While Israel Slept by Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot

While Israel Slept by Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot
Yaakov Katz
Amir Bohbot

Forthcoming | September 2, 2025

While Israel Slept | How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East by Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot delivers a gripping investigation into how misjudgments and complacency led to one of Israel’s darkest days.

A powerful indictment of the political and military decisions that led to October 7.

While Israel Slept tells the gripping inside story of how Hamas, Israel’s weakest enemy, succeeded in launching a surprise attack on one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Through a detailed examination of the events leading up to October 7, 2023, the book exposes the intelligence and strategic failures that enabled this devastating invasion. It takes readers back in time, showing how years of complacency, mistaken intelligence analysis, and a misguided policy of containment enabled Hamas to prepare for an assault that Israel did not believe was possible and that would change the Middle East.

The book unveils the dramatic events of the night before the attack, highlighting the cracks in Israel’s military and political leadership. It provides unprecedented details on how key warnings were missed, and how Israel ignored the growing threat from Hamas, believing that the group was weak and deterred. By exposing these failures, While Israel Slept offers a stark, sobering account of how overconfidence and complacency paved the way for disaster, while underscoring the critical lessons Israel must embrace to safeguard its future.

Yaakov Katz is Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post. He previously served for nearly a decade as the paper’s military reporter and defense analyst and is the co-author of the books The Weapon Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower and Israel vs. Iran: The Shadow War. Prior to taking up the role of Editor-in-Chief, Katz served for two years as a senior policy adviser to Israel’s Minister of Economy and Minister of Diaspora Affairs. In 2013, Katz was one of 12 international fellows to spend a year at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Originally from Chicago, Katz also has a law degree from Bar Ilan University. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four children.

Amir Bohbot is the military editor and senior defense analyst for Walla, Israel’s leading news website. Amir previously covered military affairs for Maariv, one of Israel’s high-circulation daily newspapers, where he worked for 12 years. Bohbot is a popular lecturer on security and defense issues in Israel and is often interviewed by local radio and TV news stations. Bohbot has a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Ben-Gurion University and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Intelligence Studies at Bar Ilan University. He lives in Lehavim with his wife and their three children.

  • ISBN-13: 978-1250345684
  • ISBN-10: 1250345685
  • 336 pages
  • Forthcoming | September 2, 2025

Published by: St. Martin’s Press