Israeli Military Intelligence Goes Back to Basics With Focus on Spies, Not Tech

Humiliated by the Hamas attack that devastated Israel 22 months ago, the country’s military intelligence agency is undergoing a reckoning. The service is making profound changes, including reviving an Arabic-language recruitment program for high school students and training all troops in Arabic and Islam.

The plan is to rely less on technology and instead build a cadre of spies and analysts with a broad knowledge of dialects — Yemeni, Iraqi, Gazan — as well as a firm grasp of radical Islamic doctrines and discourse.