Israel’s military has released footage of its so-called ‘Steel Sting’ mortar bomb being deployed in its fight against Hamas.

A video purporting to show the bomb in use was released by the Israeli Air Force, who claimed that “dozens of terrorists” had been “thwarted” in an attack on a rocket launcher.

“We used it for the first time at the beginning of the war,” Israel’s military quoted a captain in the Magellan commando unit as saying.

“It allows us to neutralize threats with greater precision than other types of bombs. We don’t shoot and hope to hit — we know we removed the threat.”

The Steel Sting is equipped with a dual guidance system, enabling precise strikes on targets in built-up areas, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Yaron Maor, a Kibbutz Nir Oz resident, fought valiantly against terrorists who infiltrated his community, protecting his family for hours until help finally arrived

Yaron Maor, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, woke up at 6:30 a.m. to discover that Hamas terrorists had infiltrated the kibbutz. Initially, he sought refuge with his wife and children in the shelter.

However, he soon realized that he had to confront the threat.

Yaron courageously left the shelter, set up an ambush, and bravely faced grenade attacks while eliminating the terrorists.

He later returned to the shelter to find his family safe, but their house had been engulfed in flames.

In a conversation with Radio 103FM, he claimed that the IDF had abandoned the town, forcing the residents to defend themselves, as no terrorists were eliminated by the military.

"In Kibbutz Nir Oz, the IDF did not engage the terrorists; they failed to eliminate a single one, even though there were hundreds.

Other kibbutzim may have faced a similar ordeal, but at least they had IDF troops that took action.

The only ones who fought valiantly were the emergency standby squad and individuals with personal firearms or other means."

At 6:30 a.m., my wife and I dropped off our children at the kindergarten. Simultaneously, our elder daughter was staying with her grandmother in the kibbutz, along with her younger sister.

At 7:15 a.m., we received a message about terrorists in the kibbutz wearing disguises near the clinic. Initially, we thought it was just another minor threat, and we were planning to leave the shelter in a few minutes.

However, my wife urged me to fetch a firearm."

"At 9:00 a.m., messages started pouring in, pleading for help as the terrorists reached their homes. Some were injured, desperate for assistance, and there was no one to send.

Many felt they had no choice but to leave to ensure their own survival. I decided to leave the shelter and, from the bathroom window, I spotted between 10 and 15 terrorists on our balcony.

My instinct was to open fire, but I held back at the last moment, choosing instead to set up an ambush inside the house to confront anyone entering.

Fortunately, I had a barricade, and they couldn't breach it. When one of the terrorists entered through a window and exposed himself, I approached and shot him twice at close range."

"Did you shoot him in the head?"

"Yes, and after that, the others yelled in Arabic - likely calling for another terrorist. Another fighter arrived, sprayed my house with gunfire while throwing a grenade at me. I swiftly moved into an inner room, the parents' room, which had a shower.

I took cover there as the grenade detonated. It took some time for me to recover, and then, after a few minutes, I ventured out of the corridor. I saw another terrorist inside my kitchen, and as he raised his head and noticed me, I advanced, firing two shots into his upper body.

He fell, and the chaos continued outside. More fighters arrived, shooting at my house and launching another grenade in my direction. Once again, I sought refuge in the same spot, this time escaping the explosion. I emerged after some time, approximately an hour and a half later."

"So, you endured an hour and a half of constant attacks, including grenade explosions?"

"Yes, that's correct. Initially, when I peeked out of the window, after leaving the school, I noticed that they had vandalized my sukkah. It seemed important to them to destroy it.

After the third grenade exploded in my vicinity and I sought refuge in the bathroom, they changed their tactics. They started approaching me from behind, and I didn't wait for them to enter the room this time. I emptied the last two rounds I had, which amounted to all my remaining ammunition."

Did you manage to injure any of them?"

"Yes, I heard voices after the shots. That's when they came at me from behind. They believed I was already dead.

Subsequently, a grenade was thrown into my room, and I quickly moved to the hallway of the shelter. The grenade exploded, and it took me a while to recover.

Somehow, I ventured out towards the room, only to see a Molotov cocktail thrown at me. The mattress ignited, and I began to panic. At one point, I managed to regain control and thought, 'It's better if the house burns down, and I reach the shelter.'

I returned to the shelter and shouted to my wife to open the door. She couldn't believe I was alive. After several minutes, she finally opened the door, and fortunately, the fire had been extinguished. An hour or two later, they returned to my house, fired shots at the shelter door from a distance, likely retrieved the terrorist's body, and then set the house ablaze."

"Weren't you affected by the fire while in the shelter?"

"I told my wife, 'We'll wait as long as we can.' We placed a towel at the door and decided to hold out as long as possible, fearing that if we tried to escape through a window, we'd be targeted.

We endured until we could no longer stay inside. My wife told me, 'We have to leave.' I opened a window, and she helped our children out. As I stood on the windowsill, the police arrived."

"What time was it when the police arrived?"

"It was 1:40 p.m."

"At 6:30 a.m., you received the warning, and at 9:30 a.m., you left the shelter. You led the battle for an hour and a half until 11:00 a.m.

Until 1:30 p.m., you were in the shelter when they were burning the house from the outside, and then you left."

"That's right. As I stood on the windowsill with the gun, the Israel Border Police unit approached me, heading towards the main door.

He was convinced that I was a terrorist. All the laser sights were on me. I shouted, 'Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,' [the Shema prayer] so that they would know I am Jewish. They still didn't believe it. The force commander grabbed my wife's hand and asked, 'Who is this?' She replied, 'My husband.' He inquired, 'What's his name?' She said, 'Yaron, leave him alone.' Only then was he convinced. He told me, 'Take us to Haim Perry; there's a terrorist there.' I said,

'Do you want me to take you? Leave two warriors here to protect my family, and I will guide you.' I then led them to safety.

Israel's Shin Bet security service and Police force jointly interrogated six detainees from Gaza who participated in the destruction and mass murder of October 7, 2023.

The footage from the interrogation was released on Monday and showed selected clips from six separate interrogations.

Each terrorist had a slightly different experience, but Israeli intelligence forces noted a number of common themes. All the Hamas agents were given explicit instructions to kill and kidnap civilians including the elderly along with women and children. While they did this, their commanders stayed behind in Gaza.

The reward for terrorism
One of the terrorists told Israeli forces that "whoever brings a hostage back [to Gaza] gets $10,000 and an apartment."

They said that the plan had been to take over the towns they attacked and hold positions there once they had finished killing and kidnapping the residents

The video released by the Shin Bet and the police shows the various Hamas operatives going into extreme detail about their activities on the morning of October 7. "The instructions were to kidnap women and children," said one. Another described an encounter with a dead body, saying: "Her body was lying on the floor. I shot her, and my commander yelled at me for wasting bullets on a dead body."

They made it clear that when it came to murder, they were not to distinguish between civilians and soldiers.

"When we finished," another Hamas operative said, "we burned two houses."

One described entering a house after his comrades had already shot a man living there. "Two [terrorists] went into the house ... we heard voices inside. Another two came in. There was one lying on the floor next to the door. I don't know if he was dead, but there was blood next to him. Inside there was one wounded man... I think a whole family. In their pajamas. The wounded man was in his underwear. A woman came out wearing a dress... then another with a dress. [Then] a boy and a girl."

He continued: "We went to the next house. From there, they took out a woman. An old woman."

He was then asked if these family members were used as human shields, and answered "Yes."

Another terrorist, who was at Be'eri, told interrogators: "When I entered the town, I saw two [terrorists] on a motorbike. They took a woman about 60-65 years old [with them] on the motorbike."

"Where did they take her?" the interrogator asked.

"To Gaza."

The footage cuts to a later part of the same terrorist's account. "After Suleiman and Karem killed that woman from the town... they took someone, a man about 40-45 years old... and took him."

"Took him where?"

"To Gaza."

The terrorists also describe a variety of other horrific activities including using smoke to force civilians out of their shelter and shooting several pets. Although the footage is heavily cut, many of their stories feature dead bodies lying on the ground and people crying and trying to run away.

At the end of the video, each of the Hamas agents was asked if what they did was permissible in Islam. They all answered the same way: "No. Islam does not permit the killing of women and children."

The Israel Defense Forces believes that in order to attain the government’s stated objectives in the war against the Hamas terror group, the military must begin its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip sooner rather than later, The Times of Israel learned Monday.

Israel says its war against Hamas is aimed at destroying the Iran-backed terror group’s infrastructure and has vowed to dismantle the organization after the October 7 massacres.

Led by Hamas and carried out with other terror groups, the assault saw some 2,500 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air, and sea, killing some 1,400 people and seizing at least 222 hostages of all ages, under the cover of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities.

The Times of Israel learned that, after 16 days of airstrikes, the IDF has told the government that it is fully prepared for a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, and believes it can achieve the goals set out for it, even at the risk of heavy casualties to soldiers, and amid ongoing attacks by Hezbollah in the north.

But the military fears that the government may not ever give the order to begin the ground offensive, or postpone it for a lengthy period.

Should the army need to move its focus to the northern front instead of Gaza, it is confident that it could pivot within just a few days. The IDF has already heavily bolstered the Lebanon border, but most forces remain near Gaza, ahead of the expected ground offensive.

Regarding the 222 confirmed hostages held by Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip, the military has been preparing for the possibility of rescue operations amid the ground offensive, according to information seen by The Times of Israel.


Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 22, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
The army is concerned that further hostage releases by Hamas could lead the political leadership to delay a ground incursion or even halt it midway

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi says that the Hamas terror group “regrets” launching a war against Israel, and admits that a ground offensive is being delayed by “strategic considerations.”

“Israel is in the midst of a war that was launched by the Hamas terror group. It already regrets it,” he says in a press conference near the Gaza border.

“We’ve prepared for this. The IDF and the Southern Command have prepared quality offensive plans to achieve the goals of the war,” he says. “The IDF is ready for the [ground] maneuver, and we will make a decision with the political echelon regarding the shape and timing of the next stage,” Halevi says.

He says that there are “tactical and even strategic considerations” delaying the ground offensive, but they enable the IDF to better prepare.

“We are making use of every minute to be even more prepared,” he says. “And every minute that passes on the other side, we strike the enemy even more. Killing terrorists, destroying infrastructure, collecting more intelligence for the next stage,” he adds.

Says Halevi: “This is our state, our house, and we will defend it by every means.

“What happened [on October 7, with Hamas’s slaughter of 1,400 people in Israel] is unprecedented since the foundation of the state. It will require a fundamental change in our security reality. There will be a cost to that, including as regard the length of the war.

“This war has one address: The Hamas leadership and all those who acted under its command. They will pay the price for what they did,” he says.

“My father(still held captive in Gaza) was getting more frail. He was very involved in rights for Palestinians and working towards peace with our neighbors,” she said, adding that he was a long-time campaigner for coexistence with the Palestinians.

“And I hope that he’s there and he’s being looked after and he’s got the chance to talk,” she said. “He speaks good Arabic, so can communicate very well with the people there. He knows many people in Gaza. I want to think he’s going to be okay.”

The Lifshitz couple, who were among the founders of Nir Oz, were peace activists and regularly transported patients from Gaza to receive medical treatment in hospitals across Israel.

Released Hamas hostage Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, described Tuesday at a widely attended press conference outside Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital how her terrorist captors took her by motorcycle from Kibbutz Nir Oz to the Gaza Strip on October 7 and into a “spiderweb” of tunnels, and accused Israel’s leadership of failures that made her and others into “scapegoats.”

She said her abductors beat her on the way to Gaza, but that she was treated well by her captors.

“I went through a hell that we’d never imagined. They [Hamas terrorists] rampaged through the kibbutz,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She derided Israel’s costly border fence with Gaza, which she said the invaders blew up with ease and had been “no help at all” in defending her kibbutz against the terrorist mob.

“I was taken, with my legs on one side and my head on the other” of the motorcycle, Lifshitz told reporters, and her abductors “flew through the fields” back toward Gaza. En route, the wheelchair-bound woman said, she was beaten with sticks, “not breaking my ribs” but “hurting me badly and making it hard for me to breathe.”

The terrorists removed her watch and jewelry, she said.

In Gaza, she was brought to the entrance of a tunnel network, which she described as “a spiderweb,” and had to walk “for kilometers” through tunnels with wet floors.

After some two-three hours, they reached a large hall where about 25 other hostages were gathered. “They told us they believe in the Quran and would not harm us, that they would give us the same conditions as they have in the tunnels,” Yocheved said of her captors.

She and about four other hostages from Kibbutz Nir Oz were taken later that day into a separate room.

“A medic and a doctor came,” and the hostages were put on mattresses, she said. The doctor returned every couple of days, and the medic arranged for medicines. “The treatment of us was good,” Lifshitz added, describing how the medic treated another of the hostages who was injured. She said her captors made sure the conditions were sanitary. “They cleaned the toilets, not us,” she said. “They were afraid of contagion.”

Asked about conversations with the captors, she said “they tried” to converse; “we told them, no politics… We didn’t answer them [on politics]. They talked about all kinds of things. They were very friendly to us. They took care of all of our needs; this must be said to their credit. We ate what they did,” she said, describing one meal a day of pita, cheese and cucumber.

She said “the lack of knowledge by the IDF and Shin Bet” about what Hamas had been planning “hurt us badly. We were the scapegoats for the leadership.” The signs were there ahead of the onslaught, including balloons flown over the border to set fire to kibbutz fields. “And the IDF, somewhere, didn’t take it seriously.”

“And suddenly on Shabbat morning, when everything was quiet, there was very heavy shelling on the communities, and along with the shelling, the mob burst in, burst through the [border] fence… opened the gate of the kibbutz and broke in en masse. It was very unpleasant, very difficult. My memory keeps replaying those pictures.”

Referring to the terrorists’ breaching of Israel’s security barrier on the Gaza border, Lifshitz said: “A swarm of people came to the fence — it cost NIS 2 billion ($493 million) and it didn’t help, not even a little bit.”

She said her captors had plainly prepared long ahead for holding hostages, and even had shampoo and conditioner for them.

Asked why she shook hands, apparently with one of her captors, when she was transferred to a Red Cross ambulance, she repeated again that the hostages were treated with “sensitivity.”

The Israel Defense Forces believes that in order to attain the government’s stated objectives in the war against the Hamas terror group, the military must begin its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip sooner rather than later, The Times of Israel learned Monday.

Israel says its war against Hamas is aimed at destroying the Iran-backed terror group’s infrastructure and has vowed to dismantle the organization after the October 7 massacres.

The Times of Israel learned that, after 16 days of airstrikes, the IDF has told the government that it is fully prepared for a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, and believes it can achieve the goals set out for it, even at the risk of heavy casualties to soldiers, and amid ongoing attacks by Hezbollah in the north.

But the military fears that the government may not ever give the order to begin the ground offensive, or postpone it for a lengthy period.

In the last decade Israel began relying on technology, intelligence, and airpower instead of ground operations to fight groups like Hamas.

Their conflicts began to follow a pattern:
Israel’s air force carries out an opening strike that kills a senior commander and temporarily knocks the enemy off balance;

Israel decides to continue the operation; the IDF then struggles to keep pressure on the enemy, which recovers and fights back;

Jerusalem turns to the international community to help bring the fight to a close; Israel enjoys a limited period of quiet before the next round.

Enemy forces whether Hizbollah or Hamas have become innoculated to this type of warfare, and the IDF needs to return to ground operations.

Israeli leaders have said in no uncertain terms that this war will only end when Hamas no longer runs the Gaza Strip.

“It’s only the beginning,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the first week of the war. “Our enemies have only just begun to pay the price. I won’t detail what will come next. But I’m telling you, it’s only the beginning.”

“We will destroy Hamas, and we will win,” he pledged.

Yet, 17 days into the war, Israel’s response looks similar to the long string of inconclusive military operations that for years allowed the Hamas threat to grow, then explode across the border into southern Israel. So far, almost the entire IDF response has been in the form of fire from the air force and artillery.

The much-anticipated ground invasion, meanwhile, has been pushed off far longer than seemed possible after Hamas invaders butchered 1,000 civilians and took hundreds more hostage.

...given Israel’s fighting record over the past 30 years, there may be another factor at play — a deep reluctance to order IDF ground troops into battle.

The rise and fall of ground maneuver

In the country’s early decades — when it won its famous victories — the IDF was an aggressive force once unleashed in war. With no strategic depth, Israel sent its ground forces to maneuver hard into enemy territory, quickly moving the fight away from Israeli population centers to deliver decisive defeats to adversary forces.

That approach was stunningly effective. Arab divisions were unequivocally devastated on the battlefield, and captured territory was the basis for peace talks with the leaders of the hostile Arab coalition, which saw members drop out with each defeat at the hands of Israeli ground forces.

But the ground maneuver concept began to crumble in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Though that conflict still ended with a classic battlefield victory by Israel’s ground forces, unexpected losses by IDF tanks, and an unprecedented loss of faith in leaders sending young men into battle, spurred Israelis to begin to reconsider whether risking their lives in pitched battles was as necessary as they had been told.

The seeds of change were planted, even though in the ensuing years the IDF doubled down on ground forces. The largest ever IDF ground army pushed into Lebanon in 1982, but the bitter debate in Israeli society over a war that was seen as one of choice added to questions over how much it should have to sacrifice in wartime.

It also pointed at the way forward. In the now-legendary Mole Cricket 19 operation on June 9, 1982, the IAF shocked the Syrians and their Soviet patrons by destroying the SAM anti-aircraft array in the Bekaa and downing around 25 Syrian planes while losing none of its own.

The air force’s success — which relied on innovative applications of new technologies — combined with the disappointing performance of the ground forces, opened the door to a new concept.

The growing debate in Israel took place at the same time that US military thinkers were relying on their technological advantage to deal with the problem of the Soviet numerical advantage in Europe. Instead of meeting Russian armor head-on, the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs, or RMA, envisioned using precision missiles and improved intelligence capacity as the keys to devastating enemy forces.

The stunning US victory over the large Iraqi army in 1991 underscored to Israel the potential for RMA to offer a means of victory without losses to ground forces.

Looking to avoid costly ground wars, and to make full use of Israel’s technological advantage over its enemies, the IDF pursued a conceptual revolution in which resources streamed toward the intelligence and the air force.  Israeli planners envisioned using precision missiles and improved intelligence capacity as the keys to devastating enemy forces, enabling the military to shut down the enemy military system by striking at key nodes while incurring minimal losses.

It also would obviate the need to capture ground, seen increasingly by Israel as a liability in the wake of the First Palestinian Intifada and amid the long occupation of southern Lebanon by the IDF.

“The possibility that the IDF would go again into Lebanon in order to defeat a terror organization wasn’t a real possibility at any stage after the withdrawal to the security zone in 1985,” wrote Moshe “Chicho” Tamir, a former brigade commander in southern Lebanon, in 2005.

Ground maneuver, formerly the cornerstone of IDF war plans, disappeared from major Israeli conflicts, with commanders exhibiting an aversion to ordering ground troops into the fight. The two large-scale operations against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the 1990s — Accountability and Grapes of Wrath — featured only artillery and aerial attacks and absolutely no ground maneuver.

Advances in stealth technology, UAVs and electronic warfare in the 1990s and early 2000s led some Israeli planners to entertain ideas of a “perfect war,” according to Itai Brun, former head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Analysis Division.

Though they might not have been explicitly cognizant of it, security chiefs seemed to be working under the belief that Israel could carry out campaigns with no casualties to its forces and no civilian deaths on the other side.

The threat that preoccupied the IDF at the time, the Second Intifada, was handled  by small infantry units carrying out raids and arrests of Palestinian terror suspects, along with airstrikes on terror leaders or rocket launchers within cities.

The major exception was Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, in which IDF forces retook Palestinian cities and fought pitched battles against massed gunmen. But that operation, not coincidentally Israel’s last decisive victory in a campaign, was seen as relevant only to the unique conditions in the West Bank, and didn’t lead to a renewed appreciation for classic ground maneuver in subsequent IDF documents.

Not surprisingly, the lion’s share of innovative technology and budget increases went to the air force and intelligence units, while the IDF ground forces — increasingly seen as irrelevant to contemporary operations — suffered through a lost decade.

Separation  

Over the same years, there was also a shift away from holding enemy territory, detaching unilaterally rather than subjecting soldiers to a slow bleeding by guerrilla forces and damaging Israel’s standing on the world stage.

Israel withdrew unilaterally from Lebanon in 2000. In the ensuing years, Israeli leaders had no desire to get stuck again in the Lebanese mud by using ground forces against Hezbollah, or to countenance the idea that pulling the troops out may have been a mistake. Instead, the idea was to hold Syria accountable if Hezbollah attacked Israel.

“I hope no one will dare, and I think that whoever dares will have to pay a price… I really don’t recommend to anyone to try us,” prime minister Ehud Barak cautioned Syria and its allies ahead of the pullout.

Israel took a similar step in Gaza, pulling out all civilians and troops in the 2005 Disengagement. Prime minister Ariel Sharon warned Palestinian terrorists not to take the withdrawal as a sign of weakness: “If they choose fire, we will respond with fire, more severe than ever.”

The Gaza withdrawal, and the security fence that started going up in the West Bank at the same time, reflected an Israeli desire to solve its conflict with the Palestinians by simply separating from them, having given up on the chances for a negotiated peace.

Deterrence

Since the Disengagement, Israel’s operations have increasingly focused on deterrence based on firepower. The 2006 Second Lebanon War began as previous operations had, with massive airstrikes. But as it became clear that the air force couldn’t stop Hezbollah rocket fire into Israel, ground forces were introduced gradually and haltingly.

“The thing that was seared into my memory was the difficulty the decision-makers exhibited in launching a ground maneuver,” remembered Gen. Guy Tzur, then commander of Division 162.

After the 2006 debacle, there were signs that maneuver was returning. The 2008-9 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza saw significant ground maneuver by IDF infantry and armored forces.

Then, the Iron Dome anti-rocket system was deployed in 2011, giving Israeli leaders cover to think in defensive terms, and not deal with the root of the terrorist army threat over its borders.

After the advent of Iron Dome, Israel fought two more major conflicts against Hamas. In the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, the IDF relied entirely on stand-off firepower and did not send troops in, while the limited ground advance in the 2014 Operation Protective Edge was part of a defensive effort against tunnels, and was not meant to defeat Hamas in the field.

Smaller rounds of conflict — in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023 — featured exclusively fire from air, sea, and artillery, and no ground incursion.

These deterrence operations were marked by an opening air attack, days or weeks of air and artillery strikes, then a ceasefire accompanied by assurances from Israeli leaders that deterrence was restored.

Some senior IDF officials warned publicly that deterrence operations were a road to perdition.

Brig. Gen. Tamir Yadai and Lt. Col. Eran Ortal wrote in an official IDF journal over a decade ago that the conflicts were part of a predictable and worrying pattern: Israel’s air force carries out an opening strike that kills a senior commander and temporarily knocks the enemy off balance; Israel decides to continue the operation; the IDF then struggles to keep pressure on the enemy, which recovers and fights back; Jerusalem turns to the international community to help bring the fight to a close; Israel enjoys a limited period of quiet before the next round.

The 2013 article came out in the aftermath of Operation Pillar of Defense — a weeklong fight that started with an airstrike on Ahmed Jabari, the second-in-command of Hamas’s military wing.

A decade later — and only five months before the Hamas massacre — the Netanyahu government launched Operation Shield and Arrow by taking out three senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials, sparking five days of intense fighting and zero hopes that it would be the last round between the two sides.

The strike eliminated Khalil Bahtini, PIJ commander for the northern Gaza Strip, who had taken over for Tayseer Jabari, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in August 2022 at the opening of another Gaza operation, Breaking Dawn. Jabari had replaced Hussam Abu Harbeed, killed by Israel during a 2021 operation, who himself had replaced Baha Abu al-Ata, struck by Israel’s air force at the start of Operation Black Belt in 2019.

Years of airstrikes, rockets, assassinations and brief bouts of tense calm were evidence for many that the IDF has been stuck in a paradigmatic rut that has placed long-term security — let alone victory — out of reach.

Return?

Still, in the years leading up to the 2023 Hamas onslaught, there were signs that the IDF was waking up to the fact that it was not providing answers to threats from Gaza and Lebanon.

Under the previous IDF chief of staff Aviv Kohavi, the IDF released two important documents, “The Momentum Multiyear Plan” and its conceptual underpinning, “The Operational Concept for Victory.”

The two publications showed that the IDF recognized that there was a serious problem, and that it must change conceptually and materially.  They provide for a significant shift in the way the IDF sees both itself and its adversaries. And at the heart of the documents lies the IDF’s understanding that reactive measures are insufficient to confront contemporary challenges.

They shed the language of insurgencies, guerrillas, and asymmetric warfare that was especially in vogue in the early aughts after the 9/11 attacks and US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead, the Kohavi-led documents speak about well-trained, capable “rocket-based terror armies.”

The documents accept the fact that deterrence operations not only don’t remove the threat, but also “inoculate the enemy against IDF power by gradually exposing him to limited doses of our capabilities,” according to Ortal, whose ideas were central to the new concept. The deterrence operations also told the enemy that his moves were having an effect on Israel “and that he should continue to develop them,” Ortal noted.

The new concept recognized the need for decisive victory through ground maneuver. But it proposed a new type of maneuver, one that emerges from the understanding that territory is no longer the asset Israel’s enemies are trying to protect. Instead, it is their ability to maintain their rocket fire on Israel’s home front that must be suppressed.

The emerging ground forces concept would take advantage of new opportunities offered by civilian technologies, especially artificial intelligence, miniaturization, sensors, automation, and big data. This, in the Kohavi vision, would allow Israeli ground forces — maneuvering once again in Gaza or Lebanon — to utilize their proximity to stealthy enemy forces and launchers to locate and destroy them after they are forced to reveal themselves.

But the concept had been meeting resistance before the Hamas onslaught. The IDF is slow to adopt organizational changes, which take years to filter through the ranks, much like any other large institution.

Though its leaders pay lip service to maneuver and victory, operationally the IDF has continued to cling to the deterrence concept and the assumptions underpinning it.

The fact that Ortal and Yadai, both now generals, had continued to call in print for the change to occur was a sign that they still saw plenty of reason to worry.

“Ostensibly, the IDF has agreed to this road map,” they wrote last October. “But we are more focused on the bank of targets [for the air force] than we are on the question of victory itself. In order to confront the new challenge, we must wean ourselves off the habits we have become used to for more than three decades.”

Right now as these lines are written, these are indications that the IDF feels itself ready to go into Gaza and is straining to do so, but is being held back by Netanyahu’s war cabinet.

By all indications, we will very soon have a much clearer picture of whether the IDF can still maneuver in enemy territory… or whether Israel’s leaders even have the stomach to order such an operation. For now, soldiers wait anxiously in staging grounds, Hamas continues to prepare its defenses, and the impatience and concern of Israeli civilians grows.

The IDF recovered on Tuesday a phone call in which a Hamas terrorist called his parents to boast of the amount of Jews he killed during the massacre of civilians in southern Israel on October 7.

The phone call, initiated by the terrorist, was taken from the phone of a murdered Israeli woman which was recovered by Israeli security forces, some two weeks after the massacre.

"Hi dad, I am speaking to you from Mefalsim," the Hamas terrorist is heard saying. "Open your WhatsApp and look at all the killed [Israelis]. Look at how many I killed with my own hands, your son killed Jews!

Terrorist live-streamed horrors of massacre to Gazan parents
"Dad, I am speaking to you from a Jew's phone, I killed her and her husband, I killed ten with my own hands," the terrorist excitedly told his Gazan parent

The father can be heard crying with joy as the terrorist expressed his intent to do a video call so his dad could see the extent of the massacre committed by his son, a member of Hamas's Nukhba forces.

"May God protect you, my son," his father said as the mother told the terrorist, "I wish I was there with you," as her son is heard shouting directions at fellow terrorists to "kill, kill, kill! kill them!"

"I was the first to enter under the guidance and with the help of Allah," he added. The full transcript of the recorded phone conversation is available below:

The full conversation between a Hamas terorrist and his family
TERRORIST: Hello dad. Dad I am inside Mefalsim. Open your WhatsApp right now, and see all the killed. Look at how many I killed with my own hands, your son killed Jews.

FATHER: Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar. May God protect you.

TERRORIST: This is inside Mefalsim, father. I am talking to you from the phone of a Jew, I killed her and her husband, I killed ten with my own hands.

FATHER: Allahu Akhbar.

TERRORIST: Open your phone and see how many I killed, father. Open your phone, I am calling you on WhatsApp.

FATHER: Crying (unintelligible).

TERRORIST: I am in Meflasim, father. I killed ten. Ten! Ten with my own bare hands. Their blood is on my hands, let me talk to Mom.

MOTHER: Oh, my son, may God protect you.

TERRORIST: I killed ten all by myself, mother.

FATHER: May God bring you home safely.

TERRORIST: Father, go back to WhatsApp! I want to call you live from Mefalsim.

MOTHER: I wish I was there with you.

TERRORIST: Mother, your son is a hero. I was the first to enter under the guidance and with the help of Allah. Father, lift your head, lift your head. (Talking to terrorists on the scene: Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill them! Inside, inside, into the city.)

BROTHER: Mahmoud, Mahmoud. Come back [to Gaza], that's enough, return.

TERRORIST: Return? There is no return, it is victory or martyrdom. My mother gave birth to me for Islam, Alaa. Are you serious, how will I return? Look at WhatsApp, look at your phone, look at all the killed.

Nineteen days into a war triggered by Hamas’s brutal October 7 terror attack on southern Israel, with the nation reeling from the horrific killings of some 1,400 people and abduction at least 224 more, and as the Israeli military prepares for a ground offensive in Gaza and potential escalation on the northern border, there is a new whisper of unity in Israeli society.

From coffeeshops to the front lines, many Israelis say they are unified on two things: they are convinced of the need to uproot Hamas, and they do not trust their own government to oversee the process.

That adds up to a deeply troubling, even terrifying scenario for the more than 350,000 reservists mobilized since the outbreak of war, the 150,000-180,000 standing army soldiers they are joining, and an Israeli society that will sacrifice to support them.

Such sentiments are backed up by numbers: New polling data shows that Israelis’ trust in government is at a 20-year low of 18%. Only 20.5% of Jewish Israelis and 7.5% of Arab Israelis polled by the Israel Democracy Institute in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack said they had trust in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. (In June, these populations polled at 28% and 18%, respectively.)

On the nineteenth day after Hamas committed unspeakable crimes against the people of Israel, brutally massacring over 1,400 inside our sovereign state, it can afford to feel quite satisfied with its standing. And that’s a diabolical situation.

The Israeli Air Force has been bombarding Hamas targets, manifestly causing considerable devastation above ground, and several times a day the IDF Spokesman gives a televised accounting of the airstrikes carried out and the Hamas commanders neutralized.

But Hamas remains all too evidently functional as a military and terrorist army, is still waging practical and pyschological war, and its most senior figures are not known to have been neutralized.

On Tuesday night, it sent terrorists by sea to try to attack two border towns. It maintains the capacity to launch barrages of rockets, including an ongoing effort to target the airport area. And its vast underground tunnel network is apparently still largely intact. Yocheved Lifshitz emerged on Monday from 17 days held captive in what she described as a “spiderweb,” and, in her undeniably candid press conference the next day, mentioned encountering wet floors and damp, but not collapsed ceilings or other devastation, as she was walked deep inside it with other hostages.

Along with its Hezbollah allies on the northern border, Hamas has forced the evacuation of some 130,000 Israelis from their homes in the south and the north — shrinking the areas of our tiny country in which the government now deems it safe for people to live, with endless personal and logistical consequences. Tens of thousands more, in areas not yet ordered to evacuate, have left their homes of their own volition, seeking greater safety in the center of the country.

The relentless rocket fire forces tens and hundreds of thousands of people, sometimes even more, to dash for shelter over and over and over again.

The economy, its tech spearhead already deeply undermined by months of bitter internal dispute over the government’s now-sidelined efforts to subjugate the judiciary, is nosediving further, and Israel’s international credit outlook is sinking. There’s barely a business that isn’t hurting badly. Volunteers are rushing to save Israeli agriculture, with foreign workers having left. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists have been away from work since the unprecedented call-up that followed the October 7 horrors.

Hamas is predictably squeezing every ounce of possible leverage out of its 220 or so hostages — enthralling the world by the simple expedient of releasing just four people thus far, efficiently misrepresenting itself as humane. In the case of the redoubtable Yocheved Lishiftz, moreover, Israel’s authorities proved incapable of realizing that presenting, for live press coverage, a newly released elderly peace activist whose husband is still being held hostage might not enable wider understanding of the terror group’s cynical ruthlessness and genocidal ambitions. As she spoke her truth, where was the supportive presence of a government representative, capable of contextualizing her account?

Hamas’s October 7 hostage bonanza, furthermore, has thus far proved able to prevent Israel from launching its daily-hyped imminent ground offensive, with the US and other nations whose citizens are held desperate to avoid a larger war in Gaza in which those lives could be lost. Israelis are, of course, no less desperate to secure the freedom of the hostages; they are also desperate to see the eradication of Hamas and the return of some confidence that they will not be murdered in their homes by the terrorists next door.

Day by day, as the monstrousness of what was done to us fades fast from the memories of those overseas who think they have no stake in Israel’s survival and well-being, world attention and empathy is switching increasingly from slaughtered Israelis to bombarded Gazans.

Israelis are proving characteristically resilient even in the wake of the unprecedented catastrophe, whose endless stories of heroism and loss continue to emerge. Two hundred thousand Israelis have flown back to the country since October 7. The soldiers, standing army and reservists, are hugely motivated, even as the government still proves largely dysfunctional.

But international understanding of the context in which Israel went to war against Hamas is rapidly receding. Israel is fighting not in retaliation or out of revenge, but in order to ensure that Gaza’s terror-government cannot survive to repeat its barbarism, to deter our other more powerful enemies, and to restore Israelis’ faith that we can live here in something close to safety.

Yet not even the presentation to international journalists of unwatchable material documenting the mass killings, the atrocities, and the delight Hamas’s murderers took in carrying them out can offset the simple passage of time since October 7.

And then, of course, there are those many around the world who have lost or never had a moral compass when it comes to the killings of Jews, and only find it when the Jews and their state attempt to defend themselves.

On the nineteenth day after swarms of Hamas terrorists burst across our unconscionably under-protected border and rampaged deep into Israel, exulting as they brutally murdered our people, empathy and support for an Israel in its darkest hour are dissipating. And Hamas, unthinkably, retains potency and even the upper hand.

The only reason we’re not all spilling outrage here at international hypocrisy, and overflowing with concern for the soaring hostility to Jews everywhere, is that we’re still deep in this war — a war that we don’t want to define as existential, but that is looking increasingly so. And it’s not clear we’ve even really begun to fight back.

Israeli fighter jets continued to pound the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Wednesday, targeting Hamas command centers and other assets and killing a senior commander in the Palestinian terror group, while the Israel Defense Forces panned Iran for allegedly taking an active part in preparing Hamas for the current war.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a press conference Wednesday that Iran had directly aided Hamas ahead of the October 7 onslaught,..in the worst terror attack in Israel’s history.

“Iran directly aided Hamas before the war, with training, supplying weapons, money and technological know-how,” Hagari charged. “Even now, Iranian aid to Hamas continues in the form of intelligence and online incitement against the State of Israel.”

The army said Wednesday that one of its overnight airstrikes killed the commander of Hamas’s North Khan Younis Battalion, Taysir Mubasher, who according to the IDF previously served as head of Hamas’s naval forces and also held several positions related to the terror group’s weapon manufacturing.

“Mubasher has extensive experience in the military and as a commander, directing terror attacks, and he is considered close to Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing,” the IDF said in a joint statement with the Shin Bet security agency.

The IDF said Mubasher had been behind a deadly 2002 attack at the Atzmona pre-military academy in the former Gush Katif bloc of Gaza settlements, among other attacks against IDF forces when Israel controlled the Gaza Strip before 2005, as well as a Hamas infiltration into Israel via Zikim beach in 2014.

In total, the IDF said, it had carried out dozens of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip overnight, including against Hamas tunnels, command centers, weapons storage sites and mortar and anti-tank missile launch sites.

The IDF said strikes also targeted war rooms, infrastructure and command centers belonging to Hamas’s so-called emergency operational apparatus.

According to the IDF, the apparatus has been responsible for setting up blockades preventing Palestinians from evacuating from northern Gaza to its south, as Israel has advised residents to do as it intensifies strikes in the Gaza City area and prepares for an expected major ground incursion aimed at rooting out Hamas.

Hamas and other Gazan terror groups have fired many thousands of rockets toward Israeli cities since the war began, though the pace has somewhat abated in what Israel as well as analysts say is preparation for a long war.

Rockets were fired overnight and on Wednesday morning toward the coastal city of Ashkelon, as well as toward Israeli communities near the Gaza border that have largely been evacuated. There were no reports of damage or injuries in those barrages.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, at least three people were killed and several were injured in an Israeli airstrike overnight in Jenin, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Wafa news agency.

The invasion and massacre in Israel on October 7 brutally showed how Hamas has significantly improved and strengthened its  tactical and strategic terror capabilities since it began to dig into and hide in the Gaza Strip decades ago.

The infamous Hamas tunnels have played a central role in this worrisome development. Prof. Joel Roskin, a geomorphologist and geologist at Bar-Ilan University's geography and environment department, has followed the changes in the Gaza tunnels over the years, analyzed the conditions that allowed their formation and expansion and revealed what geological and security conditions have enabled their speedy development.

Three years ago, Roskin published a book chapter based on his study “Underground Warfare in the Gaza Strip and the Military Complexity of Combating It.” A timely article on the same topic and with the same name is currently in the final stages of acceptance by the academic journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.

The article, based on his experience as head of the terrain research department in the Southern Command in the 2000s and on information publicized in the media, describes the field data and the geopolitical conditions that literally provided the fertile ground for the development of the tunnels.

"What is interesting about Hamas is that the rate of growth of the tunnels, not only in size but also in purpose, complemented the development of the organization’s operational concept," Roskin said. "It began with the smuggling of goods, progressed to the smuggling of weapons, and later evolved into attack tunnels."

"At these stages, the organization’s perception was tactical. Later, they facilitated abductions like that of the 2006 kidnap of Private Gilad Shalit and transformed the underground into attack and hiding tunnels," he said.

The next phase was the strategic offensive tunnels that were revealed during Operation Protective Edge nine years ago. These new tunnels corresponded to the growing operational appetite of Hamas, whose leaders saw that they were always successful – and that the Israel Defense Forces had only a meager response to this.”

THE FLEDGLING phase began in 1982 following the peace agreements with Egypt and Egyptian insistence that the border dissect the town of Rafah between Gaza and Egypt. Residents dug tunnels that were used to smuggle goods and mainly to reunite families that were split between the two sections of Rafah.

The tunnels at that time were not used for terrorism; they were dug mainly by local miners with experience in digging wells. In 1994, an upward trend began in the number of smuggling tunnels for goods and munitions between Rafah in Egypt and Rafah in Gaza, which came under the control of the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo Peace Accords.

In 2000, an intensification of the use of the underground began following the second Intifada (Palestinian uprising) and in view of the IDF’s preparations for an unfulfilled invasion of the Gaza Strip as part of Operation Defensive Shield. During this period, illegal arms smuggling and the mining of tunnels in Rafah increased.

Besides Israel's 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and its difficulty in locating the tunnels that enabled their development, Roskin points out Gaza’s geological features that facilitated mining. In the southern Gaza Strip there are sedimentological units, one to two meters thick of varying degrees of cohesion, formed from the accumulation of layers of dust and sand that harden and coalesce with time but do not turn into rock.

These units are relatively convenient for mining by hand, are stable enough and tend not to collapse. Until the 2000s, the tunnels were usually dug at a depth of four to 12 meters. Above a depth of four meters, they were not stable and there was usually no reason to invest and dig to depths of more than 12 to 15 meters. This was based on general observations and an incidental result of geophysical research in a simulated area, since the Israeli army never mapped or measured the tunnels in a professional and systemic manner.

BUT ROSKIN said that Hamas consistently learned and improved, and began digging deeper, bigger and longer specimens. At the same time, the means of support, communication and electricity and even human adaptation were close-to perfected.

“At first, it’s a psychologically and physiologically difficult place to be in. Beyond hiding the entrances and exits, the location of the tunnels in an urban area makes it easier for Hamas because the necessary infrastructure such as electricity, water and communications is nearby.," he said. "Even without an electricity network, air ventilation systems into the tunnels are possible with the help of underground generators."

Explaining the ease of mining together with the difficulty of detection, the geomorphologist noted that there are several technological detection methods, some of which are based on the transmission of a wave that may partially return according to the properties of the soil.

“But in this case, the search in a sense is for nothing, [since] a very small cross-sectional space of air compared to the subsoil medium, with a width and height of usually no more than one or two meters respectively [is] just enough to allow two-way movement in the underground, "Roskin said. "In addition, to activate detection, one has to be on ground above the tunnel or in the ground in the same place.”

Another approach to locating tunnels is identifying construction, maintenance and activity signs on the surface such as soil piles. “For this, you need high-resolution fusing of intelligence work looking at small changes in the terrain at short time intervals," he said. "In a built-up area this is very challenging. Within the city, these changes may be concealed within structures or swallowed up by intense daily reality/activity.”

It seems that until recently, popular perception of the Hamas tunnels was sometimes quite simplistic, Roskin said: they were treated as a passage for fighters, constituting a threatening infrastructure. But in recent years, Hamas integrated the underground system in many ways into its defensive and offensive system, built by cruelly combining military warfare, guerilla warfare and terrorism.

"This holistic guerilla-fare concept includes logistical, strategic and tactical tunnels alongside above-ground battle methods. The underground is integrated into all aspects of the battle, including gunfire, secretly concentrating forces and probably also for transporting prisoners and hostages and for holding them in secure medicinal conditions," he said, concluding that "These conditions are indeed a challenge for full offensive IDF treatment.

On October 7, as the scale of the Hamas massacre became clear to the Israeli public, it would have been inconceivable to a stunned and horrified Israel that 19 days later, their forces are still idling outside the Gaza Strip.

Almost three weeks after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas is still alive and kicking, able to send teams of naval commandos on suicide missions into Israeli territory and rockets through the south, center and north.

With substantial international support, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his vaunted war cabinet still have no significant military achievements in the same time it took for Israel to defeat Syria and Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

As it has done in the endless series of Gaza operations before, Israel continues to boast about the B-level commanders it eliminates, the number of airstrikes it carries out and the Hamas infrastructure it destroys. Hamas’s ability to threaten Israel is unaffected, and the overwhelming majority of its fighting force remains comfortably dug in.

In the meantime, Hamas can point at plenty of accomplishments since its unqualified “success” on October 7. Some 200,000 Israelis have left their homes, leaving the borders with both Gaza and Lebanon denuded for the first time in the country’s history. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been forced into shelters in massive barrages on Tel Aviv and its environs. Over 300,000 IDF reservists in the prime of their careers are out of the economy. Diplomatic initiatives with Muslim partners in the region are suspended indefinitely.

Slowly but surely, the focus of news coverage and diplomatic conversations is moving from Hamas’s evil, to the need to free hostages, humanitarian aid to Gaza and Palestinian casualties.

Israel simply cannot achieve its stated war aims without a massive ground operation into the Gaza Strip.

But Netanyahu dithers. It’s unclear exactly why.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the US asked Israel to hold off until it gets air defenses in place in order to protect US troops in the region.

The New York Times reported that the Biden administration wants more time to free hostages and get aid into Gaza. The White House is also extremely worried about civilian casualties on the Palestinian side and is trying to gain guarantees from Israel about minimizing collateral damage — a tall order in urban warfare.

There are also sensible Israeli reasons to move slowly. It is wise to make sure the troops are fully equipped before moving in (even if the logistical chaos is entirely unforgivable). And softening up Hamas defenses also makes tactical sense.

But most of the airstrikes seem to be aimed at Hamas officials, headquarters and launchers, and not at the defenses IDF troops will encounter as they hit the edge of Gaza’s cities.

And with every day that passes, the troops’ readiness drops. Filled with a burning determination to destroy the monsters who slaughtered their countryfolk, IDF soldiers were ready to head into the fight within days of the massacre. Now, they are heading home to visit families, organizing volleyball matches and texting friends that “we’re doing nothing.”

At the same time, there remains a more optimistic possibility.

The US and Israeli leaks to leading international outlets, and Netanyahu’s rather superfluous address to the nation Wednesday night, could all be part of a well-coordinated deception campaign.

US and Israeli officials could have agreed to get Hamas to lower its guard by making it seem like the White House was pushing Israel for a delay, and that the war cabinet was rolling over in the face of Biden’s demands.

“We are preparing for a ground incursion,” Netanyahu said in his national address, intimating that it was still some ways off. “I won’t specify when, how, how many. I also won’t detail the range of considerations, most of which the public is not aware of. And that’s the way it is supposed to be. This is the way, so that we protect our soldiers’ lives.”

If Israel is carrying out a ruse in concert with its superpower ally — one that fooled the Israeli public and hopefully Hamas — then perhaps the country is in better hands than many think.

But if the delay is the product of indecision, lack of will or a mistaken belief that there is a way to carry this out that will be relatively pain-free, then Israel is in more dire straits than we ever imagined possible.

The brutal Hamas massacre on October 7 was preceded by months of warning signs noted by IDF surveillance soldiers and disregarded as unimportant by intelligence officials, according to eyewitness accounts given in recent days.

At least three months prior to the attack, surveillance soldiers serving on a base in Nahal Oz reported signs that something unusual was underway at the already-tumultuous Gaza border, situated a kilometer from them.

The activity reported by the soldiers included information on Hamas operatives conducting training sessions multiple times a day, digging holes and placing explosives along the border. According to the accounts of the soldiers, no action was taken by those who received the reports.

IDF surveillance soldiers, referred to in Hebrew as tatzpitaniyot, belong to the Combat Intelligence Corps and operate along the country’s borders, as well as throughout the West Bank.

The surveillance soldiers are referred to by many as “the eyes of the army” as they provide real-time intelligence information to soldiers in the field, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The soldiers gather information through a variety of cameras, sensors and maps, and are expected to be acutely aware of every small change that happens in the 15-30 kilometers of land that they are each responsible for monitoring.

Once relevant information has been gathered by the surveillance soldiers, it is passed up the chain of command, including to intelligence officials who then determine what steps need to be taken. However, according to the accounts of two surveillance soldiers stationed on a base in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the signs of what was to come on October 7 were never taken seriously.

In a segment aired on Kan News on Wednesday evening, two soldiers, Yael Rotenberg and Maya Desiatnik, recounted their experiences in the months before the attack and up until 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 7.

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.

Rotenberg was asleep when the attack began, and of the surveillance soldiers who were in the living quarters that morning, she is the only one to have survived. Desiatnik, who was on duty, was the only other surveillance soldier at the base not killed or abducted.

It’s infuriating,” she told Kan of the intelligence failure. “We saw what was happening, we told them about it, and we were the ones who were murdered.”

The Hamas terrorists would train at the border fence nonstop, Desiatnik told Kan. At first, it was once a week, then once a day, and then nearly constantly.

In addition to passing on information about the frequency of the training going on at the fence, the surveillance soldier said she collected evidence of the content of the training, which included how to drive a tank and how to cross into Israel via a tunnel. As the activity on the border increased, she realized that “it was just a matter of time” until something happened

Former tatzpitaniyot Amit Yerushalmi and Noa Melman corroborated the accounts of the two survivors in an interview published by Channel 12 on Thursday morning.

Yerushalmi had finished her mandatory service a month prior to October 7, and had observed the increased activity on the Gaza border in the months leading up to her release.

“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,” she told Channel 12.

“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.”

Like Rotenberg and Desiatnik, Yerushalmi said that she passed the information along, but that nobody seemed to take it seriously.

“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.”

Melman finished her mandatory service some nine months ago, but told Channel 12 that even then, there were indications of what was to come, including a mock border fence set up by Hamas 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,” she said.

On Wednesday evening, video footage was acquired and aired by Channel 12 in which a convoy of white pickup trucks — which are favored by Hamas terrorists and were used on October 7 — can be seen driving past the border fence, at one point coming to a halt while those driving observed the border.

While Channel 12 has said that the footage was taken a month before October 7, this claim has been disputed, with other reports claiming it was captured just one week prior.

A Ynet military correspondent called it “old news” in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “These are pickup trucks with Hamas operatives; they have been patrolling the Gaza border road every day since 2015,” he added.

A report from the news outlet from 2015 backs up his claim, with footage of Hamas patrolling on the then newly constructed border road, some 300 meters from the fence.

At the time, Ynet reported that it was unclear if the patrols were being carried out for intelligence purposes, or if their purpose was to intimidate the IDF.

Yerushalmi explained to Channel 12 that the patrol featured in the recent video differed from the regular patrols, although she did not explain why.

"When we saw the convoy of pickup trucks, we said it was suspicious, it shouldn’t happen, it’s not something they do on a daily basis. In the two years I served, I never saw anything like it.”

In the weeks before October 7, Rotenberg noticed that the efforts of the Hamas soldiers were concentrated at two specific points of the area she was responsible for tracking. However, she continued to hear from her commanders that it wasn’t important and that there was nothing that could be done about it.

On October 7, the areas highlighted by Rotenberg were just two of the multiple points along the fence through which 2,500 Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel.

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.”

It was then that their cameras were cut.

Speaking to Channel 12, Yerushalmi touched on what the survivors of the massacre feel is a complete failure of the IDF to protect them after failing to take their warnings seriously.

“They [the surveillance soldiers] understood what was happening and knew exactly what to do. Usually with these events, you understand very quickly what is happening.

“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.”

IDF tanks, troops push into Gaza in limited raid ahead of ground offensive

The Israel Defense Forces deployed a limited ground incursion into Gaza overnight, sending infantry forces and tanks up to a kilometer into the northern part of the Strip, the military said Thursday morning.

The “targeted raid” appeared to be the most significant ground offensive into the Palestinian enclave since war broke out earlier this month, as the IDF prepares a full-scale invasion to eliminate the Hamas terror group that rules the Strip.

According to the IDF, the raid — led by the Givati infantry brigade and the 162nd Armored Division  — was part of preparing the border area for the “next stages of the war,” referring to the full ground offensive promised by Israeli officials.

Troops struck “numerous” terrorists, infrastructure, and anti-tank guided missile launch positions, and “operated to prepare the battlefield,” the army said.

Soldiers returned to Israeli territory after the raid, the IDF added.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the operation lasted a few hours, and no soldiers were hurt. The troops operated within one kilometer of the border.

“Through the raid, we eliminated terrorists, neutralized threats, dismantled explosives, neutralized ambushes, in order to enable the next stages of the war for the ground forces,” Hagari said.

The incursion went beyond near-daily “localized raids” soldiers have been carrying out on areas near the border to search for bodies of missing Israelis and to clear the ground of explosives left behind by Hamas terrorists from the October 7 onslaught.

Those raids are carried out with smaller numbers of forces and do not go as deep into the Gaza Strip as Thursday’s raid.

Israel says its war against Hamas is aimed at destroying the Iran-backed terror group’s infrastructure and has vowed to dismantle the organization after the October 7 massacres, while minimizing harm to Gaza’s civilians.

Led by Hamas and carried out with other terror groups, the assault saw some 2,500 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air, and sea, killing some 1,400 people and seizing at least 228 hostages of all ages, under the cover of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities.

The IDF has been calling on Palestinians to evacuate from northern Gaza southward, as it intensifies strikes in the Gaza City area ahead of the expected major ground incursion.

In the past day, Israeli jets struck over 250 sites belonging to Hamas, including infrastructure, command centers, tunnels, and rocket launchers, the army said.

Navy forces also struck a Hamas surface-to-air missile launch position that was situated next to a mosque and kindergarten, in Khan Younis, the army said.

Israeli soldiers patrol next to communities near the Israeli-Gaza border, southern Israel, October 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israeli Air Force sources have said that more than 10,000 sites belonging to Hamas and other terror groups have been struck since the beginning of the war.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says the strikes have killed 6,546 people, mostly civilians and many of them children. The figures issued by the terror group cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include its own terrorists and gunmen killed in Israel and in Gaza, and the victims of a blast at a Gaza City hospital on October 17 caused by an Islamic Jihad missile misfire but which Hamas has blamed on Israel. Israel says it killed 1,500 Hamas terrorists inside Israel on and after October 7.

Israeli soldiers on October 17 amid the destruction of a home at Kibbutz Be’eri, near the Israeli-Gaza border, where Hamas terrorists killed over 100 residents on October 7, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The death toll on both sides is expected to rise significantly once Israel launches its ground offensive and begins entering cities. Troops are expected to have to contend with Gaza’s network of tunnels built by terror groups, booby traps and bombs, as they battle through tough urban environments.

Gazan terrorists have launched thousands of rockets at Israel since October 7, killing and wounding a number of people. Rocket fire on areas near the Gaza Strip resumed Thursday morning after an overnight pause.

Much of the area has been evacuated of Israeli civilians, but is filled with thousands of troops mustering near the Gaza border who have been waiting for the order to enter.

A picture taken from the southern Israeli city of Sderot on October 26, 2023 shows flares fired by the Israeli army over the northern Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing war with Hamas. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP)
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Tuesday that the full ground offensive into Gaza had been delayed by “tactical and even strategic considerations.”

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Israel had agreed to a request from the United States to temporarily delay the planned Gaza ground incursion to give Washington more time to deploy additional air defense systems to protect its troops in the region

The US was also reportedly concerned that Israel lacks achievable military goals for its operations in Gaza, leading to fears that the IDF is not yet ready for a ground incursion.

The campaign is also understood to have been postponed to allow for extensive internationally brokered negotiations with Hamas over the potential release of hundreds of Israeli and foreign hostages it is holding. Talks have resulted in four captives being freed — mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Ra’anan on Friday night, and elderly women Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper on Monday night.

A picture taken from the southern Israeli city of Sderot shows rockets fired toward Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 23, 2023 (Jack Guez / AFP)
Addressing the apparent delay, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted Wednesday evening that the ground incursion is looming, but added he would not share when or how. He also said he would not share the range of considerations involved.

The prime minister said that the offensive’s aims are to destroy Hamas and to return the hostages, casting members of the terror group as “dead men walking.”

“We are preparing for a ground incursion. I won’t specify when, how, how many. I also won’t detail the range of considerations, most of which the public is not aware of. And that’s the way it is supposed to be. This is the way so that we protect our soldiers’ lives,” Netanyahu said, adding that there was a unanimous decision about the timing of the ground operation.

On Wednesday, Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, told a Lebanese TV station that “the battles have not begun yet.”

Ambushed and Outgunned, Local Police Defended an Israeli City
Reporting from Ofakim, Israel

Oct. 26, 2023Updated 11:54 a.m. ET
Roni Abuharon, a detective in the southern Israeli city of Ofakim, grabbed his pistol and floppy police hat. “Don’t leave me alone,” his wife pleaded as sirens signaled incoming rockets from the Gaza Strip, less than 20 miles away.

Down the street, Itamar Alus, his good friend and fellow officer, told his wife to lock the door and take their children to the bomb shelter.

The officers rushed outside. Mr. Alus glimpsed his friend from afar, running to meet the sudden staccato of gunfire. It was the last time they would see each other.

Ofakim, a quiet desert community of about 30,000 people, was the site of fierce, prolonged fighting during Hamas’s surprise attacks on Oct. 7. It was one of the farthest points the terrorists reached. With the Israeli military slow to respond to the unfolding horror, it fell to local police officers — many of them with nothing more than pistols — to defend the city and prevent Hamas from pushing deeper into Israel. Officers stared down hostage-takers, contained the rampage and prevented more bloodshed.

One measure of what might have been: The dead assailants left behind a cache of grenades, anti-tank rockets, plastic explosives and land mines that they had not had a chance to use.

“The police saved us,” said Cochy Abuharon, Roni’s older sister. “Without their courage, there would have been more slaughter.”

The New York Times stitched together key moments of the battle of Ofakim through text messages, photographs, audio recordings, video footage and interviews with victims, family members and officers. Building on reports in the Israeli media, the Times reporting reveals the heroism and harrowing choices of local officers and residents during a terrifying wait for a rescue.

And it suggests that the assault on Ofakim began with a well-timed ambush.

About 50 Israelis died in the battle, including at least six officers. That grim outcome played out again and again elsewhere. At least 58 police officers died in attacks around the country.

In Ofakim, residents called it “Black Shabbat.”

The Ambush
Two white pickup trucks rolled into town around 6 a.m., before any siren had sounded.

It was Saturday, the Jewish day of rest.

The assault team comprised more than a dozen men. Each wore a green combat vest bulging with ammunition.

A video of their arrival, taken from an upstairs window, shows grenades, launchers and ammunition organized neatly on the sidewalk alongside one of the trucks. In addition to their arsenal, the men had medical kits, instructions for slinging an injured limb, maps of Ofakim and plenty of food — preparation for a lengthy, ferocious attack.

The gunmen streamed into the dense neighborhood of Mishor HaGefen on the outskirts of town. There, they seemed to pause, residents recalled. Hamas rockets were pummeling towns across the region, and the terrorists in Ofakim apparently waited for the sirens to draw people outdoors on their way to bomb shelters.

An elderly woman was shot in the back when she came outside. Others were killed as they approached the shelters.
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Fanning out across the neighborhood, gunmen burst into homes, catching people by surprise in the panic of the sirens and shooting. A police video taken after the battle shows a man shot dead in his living room, just inside the screen door. His wife died in the hallway nearby, slumped on the blood-smeared tile floor.

Down the street, gunmen opened fire on Victor Rachmilov, 59, as he tried to escape the neighborhood with his daughter in his white Mitsubishi S.U.V. Bullets tore through his car and limbs as he tried to maneuver past them. With no way out, Mr. Rachmilov and his daughter fled the car. He was hit four more times in the legs.

For some reason, the shooting stopped long enough for Mr. Rachmilov and his daughter to escape. Video shows her ringing a doorbell, looking for safety as her father limps nearby.

“I’m still not sure what drew them away,” Mr. Rachmilov recalled. “We were easy targets.”

This was the chaos that Mr. Abuharon, Mr. Alus and other officers found when they ran to help.

‘Rabbits at a Shooting Range’
Almost immediately, Mr. Alus spotted three green-vested men. He fired twice, striking one in the leg. But they returned fire, spraying bullets around him. He retreated, outgunned.

As a police officer, Mr. Alus, 39, thought he might someday tangle with a terrorist wielding a knife or gun. He never envisioned a Hamas invasion, with teams of killers terrorizing Israelis in their neighborhoods and homes. And he never imagined that he and his fellow officers would face them alone, without the superior firepower of the Israeli military.

Senior military leaders have acknowledged that intelligence and security agencies failed to anticipate and prevent the attack. They have said little about the military’s response, which took hours as civilians ran and hid from gunmen in several towns.

Moving through the neighborhood, Mr. Alus climbed atop a garden wall and shot a Hamas gunman several times in the head. It was the first time he had killed someone.

Next door, a fellow officer faced a similar confrontation. He shot and killed a gunman who was trying to enter the back door.

Videos captured fragments of the two shootings. Another video shows the terrorist that Mr. Alus killed, lying in a craggy backyard.

Minutes later, Mr. Alus said, he came upon a rabbi lying in the street, shot and injured. Gunfire continued to pop. A trained medic, Mr. Alus knew he could help the man. He also knew that the protocol was to stop the shooter first, then tend to the wounded. But as bullets peppered the ground, Mr. Alus said he dragged the rabbi by his belt into a nearby house and wrapped a towel around his injured leg.

That’s when he spotted a wounded soldier whose helmet had been pierced by a bullet. Were more soldiers on their way, Mr. Alus asked?

“No,” the soldier responded. “I came from home.”

“I realized that we were on our own,” Mr. Alus said. “Like rabbits at a shooting range.”

Escape From a Window

Michal Bilia, a Yemenite Jew, had gathered her sons and grandchildren for a Sabbath breakfast. She placed two challahs on the dining room table.

They never got the chance to break bread.

Gunfire crackled outside, sending the family scrambling upstairs. Windows shattered. With nowhere to hide, they climbed through a window to the roof. Video shows the frantic escape, as children hurried for safety and adults passed a month-old baby through the window, all amid the pop of gunfire.

As Ms. Bilia escaped, she saw a gunman in the yard below and warned her 28-year-old son, Ariel, who was still indoors: “He’s out there. Get inside!”

She then scurried along the roof to join her family beneath her neighbor’s solar panels. Ariel tried to follow. Video footage shows that he made it halfway out of the window before slumping onto the roof, dead.

The family huddled on the roof as the sounds of grenades and gunfire mixed with the screams of their neighbors. A rocket-propelled grenade blasted through their front window, shuddering the house and scorching the living room. The explosion partially melted a baby carriage and a clock.

The challahs, covered by a white cloth, remained unscathed.

For hours, even the baby hid silently. “She didn’t make a sound,” Ms. Bilia said. “It was a miracle.”

Finally, Mr. Alus spotted them and helped them to safety.

Police officers cleared the area, lobbing grenades into a nearby shed where three gunmen had taken cover. Mr. Alus shouted in Arabic for the lone survivor to come out. As he emerged, Mr. Alus heard another other officer shout “fire” and they shot him dead.

Mr. Alus said they believed he had a bomb.

“These guys had come there for a suicide mission,” he said, “not to turn themselves in.”

Hostage Situation
Yigal Ilouz, 56, a police bomb technician, drove to Mishor HaGefen after his shift ended that morning in Ofakim. A father of four, he had spent more than 30 years as an officer and had been something of a father figure to Mr. Alus.

He was scheduled to retire in two months.

Mr. Ilouz had his police rifle, protective vest and helmet — more protection than many others had. But as he entered the neighborhood with two other officers and a soldier, he was ambushed by gunfire from a second-floor window.

Hamas gunmen had broken into the home of Rachel and David Edri, a couple in their 60s, and were holding them hostage. A large wall protected the house. The upstairs window had a clear view of the streets.

Bullets struck Mr. Ilouz in the neck and torso, finding a gap in his vest. Under fire, his companions fell back, unable to pull him to safety.

Only later, as more forces arrived at the hostage standoff, could officers retrieve Mr. Ilouz’s body.

The streets outside the Edri home were lethal. That is where the authorities found the body of Roni Abuharon, the officer who had grabbed his floppy hat and rushed into danger. The sidewalk is still stained with his blood.

Around 9:30 a.m., hours after the assault began, Mr. Alus joined the officers assembling outside the house. He made two gruesome discoveries. First, he learned that a good friend and police officer, Avi Buzaglo, had been killed. Mr. Alus picked up Mr. Buzaglo’s police hat, shook off the blood and put it on his head so people would know that he was with the police.

Then he saw Mr. Ilouz’s body. He was crushed.

When his wife called later, pleading for him to come home, Mr. Alus resisted. “It was hard to go home,” he said, “when my friends could not.”

‘We’ll Save Them’
Yamam, a secretive police counterterrorism unit that specializes in hostage rescues, arrived that afternoon at the Edri house.

Officers, including the Edris’ son Evyatar, assembled outside, trying to negotiate for the couple’s safety and occasionally trading gunfire with the hostage-takers, video footage shows.

Inside, Ms. Edri charmed her captors, plying them with food and drinks. She signaled discreetly through the window that they were being held by five terrorists.

Before dawn, Yamam, the hostage rescue team, decided to storm the house and end the standoff. Evyatar Edri thought there was a low chance his parents would survive, but urged the commandos to do what was necessary.

He remembers the commander’s embrace and his words: “I promise you. We’ll save them.”

The operators stormed the house around 3 a.m., leaving the walls and floors smeared in blood.

A police radio crackled: “The hostages have been rescued alive.”

The battle for Ofakim was over.

Aftermath
Shortly after 9 a.m., Mr. Abuharon’s wife, Shiran, emerged from the bomb shelter, where she had hidden with a large kitchen knife. Her brother-in-law, Rafi, met her there, with the news that her husband had been killed.

“Come, Shiran,” he told her. “The kids need you.”

The following day, Rafi Abuharon, a police officer himself, drove to a makeshift mortuary an hour away. He had to view hundreds of bodies before finding his younger brother.

At Mr. Abuharon’s funeral, Evyatar Edri embraced Mr. Abuharon’s widow. “We’re connected by blood,” he said.

National Unity Party leader and war minister Benny Gantz on Thursday gave the most detailed revelations on record from one of Israel’s decision-makers to date regarding the war in Gaza and its aftermath.
Gantz made it clear that the government’s original solitary goal of destroying Hamas and remaking the reality in Gaza has been adjusted by multiple other goals.

If initially top sources told the Jerusalem Post that the invasion of Gaza would happen in the first week and the government wanted to convey a sense of rapid momentum in that direction, Gantz and the government now want to convey a purposeful deliberateness in deciding their grand strategy.

In separate messages, the government and IDF said from the start that they wanted to return the hostages as well as eliminate Hamas.

However, in the early days of the war, a senior diplomatic official made it emphatically clear at that time that worrying about the hostages getting in the crossfire would in no way slow down the IDF’s attacks on Hamas.

That indication has ultimately panned out as inaccurate, as the ground invasion has been delayed by weeks and Gantz made it clear that trying to save hostages was not just a tactical issue, but a strategic consideration.

Sources have hinted that Gantz still realizes that destroying Hamas is the primary goal, but the fact that he did not use those words publicly, shows how heavily the fate of the hostages is weighing over him and other key decision-makers as a strategic matter.

He said that the IDF would greatly increase its attacks soon, but balanced that promise with the need to retain international legitimacy, including deep coordination with the US.

US calls for smaller scale response

The US has been less bashful than Israeli officials, and has explicitly called for a smaller invasion, more along the lines of Israel’s 2014 limited incursion in Gaza, with only a much smaller number of elite troops going deeper into urban areas.

Gantz made it clear that Gaza strategy is massively impacted by concerns about the next moves by Hezbollah and Iran.

One of the practical upshots of that is waiting longer for more US missile defense to be in place to further dissuade Hezbollah from getting involved if and when the IDF finally does its ground invasion into Gaza.

Other sources have revealed that some of the delay is to frame the invasion also around the best way to deal with post-invasion guerilla warfare tactics as well as to be better in a position to completely end weapons smuggling into Gaza.

..,Israel’s political and military leaders are divided about how, when and even whether to invade.....The military leadership has already finalized an invasion plan, but Mr. Netanyahu has angered senior officers by refusing to sign off on it — in part because he wants unanimous approval from members of the war cabinet

Its troops are massed on the Gaza border and described as ready to move, but Israel’s political and military leaders are divided about how, when and even whether to invade, according to seven senior military officers and three Israeli officials.

In part, they say, the delay is intended to give negotiators more time to try to secure the release of some of the more than 200 hostages captured by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups when they raided Israel three weeks ago.

But Israeli leaders, who have vowed to retaliate against Hamas for its brutal massacre of civilians, have yet to agree on how to do so, though the military could move as soon as Friday.

Some of them worry that an invasion might suck the Israeli Army into an intractable urban battle inside Gaza. Others fear a broader conflict, with a Lebanese militia allied to Hamas, Hezbollah, firing long-range missiles toward Israeli cities.

There is also debate over whether to conduct the invasion through one large operation or a series of smaller ones. And then there are questions about who would govern Gaza if Israel captured it.
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Disarray has swept Israel since terrorists from Gaza overran a swath of southern Israel, killing roughly 1,400 people, briefly capturing more than 20 villages and army bases and outmaneuvering the most powerful military in the Middle East.
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The shock of the attack has shaken Israelis’ sense of invincibility and raised doubts and debate about how their country should best respond.
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But nearly three weeks later, the Netanyahu government has yet to give the go-ahead, though the military says that it has made a few brief incursions over the border and that it will make still more in the days ahead.

The United States has urged Israel not to rush into a ground invasion, even as it pledges full support for its ally, but domestic considerations have also played a role in the delay. Beyond the hostages, there is concern about the toll of the operation and uncertainty about what exactly it might mean to destroy Hamas, a social movement as well as a military force that is deeply embedded in Gazan society.

When asked what the military objectives of the operation are, an Israeli military spokesman said the goal was to “dismantle Hamas.” How would the army know it had achieved that goal? “That’s a big question, and I don’t think I have the capability right now to answer that one,” the spokesman, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, said at news briefing a week after the attack.

One immediate concern is the fate of the hostages, and the negotiations, mediated by Qatar, to secure the release of at least some of them, according to an Israeli official, three senior military officers and a senior foreign diplomat familiar with the talks. The Israeli government wants to allow more time for those talks to make headway, perhaps to secure the release of captured women and children.

While there is little internal disagreement about allowing a small window of time for further negotiation, there is a dispute between the military establishment and parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s government about what to do if the negotiations fail, according to the officials and officers.

...The military leadership has already finalized an invasion plan, but Mr. Netanyahu has angered senior officers by refusing to sign off on it — in part because he wants unanimous approval from members of the war cabinet he formed after the Oct. 7 attack, according to two people present at cabinet meetings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters.
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Analysts believe that Mr. Netanyahu is wary about unilaterally giving the go-ahead because, with public confidence in his leadership already decreasing, he fears being blamed if the operation fails.
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The ambiguity appears to reflect divisions in the cabinet about whether to permit a full invasion of Gaza, which might plunge ground troops into daunting urban battle against thousands of Hamas fighters hiding within a network of tunnels, hundreds of miles long, dug deep beneath Gaza City.

Instead, ministers are also considering a less ambitious plan involving several more limited incursions that target one small part of the enclave at a time.

Within the military establishment, there is concern that Israel’s goals will be blurred if Mr. Netanyahu follows through on his promise on Wednesday to simultaneously seek the liberation of all the hostages while also attempting to destroy Hamas. The first goal requires negotiation and accommodation with Hamas’s leadership, while the second requires its annihilation — a difficult balance to strike, two senior military officials said.

In a sign of internal division, the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, pointedly did not describe rescuing the hostages in a speech on Thursday evening as one of Israel’s military objectives.

The mutual suspicion between the military and the prime minister runs so deep that civil servants have barred the military from bringing recording equipment into cabinet meetings, according to two people present. They interpreted the move as an attempt to limit the amount of evidence that could be presented to a national inquiry after the war.

Mr. Netanyahu has appeared unusually isolated since the Hamas attack, amid cratering poll numbers and accusations that his chaotic leadership over the past year had set the stage for the catastrophic security failure on Oct 7.

Few members of his government have given him their unqualified backing since the day, with many simply saying that scrutiny of the government’s mistakes should wait until the war ends.

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A former Netanyahu aide began a social media campaign to prolong Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza before any ground operation begins. And Aryeh Deri, a lawmaker and longtime supporter of the prime minister, told an interviewer on Monday that the army had only recently readied a plan to invade Gaza.

The Israeli news media interpreted the assertion as an attempt to suggest that it was the army — not the prime minister — that needed more time to prepare.

But the ramifications of the Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath extend far beyond Mr. Netanyahu’s personal fate, said Mr. Plesner, the analyst.

The shock of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Arab armies briefly overran Israeli defenses before being rebuffed, “changed Israeli society and the trajectory of the Israeli state,” he said.

“This event will probably be even more consequential,” he said.

Friday night has seen a plethora of reports of increased fighting in Gaza..Palestinian reports of clashes with Israeli tanks and forces near Bureij, Jabaliyeh and Beit Hanoun.

IDF fighter jets struck three senior Hamas operatives in its Daraj Tuffah Battalion this week.

In addition the IDF struck the following Hamas members during the past week; the Deputy Head of Hamas’ Intelligence Directorate, who was responsible for planning the October 7th massacre together with Yahya Sinwar; the Commander of Hamas' Northern Khan Yunis Rockets Array, Hassan Al-Abdullah; the Commander of the North Khan Yunis Battalion of the Hamas terrorist organization, Taysir Mubasher; the Deputy Commander of the Nuseirat Battalion, who took part in the Kibbutz Be'eri massacre; the Deputy Commander of the Shati Battalion; the Deputy Commander of the Sheikh Radwan Battalion; the Head of the Anti-Tank Missiles Array of Hamas' Northern Brigade, Ibrahim Alkhaser; and the Commander of the Hamas Aerial Array in Gaza City, the Head of Hamas Training Portfolio in Gaza City, Aerial Defense Officer of Hamas’ Zabra Tel Elhua Battalion, a Hamas Weapons Supply Manager in Gaza City; the Head of Training for the Hamas Aerial Defense Array in northern Gaza; and the Deputy Head of Hamas' Artillery Array in the Gaza Strip.

As Israel carried out a large round of airstrikes in Gaza on Friday night, with the Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Jordan accused Israel of starting a “ground war on Gaza,” there will be many questions about how Israel has conducted the campaign so far. The war that Israel has been fighting in Gaza is different than previous wars, but it also has some commonalities with the past.

Here is what we know. Friday night has seen a plethora of reports of increased fighting in Gaza. This has included Palestinian reports of clashes with Israeli tanks and forces near Bureij, Jabaliyeh and Beit Hanoun. As with all war, and particularly when forces move at night, these details are hard to confirm. However, those along the border say the level of airstrikes was very large on October 27.

Although 2,900 people entered Israel in three waves of attacks on October 7, some of them were not Hamas hardened terrorists. It is believes around 1,000 of them were killed. However, the Hamas commandos were able to get back to Gaza in many cases, bringing hostages with them.  

Israel has been targeting terrorist infrastructure in the three weeks of war. It has called on Gazans to leave northern Gaza. It has also highlighted how Hamas uses human shields, including operating a command post from under a hospital.  

Israel carried out numerous airstrikes to hit key parts of the Hamas terror command and control apparatus and to destroy certain units. For instance, the elite Israeli naval commandos targeted a Hamas naval commando center and surface-to-air missiles.

Israel also used two raids by tanks and troops on October 25 and 26 to target sites in Gaza. The Givati brigade participated in one of these assaults. Units of Golani are also poised to participate.  

Who was neutralized in Gaza. IDF fighter jets struck three senior Hamas operatives in its Daraj Tuffah Battalion this week. “IDF soldiers of Shayetet 13 conducted a targeted raid from the sea in the southern Gaza Strip. During the activity, the soldiers struck Hamas military infrastructure and operated in a compound used by Hamas' commando naval forces.”

In addition the IDF struck the following Hamas members during the past week; the Deputy Head of Hamas’ Intelligence Directorate, who was responsible for planning the October 7th massacre together with Yahya Sinwar; the Commander of Hamas' Northern Khan Yunis Rockets Array, Hassan Al-Abdullah; the Commander of the North Khan Yunis Battalion of the Hamas terrorist organization, Taysir Mubasher; the Deputy Commander of the Nuseirat Battalion, who took part in the Kibbutz Be'eri massacre; the Deputy Commander of the Shati Battalion; the Deputy Commander of the Sheikh Radwan Battalion; the Head of the Anti-Tank Missiles Array of Hamas' Northern Brigade, Ibrahim Alkhaser; and the Commander of the Hamas Aerial Array in Gaza City, the Head of Hamas Training Portfolio in Gaza City, Aerial Defense Officer of Hamas’ Zabra Tel Elhua Battalion, a Hamas Weapons Supply Manager in Gaza City; the Head of Training for the Hamas Aerial Defense Array in northern Gaza; and the Deputy Head of Hamas' Artillery Array in the Gaza Strip.

These are the attacks the IDF has revealed. Clearly these are key figures in the Hamas network of commanders and units. This was the prelude to the escalation on Friday, October 27.

To review, it involved three weeks of airstrikes, including thousands of munitions used against thousands of targets. It involved two large raids by armored vehicles from Israel in north and central Gaza, as well as a naval commando raid.

Israel also repaired the security fence and conducted training for units such as Givati and Golani. The air war has commonalities with 2014, 2012, and other conflicts. It also has commonalties with various operations such as Guardian of the Walls, Black Belt, and Shield and Arrow. Any ground operation however may be different because Hamas has grown stronger and Israel has set different goals.  

There’s no evidence of direct Iranian involvement in the October 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people in a string of border communities, but it’s clear that without the assistance of Iran and Hezbollah, it would have been difficult for Hamas to carry it out. Even if the conflict in Gaza ends without all-out war with Hezbollah, Israel cannot tolerate the presence of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force across the border in Lebanon. And one mustn’t forget that, as a practical matter, Iran is already a nuclear threshold state.

The situation is fundamentally rooted in Iran’s aspiration to export the Islamic revolution, to seek regional hegemony and to revive the Persian imperialist legacy. It’s also rooted in aggression and a sense of persecution and in intense enmity toward Israel.

What we have been living through since October 7 is being perceived as a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. But it’s taking place in a broader context, primarily shaped by Iran’s effort to challenge Israel on multiple fronts. There’s already a war of attrition going on between Tehran’s proxy – Hezbollah – and Israel, and at any given moment, Iran and Hezbollah’s leadership could decide to escalate it into a full-scale war.

Another Iranian proxy, the Houthis in Yemen, have already launched drones at Israel (which were intercepted), and other Shi’ite militias are preparing for action in the northern Golan Heights. While Hamas is not an Iranian proxy like Hezbollah, it maintains close contact with Tehran and Beirut and receives financial support and military supplies, as well as advice and training.

There’s no evidence of direct Iranian involvement in the October 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people in a string of border communities, but it’s clear that without the assistance of Iran and Hezbollah, it would have been difficult for Hamas to carry it out. Even if the conflict in Gaza ends without all-out war with Hezbollah, Israel cannot tolerate the presence of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force across the border in Lebanon. And one mustn’t forget that, as a practical matter, Iran is already a nuclear threshold state.

The situation is fundamentally rooted in Iran’s aspiration to export the Islamic revolution, to seek regional hegemony and to revive the Persian imperialist legacy. It’s also rooted in aggression and a sense of persecution and in intense enmity toward Israel.

As Iranian-American policy analyst Karim Sadjadpour wrote: “Tehran’s steadfast support for Assad is not driven by the geopolitical or economic interests of the Iranian nation, nor the religious convictions of the Islamic Republic, but by a visceral and seemingly inextinguishable hatred for the State of Israel.”

The original strategy of the ayatollahs’ regime has undergone a series of transformations in the past decades, shaped by events such as the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the fall of the Soviet Union, the 2003 American invasion of Iraq and the Syrian civil war. The Iraq invasion and the war in Syria had a particularly significant impact. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the transfer of power to the Shi’ite majority in Iraq permitted Iran to wield decisive influence over its Iraqi neighbor to the west and opened a path to the Levant.

Its military intervention in Syria, in cooperation with Russia, considerably boosted the Iranian regime’s ambitions. Iran began building a land bridge to the Mediterranean, establishing missile infrastructure in Syria, along with the infrastructure that Tehran entrusted to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Iran and its proxies have attacked energy facilities in Saudi Arabia and targets in the United Arab Emirates. Through a proxy, Iran has also attacked American forces in Iraq and Syria, and even downed an American drone (which the Trump administration didn’t respond to).

When the Trump administration withdrew from the Iranian nuclear accord, Tehran took advantage of the move to accelerate its uranium enrichment program, moving closer to nuclear threshold status. And the war in Ukraine has enabled Iran to play a global role by supplying drones to Russia.

The declared American policy of pivoting away from the Middle East in favor of the Asia-Pacific region allowed Iran to improve its ties with Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia. The basic enmity between them has not disappeared, but the two countries find it convenient to mask that through normalization that has been facilitated through Chinese mediation.

In the course of that period, Israel worked to thwart Iran’s nuclear program through the assassination of scientists and operatives. Since the end of the civil war in Syria, Israel has been conducting an air campaign – known as the campaign between the wars – against the Iranian infrastructure being built there. Up to now, the direct Iranian response against Israel has been limited. As a rule, Iran prefers to act through proxies, to prevent or at least minimize its casualties.

Over time, the Iranian regime has built up Hezbollah as a hybrid entity: a political movement, a terrorist organization, a militia, and more recently an army as well.

Hezbollah relies on the Shi’ite community in Lebanon, which is now stronger than the Lebanese government itself, but the organization and its patrons prefer not to completely take over the country and instead to control it without formal responsibility.

Iran has supplied Hezbollah with a vast number of missiles and rockets over the years, designed to serve it as a deterrent against an Israeli or American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Tehran has provided Hezbollah’s military units with the best equipment (including, for example, Russian anti-aircraft missiles that Hezbollah transferred to Hamas). Hezbollah also fought alongside Assad’s regime in the Syrian civil war, which enhanced the capabilities of its combat units and increased its complement of fighters.

If Tehran and Hezbollah decide to launch a full-scale battle against Israel with the beginning of the Israeli ground operation in Gaza, Israel will have to immediately deal with Hezbollah missiles and the Radwan force. And if Hezbollah remains satisfied with the war of attrition, Israel will face a dilemma when the fighting in Gaza ends.

Many Israeli residents whose homes are along the Lebanon border might refuse to return to those homes, particularly with the proximity of the Radwan force to the border and the trauma of October 7. Israel will also refuse to put up with the establishment of Shi’ite militias in the Syrian Golan Heights, or the pressure of Shi’ite militias from Iraq on Jordan, or the launch of additional drones from Yemen.

But Israel doesn’t have to face these challenges alone. The Biden administration appears to understand that if it wants to maintain America’s standing in the region and its relationships with moderate Arab countries, it has to strengthen its allies’ camp. The pro-Iranian axis, which includes Syria, Lebanon and, in a partial manner, Iraq and Yemen as well, is efficiently coordinated by Tehran.

The moderate camp, consisting of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Jordan and Morocco, is not entirely cohesive and those countries are concerned both about their domestic constituencies and the credibility of the United States. And who can offer them a guarantee that an isolationist President Trump won’t return to power?

The window of opportunity in Washington is limited. The Biden administration and Biden himself have been able to strike a balance between supporting Israel and deterring Iran and Hezbollah, on one hand, and concern for the civilian population in Gaza on the other. But in a few months, the United States will be in the middle of a presidential election campaign.

The American effort to put relations with Saudi Arabia in order and to add normalization with Israel to the deal is currently suspended, but it needs to be resumed as soon as possible.

Israel needs to be made a part of the effort and to deal with the Iranian challenge together with the Americans and other regional partners.

That won’t happen without changing Israeli policy toward the Palestinian Authority. That doesn’t mean reaching a permanent solution right now. But whoever thinks that it’s possible to build a regional array of countries with American backing and at the same time to work toward Israeli annexation of the West Bank is delusional.

The writer is the deputy director of the Institute for National Security Studies and a former Israeli ambassador to Washington.

The Israeli army and Shin Bet security service released videos purportedly showing part of the interrogation of two Hamas terrorists who were captured during the attack on Israel on October 7.

In the videos, the two individuals detail the use Hamas makes of Al-Shifa Hospital – the largest hospital in Gaza – for its own benefit. "In Shifa there is a basement floor... a big place where they hide," says one of the men in the video, described as a member of elite al-Nukhba unit.

"Clinics, schools, hospitals – these are the places you [Israelis] don't bomb... That's how you can transfer anything... Explosive devices, weapons, food, medical equipment for them [al-Nukhba forces and Az a-Din al-Qassam Brigades]. Al-Shifa is a safe place, it will not be bombed."

Referring to the interrogator's question about the use of fuel, the man replied: "Like I said, [Hamas] first takes care of their cars and jeeps and then gives to the people."

Israel says it had killed Hamas' naval and air force commanders overnight, destroying 150 underground targets ■ Widespread internet outages reported in Gaza ■ Families of Israeli hostages demand to meet Netanyahu, war cabinet ■ UN General Assembly approves resolution calling for a 'humanitarian truce' ■ IDF: struck Hezbollah infrastructure in response to rockets launched from Lebanon towards Israel which fell in Syrian territory ■ At least 1,300 killed by Hamas since October 7 ■ Hamas-run health ministry: Over 6,000 Gazans killed, some 17,000 wounded

So, will Hezbollah intervene in favor of Hamas?

Ultimately, they(a think tank) don't see Hezbollah joining as likely..

"If Hezbollah and Iran have such an advantage, then why haven't they already unleashed hell?"

To answer this question Caspian Report delves into two main aspects of Hezbollah, its position in Lebanese politics and the role it holds in the greater Iranian strategy.

They remind us that Hezbollah is also a political party within Lebanon and has been legally part of the Lebanese government since 2005.

Currently, Lebanon is experiencing an extreme economic crisis and a war with Israel would only deepen this crisis.

This leads them to conclude that Hezbollah would prefer to remain politically strong and well-liked by the Lebanese public, rather than induce increased internal tensions inside Lebanon.

The next factor is their place within Iranian strategy. Hezbollah acts as an important linchpin for Iranian strategy in the Middle East with their vast arsenal of weapons being a huge threat to Israel.

It is exactly for this reason that Caspian Report believes it unlikely that Iran will deploy said arsenal.

"Employing that firepower in the current Gaza conflict would mean depleting it as a means of deterrence, thereby neutralizing its role as a deterrent," they say.

This shows Hezbollah as a single-use deterrence, one which can cause extreme damage to Israel and the United States, but one which can only be used once before needing significant time to recover its power.

Using this deterrent over the conflict in Gaza would then leave Iran open to reprisals from the United States, negating the exact reason for maintaining Hezbollah in the first place.

Leaving the ongoing skirmishes as little more than attempts to keep the specter of Iranian involvement alive and keep Israel distracted in its war in Gaza.

Caspian Report concludes by saying that while Iran may have turned Hamas into the deadly organization it is, Iran cannot afford to lose Hezbollah.

"If push comes to shove, it is usually better to give up a pawn if it means protecting a rook."

Gruesome details of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians continue to come to light. Hamas gunmen who have been captured or found wounded are quite candid in taped interviews about their killing spree. They apparently remain unapologetic about the heinous crimes they have committed, given they correctly assume that their mollifiers in the West—from the General Secretary of the UN to university presidents—have issues with unequivocally damning their mass killing. Daily such people offer timely re-instruction about their kindred predecessors between 1939-45, and thus how and why the world then was and is now again so willfully blind to the Final Solution

The testimonies of Hamas killers—along with the helmet-camera and mobile-phone live-streamings taken by hundreds of the murderers, in the proud photographic tradition of the Einsatzgruppen (the mass murders were likely videoed to provide incentives for enlistment in Hamas)—confirm the emerging pathologists’ reports on the dead from Israel.

This multifaceted evidence confirms a picture that all the pro-Hamas demonstrators at Harvard, in the streets of New York and Los Angeles, and in the halls of our Congress can no longer deny—if they even made such at attempt rather than cheered it on.

It is hard to think of any precivilizational act that Hamas did not relish. Their death work included but was not limited to executions, torture, beheadings, desecration of corpses, rape, necrophilia, incinerating people alive, dismemberment, and hostage-taking. The captured killers mentioned that their Hamas leaders expressly ordered them to behead and mutilate. All that and more are what Ivy League and Stanford students apparently believe to be legitimate forms of “resistance”—and by their support have now become party to.

The Democratic Left is screaming “proportionality” and “stop the cycle of violence” at Israel to cease their retaliatory attempts to destroy Hamas. Their apparent theory is that Hamas has an inherent right to invade and commit barbarities while continuously shooting thousands of rockets hourly and with impunity at Israeli civilians—and yet any response that inadvertently kills Gazan civilians, perhaps most likely impressed Gazans used as shields by Hamas, constitutes a war crime. So in the unhinged West, it is now a more moral act to launch rockets designed only to kill civilians than it is to take out those killing pads.

From the Hamas prisoners’ own admissions, and from their videos of the attack, it is additionally clear that many Gazancitizens were eager to tag along in the killing, torture, and looting—albeit only once it became clear to them that the targets were mostly unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly, and the IDF was not there in force.

It was again analogous to the Eastern Front of World War II, when Baltic and Ukrainian prisoners, thugs, and Einsatzkommandos eagerly joined with the SS to murder Jews—and often outdid their death instructors.

Purportedly, free apartments and $10,000 bounties were offered by the Hamas leadership to Gazans who brought back Israeli hostages. And at that moment, though not now, there seemed to be hundreds of takers zealously following the Hamas death squads into Israel—including a few who had been prior guest workers in border kibbutzes.

That picture of eager civilian involvement was apparently confirmed by videos that emerged from the Gazan street, as the Israeli captives and dead were spit upon, struck, and reviled by civilian mobs—at least in the heady days after news of the easy killing of Jews in Israeli but before the IDF aerial response.

No doubt public opposition to Hamas is impossible for Gazans; but the idea that a vast majority of civilians became sickened by Hamas and ashamed of their subhuman killing is so far not demonstrable.

Similarly, the idea that any Western leader should accept at face value the casualty figures from Hamas ought to be evaluated in light of Hamas leaders still swearing that their henchmen did not murder civilians or commit atrocities in Israel. In Hamas’s world there were no beheadings—and an Israeli rocket hit a hospital, killing 500.

For the truth, instead listen to what the killers themselves recited. Watch their own triumphalist videos taken in medias res. Read the placards and listen to the chants at pro-Hamas rallies on campuses and in American cities. And the picture emerges of a death cult, proud of its macabre civilian body count in Israel and of the public support it thereby won—at least until the IDF demonstrates in Gaza the wages of such one-sided murdering.

So yes, much of the acclaim for Hamas is not just found in its ferocious barbarity, but also fueled by a feeling that the killers are “winning” the propaganda war. Thus their cowardly but useful idiots of the West increasingly ally with the  “oppressed” oppressor that can both butcher and claim victimhood simultaneously—and not only get away with it, but win global support for it.

And this is all the more reason why Israel must crush and thereby humiliate Hamas—as a lesson to its numerous enemies that the price for butchering innocents will always be too steep for even mass murderers to pay.

IDF chief says war's objective requires ground operation as defense minister says war enters 'new phase' ■ IDF and forces in Lebanon trade fire after anti-tank missiles fired on Israeli forces ■ Netanyahu meets with hostages' families representatives, refuses to take responsibility after questions from media for first since war erupted ■ After Erdogan reiterates Hamas 'is not a terrorist organization,' Israel orders return of envoys from Turkey ■ UAE, Saudi Arabia condemn Israel's ground operation in Gaza ■ At least 1,300 killed by Hamas since October 7 ■ Hamas-run health ministry: Over 7,300 Gazans killed, some 19,000 wounded

Netanyahu's office: At no point was the Prime Minister warned about Hamas' intention to start a war

IDF: 311 soldiers killed since October 7

RECAP: Israeli defense minister says war entered 'new phase'; Hostages' families demand meeting with political leaders as Israel's military operation in Gaza intensifies

Netanyahu refuses to take responsibility: 'After the war ends we will all answer every question. Now, my mission is to save the country'

Israeli FM orders Israeli diplomats to return from Turkey

IDF spokesman: Israeli forces are still in the field and fighting, no casualties

Second U.S. carrier group arrives in Mediterranean

Surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon towards Galilee intercepted by Israeli air defense system

IDF says it 'eliminated' Hamas' naval force commander who oversaw attempted infiltration into Israel several days ago

IDF: Struck 450 targets in Gaza, humanitarian aid to increase ■ After backlash, Netanyahu deletes tweet pinning blame for Hamas attack on security chiefs ■ Israel orders return of envoys from Turkey after Erdogan calls Israel an 'occupier', says Hamas not terrorist org at pro-Palestinian rally ■ UAE, Saudi Arabia condemn ground operation in Gaza ■ At least 1,300 killed by Hamas since October 7 ■ Hamas-run health ministry: Over 7,300 Gazans killed, some 19,000 wounded

Hamas' Health Ministry in Gaza: 8,005 people have been killed

Netanyahu: 'I made a mistake. The things I said shouldn't have been said and I apologize for it'

Hamas' Health Ministry in Gaza: 8,005 people have been killed

'Hurts our resilience': Gantz calls on Netanyahu to retract statement pinning blame for Hamas attack on security chiefs

IDF officer seriously wounded overnight from mortar shell in north Gaza, another soldier moderately wounded in combat

Palestinian Health Ministry reports two more Palestinians killed in clashes with the IDF

Red Crescent reports one Palestinian was killed by IDF fire near Nablus; others injured in clashes in Jenin and Tammun

Netanyahu's office: At no point was the prime minister warned about Hamas' intention to start war

IDF deep in Gaza: 'Intensive fire not seen since Yom Kippur War'
In recent days, the IDF has strengthened its presence in the Palestinian territory and started building a security barrier.

The Israel Defense Forces has recorded several achievements since it launched its ground operation within the northern Gaza Strip, military sources said.

In the past few days, forces entered the area while targeting terrorist tunnels from the air, ground, and land. In the second stage, the troops began rapid operations to control extensive sites and clear buildings. In recent days, the IDF has strengthened its presence in the Palestinian territory and started building a security barrier that successfully keeps Hamas terrorists and mortar shells away.

According to military sources, during searches, military positions were identified, from which terrorist cells opened fire at the entrenched forces, and very deep tunnels were discovered.

The IDF has maintained secrecy regarding the exposure of these tunnels.

According to reports coming from the area and published by Ynet, "As part of the IDF's ground activity, they have been conducting intensive fire in the Gaza Strip, which has not been seen to this extent since the Yom Kippur War.

"So far, we haven't encountered significant resistance; they mainly engage in long-range firing. They are hesitant to confront the forces and maintain a substantial barrier of fire. There hasn't been any close combat. Nobody underestimates the enemy, and there is no complacency at any stage. Still, we also don't forget that we are dealing with terrorists who are thugs to infants, children, and Holocaust survivors.

"Meanwhile, their primary focus is trying to inflict damage with long-range fire."

'Plenty of surprises'
A military source summarized: "The forces in the field are preparing for many scenarios. At each step, we are very well-prepared. As we approach densely populated areas, the fighting will become more complex, and we are ready for that, too.

"As Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi said, 'We are preparing surprises for them.'"

How Years of Israeli Failures on Hamas Led to a Devastating Attack
Israeli officials completely underestimated the magnitude of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, shattering the country’s once invincible sense of security.

Ronen BergmanMark MazzettiMaria Abi-Habib
Oct. 29, 2023

It was 3 a.m. on Oct. 7, and Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s domestic security service, still could not determine if what he was seeing was just another Hamas military exercise.

At the headquarters of his service, Shin Bet, officials had spent hours monitoring Hamas activity in the Gaza Strip, which was unusually active for the middle of the night. Israeli intelligence and national security officials, who had convinced themselves that Hamas had no interest in going to war, initially assumed it was just a nighttime exercise.

Their judgment that night might have been different had they been listening to traffic on the hand-held radios of Hamas militants. But Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, had stopped eavesdropping on those networks a year earlier because they saw it as a waste of effort.

As time passed that night, Mr. Bar thought that Hamas might attempt a small-scale assault. He discussed his concerns with Israel’s top generals and ordered the “Tequila” team — a group of elite counterterrorism forces — to deploy to Israel’s south

Until nearly the start of the attack, nobody believed the situation was serious enough to wake up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to three Israeli defense officials.

Within hours, the Tequila troops were embroiled in a battle with thousands of Hamas gunmen who penetrated Israel’s vaunted border fence, sped in trucks and on motorbikes into southern Israel and attacked villages and military bases.

The most powerful military force in the Middle East had not only completely underestimated the magnitude of the attack, it had totally failed in its intelligence-gathering efforts, mostly due to hubris and the mistaken assumption that Hamas was a threat contained.

Despite Israel’s sophisticated technological prowess in espionage, Hamas gunmen had undergone extensive training for the assault, virtually undetected for at least a year. The fighters, who were divided into different units with specific goals, had meticulous information on Israel’s military bases and the layout of kibbutzim.

The country’s once invincible sense of security was shattered.

More than 1,400 people were killed, including many women, children and old people who were murdered systematically and brutally. Hundreds are held hostage or are still missing. Israel has responded with a ferocious bombardment campaign on Gaza, killing more than 8,000 Palestinians and wounding thousands more, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The Israeli military on Sunday signaled a heavier assault on Gaza, saying it had expanded its ground incursion overnight.

Israeli officials have promised a full investigation into what went wrong.

Even before that inquiry, it is clear the attacks were possible because of a cascade of failures over recent years — not hours, days or weeks. A New York Times examination, based on dozens of interviews with Israeli, Arab, European and American officials, as well as a review of Israeli government documents and evidence collected since the Oct. 7 raid, shows that:

Israeli security officials spent months trying to warn Mr. Netanyahu that the political turmoil caused by his domestic policies was weakening the country’s security and emboldening Israel’s enemies. The prime minister continued to push those policies. On one day in July he even refused to meet a senior general who came to deliver a threat warning based on classified intelligence, according to Israeli officials.

Israeli officials misjudged the threat posed by Hamas for years, and more critically in the run-up to the attack. The official assessment of Israeli military intelligence and the National Security Council since May 2021 was that Hamas had no interest in launching an attack from Gaza that might invite a devastating response from Israel, according to five people familiar with the assessments who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. Instead, Israeli intelligence assessed that Hamas was trying to foment violence against Israelis in the West Bank, which is controlled by its rival, the Palestinian Authority.

The belief by Mr. Netanyahu and top Israeli security officials that Iran and Hezbollah, its most powerful proxy force, presented the gravest threat to Israel diverted attention and resources away from countering Hamas. In late September, senior Israeli officials told The Times they were concerned that Israel might be attacked in the coming weeks or months on several fronts by Iran-backed militia groups, but made no mention of Hamas initiating a war with Israel from the Gaza Strip.

American spy agencies in recent years had largely stopped collecting intelligence on Hamas and its plans, believing the group was a regional threat that Israel was managing.

Overall, arrogance among Israeli political and security officials convinced them that the country’s military and technological superiority to Hamas would keep the terrorist group in check.

“They were able to trick our collection, our analysis, our conclusions and our strategic understanding,” Eyal Hulata, Israel’s national security adviser from 2021 until early this year, said during a discussion last week in Washington sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank.

“I don’t think there was anyone who was involved with affairs with Gaza that shouldn’t ask themselves how and where they were also part of this massive failure,” he added.

Many senior officials have accepted responsibility, but Mr. Netanyahu has not. At 1 a.m. Sunday in Israel, after his office was asked for comment on this article, he posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, that repeated remarks he made to The New York Times and blamed the military and intelligence services for failing to provide him with any warning on Hamas.

“Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas,” the post read in Hebrew. “On the contrary, the assessment of the entire security echelon, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet, was that Hamas was deterred and was seeking an arrangement.”

In the resulting furor, Benny Gantz, a member of his war cabinet, publicly rebuked Mr. Netanyahu, saying that “leadership means displaying responsibility,” and urged the prime minister to retract the post. It was later deleted, and Mr. Netanyahu apologized in a new one.

On Sunday, Shin Bet promised a thorough investigation after the war. The I.D.F. declined to comment.

The last time Israelis’ collective belief in their country’s security was similarly devastated was 50 years earlier, at the start of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was caught off guard by an assault by Egyptian and Syrian forces. In an echo of that attack, Hamas succeeded because Israeli officials made many of the same mistakes that were made in 1973.

The Yom Kippur War was “a classic example of how intelligence fails when the policy and intelligence communities build a feedback loop that reinforces their prejudices and blinds them to changes in the threat environment,” Bruce Riedel, a former top Middle East analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote in a 2017 research paper about the 1973 war.

In an interview this month, Mr. Riedel said that Mr. Netanyahu was reaping the consequences of focusing on Iran as the existential threat to Israel while largely ignoring an enemy in his backyard.

“Bibi’s message to Israelis has been that the real threat is Iran,” he said, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname. “That with the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza, the Palestinian issue is no longer a threat to Israel’s security. All of those assumptions were shattered on Oct. 7.”

Three covered bodies lie on a road next to shattered glass and other debris. A man is photographing the scene in the background.
Israel says over 1,400 people were killed in the Hamas attacks and hundreds are held hostage or still missing. Credit... Ammar Awad/Reuters
Ignored Warnings
On July 24, two senior Israeli generals arrived at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to deliver urgent warnings to Israeli lawmakers, according to three Israeli defense officials.

The Knesset was scheduled that day to give final approval to one of Mr. Netanyahu’s attempts to curb the power of Israel’s judiciary — an effort that had convulsed Israeli society, ignited massive street protests and led to large-scale resignations from the military reserves.

A growing portion of the Air Force’s operational pilots was threatening to refuse to report to duty if the legislation passed.

In the briefcase of one of the generals, Aharon Haliva, the head of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Directorate, were highly classified documents detailing a judgment by intelligence officials that the political turmoil was emboldening Israel’s enemies. One document stated that the leaders of what Israeli officials call the “axis of resistance” — Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — believed this was a moment of Israeli weakness and a time to strike.

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.

The legislation passed overwhelmingly.

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.

The generals’ warnings were in large part based on a series of provocations on Israel’s northern border.

In February and March, Hezbollah had sent explosive-laden drones toward Israeli gas rigs. In March, a militant climbed over the border fence from Lebanon into Israel, carrying several powerful bombs, weapons, phones and an electric bike on which he traveled to a major northern intersection. He then used a powerful charge, apparently trying to blow up a bus.

On May 21, Hezbollah staged for apparently the first time war games at one of its training sites in Aaramta in south Lebanon. Hezbollah launched rockets and flew drones that dropped explosives on a simulated Israeli settlement.

Israeli officials believed that Hezbollah was leading the planning for a coordinated attack against Israel, but not one that would prompt an all-out war.

The officials’ concerns grew through August and September, and General Halevi went public with his concerns.

“We must be more prepared than ever for a multi-arena and extensive military conflict,” he said at a military ceremony on Sept. 11, just weeks before the attack.

Mr. Netanyahu’s allies went on Israeli television and condemned General Halevi for sowing panic.

In a series of meetings, Shin Bet gave similar warnings to senior Israeli officials as General Halevi. Eventually, Mr. Bar also went public.

“From the investigations we are doing we can say today that the political instability and the growing division are a shot of encouragement to the countries of the axis of evil, the terrorist organizations and the individual threats,” Mr. Bar said in a speech.

Mr. Netanyahu’s government also ignored warnings from Israel’s neighbors. As the custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, Jordan has traditionally been an important mediator between Palestinians and Israel’s government on the Aqsa Mosque compound, the third most holy site in Islam. The mosque compound has seen repeated raids by Israeli forces over the years, and Hamas has said that it launched this month’s attack in part as retaliation for those acts.

But Jordan found that when Mr. Netanyahu formed a government late last year, the most far right in recent history, it was less receptive to their warnings that the incidents at the Aqsa Mosque compound was stirring up sentiment inside Palestinian territories that could boil over into violence, according to two Arab officials with knowledge of the relationship.

The Wrong Focus
While security and intelligence officials were right about a coming attack, their intense focus on Hezbollah and Iran had a tragic effect: Far less attention was paid to the threats from Gaza. Since Israel’s withdrawal in 2005 and Hamas’s evolution from a purely guerrilla organization into the governing power of Gaza in 2007, Hamas had only periodic skirmishes with the Israeli military.

Under four different prime ministers, Israel repeatedly decided that reoccupying Gaza and crushing Hamas would cost too many lives and do too much damage to Israel’s international reputation.

Israel knew that Hamas, which Iran supports with funding, training and weapons, was growing stronger over time. But officials thought they could contain Hamas with an extensive network of human spies, sophisticated surveillance tools that would deliver early warnings of an attack and border fortifications to deter a Hamas ground assault. They also relied on the Iron Dome air defense system for intercepting rockets and missiles launched from Gaza.

The strategy, confirmed by multiple Israeli officials, bore some fruit. Over the years, Israel’s investment in penetrating Hamas’s inner circle in Gaza allowed Israel to uncover the group’s attack plans and occasionally led to assassinations of Hamas leaders.

Strengthening Hamas
Publicly, Mr. Netanyahu used blunt rhetoric about Hamas. His election slogan in 2008 was “Strong Against Hamas,” and in one campaign video at the time he pledged: “We will not stop the I.D.F. We will finish the job. We will topple the terror regime of Hamas.”

Over time, however, he came to see Hamas as a way to balance power against the Palestinian Authority, which has administrative control over the West Bank and has long sought a peace agreement in Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state.

Mr. Netanyahu told aides over the years that a feeble Palestinian Authority lowered the pressure on him to make concessions to Palestinians in negotiations, according to several former Israeli officials and people close to Mr. Netanyahu. An official in Mr. Netanyahu’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, denied this had been the prime minister’s policy.

But there is no question that Israeli officials viewed Hamas as a regional threat, not a global terrorist organization like Hezbollah or the Islamic State. This view was shared in Washington, and American intelligence agencies dedicated few resources to collecting information on the group.

Some parts of the American government even believed that Hamas operatives could be recruited as sources of information about terrorist groups considered more urgent priorities in Washington.

Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official and now the senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recalled a meeting he had in 2015 with American intelligence and law enforcement officials about suspected Hamas operatives inside the United States.

During the meeting, he recalled, the officials told him they were trying to turn the Hamas operatives into “assets” in the fight against the Islamic State.

The Invincibility of the Wall
Israeli officials firmly believed that “The Barrier” — a nearly 40-mile-long reinforced concrete wall above and below ground, completed in 2021 — would hermetically seal off Gaza. There was also a surveillance system at the border based almost exclusively on cameras, sensors and remote-operated “sight-shooter” systems, four senior Israeli military officers told The Times.

Senior Israeli military officials believed that the combination of remote surveillance and machine-gun systems with the formidable wall would make it almost impossible to infiltrate Israel, and thus reduce the need for a large number of soldiers to be stationed at the bases.

But Hamas’s attack exposed the fragility of that technology. The group used explosive drones that damaged the cellular antennas and the remote firing systems that protected the fence between Gaza and Israel.

To get around Israel’s powerful surveillance technology, Hamas fighters also appeared to enforce strict discipline among the group’s ranks to not discuss its activities on mobile phones. This allowed them to pull off the attack without detection, one European official said.

The group most likely divided its fighters into smaller cells, each probably only trained for a specific objective. That way, the rank and file did not understand the scale of the attacks they were preparing for and could not give away the operation if caught, a European official said, based on his analysis of how the attack unfolded and from the videos the group disseminated from the operation.

Hamas may have learned such operational discipline from Hezbollah, which has long confused Israeli forces on the battlefield by dividing its fighters into smaller units of friends or relatives, according to Lebanese officials with ties to the group. If the fighters speak openly on cellphones to coordinate military operations, Lebanese officials with ties to the group said, part of their code is to speak in childhood memories — for example, asking to meet up in a field where they once played together.

Hamas claimed that 35 drones took part in the opening strike, including the Zawari, an explosive-laden drone.

“We started receiving messages that there was a raid on every reporting line,” testified one soldier, who was at the Gaza Division base on the day of the invasion, in a conversation with the “Hamakom Hachi Ham Bagehinom” (“The Hottest Place in Hell”) website.

“On every reporting line, swarms of terrorists were coming in,” the soldier added. “The forces did not have time to come and stop it. There were swarms of terrorists, something psychotic, and we were simply told that our only choice was to take our feet and flee for our lives.”

In a conversation with military investigators two weeks after the attack, soldiers who survived the assault testified that the Hamas training was so precise that they damaged a row of cameras and communication systems so that “all our screens turned off in almost the exact same second.” The result of all this was a near total blindness on the morning of the attack.

After the fighting had stopped, Israeli soldiers found hand-held radios on the dead bodies of some of the Hamas militants — the same radios that Israeli intelligence officials had decided a year ago were no longer worth monitoring.

Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York, and Eileen Sullivan from Washington.

IDF: Attacked targets in Syria in retaliation to rocket launches ■ IDF notifies families of 239 hostages, as 40 people remain missing ■ Riots at airport in western Russia targeting Jews and Israelis ■ At least 1,300 killed by Hamas since October 7 ■ Hamas-run health ministry: 8,005 Gazans killed

White House condemns riots in Dagestan airport, 'unequivocally' stands with Jews facing 'worldwide surge in antisemitism'

IDF says it attacked targets in Syria from which rockets were launched at Israel

IDF Spokesperson: We've updated the families of 239 hostages taken into Gaza; 40 people remain missing

About ten rockets were fired towards Israel's north; IDF returned fire in Lebanon in response

State Comptroller: 'The government is failing to take care of the home front, there is no place for power struggles at this time'

Rocket hit confirmed on home in Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel

Israel opens second water pipeline into Gaza since beginning of war

Palestinian Islamic Jihad says senior political official killed in strike in Rafah

Hamas' Health Ministry in Gaza: 8,005 people have been killed

Israel-Hamas War Day 24 | Palestinians Report Israeli Tanks on Outskirts of Gaza City as Army Steps Up Ground Operation
Oct 30, 2023

The Israeli army is expanding its ground incursion in Gaza, with IDF saying it struck 600 terror targets in 24 hours ■ Gaza Health Ministry reports over 8,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces ■ Israeli police officer seriously wounded in suspected stabbing attack in Jerusalem ■ Four Palestinians killed in IDF raid in Jenin, West Bank ■ Israeli Air Force struck overnight targets in Syria, Lebanon ■ Number of hostages held by Hamas stands at 239, 40 remain missing ■ At least 1,300 killed since Hamas massacre on October 7

Palestinian Health Ministry: Four Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli army in city of Jenin in West Bank

Cornell Hillel advises Jewish students and staff to avoid Kosher dining hall due to threats

Gaza Health Ministry: At least 8,306 Palestinians killed since Oct. 7

IDF says it attacked targets in Syria from which rockets were launched at Israel

Among a number of suggestions in a new document drafted by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry is the possible relocation of the population of the Gaza Strip to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, in the current war's aftermath.

The document suggests that Israel might initially relocate the population of the Strip to tent cities to be followed later by the establishment of permanent communities in northern Sinai.

The document presents two additional alternatives for the future of the Gaza Strip that do not include population transfer. One would permit the Palestinian Authority, which has partial control of the West Bank and which was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007, to control Gaza with its current residents remaining.

Another option would have Israel establish "local Arab rule" by Gaza’s residents who remain in their homes after the collapse of the Hamas regime.

As first reported by Israel’s Hebrew-language Local Call website, the option of settling Gaza’s population in northern Sinai includes a buffer zone of several kilometers that would prevent Gazans from approaching the Israeli border.

The Intelligence Ministry confirmed the existence of the document, but a source familiar with the drafting of it said the cabinet isn’t expected to debate the proposal and that the Intelligence Ministry is not the government entity that would be responsible for such decision-making.

Israel’s expanding ground operation is being watched closely by regional media. On Monday, Arab news reports claimed that Israeli tanks were seen on a major road that connects the south of the Gaza Strip, to the north.

The reports prompted speculation in foreign media about the progress of the ground campaign: If Salah a-Din Road is under Israeli control (along with another major road along the coast), transit across the Strip will be cut for Hamas, essentially splitting the enclave into two. These reports have appeared only in Arab media.

The success of the IDF ground troops comes amid continued calls abroad for a pause in operations for humanitarian aid, a ceasefire, and the opening of the border with Egypt as an exit, as well as for goods to arrive in Gaza, like fuel.

Al-Ain media postulated that Israel reached into central Gaza at its narrowest point, an area of fields between Gaza City and Al-Bureij camp. This area includes the village of Juhr al-Dik and its surrounding fields. The report calls this the “soft flank” of Gaza, because there is no built-up area, and it can be easily traversed to the sea.

The Al-Ain report reads: “From the Zaytoun neighborhood, through the Netzarim Junction, to the Juhr al-Dik area, Israel seemed to be sensing a new phase in its ground operation in the Gaza Strip, on the 24th day of the war.”

Cutting the strip in two

The report goes on to note that moving through this area, near Wadi Gaza and also the Salah al-Din Road, presents a stratagem that cuts the strip in two. “The distance between the border separating Israel and the outskirts of the Zaytoun neighborhood up to Salah al-Din Street is about three kilometers, and they are uninhabited agricultural areas, and therefore Israeli movement in that area is easy,” the report reads.

The report adds that Israel has operated in this area in the past – one of the raids last week when Israel entered and retreated from the Gaza Strip. The report says that the area was “subjected to artillery shelling from Israeli vehicles and armored vehicles stationed there.” It also says that “eyewitnesses spoke of the arrival of Israeli tanks to an area just a kilometer away from the Netzarim Junction, located along the eastern outskirts of the Zaytoun neighborhood, also located on Salah al-Din;”

Palestinians in Gaza posted a video of a tank firing on a car.
The Al-Ain further report notes that the Netzerim junction is named for the former Israeli community that was evacuated in 2005 under the Disengagement from the Gaza Strip. As such, Israel is familiar with this area that “extends to Al-Bahr Street to the west,” according to the report.

It also notes that Israel would have to cut the Rashid coastal road as well. It explains that prior to 2005, Israel used to have the ability to cut these two roads in order to isolate the area of Gaza and prevent terrorism.

Pro-Iran media expressed worry about Israel cutting this key road. Al-Mayadeen ran a report claiming that Israel had not been able to cut the road, based on Palestinian claims of “resistance” in this area.
Clearly, all eyes are not on central Gaza, and the key roads between the north and south. This is as Israel also presses in from the north, along the beach from Zikim, and also toward Gaza City near Beit Hanun and other areas.