"They breached Israel’s borders at over 30 locations,
disabled robotic machine guns,
took control of major roadways,
brazenly attacked military bases
and invaded neighborhoods.
Gunmen killed and kidnapped hundreds of people unimpeded for
hours.
Again and again, one thing is missing from the picture: the
Israeli army.
Where Was the Israeli Military?
Far beneath the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv,
in a bunker known as The Pit, commanders were trying to make sense of reports
of Hamas rocket fire in southern Israel early on the morning of Oct. 7, when
the call came in.
It was a commander from the division that oversees military
operations along the border with Gaza. Their base was under attack. The
commander could not describe the scope of the attack or provide more details,
according to a military official with knowledge of the call. But he asked that
all available reinforcements be sent.
At 7:43 a.m., more than an hour after the rocket assault
began and thousands of Hamas fighters stormed into Israel, The Pit issued its
first deployment instructions of the day. It ordered all emergency forces to
head south, along with all available units that could do so quickly.
But the nation’s military leaders did not yet recognize that
an invasion of Israel was already well underway.
Hours later, desperate Israeli citizens were still fending
for themselves and calling for help. Roughly 1,200 people died as the Middle
East’s most advanced military failed in its essential mission: protecting
Israeli lives.
Image
Civilians killed by Palestinian militants lay covered in
Sderot, Israel, on Oct. 7.Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
The full reasons behind the military’s slow response may
take months to understand. The government has promised an inquiry. But a New
York Times investigation found that Israel’s military was undermanned, out of
position and so poorly organized that soldiers communicated in impromptu
WhatsApp groups and relied on social media posts for targeting information.
Commandos rushed into battle armed only for brief combat. Helicopter pilots
were ordered to look to news reports and Telegram channels to choose targets.
And perhaps most damning: The Israel Defense Forces did not
even have a plan to respond to a large-scale Hamas attack on Israeli soil,
according to current and former soldiers and officers. If such a plan existed
on a shelf somewhere, the soldiers said, no one had trained on it and nobody
followed it. The soldiers that day made it up as they went along.
“In practice, there wasn’t the right defensive preparation,
no practice, and no equipping and building strength for such an operation,”
said Yom Tov Samia, a major general in the Israeli reserves and former head of
the military’s Southern Command.
“There was no defense plan for a surprise attack such as the
kind we have seen on Oct. 7,” said Amir Avivi, a brigadier general in the
reserves and a former deputy commander of the Gaza Division, which is
responsible for protecting the region.
That lack of preparation is at odds with a founding
principle of Israeli military doctrine. From the days of David Ben-Gurion,
Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, the goal was to always be
on the offensive — to anticipate attacks and fight battles in enemy territory.
In response to a series of questions from The Times,
including why soldiers and officers alike said there had been no plan, the
Israel Defense Forces replied: “The I.D.F. is currently focused on eliminating
the threat from the terrorist organization Hamas. Questions of this kind will
be looked into at a later stage.”
The Times investigation is based on internal Israeli
government documents and a review of the military’s cache of materials, known
as Pandora, that contains tens of thousands of videos, including footage from
body cameras worn by terrorists and closed-circuit surveillance cameras. The
Times interviewed dozens of officers, enlisted troops and eyewitnesses, some of
whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
publicly about military operations.
The documents and interviews revealed new details about the
attack, including military assessments and orders like the one given by The Pit
early that morning. Taken together, they show that much of the military failure
was due to the lack of a plan, coupled with a series of intelligence missteps
in the months and years before the attack.
Israeli security and military agencies produced repeated
assessments that Hamas was neither interested in nor capable of launching a
massive invasion. The authorities clung to that optimistic view even when
Israel obtained Hamas battle plans that revealed an invasion was precisely what
Hamas was planning.
The decisions, in retrospect, are tinged with hubris. The
notion that Hamas could execute an ambitious attack was seen as so unlikely
that Israeli intelligence officials even reduced eavesdropping on Hamas radio
traffic, concluding that it was a waste of time.
None of the officers interviewed, including those stationed
along the border, could recall discussions or training based on a plan to repel
such an assault.
“As far as I recall, there was no such plan,” said Yaakov
Amidror, a retired Israeli general and a former national security adviser to
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The army does not prepare itself for things
it thinks are impossible.”
Image
Hamas teams breached the Israel-Gaza border fence in dozens
of locations.Credit...Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa/Reuters
The Israeli government had determined that the loosely
organized civilian guard, known as Kitat Konnenut, would serve as the first
line of defense in the towns and villages near the border. But the guardsmen
had different standards of training depending on who was in charge. For years,
they warned that some of their units were poorly trained and underequipped,
according to two Israeli military officials with direct knowledge of the
volunteer teams.
Additionally, the Israeli military reservists were not prepared
to quickly mobilize and deploy. Some described heading south on their own
initiative.
Davidi Ben Zion, 38, a major in the reserves, said
reservists never trained to respond at a moment’s notice to an invasion. The
training assumed that Israeli intelligence would learn of a looming invasion in
advance, giving reservists time to prepare to deploy.
“The procedure states that we have the battalion ready for
combat in 24 hours,” he said. “There’s a checklist to authorize the
distribution of everything. We practiced this for many years.”
Hamas capitalized on these errors in ways that further
delayed the Israeli response. Terrorists blocked key highway intersections,
leaving soldiers bogged down in firefights as they tried to enter besieged
towns. And the Hamas siege on the military base in southern Israel crippled the
regional command post, paralyzing the military response.
Much remains unknown about that day, including what orders
were given inside Israel’s senior military leadership in Tel Aviv, and when. The
Times investigation builds on and adds new details to aggressive coverage in
the Israeli media of the military response.
Officers and reservists who headed south that morning,
whether under orders or on their own, soon learned of the chaos that they were
entering.
Gen. Barak Hiram, who was scheduled to soon take over
command of a division along the Gaza border, drove south to see firsthand how
the soldiers there responded to what seemed like a routine Hamas attack.
In an interview, he recalled the text messages he received
from soldiers he knew in the region.
“Come save us.”
“Send the army, quickly, they are killing us.”
“Sorry we’re turning to you, we’re already out of weapons.”
Unprepared for Battle
Commando units were among the first to mobilize that morning.
Some said they rushed into the fight after receiving messages pleading for help
or learning about the infiltrations from social media.
Other units were on standby and received formal activation
orders.
The small size of the teams suggested that commanders
fundamentally misunderstood the threat. Troops rolled out with pistols and
assault rifles, enough to face a band of hostage-taking terrorists, but not to
go into full-scale battle.
Previously undisclosed documents reviewed by The Times show
just how drastically the military misread the situation. Records from early in
the day show that, even during the attack, the military still assessed that
Hamas, at best, would be able to breach Israel’s border fence in just a few
places. A separate intelligence document, prepared weeks later, shows that
Hamas teams actually breached the fence in more than 30 locations and quickly
moved deep into southern Israel.
Hamas fighters poured into Israel with heavy machine guns,
rocket-propelled grenade launchers, land mines and more. They were prepared to
fight for days. Israeli commandos apparently believed they would be fighting
for just hours; one said he set out that morning without his night-vision
goggles.
“The terrorists had a distinct tactical advantage in
firepower,” said Yair Ansbacher, 40, a reservist in a counterterrorism unit who
fought on Oct. 7. He and his colleagues mainly used pistols, assault rifles and
sometimes sniper rifles, he said.
The situation was so dire that at 9 a.m., the head of Shin
Bet, Israel's domestic security agency, issued a rare order. He told all
combat-trained, weapons-carrying employees to go south. Shin Bet does not
normally activate with the military. Ten Shin Bet operatives were killed that
day.
Making matters worse, the military has acknowledged that it
moved two commando companies — more than 100 soldiers — to the West Bank just
two days before the attack, a reflection of Israel’s mistaken belief that a
Hamas attack was not an imminent threat.
That left three infantry battalions and one tank battalion
along Gaza’s border. But Oct. 7 was the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, and
the Sabbath. One senior military officer estimated that about half the 1,500
soldiers in the area were away. He said that another infantry battalion had been
reassigned years earlier after Israel finished building a security wall around
Gaza.
Whether Hamas knew that the military was understaffed is
unclear, but it had fatal consequences. When the attacks began, many soldiers
were fighting for their lives instead of protecting residents nearby. Hamas
stormed one base, Nahal Oz, forcing soldiers to abandon it and leave behind
dead friends.
And just as the civilian volunteers had warned, the first
line of defense inside Israel was quickly overwhelmed. Some units barely had
enough weapons for an hourslong battle, officials said.
Hamas also worked strategically to weaken Israel’s advantage
in firepower. Terrorists targeted Israeli tanks, hitting several of them, said
Brig. Gen. Hisham Ibrahim, the commander of the armored corps. Tanks ran out of
ammunition, leaving crews to fight with ground soldiers.
In another instance widely covered in the Israeli media,
Hamas fired on an Israeli helicopter, forcing it down near Gaza. The
paratroopers escaped injury before the helicopter burst into flames.
All of this should have been a clear sign that Israel was
under broad attack, facing a dire situation.
But Hamas made another strategic strike that morning that
all but blinded Israel’s military at a critical moment.
This group of Hamas gunmen has a clear target: a crucial
military operations center.
Gaza-Israel border
Where’s the opening?
Ahmad, it’s here.
Ahmad, it’s here.
OK, go.
Come on.
Go.
Say “God is great.”
God is great.
Go.
Wait, wait.
Wait, wait, wait.
They make their way from Gaza to the Re’im army base,
killing civilians in their path.
Intersection of Route 242 and Route 232
There’s someone in the car.
There’s someone in the car. There’s someone in the car.
Stop right there. Stop right there.
Salef, come shoot these.
This is the heart of all military operations along the
Israel-Gaza border.
Outside Re’im base
Give it to me for a little bit.
“Calm down, man.”
“Just for a minute.”
I told him to stay in [indistinct].
Someone should come with me. Someone should come with me.
As terrorists infiltrate the base, the soldiers are unable
to coordinate a response across the region.
Inside Re’im base
In this room?
Go in. Go in. Go forward. Go forward.
Throw a grenade. Throw a grenade.
Give me a grenade.
Where Was the Israeli Military When Hamas Attacked? - The
New York Times
‘What a Mistake’
The assault on the Re’im military base left soldiers there
fighting for their lives rather than coordinating a response to the invasion.
Re’im is home to the Gaza Division, which oversees all
military operations in the region. It is also home to two brigades, northern
and southern, dedicated to protecting about 40 miles of the border.
Like other bases, Re’im was understaffed because of the
holiday. A brigade commander and key staff were away from the base, according
to a senior military officer. They were summoned back before dawn, officials
said, as Israeli intelligence officials tried to make sense of unusual Hamas
activity just over the border in Gaza.
Many soldiers, though, were allowed to keep sleeping. One
told The Times that some did not know they were under attack until Hamas was in
their sleeping quarters. Several were killed in their bunks. Others barricaded
themselves in safe rooms.
The scope of the catastrophe, if not the attack itself, was
preventable, according to records and interviews.
“After they built the fence, they put the headquarters in
the middle of the sector,” said General Samia, the former head of the Southern
Command. He said the three commanders of the brigades and division never should
have been housed together so close to Gaza’s border.
Image
Gen. Yom Tov Samia in 2000.Credit...Havakuk Levison/Reuters
“In the same camp, you all had three of them — in the same
location,” he said. “What a mistake. What a mistake.”
The Israeli authorities also knew, years in advance, that
Hamas planned to take out Re’im as part of its invasion, documents previously
obtained by The Times showed. They dismissed that plan, like the prospect of
overall invasion, as implausible.
Even in May, when intelligence analysts raised alarms about
Hamas training exercises, Israeli officials did not increase troop levels in
the South.
The assault on Re’im led to a near blackout of communication
inside the unit that coordinates troop movements across southern Israel,
according to one soldier who was based there on Oct. 7.
The division that was supposed to be directing the battle
was trying not to get overrun.
Even at noon, according to another Southern Command official,
officers there did not understand what was happening. They assessed that Hamas
had sent about 200 gunmen into Israel. They were off by a factor of 10.
It took the military most of the day to retake control of
the Re’im base.
“When your division is under fire, you’re focused on
clearing it from terrorists,” said General Ibrahim, the commander of the
armored corps, which is based in southern Israel. “It distracts from management
of the fighting more broadly.” General Ibrahim defended the military’s response,
saying there are few modern armies that could have recaptured the region as
quickly as Israel did.
But nobody had trained to repel an invasion.
‘Slowing Our Advance’
Only a few roads connect the towns of southern Israel.
Gunmen roam freely along these roadways, including Route 232 and Route 242, on
the day of the attack.
Route 242
To heaven, to heaven.
[Indistinct name] will take it.
To heaven. To heaven.
To heaven [indistinct]
Our jeeps are there. Our jeeps are there.
Abu Ahmad.
Abu Ahmad. Our jeeps are there.
Abu Ahmad, our jeeps are there.
They’re descending.
Hamas gunmen terrorize motorists, opening fire on passing
vehicles,
Route 242
and gather at major intersections, sowing chaos and taking
control of main traffic arteries.
CCTV footage outside Sderot
The mayhem on the roads impedes a faster response by the
military, and hours will pass before it establishes control of the routes.
CCTV footage from the front gate of Kibbutz Sa’ad
Hamas understood how to use Israel’s geography against its
military.
Despite the siege of Re’im, reinforcements were not far
away. Thousands of soldiers were less than 40 minutes from the towns that were
under attack. But as terrified citizens waited in bunkers or hid from gunmen,
Israeli soldiers were hung up on the highway, unable to reach them.
A central highway connects military bases in the center and
south of the country to the communities near Gaza. Pockets of Hamas gunmen set
up ambushes along the route, videos from Pandora show. Israeli commanders were
hesitant to send soldiers into those traps, according to two Israeli military
officers who took part in conversations that morning.
“Hamas is all over the roads,” one Israeli soldier reported
in a conversation recounted by a participant. “They own the street, not us.”
One of the deadliest junctions was Sha’ar HaNegev, the
intersection of two main arteries leading to the besieged towns and communities
known as kibbutzim. Hamas seized the junction by killing motorists, setting
fire to their cars and blocking roads, according to military officials and
videos.
“Every encounter at the intersections resulted in the
killing of the terrorists and slowing our advance,” said Mr. Ansbacher, the
counterterrorism reservist, recounting the team’s frustrating progress.
“As we go along, we understand that we are really delayed.
In the kibbutzim, they need us and people are getting killed.”
Fog of War
The elite Maglan commando unit operates out of a base about
25 minutes from Gaza.
Its deputy commander activated the unit at about 6:30 a.m.
on Oct. 7, according to one officer familiar with the operations that day. But
the team received little guidance from top Israeli generals or the Gaza
Division headquarters, which, they did not realize, was itself under attack.
Maglan’s commandos specialized in operating behind enemy
lines, where Israel always expected the fighting to occur. None of them had
trained to respond to an invasion, the officer said.
The officer said there were no “concrete missions.” Soldiers
were told to “just take a gun” and “save people.”
With communication out of Re’im disrupted and military
leaders in Tel Aviv struggling to understand the scope of the attack, Maglan
turned to an unlikely source for information: Refael Hayun, a 40-year-old who
lived with his parents in Netivot, about five miles from Gaza.
Image
Refael Hayun in his bedroom in Netivot, Israel, last
week.Credit...via Refael Hayun
Mr. Hayun watched Hamas videos of the attack in real time on
social media and relayed information to Maglan’s officers. He began fielding
WhatsApp messages from people trying to save their children, friends and
themselves.
“Hi Refael, we’re stuck in a trash container near the party
location,” one message read. “Please come rescue us. We’re 16 people.”
Mr. Hayun relayed those locations to the commandos, but they
did not grasp the enormity of the fight. One Maglan team killed several
terrorists near a base in Zikim, just north of Gaza, but they didn’t realize
until 11 a.m. that Hamas fighters had stormed Kfar Aza, where some of the worst
fighting took place.
Soldiers crowdsourced information. One team commander told
soldiers aboard a helicopter to check Telegram channels and news reports to
pick targets.
One general, a reservist who fought that day, said there
were many heroes on Oct. 7. But an army only needs heroes, he said, when things
have gone wrong.
Soldiers are among those asking how things went so wrong.
Major Ben Zion, the reservist, said that his paratrooper
unit left its base in central Israel, not far from Tel Aviv, in a convoy at
about 1:30 p.m. They mobilized on their own, without a formal call-up order. To
save time, they left without night-vision equipment or adequate body armor.
He expected to see the roads packed with soldiers and
equipment and armored vehicles heading south.
“The roads were empty!” he recalled in an interview. Roughly
seven hours into the fighting, he turned to the reservist next to him and
asked: “Where’s the I.D.F.?”"
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