The IDF is set to release a series of probes into its role surrounding the October 7 massacre.
One of the probes will examine the intelligence and decisions specific to the evening before the invasion, as well as regarding the orders given in light of the evolving threat situation.
IDF’s intel unit flagged unusual activity hours before attacks began
At some point overnight between October 6 and October 7, the Shin Bet and IDF Unit 8200 flagged a large number of Israeli cell phone SIM cards being activated in Gaza.
Since such cards could only be used if those Gazans with them entered Israel, this immediately raised suspicions.
Around 3 a.m., two separate virtual meetings were held.
One involved IDF Southern Command Chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkleman and his senior operations and intelligence staff, including IDF Intelligence Gaza division commander Lt. Col. A, the Gaza Division chief, an IDF colonel as an Air Force representative in the South, and several Shin Bet officials as representatives in the South.
At the same time, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar was holding an internal agency meeting with top relevant high command officials, including the Southern commander.
Both meetings came to similar conclusions: that there was an increased threat level from Hamas which might suggest a small targeted infiltration toward one Israeli town to try to kidnap hostages, while it was equally likely that all of what they were seeing was a military drill.
In fact, almost exactly one year earlier, on October 5, 2022, similar SIM card indications had occurred – and no action from Hamas had followed. There were also later warnings of a possible Hamas infiltration in April 2023, which did not pan out.
Finkleman and other IDF officials were extremely concerned that Hamas would be aware of the IDF’s eyes on its SIM card systems if Israel acted too suddenly and drastically in response to the phone card activation.
Accordingly, all officials issued instructions to keep physical changes on defense to a minimum, so as not to alert Hamas.
The main difference between the meetings of the Shin Bet and IDF was that Ronen Bar ordered a small team of around a dozen reinforcements to the southern border to be better prepared for a potential infiltration attack, whereas IDF Operations Command Chief Maj.-Gen. Oded Basiuk ordered only to check certain aerial defense and maritime defense (specifically regarding the natural gas rigs) readiness issues, but issued no reinforcement instructions.
Basiuk ordered his then-top deputy Shlomi Binder to perform the checks. Binder was later – controversially – promoted to major general and IDF intelligence chief in August 2024.
Chief of the General Staff of Israel Herzi Halevi said that the probes had cleared Binder of any connection to the major failures of October 7. The probes seem to indicate that he had been directed to focus on specific aerial and maritime defense issues.
Of course, one could ask why Binder did not press his superiors to take the Hamas threat more seriously in light of the SIM cards. On the other hand, he had not been made aware of Jericho Wall, Hamas’s invasion plans for Israel, acquired by IDF in March 2022. Therefore, his accepting the universal opinion that Hamas might be carrying out a drill as in the year before was not unreasonable.
IDF chief Herzi Halevi’s virtual meeting at 4 a.m.
At around 4 a.m. on October 7, Halevi held a virtual meeting with Finkleman, Basiuk, and some other officials, including from intelligence.
Crucially, he did not demand that then-intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva be disturbed while on vacation.
Neither did Haliva’s aides, who knew about the SIM cards.
Also, Halevi did not demand that IDF Air Force Chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar participate in the meeting.
Neither did Halevi see it fit to wake up then-defense minister Yoav Gallant or Netanyahu. Both have said that had they been woken up, they might have advised some additional defensive measures.
Halevi was also focused on not taking too many visible physical actions to avoid alerting Hamas to the SIM cards. He did order additional drone intelligence collections of suspicious movements in the Gaza area, an order which was inexplicably not executed.
But that 4 a.m. meeting was what sealed Halevi’s fate regarding the October 7 failure.
Despite all of the reasons to doubt that a major invasion was in play, he was the top defense official who could have decided to take extra precautions, just to be ready, and he decided not to.
The Israeli Air Force and its chief, Tomer Bar
Though, earlier in the war, the Israeli Air Force had claimed that Air Force chief Tomer Bar didn’t know anything about the 4 a.m. meeting, on January 29, it was nevertheless confirmed that Binder had passed on warnings to one of Bar’s top aides in the hours just preceding the Hamas invasion.
The Air Force representative in the Southern Command was also in the loop, and it was further revealed that Halevi spoke to Bar directly at 6:36 a.m., seven minutes after the Hamas invasion started at 6:29 a.m., about the attack.
Moreover, a top Halevi aide sent a text message to the top aides of all of the IDF high command, including the Air Force, at 7:05 a.m., that a war had begun.
There was also a Yediot Aharonot report in January that the Air Force had certain intelligence of a large potential rocket attack in the hours before Hamas launched around 3,000 rockets.
The Jerusalem Post confirmed that the Air Force had passed these details on to some portions of IDF intelligence, which has not explained why it did not immediately pass these on to the rest of the military, including Halevi. Nor has the Air Force explained why it did not call an emergency meeting of the IDF High Command.
These revelations paint a different picture, which seems to indicate that Bar and the Air Force knew far more than they had let on, even if Bar was not on the call with Halevi. In other words, Bar had intelligence about Hamas’s rocket units in the middle of the night, was updated by a senior aide about the critical pre-war call in the hours before the invasion, and was given two significant warnings about the war within the first 30 minutes or so.
Despite these warnings, the Air Force did not send all of its F-35, F-16, F-15, and other aircraft to the border in the 6:30-7:30 a.m. range, which might have been able to stop portions of Hamas’s second and third waves of invasion.
Rather, the Air Force sent mainly drones and helicopters to assist with border defense.
Sources noted that the Air Force did send three drones to the border immediately, which were already in the air nearby, and that within two hours, there were dozens of Air Force platforms.
However, it has also previously been reported that the Air Force’s top aircraft, some of which got into the air fairly quickly, were assigned to stay in the air near critical infrastructure areas, or were kept near the northern border – lest Hezbollah stage a second invasion – instead of to help with the defense of the southern border.
This meant there was no capability to drop large bombs on scores of invading Hamas fighters as they crossed into Israel, even before the point where they entered towns and would be hard to strike without killing Israeli civilians.
Sources explained that the short call from Halevi did not reveal significant new information and was a moment of confusion for both Halevi and Bar. In addition, the text message from Halevi’s top aide is not viewed as carrying the actual weight of a declaration of major war, they added.
Officials such as Netanyahu would prefer for the heaviest focus to be on the night under and less on the conceptual strategic framework that was in place to understand Hamas and the threats from Gaza since Netanyahu was deeply involved in developing that framework.
Why did the Israeli Air Force react slowly on morning of October 7?
Besides the fact that lots of the Air Force’s serious power was sent northward or to guard critical infrastructure sites, the Air Force probe is also expected to show that its plans for reinforcing border areas downplayed Gaza and had its aircraft stationed too far away.
Some IAF assets, including helicopters, were stationed at the Ramat David base near Nazareth in the North, while others were stationed near the Ramon base near Eilat. It took many of these aerial assets around an hour to get to the Gaza border, which was already somewhat too late.
Once they arrived, the probe would say that they over-centralized the rules of engagement for their pilots, denying them the option of firing into Israeli towns for fear of striking civilians.
There were a few cases where aerial assets targeted Hamas fighters as they crossed the border which made some difference, but often, by this time, most of the fighters were already inside.
In addition, the IAF probe will say that generally, pilots receive highly specific information about targets, that most officers were not in the South due to vacations, while those that were around had a similar lack of full understanding of the constantly evolving situation, and that the IDF Southern Command was similarly “blind” to how multi-pronged the invasion was.
In one case where the IAF tried to take the initiative based on pre-war intelligence and to attack without concrete real-time updated intelligence, it attacked a tunnel that officers thought Hamas might use to send fighters into Nativ Haasara, according to Yediot Ahronot. It turned out later that no Hamas fighters had been there.
Yet another reason for the IAF’s sluggish reaction was that the IAF plans had a dozen aircraft ready at any time, but did not expect such a sudden surprise and was only able to move to a full war footing, including shifting all of the fuel and other technological resources needed, in about six hours, by around 1:00 p.m.
Additionally, Hamas launching 3,700 rockets in a short period of time exhausted the Iron Dome defenses in the South, leading to only around 50% protection, which in turn meant that many southern runways were hit and required repairs.
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