Besides all of the “standard” disasters of October 7, around 300-500 Hamas terrorists, killing 47 Israelis and kidnapping 76, Nir Oz stands out because no IDF soldiers arrived there before the last Hamas attacker had already returned to Gaza, the IDF’s probe disclosed on Friday.
The IDF probe concluded that, in addition to the failure that no top military officials realized that the slaughter at Nir Oz was even worse than in many other places that had more IDF support, additional reasons it was utterly abandoned included its geographic distance from Israel’s center and its perception as smaller than some other Gaza border villages.
Put differently, much larger IDF forces came to Be’eri much earlier, but Beeri is further north, parallel to central Gaza, whereas Nir Oz is further south parallel to Khan Yunis in Gaza.
Also, Beeri had a pre-war population of around 1,300, whereas Nir Oz had only 400.
Among the depressing and shocking revelations in the IDF report was that IDF reinforcement forces from battalion 450 arrived in the area only two kilometers from Nir Oz around 9:45 a.m.
Had they been directed to Nir Oz, they could have potentially saved not all, but at least a large number of the residents from death and kidnapping.
Instead, half were sent to Kissufim and half to Kerem Shalom, both of which were under attack, but neither of which was or would experience the same huge loss of life that occurred in Nir Oz.
Nearby IDF tanks and aerial support didn’t help
Other major errors included that of the two tanks in the vicinity of Nir Oz, neither entered the village assist. One event at one point drove past the entrance of the village and, upon seeing the large volume of Hamas invaders, left the area.
Whether that tank staff fled for self-preservation or believed they could make a larger difference at another position where they did continue to fight will be hotly debated for years to come.
Similarly, there was IDF aerial support in the Nir Oz area with helicopter attacks on Hamas invaders at 9:22 a.m., 11:15 a.m., and after, especially on the “Dallas” dirt road artery into and around Nir Oz from Gaza, but none attacked invaders inside Nir Oz itself.
In fact, there was extreme hesitance by IDF helicopters about firing on anyone inside Israeli territory as, until this war, they had only attacked targets in Gaza or otherwise outside of Israeli territory. One helicopter, not realizing how dangerous the invaders were, was also struck by a rocket-propelled grenade and had to flee the areas, just managing an emergency landing at Hatzerim air force base.
Ultimately, 64 Gazan invader bodies were found on or around the Dallas artery, probably most of whom were killed by the helicopters, such that they did make a contribution to the more general war effort.
But that contribution did not necessarily help save a single Nir Oz resident.
One theory, according to IDF sources, is that when helicopters and aerial forces started to fire more heavily on the Dallas artery around 12:20, this might have spooked many invaders, who then retreated to Gaza.
However, an alternative theory is that given that the invaders had spent over five hours in Nir Oz and killed and kidnapped so many people, they thought there was no need to stay any longer.
A large part of the failed defense of Nir Oz was that IDF Brigade Commander Col. Assaf Hamami was killed before 7:00 a.m.
His deputy and a number of other company and platoon commanders were also killed relatively soon after the invasion started, leading to a complete and utter breakdown in command, control, and coordination of those IDF forces who were in the area.
Around 34 Golani brigade troops holed up inside the kibbutz cafeteria building which made them an easy target and highly ineffective.
Several were killed, and 17 were wounded, with IDF sources saying that they basically took themselves out of the broader battle and became a unit that just needed rescuing instead of being able to mount a real defense.
Chronologically, the first invasion wave started just before 6:45 a.m. with six penetrations out of what would eventually be around 15 penetrations nearby, after Hamas fired around 450 rockets at the Nir Oz area, mainly to kill or disable nearby IDF forces, sensors, and communications.
By 6:48 a.m., there were already altercations, and a minute later, forces at an IDF lookout post were killed by a Hamas sharpshooter.
In one gruesome episode, an older mother was murdered and then the terrorists posted photos of her death on her own Facebook page, which was the way that her daughter, vacationing in Thailand, found out that her mother had been killed.
Another horrible episode was communications in which Nir Oz residents exclaimed that they had no water to put out the fire that Hamas had lit on the structure where they were hiding, and that they should save their urine to try to use it to put out the fire.
Several children were killed by smoke inhalation.
The invaders also murdered several foreign workers from Thailand.
Even before 8:30 a.m., there were around 130 invaders from the first wave.
The high point of how many invaders were in Niz Oz simultaneously (there were waves going in and out at different points) was around 10:30 a.m., reaching around 300-400 with the second wave of invaders, and with the cumulative total of terrorists possibly reaching as high as 500.
The IDF probe said that the first wave was organized by Hamas terrorists, whereas the second wave was a mix of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, other terror groups, and random Gazans who joined in, including children and at least one elderly man in his 60s.
Already before 12:30 p.m., the number of invaders had dropped to around 200 and before 1:10 p.m., all of the invaders had returned to Gaza.
The first reinforcement forces, combat police YAMAS, only entered Nir Oz around 1:10 p.m., but they were too late to save anyone.
Likewise, the Egoz special forces, which arrived at 2:00 p.m., were too late to rescue anyone, and the Shayetet 13 navy seals, who arrived at 2:50 p.m., were also too late.
Breaking down those killed, 41 out of the 47 were residents of Nir Oz, while another six were from a nearby party who were caught up in the Nir Oz invasion.
Two cars from that party barely escaped being killed when they drove out of Nir Oz literally seconds before the invaders converged on that spot and killed three other cars of people from that party.
Information not recognized
Although the lack of commanders was a major reason why the IDF southern command and high command did not realize that the situation was much worse there than in some of the other dozens of invaded villages, in retrospect, there was plenty of information that could have tipped off the higher defense levels.
The IDF probe said that Unit 8200 had significant information about the Nir Oz invasion but that no one noticed it since they were overwhelmed.
There were some other pieces of information about Nir Oz which lower down IDF troops sent on to the higher echelons, but it was sent in a form that was hard for them to discern what it really meant given the time pressure and the dizzying number of invasions to follow.
The helicopters in the area saw up close how bad things were, but the pilots just focused on opening fire on invaders they saw outside of Nir Oz instead of reporting on the invasion situation there.
In total, eight reports came in about Nir Oz to some higher levels, but they were lost in the swamp of a total of 115 reports from the invasion.
Four reports about Nir Oz made it directly to the high command, but the IDF probe led by Maj. Gen. Eran Niv said that these did not provide a clear enough picture for the high command to have acted more decisively.
The IDF probe even analyzed real-time media coverage during the initial invasion and noted massive coverage of other villages like Beeri and almost no coverage of Nir Oz.
IDF sources noted that they were recently given some helpful additional details from Sagi Dekel-Chen, who was returned in February as part of the Israel-Hamas hostage deal.
Dekel-Chen created a Whatsapp group in real-time to help the voluntary security team pass on updates to each other as the invasion played out, but only seven of them were in the village at the time of the invasion.
Still, Dekel-Chen’s assisting with passing on information was considered helpful given that the head of the security team was killed early on in the invasion.
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