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Did IDF ‘lie’ about terror tunnel next to Israeli kibbutz?

“We can understand why they wanted to keep this story secret…”

By World Israel News Staff

After the IDF announced that it had destroyed two terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip, which reached into Israeli territory, a local journalist is speaking out about the fact that the army “maintained a lie” for years that no such tunnels existed.

Doron Kadosh, a military correspondent for Galgalatz, took to social media platform X following the army’s announcement on Saturday that it had demolished two tunnels which reached 50 and 300 meters into southern Israel.

The longer tunnel had an exit directly next to Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha, which was attacked by some 150 terrorists on October 7. The kibbutz’s security team managed to fight off the invasion, but four residents of Ein HaShlosha were murdered and homes and property were burned.

Kadosh noted that several years ago, after the IDF announced it had installed a high-tech underground security system, the army claimed that there were no tunnels from Gaza that could be used to infiltrate Israel, and that it would be impossible for terrorists to build additional tunnels that stretched into Israeli territory.

“The IDF lied to the Israeli public, and specifically to the residents of the Gaza border region, by saying explicitly, countless times, in numerous media statements that there are no more tunnels which cross from Gaza into Israeli territory,” he wrote.

“We can understand why they wanted to keep this story secret, in order to create [the illusion of] operational success, but it’s impossible to ignore the lies, which continued for years and have now been exposed,” he continued.

“It’s not clear who made the decision to lie this way to the public back in 2019, but many in the IDF’s top brass continued to maintain the lie since then.

“Now, when the residents of Ein HaShlosha discovered that a terror tunnel reached so close to them, this is how the IDF wants to rehabilitate the trust that was so critically wounded on October 7?”

Notably, residents of Israel’s north and the region along the Green Line have complained for years about hearing digging noises near their communities, stating that they suspect terrorists are creating tunnels.

Hezbollah does have an extensive tunnel system in southern Lebanon, though it’s unclear how many of those tunnels, if any, extend into Israel.