October 7 felt like a dumpster fire: Horrific, unexpected, uncontrollable, and confusing.
Residents of the South were abandoned. Politicians refuse to be held accountable.
IDF commanders have quit, one by one, lowering their heads – showing some much-needed shame, but also leaving their posts to younger and, therefore, less experienced leaders.
And now, Israel’s security forces have released the early findings from their investigation into the unprecedented massacre that occurred explicitly in Kibbutz Be’eri.
The probe brought forth several vital findings that further reinforce the understanding that the security forces, the government, and this country’s leaders across the board left the Gaza border communities to fend for themselves.
First of all, until 2:30 p.m. – over seven and a half hours after Hamas terrorists infiltrated Kibbutz Be’eri – between 13 and 26 Israelis were fighting somewhere between 80 to 200 terrorists in the kibbutz. Those initial 13 were part of the emergency standby squad; the additional 13 were security forces flown in.
To clarify, Israel, in Kibbutz Beeri, did not have superior numbers to infiltrate terrorists until seven and a half hours into the invasion.
That raises the first of many questions: Why did security forces take so long to defend the kibbutz residents?
The report breaks this down, and the answer is threefold: First of all, there were forces right next to the kibbutz that did not enter because they, in the frenzy of the invasion, believed that their roles were not to join and fight, but rather assist with evacuation and emergency care; the second reason is that other security force teams were waiting for their commanders who had yet to arrive because they were scared to operate without the necessary permissions; and the third reason was that other teams were on their way, even so long into the invasion.
Another issue that caused some confusion and chaos was that there was no “big-picture” commander to oversee the defense of the kibbutz.
That is to say, no one was overseeing all the security forces assigned to defend Be’eri and eliminate the terrorists there until 1 p.m. when Brig.-Gen. Barak Hiram took over. He only entered deep into the field hours after that.
On top of that, IDF intelligence must be held accountable, as they were able to see that SIM cards had been activated in the Gaza Strip and did not see this as a legitimate concern. Why was this the case?
To be fair to our security forces, Hamas fired 3,000 rockets in four hours, thoroughly bamboozling us and sending us into a frenzy. If any credit can be given to an evil terrorist organization, it is that.
Israel fails to protect its citizens
Nevertheless, how is it that a state such as Israel – one with a robust and mighty army that has protected its citizens since before the country itself was even founded – did not have a fully formed first or second line of defense?
Indeed, the forces along the southern border with the Gaza Strip were practically unmanned, which is in contrast to the numbers we should have seen there.
Even if that border was fully manned – even if we had the number of soldiers to justify saying that Israel is safe and well-protected – there was practically no second line of defense at all. This is the most basic of security tactics.
At the end of the day, it comes down to this: Israel thought Hamas was a joke. Israel believed that this threat, of which it had seen the “red flags,” so to speak, far before the invasion and massacre, was nothing at all.
Who decided to play this down? Whose consciences should be plagued with the horror of being part of the decision-making process to have caused this?
To Israel’s politicians, who have time and time again since the war began thwarted blame – show some humility.
This is at least in part on your heads.