Contents

• MY NOTES ON New York Times (NYT) INVESTIGATION

• 2023Dec01 synopsis NYT: Israel had a blueprint for the Oct. 7 attacks a year ago. Officials dismissed it.

• NYT Podcast Transcript-The Daily- Israelii gave Hamas Invasion Plans the Codename "Jericho Wall" 

MY NOTES ON NYT INVESTIGATION

New york times

• The email thread from the southern command

• Codename: Jericho wall (the booklet). Obtained in 2022; translated into hebrew

• ---Depth of intelligence that hamas to gather on israel; purpose is to take down the GAZAN division, which controls the massive fence & communications & towers & guards with machine guns

• --translated into a detailed attack plan--DIVERSION massive bombardment with rockets, mortars, missile

• Neutralize security barrier CAMERAS & communication hub using drones and paragliders

• Raiding forces to breakthrough in 60 different places

• Analyst told head of southern defenses- this is a preparation for war--it is a plan for invasion not for a raid.

Takeaways: 2023NOV///30 NYT: Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan Over a Year Ago

Ronen Bergman, Adam Goldman nytimes.com

• THE DOCUMENT  / INVASION PLANS

• WARNINGS 3-MONTHS BEFORE ATTACKS BY ISRAELI ANALYSTSNO

• PREPARATIONS DESPITE HAVING INVASIONS PLANS & AMPLE WARNINGS from MULTIPLE SOURCES

• "Jericho Wall" Invasion plan provided Explicit Details--A template for 7 October

• ISRAEL REVIEWING EARLIER ITERATIONS OF PLANS SINCE 2016

• Israel's GAZA DIVISION initial ASSESSMENT of Jericho Wall

• JULY 6 2023: WARNING: MEMO FROM SOUTHERN COMMAND

Intelligence - capabilities v. intentions

Capabilities - Underestimated

 Hamas has between 20i00 and 3000nukmba  commando gunman trained and ready to be deployed

However hamas only capable of deploying 70

Nov 2022 - israeli southern command memo:

2023Dec01 synopsis NYT: Israel had a blueprint for the Oct. 7 attacks a year ago. Officials dismissed it.

By Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman

Dec. 1, 2023 New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-had-a-blueprint-of-the-oct-7-attacks-a-year-ago-officials-dismissed-it.html

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

=================

NYT Podcast Transcript-The Daily- Israelii gave Hamas Invasion Plans the Codename "Jericho Wall" 

The Daily 4 December 2023 Podcast – Listen and follow The Daily

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Link to New York Times

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Produced by Rachel Quester, Mooj Zadie, Carlos Prieto and Stella Tan

Edited by Patricia Willens and Michael Benoist

Original music by Marion Lozano, Diane Wong and Dan Powell

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

transcript

0:01/36:01

The Oct. 7 Warning That Israel Ignored

Israel knew about Hamas’s plan more than a year before the attack took place.

2023-12-04  06:00:12-05:00

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.

michael barbaro

From “The New York Times“, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[THEME MUSIC]

In the weeks since Hamas carried out a devastating terror attack inside of Israel, my colleague Ronen Bergman has been investigating what kind of warnings Israel missed beforehand — today, the story of one of those warnings.

It’s Monday, December 4.

Ronen, this is your first time on “The Daily.” And you bring a unique expertise that I’d like you to describe for just a moment. Because you have been covering the Israeli military and its intelligence services for decades. And you’ve gotten to know those worlds extremely well.

ronen bergman

Israel is the country that I think is influenced by its intelligence service more than any other country in the Western world.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

ronen bergman

It always had the biggest intelligence community per capita. And today, it’s the second biggest intelligence community in total number after the US.

michael barbaro

Wow.

ronen bergman

So just think of the ratio —

michael barbaro

Size difference of those countries, right, right.

ronen bergman

Yeah. So Israeli security strategy is based on the intelligence services to supply a pre-alert to any kind of enemy intent to launch a preemptive strike on Israel to supply with viable real-time intelligence what are the intents and the capabilities of the enemy. And it’s vast. It takes massive resources.

And it has a lot of secrets. Every day, they create unbelievable stories. Not all of them, by the way, are glorifying them. Sometimes the Israeli James Bond looks more like Inspector Clouseau.

michael barbaro

[CHUCKLES]:

ronen bergman

But it’s always interesting. And it’s always very consequential. There’s no historical turn, there’s no historical event, there’s no major decision-making process in the history of Israel that the intelligence community didn’t have a massive, important imprint, if not the decisive role, in it. So this is my professional task. I’m trying at least to give the readers of “The New York Times” a better understanding of how this secret realm is so consequential on everything we see in the real world.

michael barbaro

Right. And in your capacity as a journalist deeply wired into the Israeli military and that unprecedented intelligence apparatus that you just described, you of course end up spending a lot of time after October 7 trying to understand how Israel’s government failed to anticipate that attack or really even blunt it.

Instant Uncharacteristic Mea Culpa from military! Suspicious?

ronen bergman

It’s always been in my head this question that didn’t leave, that didn’t stop bothering me — how could this happen? And what I was getting at the beginning when I was speaking with people, even in the first evening with sources, with officials throughout the intelligence community and the defense establishment — they all said, we had no idea. They all said there was nothing — just a total, 100 percent shocking surprise from 0 to 100, in a second, with no clue, no nothing that would suggest that this is coming.

michael barbaro

Were you skeptical of that, Ronen?

ronen bergman

I was a little bit skeptical in this, I would say, spontaneous and very fast admittal into something that an intelligence officer would not like to admit, which means that the intelligence coverage — human intelligence, signal intelligence, cyber, and all the rest — just failed completely. Nothing — the channels were empty.

So I thought either it’s courageous — people with kahunas who say, we failed. But because I heard this from multiple, multiple directions, I thought that’s a little bit odd. Maybe some people are courageous. And maybe some people are very fast to admit something that is very embarrassing —

michael barbaro

Right.

ronen bergman

UNIT 8200

— but in order to hide, to cover up on a much darker truth. And so I started to speak with sources. And then I think it was two days after the war began when a source said, listen, 8200 — that’s the Israeli equivalent to the NSA or the British GCHQ — the cyber and SIGINT, signal intelligence unit, which is the biggest single unit in the Israeli defense establishment and also one who takes the best brains, the best youth when they are being drafted to the military. So they said 8200 long ago stopped or diminished its dealing with tactical communication of Hamas.

But then after a few days, I get another source who says this is not even important because the real story is not about what they didn’t know, not about the lack of coverage — tactical or strategic, whatever. It’s about what they knew. There was the sources. There was something big in the pipeline. And he suggests to say they knew something about how this is going to happen, but the source was vague. The source was evasive, which of course makes me a little bit mad.

michael barbaro

[CHUCKLES]:

ronen bergman

So he said, I know this is not what you want to get, and maybe one day I’ll tell you. And I said — I told the source, listen, if there’s a dark secret in 8200, in our days, this will not remain a secret for a long time.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

ronen bergman

And then I start hearing something — it’s code-named or named the email thread with the Southern Command.

michael barbaro

Huh. People start describing something to you as “the email thread of the Southern Command“?

ronen bergman

Yes. And I start hearing stories that there’s a woman who alerted, who got it right. And then I got access to the email thread.

michael barbaro

And in summary, what does it tell you?

The veteran professional analyst in Southern Gaza & her team

ronen bergman

It tells me that there is a veteran professional analyst that is sitting in an intelligence base in the south. This base is in charge of the intelligence collection from Gaza. It’s a massive base. And this woman is studying the battle techniques of Hamas.

And so in July 6 of this year, she writes the first email in that thread where she is describing a military drill that Hamas was running in the center of Gaza City with two platoons. And she starts and say they were making this military exercise, and it was madness.

[AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYING]

And she is describing the drill — the drill, the exercise including taking down a helicopter. They are imitating the possibility. So they are taking down Israeli helicopter. They are taking down Israeli fighter jet. They cross the border into Israel. They raid a kibbutz. They put the flag on the synagogue of the kibbutz.

And then they raid some kind of a military academy. They kill all the cadets — of course, there are people playing dead there — from early dawn until the night. They were doing it with bigger forces, bigger capability. And generally, she says, I never saw anything like that, it was madness.

Now, “madness” is not usually a word that you use in those usually very dry intelligence reports. She said that was — she go, oh, no, [HEBREW] in Hebrew — “madness” or “crazy.” It also had a sense of almost — I would say she was impressed from those military capabilities.

And at the end of this report, she adds, here is another small addition. One of the commandos was speaking over the radio with another one. And he was using a quote from the Qur’an from Surah Al-Ma’idah, which is this specific chapter.

The quote was, “whoever passes this gate and surprising the other side will get the blessing of Allah.” And she says, referring to the addressees of the email, you remember this quote? This is the same quote that is at the very beginning of Jericho wall.

michael barbaro

Hmm. I just want to pause for a minute, Ronen. So in the days after October 7, you end up obtaining these highly sensitive internal emails, in which this analyst has picked up on an elaborate drill in which members of Hamas very much seem to be planning some kind of attack. And in communicating this drill to the people she works with, this analyst invokes a quote from one of the commandos, uses this phrase “Jericho wall.” It seems like that phrase might mean something. What do you end up coming to understand it means?

ronen bergman

She uses that twice. And it’s clear that it’s not physically the walls of Jericho, which is an ancient and modern city. It’s — in the Bible, the Israelites came and surrounded that Jericho, and toppled its walls, and conquered the city. So it’s clearly a code-name. And she referenced to that code-name and says, what we see in that drill is in complete overlap with “Jericho wall.”

michael barbaro

Hmm. So suddenly, you want to know what on earth is “Jericho wall“?

ronen bergman

Yes. And so I start asking around. When you say  th“Jericho wall,”ey say, ah, the booklet.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

ronen bergman

I hear this a lot — oh, the booklet, you mean the booklet. And in a certain point in a certain military facility, I was able to get and read the booklet “Jericho Wall.”

michael barbaro

And what is it?

ronen bergman

It’s a shocking document. It’s the last updated Hamas plan to attack Israel.

michael barbaro

Wow.

ronen bergman

It was obtained by Israeli intelligence after a massive effort during 2022, more than a year ago. And it’s about 40 pages. I saw the translation to Hebrew. This was the one that was shared with many seniors and analysts inside Israeli intelligence.

And I said it’s shocking because the first thing you realize is the depth of intelligence that Hamas was able to gather on Israel.

michael barbaro

Like what?

ronen bergman

The purpose of “Jericho Wall” is to take down the Gaza Division. Gaza Division is the division that is protecting the Israeli-Gazan border. They control a massive fence, which is erected above ground and underground to stop the tunnels. But it’s also fortified with many cameras and communication hubs.

And I see all the details, the secret details of how this works — how many people, where they sit, where is the headquarters, where are the regional brigades, where are the towers with the machine guns, where are the scouts watching them and operating them. You see everything into how the front is built and protected.

michael barbaro

In the hands of Hamas, in this booklet that Hamas has written in a plan for attacking Israel?

ronen bergman

But they take the intelligence. And they translate that into a detailed attack plan that describes how to attack the border — first, to have a massive bombardment with mortars, rockets, and missiles on Israel to create diversion. They have a detailed plan how to neutralize the cameras/the communication hub using drones, using paragliders. And then they have raiding forces that are tasked to break the fence in 60 different places.

michael barbaro

Wow. And of course, everything you are describing from this plan is precisely what happens on October 7. That plan becomes a reality.

ronen bergman

Nobody could believe that this could happen, but it did. To the details, this is the master plan for what happened on October 7.

michael barbaro

Right. So I want to return to that analyst you mentioned earlier because she clearly does take this report seriously. She warns in an email that she thinks that a drill that she’s watching happening in Gaza is basically a dry run for the “Jericho Wall” plan that she has read. And so what happens when she flags this to the people around her?

ronen bergman

So first, everybody are complimenting her for the detailed job that she’s doing because — I’m just giving you the gist, but this is a long memo with very detailed, meticulous work. And then the intelligence chief of the Gaza Division — he says compliments, compliments — intelligence gold, but we need to keep that in proportion.

We need to differentiate between what they do for show-off and what they’re really able to do. Because, he says to the analyst, the scenario that you described at the beginning of this email — conquering the kibbutz, putting the flag, et cetera — this is imaginative.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

ronen bergman

So he challenges her reading into the current — “current” meaning in July — current Hamas capabilities. And he says, no, they can do this on dry when there is no enemy — so no Israelis, when they’re not actually firing. But this is for show-off.

But she is not shy. And she is reacting. She says, this is not imaginative. This is not something that they are hoping to do. This is something they want to do and capable of doing. And then she says something which is I think maybe the most important. She says, this is a plan for invasion, not a plan for a raid. Because the whole terminology of everybody, even the unit that is in charge, was “raid”— raid, small-scale, two platoons crossing the border. She said, this is a preparation for war, and it can happen.

michael barbaro

So the analyst’s colleague, who’s a very important figure in keeping Israel safe from Gaza — he basically says to this analyst, I think you’re wrong. This isn’t a drill for a real-life attack. Hamas can’t do what you think they can do.

Thank you for your work. It’s very impressive, but your worries are misplaced. And the analyst comes back and says, no, no, no, no, no, you are wrong. They can do this. This isn’t for show. You should be very worried about this. But ultimately, his view carries the day.

ronen bergman

His view carries the day because this was the common wisdom. She was going against the stream. [AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYING]

She was saying something together with two of colleagues from her base that supported her in the exchange. She was saying, everything you — everybody else believe about “Jericho Wall” is wrong. “Jericho Wall” is for real. And it’s about what Hamas is capable of doing now.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

Ronen, help us understand why no one took these warnings from this analyst seriously and ultimately why nobody who read the “Jericho Wall” blueprint behaved in a way that might have stopped this attack.

ronen bergman

The intelligence blunder has three parts — first of all, a total misreading of Hamas mindset — or maybe be more precise, what was going in the head of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas.

michael barbaro

In Gaza, right.

ronen bergman

In Gaza. They know him for a long time. 22 years he spent in Israeli prison.

michael barbaro

Right.

ronen bergman

It’s not a new guy. They knew that there is a struggle in Hamas. One part wants to be a ruler of a state — that it’s theirs. If you are governing a state, you need to take care of the water of the electricity, of the sewage, of the health. You cannot afford yourself to be in all-out war with Israel because then you cannot supply those services. And the other side of Hamas was about a permanent status of war.

michael barbaro

Right. And Israel believed that Sinwar was ultimately starting to lean towards governance and away from war.

ronen bergman

Yes. And Israel believed that this is going towards a good place. Five days before the invasion, the national security advisor for Prime Minister Netanyahu, someone called Tzachi Hanegbi, gave an interview to military radio where he said, Hamas is totally deterred. They learned the lesson from the previous round of hostilities — that’s May 21. They understand the price of defiance. They don’t want that. And it’s all going towards the direction of calm period.

michael barbaro

So you’re describing a misunderstanding or a underestimating of Hamas intent?

ronen bergman

Of Sinwar intent — Sinwar and his buddies, the people around him in Gaza. He took a decision. This is about intents.

michael barbaro

Well, what else explains this failure to heed the warnings of this “Jericho Wall” report beyond misunderstanding Sinwar’s intent?

ronen bergman

Professional intelligence analysts will make a clear distinction between assessing intent and assessing capabilities. So if you fail one, the other will have sort of a safety button. But here, I think they were influenced by the understanding that Sinwar is not going towards war and is not planning an all-out attack against Israel. And so maybe subconsciously, they didn’t understand how important is the military build-up.

Now, some of this was just deception. So for example, Hamas did not do a full exercise of all the fighting forces. So there was no one incident — many, many military drills, but there was no single event that Israel could see all the different platoons together standing.

michael barbaro

And you’re saying the capacity that Israel did see — they underestimated it because they had allowed their views of that capacity to be so colored by their determination that Sinwar/that Hamas was not in this moment —

ronen bergman

Yep.

michael barbaro

— a threat. So their views of intent bled over into their views of capacity.

ronen bergman

Yes. And also, just maybe poor intelligence or poor assessment — poor professional understanding. In November of ‘22, Israeli Southern Command is writing a memo. They say Hamas have between 2,000 and 3,000 Nakba commando gunmen trained and ready to be deployed. However, Hamas is capable of deploying only 70. OK. 70 is not that bad.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

ronen bergman

It dictates a total different set of preparation and defenses from Israel.

michael barbaro

So on top of everything you’re describing so far, Ronen — a misunderstanding of intent, a misunderstanding of capacity — I’m curious how much Israel also just misunderstood its own security system. Right? Israel spoke so frequently about this fence, which turned out wasn’t impregnable.

ronen bergman

The fence was created as a lesson from a round of hostilities in 2014, when Israel discovered that Hamas is digging tunnels from Gaza into Israel. Now, those are very hard to detect, very hard to destroy. And Israel started to think of how technology can solve that.

And six years later, they finished building this massive barrier that had also that above-ground wall and underground up to 100 meters deep, with sensors, with explosives. In practice, it solved the problem of the tunnels.

michael barbaro

Hmm-hmm.

ronen bergman

Hamas was not able to continue with this any more at all, but it forced Hamas to be smarter. It forced Hamas to work on an open field and plan how they will execute “Jericho Wall” above ground. And nobody in Israel believed that this can be — like, open? If it’s open, then we don’t need to detect them. We have all those computers, and telescopes, and scouts, and cameras.

michael barbaro

Right. We’ll see it.

ronen bergman

Yeah, we’ll see it. People got completely — people of the military got completely enchanted by the wall. And in time, they allocated fewer and fewer forces to the southern front. And those forces were less and less alert because it’s all about technology.

michael barbaro

In short, you’re saying Israel became complacent?

ronen bergman

The forces on the border were not sharp, were not ready. Because they said that the fence is invincible. You see the videos from the day of the invasion. You see how easy it was for Hamas to break the fence. And you don’t understand the gap between invincible and just one bulldozer just take it out.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm. What would have happened in a world where the “Jericho Wall” report was taken much more seriously, had been distributed much more widely, and more and more people in the military and in the government took the view of this analyst, for example? How easily could Israel have prepared for and prevented the ultimate October 7 attack if they had decided that report, that plan was for real?

ronen bergman

So the other day, someone — very high-ranked official in the southern front — he calls me. And he asked me to come to see him privately. So I understand it’s something very secret. And when I come and see him, he says, do you know what is “Jericho Wall“?

michael barbaro

Hmm.

ronen bergman

I said, well, as it happens, I know.

michael barbaro

Because you hadn’t yet published your investigation?

ronen bergman

Yeah. And he said, I didn’t know until yesterday. He didn’t know. And I said, OK, what would you do if you knew? And he says, there are two options here. Either you deem the force of Hamas at this moment is too risky to Israel and then you go to preemptive surprise attack against Hamas to take them down but also acknowledging — we both said this immediately and simultaneously. There was no government, no prime minister, no public that would support such a ground invasion before October 7.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

ronen bergman

So the other option is to prepare in case that happens. Some steps are easy — put landmines behind the fence. And some are by far more significant. So instead of four battalions, Israel would need to have throughout the year four to five brigades. This is massive. We’re talking about, like, 20,000 troops. But there’s no other way. Because if you think that there is a threat, if they have the capability, you don’t need even to think about the intent. None of that happened. They did not put landmines. They did not enlarge the forces because they didn’t think it’s real.

michael barbaro

So I have to ask what has been the reaction to your reporting within Israel? The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said there will be a moment to account for his government’s failings to prevent October 7 when the war is over. Is what you have found here — the existence of this report and the failure to take it seriously — is that going to mean that, when that accounting comes, it’s going to be devastating, especially for him?

ronen bergman

Benjamin Netanyahu is occupied mainly with one thing — to put all the blame on the shoulders of the intelligence and the military. Now, not that they didn’t fail — they did. Their leaders took responsibility. They said, we failed. We will conclude the necessary lessons after the war, which is — in Hebrew, that means that they will resign. But first, they said, we need to fight.

Benjamin Netanyahu said, it’s not me, it’s them. Here, they took responsibility. And in any case, we don’t investigate now. Now, if there is a true investigation after the war, what we discuss now — this is going to be one of the main chapters of the investigation panel.

michael barbaro

Right. How could it not be?

ronen bergman

No doubt. I was in a meeting where a senior “New York Times” editor asked a high-rank official if there’s a moment he regrets in hindsight — that he could do something else. And that person said, we will all have a lifetime to think about that.

michael barbaro

So we’re talking about high-level officials, but I’m curious how much this attack and the idea that it was preventable — how that has changed how everyday Israelis view this enormous military intelligence apparatus that we have been talking about here that was supposed to protect them.

ronen bergman

I think most Israelis didn’t need “The New York Times” to know that intelligence failed because the failure is just all over the defense establishment — the failure to prevent and then, when it happens, to rush the forces and save those people that are being butchered. It was clear from the first evening.

And he writes exactly into the reasons why Israel was established in the first place. The promise that every Jew that comes to Israel will be protected was one of the main cores of the establishment/the DNA of every Israeli. That contract between the state and the Jewish people was brutally violated.

[AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYING]

When I was a kid and basically throughout my life, everyone always complained about the government — that it’s dysfunctional, that it’s corrupt. But everybody were also living under the assumption that, whatever the government does, the defense establishment is a different island. It’s a different universe.

And they might fail from time to time. But at the end of the day, they will supply the necessary security that would prevent any enemy to reach Israeli territory. That feeling of confidence was hammered. People in Tel Aviv now are afraid to leave their houses. And so this intelligence blunder will haunt the Israeli future for many, many years.

michael barbaro

Well, Ronen, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

ronen bergman

Thank you, Michael — a pleasure to be with you.

michael barbaro

Over the weekend, Israel appeared to set the stage for a ground invasion of Southern Gaza by bombarding the region with airstrikes and ordering residents of several towns there to leave their homes. In remarks to reporters, a spokesman for the Israeli military sought to dispel the idea that Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas could be accomplished in a short period of time. The spokesman described a, quote, “long war that is not bound by time.”

We’ll be right back.

[THEME MUSIC]

Here’s what else you need to know today.

archived recording (mike johnson)

On this vote, the yays are 311. The nays are 114. 2/3 voting in the affirmative — the resolution is adopted. The chair announces to the House that, in light of the expulsion of the gentleman from New York, Mr. Santos, the whole number of the House is now 434.

michael barbaro

The expulsion of Republican Congressman George Santos of New York on Friday over serial fabrications and allegations of theft from his own campaign has touched off an intense battle to replace him. “The Times” reports that the governor of New York is expected to schedule a special election to fill Santos’ seat in February, an election likely to become one of the most high-profile, competitive, and expensive off-year races in decades. Santos’ former district on Long Island is politically moderate. And both Republicans and Democrats see it as a major electoral prize in a closely divided House.

Today’s episode was produced by Rachel Quester, Mooj Zadie, Carlos Prieto, and Stella Tan. It was edited by Patricia Willens and Michael Benoist; contains original music by Marion Lozano, Diane Wang, and Dan Powell; and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

Dec. 4, 2023

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Produced by Rachel Quester, Mooj Zadie, Carlos Prieto and Stella Tan

Edited by Patricia Willens and Michael Benoist

Original music by Marion Lozano, Diane Wong and Dan Powell

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

In the weeks since Hamas carried out its devastating terrorist attack in southern Israel, Times journalists have been trying to work out why the Israeli security services failed to prevent such a huge and deadly assault.

Ronen Bergman, a correspondent for The New York Times, tells the story of one of the warnings that Israel ignored.

Ronen Bergman, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Contents

• MY NOTES ON NYT INVESTIGATION

• 2023Dec01 synopsis NYT: Israel had a blueprint for the Oct. 7 attacks a year ago. Officials dismissed it.

• 2023NOV30 NYT: Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan Over a Year Ago

MY NOTES ON NYT INVESTIGATION

New york times

• The email thread from the southern command

• Codename: Jericho wall (the booklet). Obtained in 2022; translated into hebrew

• ---Depth of intelligence that hamas to gather on israel; purpose is to take down the GAZAN division, which controls the massive fence & communications & towers & guards with machine guns

• --translated into a detailed attack plan--DIVERSION massive bombardment with rockets, mortars, missile

• Neutralize security barrier CAMERAS & communication hub using drones and paragliders

• Raiding forces to breakthrough in 60 different places

• Analyst told head of southern defenses- this is a preparation for war--it is a plan for invasion not for a raid.

Intelligence - capabilities v. intentions

Capabilities - Underestimated

 Hamas has between 2000 and 3000 nukba commando gunman trained and ready to be deployed

However hamas only capable of deploying 70

Nov 2022 - israeli southern command memo:

2023Dec01 synopsis NYT: Israel had a blueprint for the Oct. 7 attacks a year ago. Officials dismissed it.

By Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman

Dec. 1, 2023 New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-had-a-blueprint-of-the-oct-7-attacks-a-year-ago-officials-dismissed-it.html

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

2023NOV30 NYT: Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan Over a Year Ago

Ronen Bergman, Adam Goldman nytimes.com

• THE DOCUMENT  / INVASION PLANS

• WARNINGS 3-MONTHS BEFORE ATTACKS BY ISRAELI ANALYSTSNO

• PREPARATIONS DESPITE HAVING INVASIONS PLANS & AMPLE WARNINGS from MULTIPLE SOURCES

• "Jericho Wall" Invasion plan provided Explicit Details--A template for 7 October

• ISRAEL REVIEWING EARLIER ITERATIONS OF PLANS SINCE 2016

• Israel's GAZA DIVISION initial ASSESSMENT of Jericho Wall

• JULY 6 2023: WARNING: MEMO FROM SOUTHERN COMMAND

A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.

Published Nov. 30, 2023

Updated Dec. 2, 2023 New York Times

IMAGE Hamas-led gunmen seized an Israeli military vehicle after infiltrating areas of southern Israel during the Oct. 7 attacks. A blueprint for similar attacks was circulating among Israeli leaders long before Hamas struck.Credit...Ahmed Zakot/Reuters

THE DOCUMENT  / INVASION PLANS

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

Image

IMAGE: A woman running to the concrete shelter at her home in Ashkelon, Israel, after a rockLast year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.

WARNINGS 3-MONTHS BEFORE ATTACKS BY ISRAELI ANALYSTS

“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.

Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.

But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”

“It is a plan designed to start a war,” she added. “It’s not just a raid on a village.”

Officials privately concede that, had the military taken these warnings seriously and redirected significant reinforcements to the south, where Hamas attacked, Israel could have blunted the attacks or possibly even prevented them.

Image

IMAGE Israeli soldiers were deployed in an area where civilians were killed in the southern city of Sderot on Oct. 7.Credit...Oren Ziv/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

NO PREPARATIONS DESPITE HAVING INVASIONS PLANS & AMPLE WARNINGS from MULTIPLE SOURCES

Instead, the Israeli military was unprepared as terrorists streamed out of the Gaza Strip. It was the deadliest day in Israel’s history.

Israeli security officials have already acknowledged that they failed to protect the country, and the government is expected to assemble a commission to study the events leading up to the attacks. The Jericho Wall document lays bare a yearslong cascade of missteps that culminated in what officials now regard as the worst Israeli intelligence failure since the surprise attack that led to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

Underpinning all these failures was a single, fatally inaccurate belief that Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so. That belief was so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary.

The Israeli military and the Israeli Security Agency, which is in charge of counterterrorism in Gaza, declined to comment.

Officials would not say how they obtained the Jericho Wall document, but it was among several versions of attack plans collected over the years. A 2016 Defense Ministry memorandum viewed by The Times, for example, says, “Hamas intends to move the next confrontation into Israeli territory.”

Such an attack would most likely involve hostage-taking and “occupying an Israeli community (and perhaps even a number of communities),” the memo reads.

Image

IMAGE Vehicles caught fire in Ashkelon, Israel, as rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.Credit...Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters

"Jericho Wall" Invasion plan provided Explicit Details--A template for 7 October

The Jericho Wall document, named for the ancient fortifications in the modern-day West Bank, was even more explicit. It detailed rocket attacks to distract Israeli soldiers and send them hurrying into bunkers, and drones to disable the elaborate security measures along the border fence separating Israel and Gaza.

Hamas fighters would then break through 60 points in the wall, storming across the border into Israel. The document begins with a quote from the Quran: “Surprise them through the gate. If you do, you will certainly prevail.”

The same phrase has been widely used by Hamas in its videos and statements since Oct. 7.

One of the most important objectives outlined in the document was to overrun the Israeli military base in Re’im, which is home to the Gaza division responsible for protecting the region. Other bases that fell under the division’s command were also listed.

Hamas carried out that objective on Oct. 7, rampaging through Re’im and overrunning parts of the base.

The audacity of the blueprint, officials said, made it easy to underestimate. All militaries write plans that they never use, and Israeli officials assessed that, even if Hamas invaded, it might muster a force of a few dozen, not the hundreds who ultimately attacked.

Israel had also misread Hamas’s actions. The group had negotiated for permits to allow Palestinians to work in Israel, which Israeli officials took as a sign that Hamas was not looking for a war.

But Hamas had been drafting attack plans for many years, and Israeli officials had gotten hold of previous iterations of them. What could have been an intelligence coup turned into one of the worst miscalculations in Israel’s 75-year history.

Image

IMAGE A truck reportedly transported a captured Israeli woman in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Oct. 7.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ISRAEL REVIEWING EARLIER ITERATIONS OF PLANS SINCE 2016

In September 2016, the defense minister’s office compiled a top-secret memorandum based on a much earlier iteration of a Hamas attack plan. The memorandum, which was signed by the defense minister at the time, Avigdor Lieberman, said that an invasion and hostage-taking would “lead to severe damage to the consciousness and morale of the citizens of Israel.”

The memo, which was viewed by The Times, said that Hamas had purchased sophisticated weapons, GPS jammers and drones. It also said that Hamas had increased its fighting force to 27,000 people — having added 6,000 to its ranks in a two-year period. Hamas had hoped to reach 40,000 by 2020, the memo determined.

Israel's GAZA DIVISION initial ASSESSMENT of Jericho Wall

Last year, after Israel obtained the Jericho Wall document, the military’s Gaza division drafted its own intelligence assessment of this latest invasion plan.

Hamas had “decided to plan a new raid, unprecedented in its scope,” analysts wrote in the assessment reviewed by The Times. It said that Hamas intended to carry out a deception operation followed by a “large-scale maneuver” with the aim of overwhelming the division.

But the Gaza division referred to the plan as a “compass.” In other words, the division determined that Hamas knew where it wanted to go but had not arrived there yet.

JULY 6 2023: WARNING: MEMO FROM SOUTHERN COMMAND

On July 6, 2023, the veteran Unit 8200 analyst wrote to a group of other intelligence experts that dozens of Hamas commandos had recently conducted training exercises, with senior Hamas commanders observing.

The training included a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft and taking over a kibbutz and a military training base, killing all the cadets. During the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan, she wrote in the email exchanges viewed by The Times.

The analyst warned that the drill closely followed the Jericho Wall plan, and that Hamas was building the capacity to carry it out.

The colonel in the Gaza division applauded the analysis but said the exercise was part of a “totally imaginative” scenario, not an indication of Hamas’s ability to pull it off.

“In short, let’s wait patiently,” the colonel wrote.

Image

IMAGE An Israeli soldier in the southern city of Sderot near the bodies of Israelis killed by Palestinian gunmen who entered from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.Credit...Tsafrir Abayov/Associated Press

The back-and-forth continued, with some colleagues supporting the analyst’s original conclusion. Soon, she invoked the lessons of the 1973 war, in which Syrian and Egyptian armies overran Israeli defenses. Israeli forces regrouped and repelled the invasion, but the intelligence failure has long served as a lesson for Israeli security officials.

“We already underwent a similar experience 50 years ago on the southern front in connection with a scenario that seemed imaginary, and history may repeat itself if we are not careful,” the analyst wrote to her colleagues.

While ominous, none of the emails predicted that war was imminent. Nor did the analyst challenge the conventional wisdom among Israeli intelligence officials that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was not interested in war with Israel. But she correctly assessed that Hamas’s capabilities had drastically improved. The gap between the possible and the aspirational had narrowed significantly.

The failures to connect the dots echoed another analytical failure more than two decades ago, when the American authorities also had multiple indications that the terrorist group Al Qaeda was preparing an assault. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were largely a failure of analysis and imagination, a government commission concluded.

“The Israeli intelligence failure on Oct. 7 is sounding more and more like our 9/11,” said Ted Singer, a recently retired senior C.I.A. official who worked extensively in the Middle East. “The failure will be a gap in analysis to paint a convincing picture to military and political leadership that Hamas had the intention to launch the attack when it did.”

Image

IMAGE The breached security fence in the village of Kfar Azza, Israel, three days after it was attacked by Hamas.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Ronen Bergmanis a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, based in Tel Aviv. His latest book is “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” published by Random House. More about Ronen Bergman

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 1, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Israelis Saw Plan For Hamas Atttack Over a Year Ago. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Contents

• 2023-2024 Hamas attack - wikipedia snapshot

• New York Times Journalists covering Gaza beat

• NYT 2023Oct13: The Secrets Hamas Knew About Israel’s Military - New York Times

• NYT 2023Dec30 Where Was the Israeli Military When Hamas Attacked? [next entry]

2023-2024 Hamas attack-Wikipedia excerpt

In the failure to forecast the 2023-2024 Hamas attack on Israel by Israel's intelligence agencies, Unit 8200 was blamed for having underestimated Hamas activities.[20] Unit 8200 is alleged to have stopped listening to Hamas's handheld radios in 2022, deciding it was a "waste of effort". Monitoring that radio network might have helped the Shin Bet realize a few hours before the attack that the unusual activity they were seeing on the Gaza border was not just another military exercise by Hamas, Times of Israel noted.[21] The New York Times reported in November that a veteran analyst in Unit 8200 had warned in July that Hamas were preparing for a cross-border attack and that the analyst's concerns were dismissed by senior military leadership as "totally imaginative".[22]

The "Spotters", known as tatzpitaniyot, are female members of the IDF who observe the barriers along the border and activate complex technological systems to prevent the enemy from penetrating into Israel. Their responsibilities have been described as a "difficult, cognitively and emotionally demanding job that entails hours of closely monitoring surveillance cameras, with the knowledge that missing even the slightest unusual event along the border could have disastrous effects on the entire country" but "[t]hey didn’t miss Hamas' preparations for the October 7 attack"; one was quoted as saying, "We were all seeing Hamas militants training for exactly what happened: We saw them training to crash the fence, training to kill civilians, training to take back hostages" and another stated "We knew this would happen. We warned the higher ups. But they ignored us. They told us that they know better, even though this is our job—we have to know every tree, every tent, every pothole in our section, and especially to know when something unusual is happening. And we do."[23][24][25] Only two of the tatzpitaniyot on duty on 7 October 2023 evaded death or abduction.[26]

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200>

================

New York Times Journalists covering Gaza beat

Patrick Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. More about Patrick Kingsley

Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, based in Tel Aviv. His latest book is “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” published by Random House. More about Ronen Bergman

Mark Mazzetti is an investigative reporter based in Washington, D.C., focusing on national security, intelligence, and foreign affairs. He has written a book about the C.I.A. More about Mark Mazzetti

Ainara Tiefenthäler is a video journalist with the Visual Investigations team. She was among the recipients of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for The Times's coverage of the vast civilian toll of U.S.-led airstrikes. More about Ainara Tiefenthäler

Sheera Frenkel is a reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp. More about Sheera Frenkel

===================================

NYT 2023Oct13: The Secrets Hamas Knew About Israel’s Military - New York Times

Patrick Kingsley and Ronen Bergman | New York Times | 13 October 2023

To reconstruct the day’s events, the reporters interviewed more than 20 survivors, soldiers, military and intelligence officials, and reviewed Hamas planning documents and footage of the attacks.

Oct. 13, 2023

The 10 gunmen from Gaza knew exactly how to find the Israeli intelligence hub — and how to get inside.

After crossing into Israel, they headed east on five motorcycles, two gunmen on each vehicle, shooting at passing civilian cars as they pressed forward.

Ten miles later, they veered off the road into a stretch of woodland, dismounting outside an unmanned gate to a military base. They blew open the barrier with a small explosive charge, entered the base and paused to take a group selfie. Then they shot dead an unarmed Israeli soldier dressed in a T-shirt.

For a moment, the attackers appeared uncertain about where to go next. Then one of them pulled something from his pocket: a color-coded map of the complex.

Reoriented, they found an unlocked door to a fortified building. Once inside, they entered a room filled with computers — the military intelligence hub. Under a bed in the room, they found two soldiers taking shelter.

The gunmen shot both dead.

This sequence was captured on a camera mounted on the head of a gunman who was later killed. The New York Times reviewed the footage, then verified the events by interviewing Israeli officials and checking Israeli military video of the attack as well.

They provide chilling details of how Hamas, the militia that controls the Gaza Strip, managed to surprise and outmaneuver the most powerful military in the Middle East last Saturday — storming across the border, overrunning more than 30 square miles, taking more than 150 hostages and killing more than 1,300 people in the deadliest day for Israel in its 75-year history.

With meticulous planning and extraordinary awareness of Israel’s secrets and weaknesses, Hamas and its allies overwhelmed the length of Israel’s front with Gaza shortly after dawn, shocking a nation that has long taken the superiority of its military as an article of faith.

Using drones, Hamas destroyed key surveillance and communications towers along the border with Gaza, imposing vast blind spots on the Israeli military. With explosives and tractors, Hamas blew open gaps in the border barricades, allowing 200 attackers to pour through in the first wave and another 1,800 later that day, officials say. On motorcycles and in pickup trucks, the assailants surged into Israel, overwhelming at least eight military bases and waging terrorist attacks against civilians in more than 15 villages and cities.

Hamas planning documents, videos of the assault and interviews with security officials show that the group had a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of how the Israeli military operated, where it stationed specific units, and even the time it would take for reinforcements to arrive.

The Israeli military says that, once the war is over, it will investigate how Hamas managed to breach its defenses so easily.

But whether the armed forces were careless with their secrets or infiltrated by spies, the revelations have already unnerved officials and analysts who have questioned how the Israeli military — renowned for its intelligence gathering — could have inadvertently revealed so much information about its own operations.

Soldiers from an Israeli military counterterrorism unit battling Hamas in the intelligence hub.

The outcome was a staggering series of atrocities and massacres, in what the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, has described as the worst mass killing of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust.

It shattered Israel’s aura of invincibility and provoked an Israeli counterattack on Gaza that has killed more than 1,900 Palestinians in a week, the ferocity of which has never been seen in Gaza.

It also upended assumptions that Hamas, long designated a terrorist group by Israel and many Western nations, had gradually become more interested in running Gaza than in using it to launch major assaults on Israel.

Hamas made Israelis think it was “busy with governing Gaza,” said Ali Barakeh, a Hamas leader, in a television interview on Monday. “All the while, under the table, Hamas was preparing for this big attack,” he added.

‘Hamas In the Kibbutz!’

The terrorists were inside Addi Cherry’s home, on the other side of an unlocked door.

Ms. Cherry, her husband and their three children were hiding inside their eldest son’s bedroom, listening to the gunmen wander around their living room.

“Please help us,” Ms. Cherry texted a friend, as one of the assailants walked closer and closer to the bedroom door.

Then he gripped the door handle.

The Cherry family’s day had begun with a burst of rockets from Gaza, not long after 6 a.m.

Ms. Cherry, an economist, and her husband, Oren, an engineer, rushed with their children into their eldest son’s bedroom, which doubled as a bomb shelter.

Initially, the events of the morning felt distressingly familiar. The Cherry family lives in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a rural village of some 500 residents, a few hundred yards east of the border with Gaza. Early morning rocket fire — and the ensuing rush to the safe room — is a frequent feature of life in the region.

“Like always,” Ms. Cherry remembered thinking.

But this morning soon felt different. The rockets kept coming, many of them headed deep into Israeli territory.

Mr. Cherry left the bedroom, and peeked through the shutters on their living room windows.

“Oh God,” Ms. Cherry remembered her husband shouting. “Hamas in the kibbutz! Hamas in the kibbutz!”

It was 7:20 a.m.

Hundreds of Hamas invaders, carrying guns, shoulder-borne rocket launchers and wearing the group’s green headband, were streaming through the village fields.

It was part of a coordinated assault that, documents and video show, assigned squads of assailants to precise targets. As some swept through military bases, others charged into residential areas, ruthlessly kidnapping and killing civilians.

They would reach the Cherrys’ street within minutes.

The family had to act quickly. Their bomb shelter — a teenager’s bedroom — had no lock.

The parents grabbed a chair, and wedged it under the door handle — making it harder to open.

They dragged a small cabinet, and pressed it against the chair.

Then they waited. There was an army base next to the village. Its troops would be here within minutes, Ms. Cherry remembered thinking.

What she didn’t know was that many of them were already dead.

‘Take soldiers and civilians’

All along the border, the Hamas gunmen had already overrun most, if not all, of the Israeli border bases.

Footage from the attackers’ head-mounted cameras, including the video of the raid on the intelligence hub, showed Hamas gunmen — from its highly trained Nukhba brigade — smashing through the barricades of several bases in the first light of the morning.

After breaching, they were merciless, gunning down some soldiers in their beds and underwear. In several bases, they knew exactly where the communications servers were and destroyed them, according to a senior Israeli army officer.

With much of their communications and surveillance systems down, the Israelis often couldn’t see the commandos coming. They found it harder to call for help and mount a response. In many cases, they were unable to protect themselves, let alone the surrounding civilian villages.

A Hamas planning document — found by Israeli emergency responders in one village — showed that the attackers were organized into well-defined units with clear goals and battle plans.

One platoon had designated navigators, saboteurs and drivers — as well as mortar units in the rear to provide cover for the attackers, the document shows.

The group had a specific target — a kibbutz — and the attackers were tasked with storming the village from specific angles. They had estimates for how many Israeli troops were stationed in nearby posts, how many vehicles they had at their disposal, and how long it would take those Israeli relief forces to reach them.

The document is dated October 2022, suggesting that the attack had been planned for at least a year.

Elsewhere, other assailants were posted to key road junctions to ambush Israeli reinforcements, according to four senior officers and officials.

Some units had specific instructions to capture Israelis for use as bargaining chips in future prisoner exchanges with Israel.

“Take soldiers and civilians as prisoners and hostages to negotiate with,” the document said.

‘We Are Going to Die’

The terrorists smashed their way into the Cherrys’ house shortly before 10 a.m., according to texts that Ms. Cherry sent friends at the time.

They had already killed the kibbutz guards, as well as a civilian security volunteer who had rushed to confront them in the opening moments of the assault, according to the village leadership.

Now, the terrorists were going house by house, trying to find people to kill and kidnap.

“Please send help,” Ms. Cherry typed into her phone.

At the Cherrys’ house, they forced in the door. Then they charged in, shouting and ransacking the house, Ms. Cherry said.

“We are going to die,” Ms. Cherry remembered thinking.

The family waited in terrified silence, hoping the intruders would ignore the door to the bedroom and assume everyone was away.

Mr. and Mrs. Cherry put all their weight against the cabinet, to brace the chair underneath the door handle.

Guy, 15, their eldest son, stood next to the door, holding an 18-pound dumbbell. If someone did break in, the plan was to drop it on the assailant’s head.

Then the handle twitched.

The parents began to push the cabinet.

The handle continued to rattle.

Then it stopped. The assailant walked away.

A few streets away, the family of Miki Levi, who oversees the kibbutz gardens, had an even closer call.

After a terrorist squad chased Mr. Levi, 47, inside his safe room, the attackers sprayed bullets at the reinforced door, Mr. Levi said in an interview.

Some of the bullets pierced the door, creating large openings, and Mr. Levi said he also fired back with his pistol, shredding it further. His wife and two young daughters sheltered to the side.

Changing tactics, the terrorists later brought two of his neighbors — a mother and her 12-year-old daughter, Mr. Levi said.

At gunpoint, the mother and child were told to persuade him to open up, Mr. Levi said.

“‘Come out and stop shooting,’” Mr. Levi recounted one of them saying. “‘The terrorists won’t do anything to you.’”

Eventually, the terrorists gave up that approach and returned with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, Mr. Levi said.

It was only when Mr. Levi shot one attacker in the thigh that they finally left, he added.

The mother and child, Mr. Levi suspects, are now captives in Gaza.

‘Bodies Were Burning’

Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfus said he drove south without knowing where exactly he should go.

General Goldfus, 46, a paratrooper commander, had been on leave at home, jogging in his neighborhood north of Tel Aviv. Then he saw a video from the south, showing terrorists cruising through a city, entirely unimpeded.

Without waiting for orders, the general said he ran home, changed into his uniform and headed south.

He picked up guns and two soldiers from his base in central Israel, and called friends and colleagues to find out what was happening.

Only a few picked up. Of the rest, “There was nobody really understanding the full picture,” General Goldfus said in an interview.

The speed, precision and scale of Hamas’s attack had thrown the Israeli military into disarray, and for many hours afterward civilians were left to fend for themselves.

Using the few scraps of information he could glean, General Goldfus said he and the soldiers headed to a village north of Nahal Oz, and then gradually worked their way south.

It was around 10 a.m. All around him was carnage and atrocity.

Dead Israelis lined the roads, alongside the husks of burned-out, overturned cars.

At the site of an all-night outdoor rave, gunmen had killed an estimated 260 partygoers.

There and then, the two men came up with their own ad hoc strategy.

“There’s no orders here,” General Goldfus said. “I said: ‘You take from this place and further south — and I’ll take from this place and further north.’”

That was how some of the Israeli counterattack took place: soldiers or civilian volunteers — including retired generals in their 60s — rushing to the region and doing what they could.

Israel Ziv, a former general, reached a nearby battle in his Audi.

Yair Golan, a retired deputy chief of staff and former leftist lawmaker, said he took a gun and began rescuing survivors of a massacre at a rave, who were hiding in nearby bushes.

“We are brought up to run as fast as possible toward the fire,” said General Goldfus. “So that we can be the first one there.”

‘It’s O.K. We’re Jewish.’

The intelligence hub near Gaza was one of the first places to be recaptured by Israel.

In the late morning, soldiers and reservists from different units reached the base from separate directions, overpowering the 10 Gazan gunmen who had filmed their deadly assault on video.

The camera mounted on the Hamas commander’s head captured the moment he was shot and killed. The camera falls off, bouncing along the ground. By the time the video stops, the commander can be seen slumped on the ground, revealing his long beard and thinning hairline.

In other parts of southern Israel, the first formal reinforcements came from an Israeli commando unit that arrived in helicopters, according to the senior Israeli officer.

They were followed by other special operations units, including Israeli navy seals and a reconnaissance unit trained to operate deep inside enemy lines, rather than on Israeli soil.

Sometimes, the commandos joined forces with volunteers without body armor who had rushed into the fray to rescue family members.

Noam Tibon, a former general, drove south with his pistol to try to retake Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where his son, Amir, a journalist, was trapped.

In the early afternoon, the elder Mr. Tibon joined a squad that was making its way through the kibbutz, house by house.

By Sunday afternoon, several villages and bases still had some kind of Hamas presence. The whole area would not be fully secured for days.

Ms. Cherry emerged around 5 p.m. on Saturday in Kibbutz Nahal Oz to find her home turned upside down, the microwave torn from the wall, drawers ripped from their cabinets and a pool of drying blood on the floor.

She had heard a gun battle in and around her home earlier in the day. She believed a terrorist had died in the house — and that his bloodied corpse had been carried off by fellow fighters.

Some survivors refused to open up, even after the army arrived.

When soldiers reached the home of Oshrit Sabag, another resident of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, she feared they were terrorists in disguise.

Even after the soldiers began chatting to one another in Hebrew, to prove who they were, Ms. Sabag, 48, was unconvinced.

It was only their Jewish prayers that made her relax.

“‘It’s O.K., it’s O.K.,’” Ms. Sabag remembered them saying. “‘We’re Jewish.’”

Hamas Attack Exploited Secrets of Israel’s Military. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

nytimes.com

=============================================================

Contents

• 2023-2024 Hamas attack - wikipedia snapshot

• New York Times Journalists covering Gaza beat

• NYT 2023Oct13: The Secrets Hamas Knew About Israel’s Military - New York Times

• NYT 2023Dec30 Where Was the Israeli Military When Hamas Attacked?

NYT 2023Dec30 Where Was the Israeli Military When Hamas Attacked?

NEW YORK TIMES [ARTICLE LINK]

By Adam Goldman, Ronen Bergman, Mark Mazzetti, Natan Odenheimer, Alexander Cardia, Ainara Tiefenthäler and Sheera Frenkel

The journalists reported from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and towns and kibbutzim in southern Israel.

A Times investigation found that troops were disorganized and out of position and relied on social media to choose targets. Behind the failure: Israel had no battle plan for a massive Hamas invasion.

Published Dec. 30, 2023 Updated Jan. 3, 2024

Far beneath the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, in a bunker known as The Pit, commanders were trying to make sense of reports of Hamas rocket fire in southern Israel early on the morning of Oct. 7, when the call came in.

It was a commander from the division that oversees military operations along the border with Gaza. Their base was under attack. The commander could not describe the scope of the attack or provide more details, according to a military official with knowledge of the call. But he asked that all available reinforcements be sent.

At 7:43 a.m., more than an hour after the rocket assault began and thousands of Hamas fighters stormed into Israel, The Pit issued its first deployment instructions of the day. It ordered all emergency forces to head south, along with all available units that could do so quickly.

But the nation’s military leaders did not yet recognize that an invasion of Israel was already well underway.

Hours later, desperate Israeli citizens were still fending for themselves and calling for help. Roughly 1,200 people died as the Middle East’s most advanced military failed in its essential mission: protecting Israeli lives.

Image: Civilians killed by Palestinian militants lay covered in Sderot, Israel, on Oct. 7.Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press

Military Chaos and Incompetence

The full reasons behind the military’s slow response may take months to understand. The government has promised an inquiry. But a New York Times investigation found that Israel’s military was undermanned, out of position and so poorly organized that soldiers communicated in impromptu WhatsApp groups and relied on social media posts for targeting information. Commandos rushed into battle armed only for brief combat. Helicopter pilots were ordered to look to news reports and Telegram channels to choose targets.

No Contingency Plan for Hamas Invasion

And perhaps most damning: The Israel Defense Forces did not even have a plan to respond to a large-scale Hamas attack on Israeli soil, according to current and former soldiers and officers. If such a plan existed on a shelf somewhere, the soldiers said, no one had trained on it and nobody followed it. The soldiers that day made it up as they went along.

“In practice, there wasn’t the right defensive preparation, no practice, and no equipping and building strength for such an operation,” said Yom Tov Samia, a major general in the Israeli reserves and former head of the military’s Southern Command.

“There was no defense plan for a surprise attack such as the kind we have seen on Oct. 7,” said Amir Avivi, a brigadier general in the reserves and a former deputy commander of the Gaza Division, which is responsible for protecting the region.

That lack of preparation is at odds with a founding principle of Israeli military doctrine. From the days of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, the goal was to always be on the offensive — to anticipate attacks and fight battles in enemy territory.

In response to a series of questions from The Times, including why soldiers and officers alike said there had been no plan, the Israel Defense Forces replied: “The I.D.F. is currently focused on eliminating the threat from the terrorist organization Hamas. Questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage.”

Image: Israeli soldiers in Sderot on Oct. 7.Credit...Tsafrir Abayov/Associated Press

PANDORA

The Times investigation is based on internal Israeli government documents and a review of the military’s cache of materials, known as Pandora, that contains tens of thousands of videos, including footage from body cameras worn by terrorists and closed-circuit surveillance cameras. The Times interviewed dozens of officers, enlisted troops and eyewitnesses, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about military operations.

The documents and interviews revealed new details about the attack, including military assessments and orders like the one given by The Pit early that morning. Taken together, they show that much of the military failure was due to the lack of a plan, coupled with a series of intelligence missteps in the months and years before the attack.

ISRAELI ASSESSMENTS UNDERESTIMATED HAMAS CAPABILITIES & INTENTIONS

Israeli security and military agencies produced repeated assessments that Hamas was neither interested in nor capable of launching a massive invasion. The authorities clung to that optimistic view even when Israel obtained Hamas battle plans that revealed an invasion was precisely what Hamas was planning.

The decisions, in retrospect, are tinged with hubris. The notion that Hamas could execute an ambitious attack was seen as so unlikely that Israeli intelligence officials even reduced eavesdropping on Hamas radio traffic, concluding that it was a waste of time.

NO PREPARATION WHATSOEVER FOR POSSIBLE INVASION

None of the officers interviewed, including those stationed along the border, could recall discussions or training based on a plan to repel such an assault.

“As far as I recall, there was no such plan,” said Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general and a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The army does not prepare itself for things it thinks are impossible.”

Image: Hamas teams breached the Israel-Gaza border fence in dozens of locations.Credit...Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa/Reuters

The Israeli government had determined that the loosely organized civilian guard, known as Kitat Konnenut, would serve as the first line of defense in the towns and villages near the border. But the guardsmen had different standards of training depending on who was in charge. For years, they warned that some of their units were poorly trained and underequipped, according to two Israeli military officials with direct knowledge of the volunteer teams.

Additionally, the Israeli military reservists were not prepared to quickly mobilize and deploy. Some described heading south on their own initiative.

Davidi Ben Zion, 38, a major in the reserves, said reservists never trained to respond at a moment’s notice to an invasion. The training assumed that Israeli intelligence would learn of a looming invasion in advance, giving reservists time to prepare to deploy.

ISRAEL RESERVES REQUIRED 24-HR NOTICE FROM HAMAS TO GET READY ;(

“The procedure states that we have the battalion ready for combat in 24 hours,” he said. “There’s a checklist to authorize the distribution of everything. We practiced this for many years.”

Hamas capitalized on these errors in ways that further delayed the Israeli response. Terrorists blocked key highway intersections, leaving soldiers bogged down in firefights as they tried to enter besieged towns. And the Hamas siege on the military base in southern Israel crippled the regional command post, paralyzing the military response.

Much remains unknown about that day, including what orders were given inside Israel’s senior military leadership in Tel Aviv, and when. The Times investigation builds on and adds new details to aggressive coverage in the Israeli media of the military response.

UTTER CHAOS ON 7 OCTOBER

 [NOTE-Tel Aviv to Sderot just outside Gaza Strip is only 48 miles drive south--less than an hour drive]

Officers and reservists who headed south that morning, whether under orders or on their own, soon learned of the chaos that they were entering.

Gen. Barak Hiram, who was scheduled to soon take over command of a division along the Gaza border, drove south to see firsthand how the soldiers there responded to what seemed like a routine Hamas attack.

In an interview, he recalled the text messages he received from soldiers he knew in the region.

“Come save us.”

“Send the army, quickly, they are killing us.”

“Sorry we’re turning to you, we’re already out of weapons.”

Unprepared for Battle

Commando units were among the first to mobilize that morning. Some said they rushed into the fight after receiving messages pleading for help or learning about the infiltrations from social media.

Other units were on standby and received formal activation orders.

The small size of the teams suggested that commanders fundamentally misunderstood the threat. Troops rolled out with pistols and assault rifles, enough to face a band of hostage-taking terrorists, but not to go into full-scale battle.

Previously undisclosed documents reviewed by The Times show just how drastically the military misread the situation. Records from early in the day show that, even during the attack, the military still assessed that Hamas, at best, would be able to breach Israel’s border fence in just a few places. A separate intelligence document, prepared weeks later, shows that Hamas teams actually breached the fence in more than 30 locations and quickly moved deep into southern Israel.

Hamas fighters poured into Israel with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, land mines and more. They were prepared to fight for days. Israeli commandos apparently believed they would be fighting for just hours; one said he set out that morning without his night-vision goggles.

“The terrorists had a distinct tactical advantage in firepower,” said Yair Ansbacher, 40, a reservist in a counterterrorism unit who fought on Oct. 7. He and his colleagues mainly used pistols, assault rifles and sometimes sniper rifles, he said.

The situation was so dire that at 9 a.m., the head of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security agency, issued a rare order. He told all combat-trained, weapons-carrying employees to go south. Shin Bet does not normally activate with the military. Ten Shin Bet operatives were killed that day.

Making matters worse, the military has acknowledged that it moved two commando companies — more than 100 soldiers — to the West Bank just two days before the attack, a reflection of Israel’s mistaken belief that a Hamas attack was not an imminent threat.

IDF ON HOLIDAY 7 OCTOBER….50 PERCENT OF TROOPS NOT ON DUTY

That left three infantry battalions and one tank battalion along Gaza’s border. But Oct. 7 was the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, and the Sabbath. One senior military officer estimated that about half the 1,500 soldiers in the area were away. He said that another infantry battalion had been reassigned years earlier after Israel finished building a security wall around Gaza.

Whether Hamas knew that the military was understaffed is unclear, but it had fatal consequences. When the attacks began, many soldiers were fighting for their lives instead of protecting residents nearby. Hamas stormed one base, Nahal Oz, forcing soldiers to abandon it and leave behind dead friends.

And just as the civilian volunteers had warned, the first line of defense inside Israel was quickly overwhelmed. Some units barely had enough weapons for an hourslong battle, officials said.

Hamas also worked strategically to weaken Israel’s advantage in firepower. Terrorists targeted Israeli tanks, hitting several of them, said Brig. Gen. Hisham Ibrahim, the commander of the armored corps. Tanks ran out of ammunition, leaving crews to fight with ground soldiers.

In another instance widely covered in the Israeli media, Hamas fired on an Israeli helicopter, forcing it down near Gaza. The paratroopers escaped injury before the helicopter burst into flames.

All of this should have been a clear sign that Israel was under broad attack, facing a dire situation.

But Hamas made another strategic strike that morning that all but blinded Israel’s military at a critical moment.

This group of Hamas gunmen has a clear target: a crucial military operations center.

Image: Gaza-Israel border

Where’s the opening?

Ahmad, it’s here.

Ahmad, it’s here.

OK, go.

Come on.

Go.

Say “God is great.”

God is great.

Go.

Wait, wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

They make their way from Gaza to the Re’im army base, killing civilians in their path.

Image: Outside Re’im base

Give it to me for a little bit.

“Calm down, man.”

“Just for a minute.”

I told him to stay in [indistinct].

Someone should come with me. Someone should come with me.

As terrorists infiltrate the base, the soldiers are unable to coordinate a response across the region.

Image: Inside Re’im base

In this room?

Go in. Go in. Go forward. Go forward.

Throw a grenade. Throw a grenade.

Give me a grenade.

Where Was the Israeli Military When Hamas Attacked? - The New York Times

‘What a Mistake’ - RE'IM CENTRAL COMMAND UNDER SIEGE

The assault on the Re’im military base left soldiers there fighting for their lives rather than coordinating a response to the invasion.

Re’im is home to the Gaza Division, which oversees all military operations in the region. It is also home to two brigades, northern and southern, dedicated to protecting about 40 miles of the border.

Like other bases, Re’im was understaffed because of the holiday. A brigade commander and key staff were away from the base, according to a senior military officer. They were summoned back before dawn, officials said, as Israeli intelligence officials tried to make sense of unusual Hamas activity just over the border in Gaza.

Many soldiers, though, were allowed to keep sleeping. One told The Times that some did not know they were under attack until Hamas was in their sleeping quarters. Several were killed in their bunks. Others barricaded themselves in safe rooms.

The scope of the catastrophe, if not the attack itself, was preventable, according to records and interviews.

“After they built the fence, they put the headquarters in the middle of the sector,” said General Samia, the former head of the Southern Command. He said the three commanders of the brigades and division never should have been housed together so close to Gaza’s border.

Image: Gen. Yom Tov Samia in 2000.Credit...Havakuk Levison/Reuters

“In the same camp, you all had three of them — in the same location,” he said. “What a mistake. What a mistake.”

The Israeli authorities also knew, years in advance, that Hamas planned to take out Re’im as part of its invasion, documents previously obtained by The Times showed. They dismissed that plan, like the prospect of overall invasion, as implausible.

Even in May, when intelligence analysts raised alarms about Hamas training exercises, Israeli officials did not increase troop levels in the South.

The assault on Re’im led to a near blackout of communication inside the unit that coordinates troop movements across southern Israel, according to one soldier who was based there on Oct. 7.

The division that was supposed to be directing the battle was trying not to get overrun.

Even at noon, according to another Southern Command official, officers there did not understand what was happening. They assessed that Hamas had sent about 200 gunmen into Israel. They were off by a factor of 10.

It took the military most of the day to retake control of the Re’im base.

“When your division is under fire, you’re focused on clearing it from terrorists,” said General Ibrahim, the commander of the armored corps, which is based in southern Israel. “It distracts from management of the fighting more broadly.” General Ibrahim defended the military’s response, saying there are few modern armies that could have recaptured the region as quickly as Israel did.

But nobody had trained to repel an invasion.

‘Slowing Our Advance’

Only a few roads connect the towns of southern Israel. Gunmen roam freely along these roadways, including Route 232 and Route 242, on the day of the attack.

Image: Route 242

To heaven, to heaven.

[Indistinct name] will take it.

To heaven. To heaven.

To heaven [indistinct]

Our jeeps are there. Our jeeps are there.

Abu Ahmad.

Abu Ahmad. Our jeeps are there.

Abu Ahmad, our jeeps are there.

They’re descending.

Hamas gunmen terrorize motorists, opening fire on passing vehicles,

Image: Route 242

and gather at major intersections, sowing chaos and taking control of main traffic arteries.

Image: CCTV footage from the front gate of Kibbutz Sa’ad

Where Was the Israeli Military When Hamas Attacked? - The New York Times

Hamas understood how to use Israel’s geography against its military.

Despite the siege of Re’im, reinforcements were not far away. Thousands of soldiers were less than 40 minutes from the towns that were under attack. But as terrified citizens waited in bunkers or hid from gunmen, Israeli soldiers were hung up on the highway, unable to reach them.

A central highway connects military bases in the center and south of the country to the communities near Gaza. Pockets of Hamas gunmen set up ambushes along the route, videos from Pandora show. Israeli commanders were hesitant to send soldiers into those traps, according to two Israeli military officers who took part in conversations that morning.

“Hamas is all over the roads,” one Israeli soldier reported in a conversation recounted by a participant. “They own the street, not us.”

Image: Refael Hayun in his bedroom in Netivot, Israel, last week.Credit...via Refael Hayun

Mr. Hayun watched Hamas videos of the attack in real time on social media and relayed information to Maglan’s officers. He began fielding WhatsApp messages from people trying to save their children, friends and themselves.

“Hi Refael, we’re stuck in a trash container near the party location,” one message read. “Please come rescue us. We’re 16 people.”

Mr. Hayun relayed those locations to the commandos, but they did not grasp the enormity of the fight. One Maglan team killed several terrorists near a base in Zikim, just north of Gaza, but they didn’t realize until 11 a.m. that Hamas fighters had stormed Kfar Aza, where some of the worst fighting took place.

Soldiers crowdsourced information. One team commander told soldiers aboard a helicopter to check Telegram channels and news reports to pick targets.

One general, a reservist who fought that day, said there were many heroes on Oct. 7. But an army only needs heroes, he said, when things have gone wrong.

Soldiers are among those asking how things went so wrong.

Major Ben Zion, the reservist, said that his paratrooper unit left its base in central Israel, not far from Tel Aviv, in a convoy at about 1:30 p.m. They mobilized on their own, without a formal call-up order. To save time, they left without night-vision equipment or adequate body armor.

He expected to see the roads packed with soldiers and equipment and armored vehicles heading south.

“The roads were empty!” he recalled in an interview. Roughly seven hours into the fighting, he turned to the reservist next to him and asked: “Where’s the I.D.F.?”

Reporting was contributed by Gal Koplewitz, Adam Sella, Aaron Boxerman, Dmitriy Khavin, Riley Mellen and Angela Rath. Produced by Alice Fang.

Ronen Bergmanis a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, based in Tel Aviv. His latest book is “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” published by Random House. More about Ronen Bergman

Mark Mazzettiis an investigative reporter based in Washington, D.C., focusing on national security, intelligence, and foreign affairs. He has written a book about the C.I.A. More about Mark Mazzetti

Ainara Tiefenthäler is a video journalist with the Visual Investigations team. She was among the recipients of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for The Times's coverage of the vast civilian toll of U.S.-led airstrikes. More about Ainara Tiefenthäler

Sheera Frenkelis a reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp. More about Sheera Frenkel

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 30, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: On All Fronts, Israeli Military Failed on Oct. 7. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

 nytimes.com

 HEADLINES - ISRAEL KILLING THEIR OWN HOSTAGES AND PALING with HAMAS!

Israel-Hamas War: Hostages Waved White Flag Before Being Shot By Israeli Troops

Published Dec. 16, 2023

Updated Dec. 19, 2023

 Continue reading...

From <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/16/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news>

Israelis Question Army’s Rules of Engagement After Hostages Slain

Israel’s military said that soldiers who shot hostages, while they waved a white flag, violated its rules of engagement. Human rights activists say the rules are good, but enforcement is lax.

By Roni Caryn Rabin

Reporting from Jerusalem Jan. 4, 2024

 Continue reading...

\From <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-rules-of-engagement-hostages.html>

A General’s Account of Oct. 7 Battle for Be’eri Stirs Debate in Israel

The commander told The New York Times about how he had authorized Israeli tank fire on a house where hostages were being held by Hamas fighters.

By Aaron Boxerman, Natan Odenheimerand Ronen Bergman | Dec. 27, 2023

The Israeli military said it would review the circumstances of an Oct. 7 battle to retake a village from Hamas fighters, after a New York Times investigation featuring new details about Israeli tank fire on a house where hostages were being held stirred debate in Israel.

At least 97 civilians were killed in the village of Be’eri after Hamas and its allies surged across the border from Gaza on Oct. 7. Scores of gunmen ransacked neighborhoods in Be’eri and set fire to homes, killing many of those they found inside and abducting others.

Map locates the village of Be’eri in southern Israel, east of the Gaza Strip.

sraeli news outlets had previously quoted survivors of the massacre saying that an Israeli tank had fired on a house where Hamas fighters were holding hostages during the lengthy battle to retake Be’eri. In an article published on Friday by The New York Times, the Israeli commander who led the fight detailed how he had authorized tank fire to end what was already an hourslong standoff — “even at the cost of civilian casualties.”

Those remarks have been picked up by the Israeli news media and prompted some public debate about the conduct of the commander, Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram. Only two out of the 14 hostages in the house survived that day; it was not clear how many died by tank fire.

Some people have defended General Hiram, saying he had run into the line of fire to fight terrorists. Critics have said that the commander had recklessly endangered the lives of hostages who might otherwise have been saved.

General Hiram, through a military spokeswoman, declined to comment.

In a written statement on Sunday in response to questions regarding General Hiram’s conduct, the Israeli military said it would “conduct a detailed and in-depth probe to clarify the details as soon as the operational situation permits.” It called General Hiram “a decorated, principled, and respected officer, who fought bravely on Oct. 7,” sentiments echoed by the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, on Sunday evening.

Admiral Hagari said the Oct. 7 assault had forced “very tough decisions” which would have to be investigated as soon as possible. He urged the public not to judge General Hiram’s conduct before the inquiry was complete, adding that he was “sure Barak’s decisions were guided by his commitment to defending the citizens of Israel.”

Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, on Sunday also called General Hiram “a hero of Israel” who had been forced to make difficult choices to fend off the Hamas attack.

Yoav Limor, a military commentator, argued in the right-leaning daily Israel HaYom that people who “sat at home and watched the broadcasts in terror” on Oct. 7 should not rush to criticize General Hiram and his fellow soldiers who “fought for the kibbutzes and for us all.”

But some commentators blamed General Hiram for the deaths of the hostages.

“The heroes of Israel ought to protect the children of Israel, not to kill them,” Shelly Yachimovich, a former leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, wrote on the X platform on Sunday. “Who am I to judge? Who is he to kill.”

 Continue reading...

From <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/world/middleeast/israel-beeri-hiram-hamas.html>

Israel Found the Hamas Money Machine Years Ago. Nobody Turned It Off.

Agents worried as millions poured in. Hamas bought weapons and plotted an attack. The authorities now say the money helped lay the groundwork for the Oct. 7 assault on Israel.

By Jo Beckerand Justin Scheck

Jo Becker reported from Tel Aviv, and Justin Scheck from Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey.

Published Dec. 16, 2023Updated Dec. 28, 2023

 Continue reading...

From <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/world/europe/israel-hamas-money-finance-turkey-intelligence-attacks.html>

‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gambled that a strong Hamas (but not too strong) would keep the peace and reduce pressure for a Palestinian state.

By Mark Mazzettiand Ronen Bergman

Reporting from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

Dec. 10, 2023

 Continue reading...

From <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html>