The Devil's Advocate Unit (, ''Makhleket HaBakara'' – lit. "the comptroller department")" is a small unit in the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate. Its purpose is to evaluate intelligence assumptions and products in a professional and critical manner, including serving as the "

Devil's advocate The (Latin for Devil's advocate) is a former official position within the Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith: one who "argued against the canonization (sainthood) of a candidate to uncover any character flaws or misrepresentation of th ...

" or the "Ifcha Mistabra" (

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

- lit. "appears to be the opposite") function. This means examining unlikely scenarios and questioning common assumptions of the Research Department as well as proposing adversarial evaluations. The unit works as an independent part of the Research Department. The Devil's Advocate Unit was founded after the

Yom Kippur War The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was fought from 6 to 25 October 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states led by Egypt and S ...

as part of the implementation of the

Agranat Commission The Agranat Commission (Hebrew: ועדת אגרנט) was a National Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate failings in the Israel Defense Forces in the prelude to the Yom Kippur War when Israel was found unprepared for the Egyptian attack a ...

recommendations. The head of the unit is a

Colonel Colonel ( ; abbreviated as Col., Col, or COL) is a senior military Officer (armed forces), officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a colon ...

( Aluf Mishne) that operates directly under the head of Military Intelligence Directorate and not under the head of the Research Department. Notable previous heads of this unit are Yaakov Amidror and

Amos Gilad Amos Gilad (; January 23, 1941–December 2010) was an Israeli Olympic runner. When he competed in the Olympics, he was tall, and weighed . Running career Gilad won the Israeli 800 m national championships in 1961 (1:56.5) and 1962 (2:00.6). I ...

. In 2008, the head of the unit was quoted as saying that there are not many cases where the Devil's Advocate evaluation turned out to hold. An exception is Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon. Intelligence evaluations predicted

Gog and Magog Gog and Magog (; ) or Ya'juj and Ma'juj () are a pair of names that appear in the Bible and the Quran, Qur'an, variously ascribed to individuals, tribes, or lands. In Ezekiel 38, Gog is an individual and Magog is his land. By the time of the New ...

in the north, and the unit has said that

Hezbollah Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...

will keep things quiet, which turned out to be mostly the case until 2006. A plot element in the 2006 novel

World War Z ''World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War'' is a 2006 zombie apocalyptic horror novel written by American author Max Brooks. The novel is broken into eight chapters: “Warnings”, “Blame”, “The Great Panic”, “Turning the Tid ...

(as well as in the 2013 film adaption) is based upon the Israeli Devil's Advocate Office. In 2024 it was revealed that the unit tried repeatedly to warn of a possible Hamas attack before the 7 October 2023 attack, writing directly to all senior decision-makers in the army and the political echelon on September 21 and 26, 2023.

References

{{Reflist Military units and formations of Israel Military intelligence