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NYT: Where Was the Israeli Military on Oct. 7?
By Adam Goldman, Ronen Bergman, Mark Mazzetti, Natan Odenheimer, Alexander Cardia, Ainara Tiefenthäler and Sheera Frenkel
The journalists reported from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and towns and kibbutzim in southern Israel.
Dec. 30, 2023, 12:01 a.m. ET
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.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/world/middleeast/israeli-military-hamas-failures.html
The journalists reported from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and towns and kibbutzim in southern Israel.
Dec. 30, 2023, 12:01 a.m. ET
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.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/world/middleeast/israeli-military-hamas-failures.html
38 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
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.
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.
Refael Hayun in his bedroom in Netivot, Israel
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.
Refael Hayun in his bedroom in Netivot, Israel
... and we will fight for our country to recover from the blunder of 2023."
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Rally in solidarity of the Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza, on Saturday night in Tel Aviv.Credit: Hadas Parush
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-30/ty-article-live/israel-strikes-in-syria-lebanon-after-rockets-target-north-idf-widens-south-gaza-combat/0000018c-b8de-d45c-a98e-bbde04ed0000
