One week after Hezbollah's retaliation, head of Unit 8200 to resign

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Israeli media
1 Sep 2024 16:19
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Yossi Sariel will resign from his position as head of the Israeli regime's top intelligence-gathering unit, according to Walla.

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Palestinians wave their flag and celebrate on a destroyed Israeli Merkava tank in eastern Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, in Palestine, on October 7, 2023. (AP)

The chief of the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) Unit 8200 and architect of their military's Artificial Intelligence (AI), Brigadier General Yossi Sariel, is expected to resign in the upcoming weeks, according to a report by the Israeli news website Walla.

Nearly 11 months after Sariel's unit failed to warn the Israeli military command of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, the general is finally resigning.

"The unit that has become an international brand is supposed to undergo rehabilitation after the great crisis," an Israeli security official told Walla.

The Military Intelligence Directorate's Unit 8200, known for its expertise in signal intelligence (SIGINT) and code decryption, counterintelligence, cyber warfare, military intelligence, and surveillance, plays a pivotal role in Israeli security and is comparable to the United States National Security Agency (NSA).

Unit 8200 is also the IOF's largest intelligence collector and has seen a revolutionary upheaval under Sariel, who pushed for the integration of AI into the force's function. Renowned for his work within intelligence circles, Sariel has made a series of blunders that have cast a grim shadow over his career in the Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman).

Not only had Sariel failed to take the appropriate security measures prior to October 7, but he had also mistakenly revealed his identity to the public. The head of Unit 8200 and other top commanders of strategic units in the IOF are kept a top secret. However, a mistake made by Sariel himself at an earlier time nullified the effects of Israeli protocols.

After keeping his identity a secret for nearly two decades, Sariel doxxed himself after publishing a book under a pen name. The "embarrassing security lapse" saw Sariel, previously known as Brigadier General Y, publish a book on Amazon, leaving a digital trail to his private Google account created in his name, along with his unique ID and links to the account's maps and calendar profiles, The Guardian reported earlier this year.

Aman's head of the Research Division, Brigadier General Amit Saar, had also been subject to criticism over the failure to warn and take action against the October 7 operation and resigned in April this year, citing illness.

It is also worth noting that the headquarters of Unit 8200 came under a drone attack by Hezbollah on August 25, in a response launched by the Islamic Resistance against the Israeli regime for the assassination of top commander martyr Sayyed Fouad Shokor in late July.