Touch upon this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSave
KISSUFIM, Israel — When Hamas militants arrived within the tiny kibbutz of Kissufim, lower than a mile from the border with the Gaza Strip, they attacked a rigorously picked first goal: the white and purple metallic communication towers on its outskirts.
They made a beeline for the small fenced compound that housed the crucial gear, taking pictures at it and utilizing a ladder to scale a barbed wire fence to get inside, movies obtained by The Washington Put up present.
“They knew precisely what they had been doing,” mentioned Shai Asher, 50, a member of the armed kibbutz safety squad that battled Hamas gunmen that day, struggling to speak with one another and unable to name for backup.
“The telephone community doesn’t work, WhatsApp doesn’t work, every little thing is damaged down, our radio doesn’t work, all of the channels of command are lacking,” he recalled. “They’d a flawless battle plan that they executed flawlessly.”
For hours, volunteers corresponding to Asher had been left to fend for themselves, outnumbered and outgunned. The troopers that had been supposed to guard them had been blind to the unfolding catastrophe, or had been killed or kidnapped.
Shai Asher, 50, a safety guard and resident of Kibbutz Kissufim, stands outdoors a home the place a girl and her 15-year-old son had been killed by Hamas attackers. (Video: Jon Gerberg, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Put up, Photograph: Heidi Levine/The Washington Put up)
In a simultaneous wave of assaults on at the very least seven navy posts throughout the border, Hamas sought to systematically disable key detection, communications and warning techniques, utilizing snipers and industrial drones armed with explosives. The technique allowed its gunmen to advance deep into Israeli territory with little resistance and scrambled the next navy response.
The Washington Put up spoke to greater than a dozen present and former Israeli intelligence and safety officers and studied footage from Hamas physique cameras to construct an image of how militants had been in a position to overwhelm Israeli navy installations and rampage by way of greater than 20 residential communities.
Scenes from a bloodbath: Inside an Israeli city destroyed by Hamas
“There weren’t sufficient troopers; there weren’t sufficient capabilities,” mentioned Eyal Hulata, the pinnacle of the nation’s Nationwide Safety Council from 2021 to 2023. “The primary line of protection grew to become the final line of protection, and this could by no means occur. Israel is aware of that.”
The assault, by which greater than 1,400 individuals had been killed and 229 others taken hostage, uncovered the vulnerabilities of Israel’s border safety system, lengthy believed to be probably the most superior and indomitable on the earth. At the very least 309 Israeli troopers are among the many useless.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had boasted for years of multimillion-dollar investments in an expansive “sensible wall,” operating the size of the enclave above floor and lengthening deep into the bottom.
Claiming in recent times that Hamas had been efficiently contained in Gaza, Netanyahu oversaw the gradual withdrawal of troops from the south. Forces left behind on the navy and intelligence bases had been skilled to depend on subtle cameras and sensors to watch for border infiltrations, and to alert forces on the bottom in case of surprising occasions.
How Hamas’s rigorously deliberate Israel assault devolved right into a chaotic rampage
However within the early hours of Oct. 7, at the very least 1,500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants broke by way of some 30 factors alongside the border barrier. They overran some bases so quickly that troopers had been killed of their bunks, and the militants took out communication networks so effectively that the realm grew to become a blind spot for the navy.
“They coordinated it, in sync, to get the utmost affect,” Hulata mentioned. “The actual fact we failed doesn’t imply the IDF isn’t ready to reply,” he added.
The assault got here on a Saturday morning, on the Jewish vacation of Simchat Torah — the tip of a two-week string of holidays — ravaging a sleeping nation that had been assured repeatedly by its high safety officers that Hamas posed no rapid risk.
“Regardless of a sequence of actions that we carried out, sadly on Saturday we had been unable to generate a ample warning that might have thwarted the assault,” mentioned Ronen Bar, the pinnacle of the Shin Guess inner safety service, in a letter to his staff and their households.
Requested for remark by The Put up, the Israeli navy replied: “At present the IDF is concentrated on the continuing struggle, we are going to get to questions of your variety afterward.” The prime minister’s workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The coordinated assault started with rocket hearth from Gaza — an everyday incidence that brought on no specific alarm amongst troopers and civilians. Because the air raid sirens sounded simply earlier than 6:30 a.m., Israeli officers stayed beneath their lookouts.
Then got here the acquainted booms from the Iron Dome antimissile protection system, drowning out the gunfire from snipers, who shot at a string of cameras dotting the border, and the explosions from greater than 100 remotely operated drones that took out watchtowers, based on safety specialists who analyzed the footage — most of it posted in actual time by the militants.
The towers had been outfitted with machine weapons and cameras, each related to the border’s thermal imaging sensors and to optical and radar detection techniques. They relied partly on automation, partly on distant management.
As soon as the techniques had been disabled, fighters from the Nukhba, Hamas’s particular operations unit, had been in a position to breach the border with relative ease, movies present, utilizing bulldozers, vans and bikes. From there, it was lower than a mile’s drive to the primary navy installations, which had been principally unguarded outdoors.
Entrance-line remark troops had been caught off guard when the militants stormed their bases, navigating confidently by way of amenities and barracks, safety officers aware of the state of affairs instructed The Put up.
Troopers managed to kill some Hamas gunmen with remotely managed weapons however, inside minutes, a whole lot extra had taken their place. They killed troopers of their protected rooms and took others hostage whereas ransacking weapons caches, loading up vans and motorbikes already laden with AK-47s, grenades and different weaponry.
Solely at 8:06 a.m. — an hour and a half after the beginning of the assault — did the Israel Protection Forces report a “mixed assault.” At 8:25, with numerous Israelis already useless, it declared “a state of alert for struggle.”
Putting key command facilities so near the border was a key mistake, mentioned a former senior Israeli intelligence officer, who spoke to The Put up on the situation of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
“That’s what occurs if you endure a catastrophic systemic failure,” he mentioned, “and navy headquarters and different installations are so near the border. That’s what occurs if you neglect that every one protection traces can finally be breached and have been traditionally. That’s what occurs if you underestimate your enemy.”
The Israeli navy’s regional command-and-control heart, close to Kibbutz Re’im, suffered a “full destruction” of “communications techniques, their antennas, even the techniques that activated the sensors on the fence itself,” mentioned Lt. Col. Alon Eviatar, a member of the reserves and an knowledgeable in Palestinian militancy in addition to being a former officer in 8200, Israel’s elite intelligence unit.
In parallel, based on footage reviewed by safety analysts, a separate Hamas unit stormed an 8200 set up close to Urim, about 10 miles inside Israeli territory, detonating an explosive on the entrance to an underground bunker that housed an expansive intelligence equipment — synthesizing knowledge from Israel, the Palestinian territories and all over the world.
“It’s the largest and most important intelligence base in Israel, one of many nation’s biggest property,” mentioned Eviatar. “It was a high precedence for them.”
Hamas fighters battled with Israeli forces outdoors the bunker, Eviatar mentioned. It’s nonetheless unclear whether or not any of the militants survived the battle or managed to take espionage paperwork or gear again to Gaza, which he mentioned might be “extraordinarily precious to Hamas management and to Iran.”
Forty-five miles to the north, in Zikim, troops at a coaching base for the Israeli navy’s search-and-rescue brigade had been among the many few items not affected by the disabling of communication techniques. They belonged to a separate command heart that was spared the blackout that affected a lot of the different installations.
When a rocket struck the bottom, the obligation officer was in a position to report the assault to Col. Elad Edri, the brigade’s commander, who sped to the scene.
“We managed to talk to one another by radio, by telephone. It was clear, it was okay,” he instructed The Put up. “The bombs didn’t affect my unit. They clearly influenced the items that had been there to defend the fence.”
Edri misplaced seven troopers however managed to repel the assault and preserve management of the bottom.
The breadth and velocity of the assault factors to deep planning by Hamas. Asher, the safety guard in Kissufim, estimates that the militants had been at his kibbutz just some minutes after 6:30 a.m., shortly after the primary rocket barrage.
At 6:45 a.m., he bought a voice observe within the kibbutz’s safety group on WhatsApp. “That is actual motion, actual motion, an actual state of affairs,” a member of the workforce mentioned, as gunfire sounded and sirens wailed within the background.
“Do you could have any reference to the IDF?” Asher requested, as squad members tried in useless to name in navy reinforcements. The web would reduce out quickly after. Asher didn’t know till 10 p.m. that his spouse and two youngsters, barricaded of their protected room at residence, had survived.
“It was a nightmare,” he mentioned.
After coming into the kibbutz, the militants went straight to the home of the neighborhood’s head of safety, who was compelled to retreat to a protected room along with his household. He couldn’t be a part of the battle, however he survived.
It was a sample repeated in different communities, Asher mentioned, citing conversations with residents.
“Their success wasn’t tech; it was preparation,” mentioned Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer within the IDF. They “used navy techniques to hold out a terror assault.”
Because the hours wore on and the loss of life toll climbed, the uncommon messages that did make it again to Israel’s predominant navy headquarters in Tel Aviv had been interpreted with “a number of query marks,” mentioned Michael Milshtein, a former senior adviser to COGAT, the Israeli navy company in control of the Palestinian territories. “After so a few years of discounting Hamas,” he mentioned, navy leaders struggled to grapple with the size of the unfolding calamity.
Initially, the IDF despatched in particular operations items, skilled to reply to infiltrations from Gaza. However none of their struggle video games resembled what confronted them on Oct. 7.
“[Hamas] knew precisely the place they had been going, what they had been doing, regardless that it was their first time there,” mentioned Milshtein, who mentioned that Shin Guess has been making an attempt to crack down on espionage networks from Gaza over the previous two years.
Israeli forces that had been in a position to battle their means into communities below assault struggled to handle the state of affairs, missing higher-altitude assessments of an unlimited and chaotic battlefield.
“With out an general image, we needed to make a number of fast selections,” mentioned Maj. Palmach, one of many Israeli reservists who, with out ready to be referred to as up, placed on their uniforms and jumped of their automobiles that Saturday, dashing south to battle alongside the particular operations forces. He shared his story on the situation that he be recognized solely by his final title due to IDF floor guidelines.
Palmach battled Hamas gunmen on the entrance to Alumim, stopping them from coming into. He then joined an improvised convoy to Be’eri, one of many hardest-hit kibbutzim. Guided by phrase of mouth and frantic WhatsApp messages, Palmach rescued individuals from their protected rooms, many as their homes had been burning. Militants lit tires on hearth and wheeled them into properties to smoke out households that had been in hiding, based on different officers who arrived on the scene that day.
Israel’s southern border area is a navy zone now. Its tightknit cities are charred and deserted. Our bodies are nonetheless being discovered. Many survivors really feel betrayed by a authorities that promised them security even because it withdrew safety.
Israel massed troops within the West Financial institution. Then Hamas attacked from Gaza.
In December 2021, Netanyahu tweeted that the set up of an “underground barrier that stops Hamas’s tunnel weapons” amounted to a “historic” day. He had accomplished the venture, he mentioned, regardless of “nice opposition” from different politicians and the protection institution.
Amir Tibon, a journalist from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, moved to Nahal Oz in 2014. At the very least 14 of his neighbors had been killed there Oct 7.
When he started dwelling there, fight items had been stationed in each neighborhood. Lately, they had been redeployed to the West Financial institution to guard Jewish settlements and to counter new Palestinian militant teams.
“After that fancy underground impediment that Netanyahu was so happy with, it was determined that the forces weren’t wanted anymore,” Tibon mentioned in a current Haaretz podcast. “If in each neighborhood on that darkish Saturday there have been forces of 20 individuals, every little thing would have seemed otherwise.”
Some Israeli troopers stationed alongside the border now say they feared a Hamas incursion was imminent and tried to sound the alarm.
“It was clear that one thing would occur. It was solely a matter of time,” Maya Dasiatnik, an remark officer within the Nahal Oz base, mentioned an interview with the Kan public broadcaster on Wednesday.
She mentioned that she and dozens of fellow troopers had repeatedly reported suspicious exercise: individuals approaching the fence with maps, showing to check it for its weak spots, getting nearer each week. There additionally had been tractors and huge teams of armed males, finishing up workout routines that seemed like navy drills.
Roni Eshel, who served alongside Dasiatnik, is believed to be among the many hostages held in Gaza.
“She reported all types of breakdowns alongside the border,” Eyal, her father, instructed The Put up. His final contact with Roni was a textual content message at 9:27 a.m., three hours after her base was raided. The beds, the protected rooms and the central struggle room had been torched.
“It may have been prevented,” he mentioned, “if somebody within the military had opened their eyes and ears.”
Shai Asher, 50, a safety guard and resident of Kibbutz Kissufim, stands outdoors a home the place a girl and her 15-year-old son had been killed by Hamas attackers. (Video: Jon Gerberg, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Put up, Photograph: Heidi Levine/The Washington Put up)