Hamas attack on October 7 | Where was the Israeli army?

An investigation of New York Times reveals that the troops were disorganized, poorly positioned and relied on social media to choose their targets. Behind the failure: Israel had no battle plan in the event of a massive Hamas invasion.

(Tel Aviv) Far below the Israeli army headquarters in Tel Aviv, in a bunker nicknamed the “pit”, commanders were trying to understand reports of Hamas rocket fire in southern Israel, the morning of October 7, when the call was received.

The call came from a division commander overseeing military operations along the border with the Gaza Strip. Their base was under attack. The commander could not describe the scale of the attack or provide further details, said a well-informed military official. However, he requested that all available reinforcements be sent to him.

At 7:43 a.m., more than an hour after the rocket attack began and thousands of Hamas fighters arrived in Israel, the “pit” gave its first deployment instructions of the day. She ordered all emergency forces to head south, along with all available units that could do so quickly.

But the country’s military leaders had not yet understood that Israel’s invasion was already well underway.

Hours later, desperate Israeli citizens continued to fend for themselves and call for help. That day, approximately 1,200 people died because the most advanced army in the Middle East failed in its essential mission: to protect Israeli lives.

It may take months to understand all the reasons for the military’s slow response. The government has promised to look into the matter. But an investigation by New York Times reveals that the Israeli army was understaffed, poorly positioned and so poorly organized that soldiers communicated in makeshift WhatsApp groups and relied on social media messages for information on targets to target.

The commandos rushed into battle, armed only for brief combat. Helicopter pilots were ordered to rely on news reports and Telegram channels to choose their targets.

And perhaps most damning: The Israeli military 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.

“In practice, there was no adequate defensive preparation, no training, no equipment or force buildup for such an operation,” says Yom Tov Samia, a major general in the Israeli reserve forces and former head of the army’s Southern Command.

“There was no defense plan for a surprise attack like the one on October 7,” says Amir Avivi, a brigadier general in the reserve forces and former deputy commander of the Gaza division, responsible for protecting the region.

In response to a series of questions posed by the New York Timesincluding why soldiers and officers claimed there had been no plan, the Israeli army responded: “ [Tsahal] is currently focused on eliminating the threat posed by the terrorist organization Hamas. Questions of this type will be considered later. »

New details about the attack

The investigation of New York Times is based on internal Israeli government documents and a review of the military’s cache of documents, known as Pandora, which contains tens of thousands of videos, including footage from body cameras worn by terrorists and closed circuit surveillance cameras. We interviewed dozens of officers, soldiers and eyewitnesses.

The documents and interviews uncover new details about the attack, including military assessments and orders such as the one given by the “pit” early that morning. Taken together, these elements show that the military failure was largely due to the lack of a plan and a series of intelligence errors in the months and years leading up to the attack.

Israeli military and security agencies have repeatedly assessed that Hamas is not planning to launch a massive invasion and is not capable of doing so. Officials clung to this optimistic view even after Israel obtained battle plans from Hamas that revealed that this was precisely what Hamas planned to do.

The Israeli government had decided that Kitat Konnenut, a loosely organized civil guard, would serve as the first line of defense in towns and villages near the border. But guard training standards vary depending on who is in charge. For years, they reported that some of their units were poorly trained and under-equipped, according to two Israeli military officials.

Additionally, Israeli army reservists were not prepared to mobilize and deploy quickly.

Davidi Ben Zion, 38, a major in the reserve army, says reservists have never been trained to react at short notice to an invasion.

Troops unprepared for combat

Commando units were among the first to mobilize that morning. Some said they rushed into battle after receiving messages calling for help or learning about the infiltrations through social media.

Other units were on standby and received formal activation orders.

The small size of the teams suggests that commanders fundamentally misunderstood the threat. The troops deployed were equipped with pistols and assault rifles.

Previously undisclosed documents, which the New York Times, testify that the army misinterpreted the situation. Documents from earlier today show that even during the attack, the army estimated that Hamas would at most be able to breach Israel’s border fence in just a few places. Another intelligence document shows that Hamas teams actually breached the fence in more than 30 places.

Hamas fighters poured into Israel with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, landmines, and more. They were ready to fight for days. The Israeli commandos apparently thought they would only fight for a few hours.

“The terrorists had a clear tactical advantage in terms of firepower,” says Yair Ansbacher, 40, a reservist in an anti-terrorism unit that fought on October 7. He and his colleagues primarily used pistols, assault rifles, and sometimes sniper rifles.

As the civilian volunteers had predicted, the first line of defense inside Israel was quickly overwhelmed. Some units barely had enough weapons for an hour-long battle, officials said.

Hamas has also worked strategically to weaken Israel’s advantage in firepower. The terrorists targeted Israeli tanks, hitting several of them, said Brigadier General Hisham Ibrahim, commander of the armored corps. The tanks ran out of ammunition, leaving the crews to fight with the soldiers on the ground.

But Hamas carried out another strategic strike that morning, which virtually blinded the Israeli army at a crucial moment.

The assault on the Re’im military base left soldiers 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 also houses two brigades, one in the north, the other in the south, responsible for protecting around forty kilometers of the border.

Like other bases, Re’im was understaffed due to the Yom Kippur holiday. A brigade commander and key personnel were missing from the base, according to a senior military officer. They were called back before dawn, as Israeli intelligence tried to understand unusual Hamas activity across the border in Gaza.

fog of war

The elite Maglan commando operates from a base about 25 minutes from Gaza.

His deputy commander activated the unit around 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7, according to an officer familiar with operations that day. But the team received little guidance from Israeli generals or the Gaza division headquarters, which they did not know was itself under attack.

With communications with Re’im disrupted and military leaders in Tel Aviv struggling to understand the scale of the attack, Maglan turned to an unlikely source of information: Refael Hayun, a 40-year-old man who lived with his parents in Netivot, about 8 km from Gaza.

Hayun watched videos of the Hamas attack in real time on social media and relayed the information to Maglan officers. He started receiving WhatsApp messages from people trying to save their children, their friends, and themselves.

“Hi Refael, we are stuck in a garbage container near the party location,” one message read. “Please come and save us.” There are 16 of us.”

Hayun transmitted these locations to the commandos, but they did not understand the scale of the fight.

Ben Zion, the reservist, explains that his paratrooper unit left its base in central Israel, not far from Tel Aviv, in a convoy around 1:30 p.m. To save time, they left without vision equipment nocturnal or adequate bulletproof vest.

He expected to see the roads crowded with soldiers, equipment and armored vehicles heading south.

“The roads were empty,” he recalled in an interview. About seven hours after the fighting began, he turned to the reservist next to him and asked, “Where is the IDF?” Where is the IDF? »

This article was originally published in the New York Times.