain.

The paper, authored by Robert J. Jackson Jr. and Joshua Mitts of New York University School of Law, concludes that unidentified individuals were cognizant of the impending operation and intended to illicitly profit, as evidenced by a “significant spike” in short selling of listed Israeli companies. (By short selling, or shorting, investors wager that a particular stock will underperform and profit if their prediction is accurate.)

Contrary to conventional trading, shorting is an exceedingly uncommon practice, and justifiably so. Numerous investment advisors caution against the practice under all circumstances, as breaches of projected poor performance can result in enormous losses.

Remarkably, the researchers discovered that the volume of short selling on Israeli companies in the days leading up to October 7 “far exceeded short selling that occurred during numerous other periods of crisis, including the recession following the financial crisis, the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Now, Israeli authorities are investigating the allegations made by the U.S. researchers:

Research by law professors Robert Jackson Jr from New York University and Joshua Mitts of Columbia University found significant short-selling of shares leading up to the attacks, which triggered a war nearly two months old.

“Days before the attack, traders appeared to anticipate the events to come,” they wrote, citing short interest in the MSCI Israel Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that “suddenly, and significantly, spiked” on Oct. 2 based on data from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

“And just before the attack, short selling of Israeli securities on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) increased dramatically,” they wrote in their 66-page report.

The TASE subsequently directed Reuters to the Israel Securities Authority, which issued the following statement: “The matter is known to the authority and is under investigation by all the relevant parties.”

The securities regulator’s spokesperson refrained from providing further details, and the Israeli police did not respond promptly either.

They wrote that Leumi (LUMI.TA), the largest bank in Israel, generated profits of $3.2 billion shekels ($862 million) from the additional short-selling of 4.43 million new shares sold short between September 14 and October 5.

“Although we see no aggregate increase in shorting of Israeli companies on U.S. exchanges, we do identify a sharp and unusual increase, just before the attacks, in trading in risky short-dated options on these companies expiring just after the attacks,” they said.

“Our findings suggest that traders informed about the coming attacks profited from these tragic events, and consistent with prior literature we show that trading of this kind occurs in gaps in U.S. and international enforcement of legal prohibitions on informed trading.”

The academics concluded: “Our evidence is consistent with informed traders anticipating and profiting from the Hamas attack.”

Aside from concerns regarding the paper’s potential to skew profit totals, this finding is exceedingly persuasive. A multitude of datasets examined extensively demonstrate that there was, in fact, a “significant spike” in short selling immediately preceding Operation Al-Aqsa Flood – and one that was extremely dubious, to say the least.

Prior to the attack, the shorting of dozens of Israeli companies listed on the Tel Aviv stock exchange “significantly increased.”

From September 14 to October 5, 4.43 million new shares were shorted on a single company. Additionally, just prior to the attacks, there was an “abnormal and sudden increase” in U.S. exchanges in the volume of extremely risky short-dated options placed on Israeli equities. These options expired almost immediately after the attack began.

In a similar vein, the shorting of the MSCI Israel Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), which is a passive investment vehicle that mirrors the overall performance of the Israeli stock exchange, “suddenly, and significantly, spiked” on October 2. In the 3,570 trading days preceding Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, this was the 30th-highest daily shorting volume ever witnessed by the ETF, according to the authors. In other terms, it was one of the largest wagers placed since 2009 on the underperformance of the Israeli stock exchange.

Israeli stock shorting at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which momentarily precipitated one of the largest global stock market catastrophes in history, was “significantly” dwarfed by this shorting. A “largest intraday trading decline ever recorded” occurred in March 2020, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 2000 points, evaporating trillions of dollars from the global economy.

The authors’ conclusion is unsurprising:

“It is extremely unlikely that the volume of short selling on October 2nd occurred by random chance.”

The identification of “similar patterns” in the trading of the Israeli ETF in April 2023, precisely when Hamas was reportedly preparing to launch a similar attack, is an additional compelling finding. The strike, which had been scheduled to closely mirror the events of October, was canceled when Tel Aviv publicly issued a national alert level in response to Israeli intelligence agencies gaining advance notice.

The attack was timed to start on the eve of Passover, April 5. Two days earlier, the shorting of the Israeli ETF “peaked … at levels very similar to those observed” on October 2. The recorded volume “was far higher (by an order of magnitude) than other days prior:”

This evidence strengthens the interpretation that the trading observed in October and April was related to the Hamas attack, rather than random noise.”

Based on publicly available data, it is currently unclear exactly who was responsible for this conduct. Nonetheless, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority will be aware of their names.

In order to "[understand] why, and how, financial markets may have anticipated" the events on October 7, the authors of the article advise these agencies to go further.

We have no comment about ideas claiming that Tel Aviv deliberately allowed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood to occur in order to create a pretext for carrying out the horrifying genocide that is taking place in Gaza. It's possible that Israel's laziness and a real "intelligence failure" of historic proportions are to blame for the attack's success, but if we look at events like 9-11 and the Gulf of Tonkin, it is not out of hand to wonder if there were ulterior motives at play.

Badlands Media articles and features represent the opinions of the contributing authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Badlands Media itself.

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