There’s a hashtag going around, #BibiKnew. That’s insane, but the above Tweet demands an answer.
I’ll focus only on ONE THING, what happened after Hamas et al1 breached the fence, not the atrocities themselves. I’ve provided links below to articles which describe in gruesome detail the atrocities as well as providing a link to a Google Docs list. 2
I think the military failure is the most important aspect of the debacle.3 Sure, breaching that security fence was bad enough, but it was never meant to be impregnable, just an early warning system. I don’t want to get off the subject and start ranting, so without further ado:
It took most of a day for Israeli soldiers to arrive as people tried to hide from Hamas terrorists on Saturday. Here’s what the evidence shows about the response to some of the deadliest attacks.
“Where is the army,” Amit Man, 22, texted her family after hiding from Hamas attackers for five hours, before she was shot and killed. Others hid in the woods, barricaded themselves in safe rooms and waited for as many as 26 hours for help to arrive.
Israeli officials declined to answer questions about the timing of their response to the attacks.
Israeli intelligence detected an unusual surge in activity on Gazan militant networks it monitors and alerted the Israeli soldiers guarding the Gazan border. But the warning wasn’t acted upon, either because the soldiers didn’t receive it or the soldiers didn’t read it.
Shirley Okev went to a safe room in Kfar Azza, a nearby village. She would not leave for more than 20 hours. She contacted her son to alert the army. “But the army didn’t come fast, we waited for a long time,” she said
.
Mr. Itzik would shelter for at least eight more hours before soldiers arrived to rescue him. “The army wasn’t in the area, not even one soldier.” He added: “We were all by ourselves. It was terrifying.”
From the Be’eri clinic, Ms. Man messaged her family asking when the army would come. “I don’t understand,” she wrote. “It’s been hours already.”
Photographs show the Israeli military in Sderot. Many Israeli soldiers were killed at bases near the border, and drone strikes caused communication problems.
“We told her that any time the military will get inside and get them out,” her sister said later. “We really believed in that. I promised her.”
“We never never imagined, in our worst dream, that she would not make it, that the soldiers would not be there in time to rescue them and to save them,” she said.
11 hours after attacks began 5:24 p.m “Does anyone know where the army is?” a Nir Oz resident wrote in a neighborhood WhatsApp group seen by The New York Times.
About 6PM ISRAELI RESPONSE The army rescued students in Nir Oz.
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.
Under a bed in the room, they found two soldiers taking shelter. The gunmen shot both dead.
managed to surprise and outmaneuver the most powerful military in the Middle East last Saturday — On motorcycles and in pickup trucks, the assailants surged into Israel, overwhelming at least eight military bases
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,
There was an army base next to the village.4 Its troops would be here within minutes, Ms. Cherry remembered thinking. What she didn’t know was that many of them were already dead.
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.5
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, 6et alone the surrounding civilian villages.
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.
Random screenshot:
I’m sick and tired of the comparisons to the Holocaust. This is nothing like the Holocaust. Stop it, just stop. Any comment placed here disagreeing with me on this will be removed.
The Holocaust was carried out on defenseless citizens in territory taken over by the Third Reich’s army carried out by its army and its local henchmen. These people, Israeli Jews and Muslims, Thais, Nepalis, Filipinos, were guests of Israel. They were betrayed by the Israeli government and security apparatus.
I feel especially sad for the guest workers. They trusted the host government. How on earth could they have suspected something like this could happen?
If Hanegbi had an ounce of self-respect, he’d commit seppuku. I hope he does. (He won’t.)
Before I sign off, I want to address the #BibiKnew hashtag. Because of Covid, because of the lies of Afghanistan and Iraq, because of the Deep State apparatus dedicated to creating forever wars, a lot of people are so disgusted with authority they’ll believe anything, even that Netanyahu enabled this to shore up his political position.
I empathize with radical skepticism about politicians. But don’t go there. It’s crazy.
At best Netanyahu and his seed would be pariahs in Israel and among the Jewish people forever, until the end of time. Israel isn’t the US. It’s not a big country that you can get lost in. It’s tiny. People must care about what other people think about them. Anywhere in the Jewish world the name Netanyahu would be pigshit. Bibi might as well emigrate to Iran.
And among his own base, the settler-nationalists, this would be unforgiveable. And from this base could come something even worse:
Assassination. I say this word reluctantly but it must be spoken. Assassins may act alone, but they only act as the lightning rod and strike force of an enraged army. That’s certainly the case now. Violent intimidation in Israel always comes from the settler/nationalist right. They’ve already done it once for far less.
But still… how could a failure of this magnitude have happened? Isn’t there something suspicious about that?
No. The truth is merely humiliating and galling, not suspicious.
The Israeli security establishment is overrated, mediocre trash. And they’ve dumbed down and feminized the army.
This was not an intelligence failure or even a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of imagination.
They never imagined that Hamas et al, which told us over and over again what it was, an apocalyptic Islamic fundamentalist death cult, would do this. They never imagined that these disparate groups would cooperate. They never imagined that chicks in uniform would act more like chicks than soldiers?7
Martin Van Creveld has been warning about this for decades.
I am going to bet that the majority of the soldiers who died in the Hamas et al attack on October 7 (not afterward) were women.
What do soldiers do? Things that are very shocking to our modern sensibilities.
If you get a chance, see the TV Series, “The Pacific.” The actor who played Puller was brilliant. I don’t know if Lewis “Chesty” Puller actually said these words, but I love them anyway so here they are.
Addressing a roomful of Marine NCOs right after Pearl Harbor:
“We will meet our enemy, and kill them all.”
You got that?
If you think I’m being cruel for focusing on this, tough. Think of kids being dismembered while their killers eat a meal. Think of how that could have been prevented.
I have more to say tomorrow about Van Creveld and one or two other things but I’m as tapped out as an American storehouse of 155M howitzer shells right now.
LINKS
A variety of terror organizations
List of the atrocities (being updated)
Simple Timeline of Deadly Attacks in Israel and Response in Gaza - The New York Times (archive.org)
“It took most of a day” - Expanded Timeline
“Ten miles later….” The Secrets Hamas Knew About Israel’s Military
How Hamas breached Israel’s ‘Iron Wall’ - The Washington Post (archive.org)
Pussycats by Martin Van Creveld
Military Women Are Not the Cure, They Are the Disease
I use that phrase because Gaza hosts a variety of terror organizations, all of which apparently cooperated to carry out this attack.
I loathe the NY Times, which scandalously sensationalized the rocketing of the Gaza Hospital with a picture of something else, apart from bad reporting, but they’ve done excellent work on the attack. Tells you something. When Israel fucks up, they document it in detail.
Some have also pointed out that this is important because Hamas et al could have concentrated solely on military targets. That’s true, but again, not my point.
Nahal Oz
Don’t military bases have guards?
Why? Don’t soldiers carry guns?
I will not tell you her name, but one of the girl-soldiers who was killed was on Facebook, where she posted pictures of her abundant hair and beautiful manicures. What in the actual fuck was a girl like that doing in a base near Gaza? Why wasn’t she teaching kids in a development town?
Absolutely brilliant, thank you. That Puller quote...SHIVERS
I have something to say about the Holocaust thing but I'll do that in a dm