HOW COULD ISRAEL'S ARMY ABANDON THIS KIBBUTZ FOR SEVEN HOURS ON OCTOBER 7?

How Could Israel's Army Abandon This Kibbutz for Seven Hours on October 7?

'Left to die in our homes': A Haaretz investigation details the Israeli army's failure to defend Kibbutz Nir Oz, where 117 people were murdered or kidnapped by Hamas to Gaza on October 7

April 24th, 13PM April 24th, 13PM

Omer's toy planes were brought to him earlier this month, along with a tiny truck. They were placed on the 2-year-old boy's grave. There's also a green bulldozer near the grave of his twin sisters, Shachar and Arbel, who were 5 when they died. This is part of the scene at the Kibbutz Nir Oz cemetery near the Gaza border.

One might say these small vehicles will now protect the children. On their last day they waited in vain for vehicles carrying soldiers to come and save them. "Nir Oz was forgotten," a senior army officer says. "That's the truth."

The three children suffocated to death in the safe room of their home, which was set on fire by Hamas terrorists on October 7. Their parents, Tamar and Yonatan (Jonny) Siman Tov, died as well and are buried alongside them. Six and a half months after 117 people at Kibbutz Nir Oz were murdered or kidnapped to Gaza, Tamar's parents, Reuma and Gadi Kedem, are still waiting for answers.

In fact, all the members of this community and their relatives are wondering: Why did it take seven hours for the security forces to arrive? The government and the army haven't responded, but documents obtained by Haaretz, along with testimony by senior army officers and other defense officials, reveal a series of failures on Black Saturday.

It turns out that reports of events at Nir Oz reached the local divisional headquarters very late, and when they did arrive, the headquarters and Southern Command didn't send soldiers to the kibbutz. Gaza Division commander Avi Rosenfeld and Southern Command chief Yaron Finkelman were in charge.

It also turns out that when Israeli forces reached the border area, they headed for army bases, military outposts and other communities. Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfuss, who was responsible for the area that included Nir Oz, has admitted he forgot to send forces to that kibbutz, senior officers say.

In fact, the first security forces entered Nir Oz only after Hamas terrorists had returned to Gaza. "The conduct of senior commanders in the combat zone should be a significant part of the investigation into this incident," one officer says.

When Reuma Kedem tried to call her son-in-law's mother, 'a terrorist answered the phone. He told me, "It's over," which is when I realized we had been left to die in our homes.'

The start of that day is well-known: missiles at 6:29, reports by division headquarters at 6:43 indicating an invasion, a collapse of the observation and spotting systems, chaos, confusion and helplessness. At 7:15, the Nir Oz WhatsApp group reported that "terrorists dressed as soldiers are near the kibbutz clinic."

They came from all sides. Some entered through the main gate that was breached, others from the rear gate. Some broke through the kibbutz's fence near the vineyards. They then did whatever they wanted. It's possible that they too were surprised that no one was there to stop them. When they left at 1 P.M., they hadn't encountered a single soldier.

During those seven hours, hundreds of messages were sent on the kibbutz WhatsApp group about terrorists inside houses, attempts to break into safe rooms, wounded, killed and kidnapped. Then there was the avalanche of question marks and panicked pleas.

"Save us, they're inside our house," David Cunio wrote at 9:30. "Where's the army?" This was a very popular question over the next few hours. At 10:35, his wife, Sharon, wrote: "Save us, they're inside our house. Send the army here already." Sharon kept begging for help, including when the terrorists set the house on fire. At 11:13 she wrote: "The girls are suffocating."

During all those hours, kibbutz and family members who were away from the community contacted every possible agency including the police, the Maged David Adom emergency services, the regional council, army officers and the media. To no avail.

Ultimately, so as not to succumb to the smoke, the Cunio family and others emerged from their burning homes and were kidnapped to Gaza. Sharon and her daughters have returned, but David is still there.

But if you compare the messages on the kibbutz's WhatsApp group and the army's radio chatter, you notice two parallel universes. In one, Nir Oz is being destroyed, in the other, it doesn't exist.

No contact

Only at 8:54, more than two hours after the attack began (and after soldiers were seen being kidnapped at the Erez border crossing), did the Gaza Division first report an invasion of two nearby kibbutzim: Nirim and Kissufim. It didn't mention Nir Oz.

But one soldier was from Nir Oz and was reading the messages in the WhatsApp group. He was on reserve duty with the air force's search and rescue unit, Shaldag. That morning, he was rushed by helicopter to the Gaza border area. Before that, he tried to inform his unit and the top command about the fighting on his kibbutz, but to no avail.

His helicopter landed on Kibbutz Be'eri a bit to the northeast along the border, where he fought terrorists, but no helicopter reached Nir Oz, not even a military jeep. "I should have gotten on a helicopter and demanded that they land on our kibbutz," he later told Nir Oz members.

By prioritizing the army bases and outposts, it was if the Israel Defense Forces' values had changed overnight: The army was protecting soldiers first, then civilians.

At 8:24, a drone attacked the Nahal Oz outpost in which soldiers including female spotters were trapped. At 8:43, another drone came to help at the Erez crossing, and again at 8:54. (The war room reported: "Many soldiers have been kidnapped, it's urgent that we bomb.")

Around that time, the list of border locations that had been penetrated was growing, as received by the Gaza Division. One more kibbutz, one more army base. At 9:04, the division's war room reported about "a complicated incident involving an invasion of Nir Oz" – it mentioned the kibbutz for the first time. By now it was clear that Nir Oz had been invaded by terrorists, with the people trapped in their burning houses. But the army didn't send forces.

Two helicopters were dispatched in the next few minutes, but further south. One went to Avshalom Junction to evacuate wounded soldiers. The other was sent to an area where soldiers were battling Hamas at an army outpost and the entrance to Kibbutz Sufa. On their way, the two helicopters passed near Nir Oz, allowing a good view of the rising smoke. But there was no change.

"You just can't understand what happened at Nir Oz, why nobody reached them," Reuma Kedem says. "How could they not see the smoke rising there?" She and her husband live on nearby Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha.

"I can't understand how the IDF decided to abandon an entire kibbutz," she adds. "I tried to call Jonny's mother but a terrorist answered the phone. He told me, 'It's over,' which is when I realized that a disaster had befallen us, that we had been left to die in our homes."

By prioritizing army bases and outposts, it was if the IDF's values had changed overnight: It was protecting soldiers first, then civilians.

Only at 10:15 were the words "kidnap" and "Nir Oz" mentioned together:: "Terrorists are entering houses and trying to kidnap people on Nir Oz and Nirim." Some kibbutz members were already in Gaza or on their way there. An hour later, the war room of the division's southern brigade reported "an invasion of a house on Nir Oz, with civilians saying they're hearing drilling noises."

The frequency of such reports increased. The large forces that finally reached the area at 12:30 spread out among several trouble spots but skipped Nir Oz. "Commanders simply forgot Nir Oz," a senior IDF commander says.

Out-of-the-way kibbutz

To describe the problem at Nir Oz, commanders use the term "black hole." In a conversation with members of the kibbutz, senior officers admitted that this was one of the army's worst failures on October 7.

"They ran around among all the communities in the area, but someone who isn't familiar with the area could miss Nir Oz since it's a kind of enclave," a senior officer at Southern Command says.

Still, some officers argue that the army, which over the years prepared for an attack on Gaza border communities, shouldn't overlook anything. "It's unclear how a division for which this is its entire purpose can miss or forget an entire kibbutz for hours, with smoke rising above it that could be seen from many points in the area," the senior officer says.

He notes that most of the communities on the border lie along Route 232, but Nir Oz is a bit to the west, closer to Gaza. "Nir Oz lies in a location that only somebody going there gets to, and this might be the reason forces didn't get there for hours," he says.

Still, he adds: "That can't be the excuse for the grave error that was made there. If there was a thorough plan this shouldn't have happened."

Ostensibly, Southern Command and the Gaza Division should have divided the area among senior commanders based on a scenario that included an invasion of Israel. But since Hamas quickly took out the command-and-control capabilities of Southern Command and the Gaza Division, junior commanders and common soldiers had to make decisions on their own.

In fact, during the first hours, senior commanders couldn't provide an overall picture of events. Since the communications and spotting systems had collapsed, there was no continuous communication between forces on the ground and division headquarters, which was also under attack. Only toward 10:30, when command and control started to recover, were sections of the area divided up by senior commanders.

Goldfuss, the head of the 98th Division, received responsibility for the section that included Nir Oz. "He sent combat troops to all the kibbutzim, bases and outposts in the area," a senior officer says. "The Egoz, Duvdevan and Maglan commando units fought in all the tough locations. The paratrooper brigade also took part in the fighting, and Goldfuss himself fought inside some of these communities."

But Goldfuss reportedly admitted that he forgot Nir Oz. "He simply forgot this kibbutz, as did Southern Command and the Gaza Division, who were obligated to send forces there," the senior officer says.

The fact that the commanding officer himself was fighting on kibbutzim "attests to the fact that there was no thorough defense plan for a raid scenario," the senior officer adds. "We can tell ourselves a lot of stories and look for the ones to blame, but the public must be told the truth: The IDF didn't prepare any response for a scenario that included a Hamas raid on communities. They caught us with our pants down."

And that's not the entire scope of the failure. It appears that throughout that day, units were moved around depending on operational needs. Forces moved from kibbutz to kibbutz, from base to base as needed, sometimes returning to a previous location. This happened in the Nir Oz area as well, but the kibbutz was left on its own.

Special commando forces, assisted by other units, returned to Kibbutz Nirim after the IDF had already taken control there. This was also true for Magen and Ein Hashlosha, where fighting took place outside the kibbutz. The evacuation of wounded soldiers took priority over entering Nir Oz.

Behind the heavy smoke

The closest approach to Nir Oz came around 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) from the kibbutz, near the border fence – too far away to see what was happening in the community. Air force helicopters were firing in that area as well, killing one hostage, Efrat Katz.

The soldiers in a tank between Nirim and Nir Oz told Channel 12 this month that they spotted three terrorists at the kibbutz gate. They say they fired at them but decided not to enter the community and instead drove toward Nirim. Amid the chaos, they probably couldn't imagine what was happening behind the heavy smoke that concealed Nir Oz.

At 2:13 P.M., two vehicles arrived at Nir Oz separately carrying troops from Yamas, an elite Border Police unit. By this time, the terrorists were gone, having left the kibbutz of their own accord at about 1 P.M., according to local residents.

When the Yamas forces arrived, most of the people of Nir Oz, alive or dead, were shut up in their houses. The only ones left outside were the members of the kibbutz security squad.

The squad's leader was wounded at the start of the onslaught, and the others were all killed or kidnapped, aside from two – Eran Smilansky, who fought on his own for hours, wounded six terrorists and managed to hide, and Benny Avital, who wasn't armed. When these two saw that the terrorists were gone, they started rescuing families from the burning safe rooms.

They saved several people at the last moment from death by smoke inhalation. The Yamas troops joined them and they went from house to house together.

Twelve more minutes would pass before the following words would be heard over the Gaza Division's communications network: "Nir Oz – fighting happening, contact lost with head of security squad, family in critical condition, house on fire. A child has been abducted." Of course, this was badly incomplete information long after the fact.

When the army at last realized that forces needed to be sent, it dispatched soldiers from Shayetet 13 – basically Israel's Navy SEALs – and the Egoz commando unit, but all they could do was free people from their homes and leave the bodies of the dead out on the grass for identification. Not one bullet from an army unit or the police was fired on Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Today, the numbers complete the story. A full 40 residents of the kibbutz were murdered on October 7, with 77 kidnapped to Gaza, of which 26 are still there and believed to be alive. Hamas also holds the bodies of 10 people from Nir Oz, while 40 hostages from the kibbutz were returned to Israel in the swap for Palestinian prisoners in November. The body of another hostage, Elad Katzir, was recently retrieved from Gaza.

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit says: "The IDF has begun investigating the events of October 7, including the events at Nir Oz. At the conclusion of the investigations, the findings will be transparently presented to the public.

"On October 7, the IDF failed to protect the citizens and went to war. In all the Gaza-area communities and military posts, soldiers and civilians fought with supreme heroism and put their lives on the line to stop the killing spree as quickly as possible and save lives. The IDF stands with the bereaved families and is working to return the hostages."

2024-04-24T10:52:51Z dg43tfdfdgfd