Foreknowledge
Activity at the border was reported months before October 7th and ignored - Signs of a Hamas attack were reported months before Oct. 7 by surveillance soldiers, but their warnings were brushed off by Israel's higher ups. When Hamas activity was reported in the hours before the attack, Israel increased the presence of special forces in the South, but the bases which had reported the threat received no notification, causing most of their soldiers, mainly women, to be slaughtered in their sleep.
Yael Rotenberg and Maya Desiatnik, two surveillance soldiers stationed on a base in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, testified in an interview to Kan News that they had reported Hamas operatives conducting training sessions multiple times a day, digging holes and placing explosives along the border; and that their reports were brushed off by higher ups. Rotenberg recalled frequently seeing many Palestinians dressed in civilian clothing approach the border fence with maps, examining the ground around it and digging holes. One time, when she passed the information on, she was told that they were farmers, and there was nothing to worry about. ''The Hamas terrorists would train at the border fence nonstop... At first, it was once a week, then once a day, and then nearly constantly." In the weeks before Oct. 7, Rotenberg emphasized two specific points of Hamas activity, later two of the multiple points along the fence from which 2,500 Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel. Desiatnik and Rotenberg are the only surveillance soldiers at their base not killed or abducted.
In an interview with Israel's Channel 12, surveillance soldier Amit Yerushalmi testified reporting increased activity months leading up to her release a month before Oct. 7: “We sat on shifts and saw the convoy of vans. We saw the training, people shooting and rolling, practicing taking over a tank. The training went from once a week to twice a week, from every day to several times a day... We saw patrols along the border, people with cameras and binoculars. It happened 300 meters from the fence. There were a lot of disturbances, people went down to the fence and detonated an outrageous amount of explosives, the amount of explosives was crazy... I saw what was happening, I wrote everything down on the computer and passed it on. I don’t know what happened with it, we don’t actually know what they do with the information.” Amit Yerushalmi explained their protocol under the circumstance of an attack: “We were taught that we would report on the incident, we would direct helicopters to the scene, and someone would come and save us,” she said. “Our mission was to protect the kibbutz, not ourselves. They always said that someone would come and protect us.”
Noa Melman reported to Channel 12 that she had finished her mandatory service some nine months ago, and reported Hamas blowing up a mock border fence in order for the terrorists to practice, again and again, blowing up the border and crossing over to the other side: “Our commanders told us to report what we saw, but everyone treated it like it was normal, like it was routine...”
Hamas was reported at the border months before - Desiatnik began her shift at 3:30 a.m. on October 7. It started as normal, she recounted to Kan, but at 6:30 a.m., everything changed. “We saw people running to the border from every direction, running with guns. We saw motorbikes and pickup trucks driving straight at the fence...” she said. “We watched them blow up the fence and destroy it. And we might have been crying but we continued to do our jobs at the same time.”
Israel had documents detailing Al Aqsa flood before October 7th - According to the New York Times, prior to Oct. 7 Israel had compiled a 40-page document, code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlining evidence that Hamas was preparing to attack. Within it, a 2016 Defence Ministry memorandum read: “Hamas intends to move the next confrontation into Israeli territory,” and that such an attack would most likely involve hostage-taking and “occupying an Israeli community (and perhaps even a number of communities). The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel in mass in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot. A 2016, Israeli memo said that Hamas had purchased sophisticated weapons, GPS jammers and drones, and that Hamas had increased its fighting force to 27,000 people — having added 6,000 to its ranks in a two-year period.
Israel was warned by an analyst - In July 2023 a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise matching what was outlines in Jericho Wall, but a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The New York Times. On July 6, 2023, the veteran Unit 8200 analyst wrote to a group of other intelligence experts that dozens of Hamas commandos had recently conducted training exercises, with senior Hamas commanders observing. The training included a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft and taking over a kibbutz and a military training base, killing all the cadets. During the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan, she wrote in the email exchanges viewed by The Times.
Israel wrote a document planning retaliation - Last year, after Israel obtained the Jericho Wall document, the military’s Gaza division drafted its own intelligence assessment of this latest invasion plan. Hamas had “decided to plan a new raid, unprecedented in its scope,” analysts wrote in the assessment reviewed by The Times. It said that Hamas intended to carry out a deception operation followed by a “large-scale manoeuvre” with the aim of overwhelming the division. But the Gaza division referred to the plan as a “compass.” In other words, the division determined that Hamas knew where it wanted to go but had not arrived there yet.
Benjemin Netenyahu and Knesset refused to be warned by a general - According to Israeli officials interviewed by the NYT, Benjemin Netenyahu refused to meet Herzi Halevi, the military’s chief of staff, who came to deliver a threat warning based on classified intelligence. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, according to one of the documents, said that it was necessary to prepare for a major war. General Haliva was ready to tell the coalition leaders that the political turmoil was creating an opportunity for Israel’s enemies to attack, particularly if there were more resignations in the military. Only two members of the Knesset came to hear his briefing. Separately, Gen. Herzi Halevi, the military’s chief of staff, tried to deliver the same warnings to Mr. Netanyahu. The prime minister refused to meet him, the officials said. Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment about this meeting.
In 2016 Israeli defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman wrote a secret memo to Netanyahu and the Israeli military chief of staff, saying Hamas was slowly building its military abilities to attack Israel, arguing that Israel should strike first. Netanyahu rejected the plan.
Shin Bet foreknowledge - Forty two survivors of the Nova music festival in Re'im on 7 October have filed a lawsuit placing responsibility on the Israeli government for the tragic events of the festival, Israeli media reported on 1 January. Some 42 survivors of the Nova music festival are seeking NIS 200 million ($55 million) in damages, blaming the state, the army, the police and the Shin Bet for their omissions and negligence in failing to protect them during the early morning Hamas attack in which 364 people attending the concert were killed and others injured. Senior Shin Bet and army officials held two emergency meetings, one by phone around midnight on Friday night, and one in person at 3 am Saturday. However, the officials failed to notify the concert organizers. Had they done so, the concert could have been evacuated before the Hamas attack took place. Israeli media reported that the lawsuit said that senior officers in the Gaza Division of the Israeli army expressed concerns about a large gathering so close to the Gaza border, but the event was still approved. Additionally, a senior operations officer of the Gaza Division opposed the holding of the Nova festival, viewing it as an unnecessary security risk. He emphasized that the army would have difficulty securing the party throughout the weekend, because it was the Simchat Torah holiday and many soldiers were on leave. Despite his warnings and warnings of additional officers, permission to hold the party was granted and no one in the army or the police informed the approximately 3,500 participants of the Nova party about security concerns nor of the signs of a potential Hamas attack that emerged on 6 October.
Hamas had shot down an Israeli helicopter - In another instance Hamas fired on an Israeli helicopter, forcing it down near Gaza. The paratroopers escaped injury before the helicopter burst into flames.
Hamas training footage - Before Oct. 7, Hamas had posted training videos depicting the Al Aqsa flood operation on social media, including the use of paragliders, breaking into buildings and blowing up fences before driving trucks through.
Egypt's Warning - On top of that, Egypt had warned Israel of the attack three days prior.
The IDF knew of the threat on the day - A video from a Hamas Gopro obtained by PBS shows a surveillance balloon can be seen, despite the army's claim that it had been cut by Hamas.
An Anonymous surveillance soldier interviewed by Haaretz, recalls how before the attack she reported a suspicious-looking man at one of the barrier gates along the Gaza border to Lt. Col. Meir Ohayon, commander of the 51st Battalion in the Golani Brigade. After tear gas was used on the suspect, he returned to a Hamas observation post about 300 meters from the fence, where a briefing, she observed, was being held there.
Speculation - Suspiciously, an unidentified Israeli bank made the equivalent of $10M dollars by betting on Israeli stocks before Oct. 7. Here you can see the short volume leading up to the day.
According to Yavin Pagot, the head of the Israeli stock exchange, who spoke to Reuters, "there was nothing unusual in the short positions in the stock exchange in the two months before the attack," and that the short position in the bank in question, Leumi, was taken by an unidentified Israeli bank.
Inaction
Civilians had called in the attack - According to PBS In the first 5 minutes of the attack there were red alerts for more than 30 communities near the Israeli side of the border. It takes less than 5 minutes for an attack helicopter to arrive from their destination, however, according to Oct. 7 survivor Yasmin Porat, it took 10 hours for the IDF to arrive at her Kibbutz: "I'm angry at the state I'm angry at the army... for 10 hours the kibbutz was abandoned."
Reservist Davidi Ben Zion of beheaded babies fame, led his paratrooper unit, without a formal call up order at 1:30 PM, 7 hours after the missile attack, to find the roads empty of IDF soldiers. Footage obtained by CNN shows the IDF arriving seven hours after the attack began.
Former IDF fence chief Dany Tirza said: ''we couldn't use helicopters because we didn't know who and what is going on there.''
The IDF didn't alert Nahal Oz - That Friday evening, senior officials increase the presence of special forces in the south, sending a specialist team trained to deal with terror squads. Another team from the Shin Bet operational unit and a force from the commando unit were also placed on alert. An elite IDF team from Sayeret Matkal was also dispatched to the area. At 4 A.M., when it was decided to put the Gaza border communities themselves on alert for fear of possible infiltration
Despite this, "Yaara" an anonymous surveillance soldier from Nahal Oz, the base which reported the activity explains how they were not notified: “If we had known about this warning, this whole disaster would have looked different... Nobody told us there was such a high level of alert.” According to Yaara, three hours, or even two hours, would have given the young spotters time to prepare. “But nobody thought to tell us. The IDF left us like sitting ducks on a range. The fighters at least had weapons and died as heroes. The spotters who had been abandoned by the army were simply slaughtered, without any opportunity to defend themselves.”
“I cannot describe the frustration, the sense of abandonment by the senior commanders. We issued warnings, we told our commanders, but we’re considered the bottom of the division’s food chain”
Soldiers in the Re'im base were not notified - 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.
Contempt for Kubutz communities
In Israel, Kibbutz communities are considered largely left wing, and have socialist origins, with many residents having having Palestinian state sympathies. The purpose of the Nova music festival itself was to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians. According to an IDF spokesman who spoke to CNN: "Many of the residents who lived there believed in peace, coexistence and mutual respect and had friends in Gaza...". In 2023 far right activists in support of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, blocked traffic junctions at the entrances to Kibbutzes in northern Israel, lighting tires on fire, demanding they praise Netanyahu and Ben Gvir in order to get home. Those vehicles from the nearby city of Beit Shean, a Likud stronghold, were allowed to pass.
Despite knowing of an attack, Israel didn't warn the Nova Music festival, moving it closer to the Gaza border before the attack. They had also recently confiscated weapons from border communities, leaving them defenceless.
