The Israel Defense Forces unveiled another report about the October 7, 2023, massacre, this time focused on the southern community of Nahal Oz, located 700 meters from the border with Gaza.
Why does this matter?
Pressure is rising to summon an official state investigation of inquiry.
New IDF commander in Chief Eyal Zamir took office and ordered a review of the findings of his predecessor, Herzi Halevi.
Seventeen months after the Oct.7 tragedy, some key questions are slowly being answered following an internal investigation conducted by the IDF and presented earlier this week.
The conclusions reflected a complete systematic failure within the country's top security branches, including a lack of reliable intelligence, misleading assessments, logistics issues and the malfunction of troops on the ground.
At Kibbutz Nahal Oz, which witnessed the murders of 15 of its members, the kidnapping of another eight, and massive destruction, a lesser known factor contributed to its downfall: The scarce resources and bureaucratic obstacles that prevented the proper installation and repairing of CCTV cameras in the perimeter. Nahal Oz’s power grid suffered a blackout during the first moments of the attack. Of the 16 members of the so-called rapid response force, four had carried weapons, the report concluded.
The armory remained closed. Hamas terrorists murdered the only person with knowledge of the codes.
The estimation is that about 180 members of several Palestinian factions stormed the community in three separate waves, the first one in the morning hours of October 7th at 06:29 a.m. (local time) until the evening hours, around 5:30 p.m., according to official documents provided by the IDF spokesperson.
The latest findings were the result of months of investigations led by former IDF chief Halevi, presented just days before he left office after his resignation due to his failure and personal responsibility in preventing the attacks.
That said, the report was not without controversy as large sectors of the Israeli society lost confidence in the role of Halevi and his findings.
On March 5, Zamir created a task force to reevaluate and reexamine those conclusions.
Meanwhile, the head of Shin Bet Ronen Bar unveiled the organization's own probe focused on the failures within the domestic security agency, concluding that Oct. 7 could have been avoided. The report emphasized the misleading intelligence assessment under which Hamas was supposedly deterred, thanks to the money sent from Qatar in an attempt to buy a fragile “peace”.
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With that said, reports in the Israeli media claimed that spy master Bar warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu five months before the attack about the dangers of Hamas and its deadly potential, yet Bar was dismissed.
The struggle between Netanyahu and the heads of the local security agencies escalated in the past months with reports saying Bar was likely to resign in the next weeks due to his role in preventing the killing of almost 1200 people, mostly citizens, including women and children.
Israel’s state commission of inquiry
Since the Oct. 7 massacre, Netanyahu was called to appoint a state commission of inquiry that would analyze the responsibility and failures in the tragedy, but this was often dismissed and delayed as an option based on the belief that political interests were behind the move.
Last Monday, during a special session in the Knesset, Netanyahu took the stage and addressed the issue. “I want to tell you - it is important and necessary to investigate in depth everything that happened to us on October 7 and what preceded it. I stand by it, but this inquiry must win the majority of the people or an overwhelming majority of the people,” he claimed.
“That's why we demand the establishment of an objective, balanced commission of inquiry - not politically biased whose conclusions are already known in advance,” he said.
Key aspects of the failures that led to the largest killing of Jews since World War II remain unsolved. Above all, Why did it take so much time for the troops to reach the southern border communities? Israelis across the country demand clear answers.
Damian Pachter is an Argentine-Israeli journalist based in Berlin. He worked as Chief World editor for Israel Hayom daily and special correspondent for Haaretz newspaper before that. He also anchored the Spanish spoken TV show Ñews24 on i24NEWS and served as its senior editor. Previously, Pachter collaborated with The Associated Press in Buenos Aires, Argentina.