While there are a near limitless number of missteps that led to the failure to stop and mitigate Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel on October 7, including the extreme delay in sending reinforcements, two key stunning reasons clarified by the IDF probes on Thursday were denial by commanders that they had been beaten – and utter chaos at IDF headquarters.
Multiple IDF sources have said that even to this day, Gaza Division chief Brig.-Gen. Avi Rosenfeld might not admit that his forces were completely defeated by Hamas, and certainly, he would not admit that it occurred before 7 a.m. on October 7.
They said this is a crucial point because even when the IDF, at different military levels, between 6:45 and 7:15 a.m., started to declare that a full war was on, they were still looking to Rosenfeld for updates on the situation as the senior forward commander in the area.
The IDF high command, led by Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, Operations Command chief Oded Basiuk, and idf Operations Brigade chief Brig.-Gen. Shlomi Binder did eventually try to take some independent actions to learn what was going on in the South, but they mostly relied on Rosenfeld.
Similarly, while Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman took a variety of independent decisions and actions to learn what was transpiring in the South, he also heavily relied on Rosenfeld.
It did not even occur to any of the officials above Rosenfeld that there could be a scenario where his headquarters was completely overtaken and he had zero situational awareness, and this was true even after they started to learn that there were many Hamas penetrations simultaneously, and not just the two or so the military had trained for.
None of his superiors could imagine a situation where Rosenfeld was completely defeated so quickly, and Rosenfeld himself did not even acknowledge how bad his situation was until he called IAF Brig.-Gen. Omer Tishler at 9:47 a.m., begging for help to defray the attacks on his positions.
This meant that Finkelman and the air force did not decide to blanket the Israel-Gaza border with aerial fire until around 10:05 a.m. (according to the air force) or 10:20 a.m. (according to Southern Command), and carrying out this “Hannibal Directive” did not start until around 10:30 a.m.
Even then, Rosenfeld never used the word that his division was “defeated” or “overwhelmed,” which, had he done so, multiple IDF sources say they would have acted with even more urgency than they did.
Rosenfeld did announce “parash pleshet” (Philistia knight), a code word for multiple penetrations from Gaza, at 6:37 a.m, but none of his superiors had any concept of the size of the invasion or that he could not be counted on to provide them updates and to direct the response.
Because of Rosenfeld’s denial, IDF sources said they did not fully realize that his division had utterly collapsed (they knew it was being hit hard) until around noon.They said this is why they did not start assigning new commanders to have official managerial responsibility for different parts of the defense of the Gaza Corridor until after then, with some appointments not being finalized until around 1 p.m.
In the same spirit, the IDF did not realize and could not imagine that 157 of its border soldiers had been killed in only three to five hours, many in the first hour of the invasion.
All of this means that the IDF high command and Southern Command knew about many developing incidents in real-time, but that out of the 114 border penetrations, they only knew about 40% by 7:30 a.m., a full hour into the invasion.By 10 a.m., three and a half hours into the invasion, they only knew about 60% of the incidents.
Only by 11:30 a.m. – and most of Hamas’s invaders and their hostages were already back in Gaza by around noon – did the IDF get up to an 85% awareness level about incidents, without even getting into how much time it then took to send reinforcement forces to a “new” problem spot.
The Jerusalem Post and other media were shown video footage of certain high command developments at Kirya military headquarters in real time on the day of the invasion.The footage showed an utterly chaotic situation with mid-level officers yelling at each other from across the room on an evolving basis to try to understand where Hamas’s invaders already were and where they were showing up next.
None of the three key high command officers – Halevi, Basiuk, or Binder – were present, as they were all still trying to make their way back to military headquarters from their homes.
The highest ranked official in the situation room directing the response was Col. Efraim Avni, meaning multiple ranks below any members of the high command.
Avni was receiving instructions from top high command officials by phone and text, but it appeared clear that the ability of the high command to direct the war was severely hampered by the absence of even a single major-general.
The IDF probes also found that a major problem was there was no drilling for the possibility that Hamas invaders would penetrate deep enough into Israel to take control of key road junctions.
For example, a large number of IDF reinforcements were killed at the junction to Route 232 on their way to assist southern villages, having had their guard completely down given that they did not anticipate invaders until they would be arriving at the villages.
Other IDF reinforcements survived attacks by Hamas at junctions
Other reinforcements survived attacks by Hamas at the junctions, but were significantly delayed trying to defend themselves.
Yet other reinforcements ended up going to different villages than originally intended, deciding to circumvent the junction to avoid the Hamas fighters, but in the chaos of the day, no one in the high command or Southern Command realized that these forces had altered their destinations.
Despite all of the chaos, Southern Command sources noted that Hamas’s original plan was to penetrate all the way to Beersheba, Ashkelon, Netivot, and the air force Hatzerim base, not “just” to get to Sderot and Ofakim in terms of larger population centers.
These sources said that, however chaotic the response was, the heroism and rapid response from those IDF forces, reservists, and some plain civilians to block and repel Hamas’s advance were what saved a much larger tragedy and much larger loss of life than the 1,200 Israelis who were killed that day.
For example, the IDF said Hamas had planned to kill around 600 civilians in Ofakim alone, including all of the students at a sizable school.
According to the army, this is not an estimate but was based on maps and instructions found on killed Hamas invaders inside Israel.
Errors made by IDF commanders on October 7
ADDITIONAL ERRORS on October 7 itself included that Finkelman gave more attention to the northern Gaza corridor villages than to the southern Gaza Corridor villages.Although at some point, he correctly guessed that southern Gaza Corridor commander Col. Assaf Hamami had been killed by Hamas invaders, he thought that after he spoke to and appointed a new officer to handle those areas, he did not need to continue to more directly manage the area.In contrast, the probe found that so many southern Gaza Corridor commanders were killed or wounded that the new commander did not gain control of the situation for several hours.This led to the IDF not even arriving at Nir Oz and some of the other most badly hit southern Gaza Corridor villages until after all of the Hamas invaders had returned to Gaza.Also, while there were many instances of bravery, there were several instances where IDF forces retreated in the face of Hamas invaders, rather than following IDF directives to always stand their ground and even proactively repel invaders from Israeli territory.The Post and other media viewed a video of soldiers at Zikim, who even outnumbered Hamas naval commando invaders coming across the beach after having penetrated IDF naval defenses, simply retreating instead of confronting the invaders.Those Hamas invaders would kill 17 Israelis before being stopped by other forces.Like with the entire probes being released publicly, the IDF would not comment on how it handled such improper retreats, with sources only saying that they were being addressed.
Five errors the IDF probe attributes to Finkelman, and which he himself has endorsed, include he: 1) gave too much weight to his intelligence officers’ briefings and did not think independently enough about the possibility of an imminent attack; 2) after 6:29 a.m. on October 7, he did not push for enough additional sources to learn about the evolving invasion and what was happening in individual border villages, still somewhat focused on intelligence relating to how senior Hamas officials were acting and striking them; 3) took too long to realize he needed rapid and much wider help from the air force; 4) did not intervene directly enough and rapidly enough in the southern Gaza Corridor; and 5) did not act fast enough to evacuate civilians and to be in clearer communication with them about how and when they would be saved.
Regarding this last point, Finkelman was faulted for not realizing that having evacuated 90% of the Nova festival at 7:15 a.m., the number of participants had been so large, that there was still a huge risk to civilians there.
In his defense, Southern Command sources note that he had sent a veteran commander there to manage the situation, but that commander was killed en route, and Finkelman did not know that in real time.
Besides the more specific findings, the probe recommended that in the big picture: 1) the IDF cannot plan in the future to contain and be stuck with fighting a terror group on its border (a security perimeter is needed like in Syria.); 2) there needs to be full plans for how to act if an enemy achieves complete surprise on the IDF; 3) there needs to be war plan to decisively defeat every enemy (Southern Command sources say no such plan existed for Hamas on October 7, contradicting defense minister Yoav Gallant); and 4) the IDF as a whole must be much more deadly and ready to confront invaders.
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