IDF fails to penalize Golani soldiers who fled Hamas invaders at Zikim Beach, abandoning civilians

The IDF on Monday acknowledged that it had failed to penalize seven Golani Brigade soldiers who fled in the face of five Hamas invaders at Zikim Beach on October 7, 2023, abandoning civilians there to their deaths.

Video footage shown to The Jerusalem Post and other military reporters in February as part of unveiling the navy’s probe of October 7, and again last week in the probe of the IDF Zikim base, clearly showed the Golani soldiers retreating in the face of an enemy with fewer forces.

However, until Monday’s presentation by IDF Col. Tal Koritzky, no IDF official had been willing to make official statements about the soldiers’ problematic conduct, other than to say unofficially that it looked problematic.

Koritzky formally admitted that the soldiers had failed to act as expected.

Given that the soldiers had seen that there were civilians still on the beach and that some of the Hamas invaders had fired on them from as close as 100 meters away, the unambiguous IDF expectation would be for the Golani forces to advance against the enemy.

Further, the Golani forces should have advanced specifically to a position where they were serving as a human shield for the civilians on the beach to be protected and to potentially rescue them.

Koritzky provides explanations for soldiers’ retreat

According to Koritzky, there were two ways to understand the episode regarding the soldiers’ retreat in the face of an enemy with fewer numbers.

He said that the more charitable explanation would be to accept the soldiers’ narrative: that they had not fled for their lives out of fear, but were merely making a tactical retreat to try to get to a higher position to have a better vantage point for seeing and firing on the Hamas invaders.

Adding to this narrative, Koritzky noted that the soldiers knew from a mix of what they could see and communications with others, that there were Hamas invaders both north and south of them, such that they could be concerned about being overwhelmed by superior forces, even if directly in front of them they had a seven to five numbers advantage.

Moreover, the soldiers told Koritzky that they did not think they had a clean line of shot from their initial position which was at a somewhat lower height than the beach where the invaders stood.

Moving to the new position could in fact give them an advantage in terms of holding the higher ground.

Finally, Koritzky revealed that the navy fired a shell at the Hamas invaders on the beach and that the shell landed as a relatively near miss close to the Golani soldiers.

He added that the Golani soldiers had no communications with the navy (though given that they were guarding the beach head, it could be highly problematic, and not just an unexpected error, that they did not have such communications) and that they thought it was possible that they were being fired on by Hamas using some heavier firepower than what they had to defend themselves.

However, he recognized that it could also be understood that the soldiers fled out of fear, even though they did not suggest that they were afraid of the invaders.

In any event, Koritzky admitted that abandoning the civilians on the beach and retreating was the wrong move, whether the high ground might have theoretically helped or not – and in the end it did not and led to additional civilian deaths.

Consquences enforced by IDF

Pressed as to what consequences the IDF placed on the retreating Golani soldiers, Koritzky said that one of the soldiers was wounded physically and was discharged, one suffered a complete mental breakdown and was discharged, and that the others all completed their service and were released prior to when the final probe results were issued.

Koritzky said that the extenuating circumstances of October 7 generally, and of the specific battle specifically played a role in the soldiers receiving lenient treatment and being allowed to continue in the Golani brigade, including in the invasion of Gaza.

Yet, the fact that most of the final probes were only issued in February of this year and this one was only issued now, around 18 months after October 7, is in and of itself viewed by many as an additional error by the IDF.

The longer the military took to issue its probes, the more it could allow IDF officials to continue for several months or even a year to finish their service without getting into the messy business of disciplining them for October 7 errors.

In fact, nearly all of the top IDF officials who resigned due to their responsibility for October 7, did so only after several months and ended their service at a time of their choosing.

For example, October 7 IDF intelligence chief Aharon Haliva only resigned in April 2024 and only actually exited office in August 2024.

Some observers have criticized former IDF chief Herzi Halevi for staying in office until March of this year as sending the wrong message to the military broadly and encouraging many other IDF officials to be overly lenient about October 7 failures.

Some have criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for blocking a state inquiry and for declaring that he will not resign and will seek re-election as messaging to the military and the country that it is acceptable to seek to abdicate personal responsibility for October 7, while blaming the failures on “the system.”

IDF probe, navy probe inconsistencies

Another issue uncovered by the IDF probe into the Zikim beach battle was that between four to five invading Hamas ships reached the coast, though at some earlier point in the probe there had been indications of fewer ships.

One of the ships was essentially destroyed upon reaching the coast and even some of the others took for immediately upon landing, leading to only 16 Hamas naval commandos out of an original 38 making it onto Zikim beach alive for any significant amount of time, but those 16 managed to kill a number of Israeli civilians and soldiers in several areas.

The kibbutz of Zikim, with 900 residents, itself was not penetrated due to the navy giving it a 20 minute advance warning of a potential invasion to get ready for Hamas as well as a well-prepared local volunteer security team.

JPost