Hi, it's Diane. On my mind, Israel's war with Hamas. The Israeli military continues

at devastating bombardment of the Gaza Strip with airstrikes flattening entire neighborhoods.

Forces have also cut off all supplies to the area as troops gather for a likely ground invasion.

This is an retaliation for the attack by Hamas in Israeli territory. At least 1,300 are dead

and social media is built with images of intense brutality against civilians.

I think we're still in this period of grief.

Daniel Kerter is former US ambassador to both Israel and Egypt. Currently professor of

Middle East policy studies at Princeton. He joined me to help give context to the tragic

events unfolding in the Middle East. Dan, one of the questions I've heard most discussed

about this horrific attack on Israel by Hamas is why? How did the Israelis not know it was coming?

What's your response to that? I think there's several factors Diane that account for what has

clearly been a huge intelligence operational and political failure. On the intelligence side,

I think Israel got caught up in what might be called a mistaken conception. The idea that

Hamas would be a better partner than the PLO in that Hamas was not looking for a political outcome.

They seemed to be mostly interested in governing in Gaza,

in increasing their support in the West Bank. You saw over the last few years Israeli leaders

believed that they could arrange with Hamas what's called a Houdna, a long-term ceasefire.

That was a misconception that took hold. Hamas played out its own deception very effectively,

playing into the Israeli misconception. You had this perfect storm of circumstances that led

to the operational failure where the Israeli army just wasn't prepared. We haven't seen

the full reports of what happened, but clearly there were not enough army units in the area of Gaza.

The response time to what happened was amazing, eight in 10 and 12 hours, just to try to rescue

...