The IDF on Thursday presented the findings of its top-level investigations into the military’s failures before and during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion from Gaza. The long-awaited report details a catastrophic breakdown in intelligence, misjudgments by military leadership, and a failure to protect Israeli civilians during the deadliest terror attack in the country’s history.

The October 7 onslaught saw some 5,000 Hamas-led terrorists breach Israel’s border, overrun IDF bases, and massacre approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Another 251 individuals were abducted, and entire communities in southern Israel were devastated. The IDF, unprepared for an invasion of such magnitude, struggled to mount an effective response, with command chains collapsing amid the chaos.

For months, Israeli officials have pledged a full accounting of what went wrong. Now, the IDF’s internal probes have confirmed what was previously unacknowledged: the military’s Gaza Division was effectively “defeated” for several hours on October 7, allowing Hamas to carry out its massacre and kidnappings virtually unchallenged in many areas.

The report, which investigates multiple aspects of the IDF’s handling of the attack, identifies four main areas of failure:

1. Misguided Perception of Hamas’s Threat

For over a decade, the IDF wrongly assessed Hamas’s capabilities and intentions. Military officials believed that Hamas was uninterested in a full-scale war, that its tunnel network had been significantly degraded, and that Israel’s high-tech border fence would thwart any cross-border threat.

However, these assumptions were starkly at odds with Hamas’s actual preparations. The IDF was unaware of the true extent of the terror group’s planning and failed to grasp the scale of the threat.

2. Dismissed Intelligence Warnings

The investigation revealed that the Military Intelligence Directorate received clear indications over several years that Hamas was planning a large-scale attack on Israel—yet repeatedly dismissed these plans as unrealistic.

Senior intelligence officials incorrectly assumed that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was a pragmatist who sought to avoid a major escalation. They also believed Hamas’s military priorities were focused on rocket attacks rather than a ground invasion.

Crucially, the report confirms that Hamas had made the decision to carry out a massive assault as early as April 2022. By September 2022, the terror group was already 85% prepared for the attack. In May 2023, Hamas finalized its plan to launch the attack on October 7—yet Israel’s intelligence services failed to sound the alarm.

3. Intelligence Failures on the Night of the Attack

On the eve of October 7, the IDF identified five clear warning signs of Hamas’s unusual movements but failed to recognize them as indicators of an imminent attack. Years of flawed assessments about Hamas shaped the military’s decision-making that night, leading to a disastrous failure to prepare for what was coming.

With intelligence officers at every level failing to issue proper warnings, Israeli forces were caught entirely off guard when Hamas breached the border just hours later.

4. Command Breakdown and the Battle for Southern Israel

The final investigation focuses on the IDF’s inability to mount an effective defense during the Hamas invasion. The report states that for several hours, Israel’s Gaza Division had effectively collapsed, unable to respond to the scale of the attack.

Military leaders in Tel Aviv did not fully grasp the severity of the situation in real time, failing to coordinate a coherent response. This miscalculation delayed the IDF’s counterattack, costing hundreds of lives.

The IDF’s investigations were limited to operational and intelligence failures within the military. The probes did not examine the decisions of Israel’s political leadership, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which has insisted that political inquiries should wait until after the war against Hamas concludes.

The report’s findings were compiled after thousands of hours of interviews, intelligence reviews, and battle analysis, with the IDF investigating 41 separate battles and incidents from October 7.

In response to the report, IDF officials have vowed to make sweeping changes to Israel’s intelligence gathering, border security, and rapid response capabilities to prevent a similar disaster in the future.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)