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IDF ignored intel hinting at attack hours before Hamas invasion

No warnings were sent to either the border bases or villages’ emergency squads.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israeli intelligence got wind of an impending Hamas attack two hours ahead of time October 7 but, the IDF downplayed the reports, and ultimately decided not to warn the forward bases on the border or the Gaza envelope’s communities, Channel 12 reported Friday.

There were “concrete” indications by 4 AM – two-and-a-half hours before the invasion – that there would be a “day of battle,” the report said, which would involve a Hamas attempt to get through the border to take over one or two villages and capture hostages.

These “telltale signs” were not considered urgent enough to immediately issue an alert at least to the border villages’ emergency squad leaders, or bring a significant number of personnel or tanks to the border, Channel 12 said.

Instead, it was decided to wait until morning – enabling Hamas to attack all the Israeli border communities as well as Ofakim and Sderot with some 2,500 men just before 6:30 a.m., massacring 1,400 men, women, children and babies, and taking 210 hostages into Gaza, including infants and foreign nationals.

More than 300 soldiers were killed, many of them in bases that were overrun by the terrorists, which had been more lightly staffed due to the Simchat Torah holiday being celebrated that Saturday.

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The military’s failure to respond to intelligence warnings of a looming surprise attack is a stark throwback to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel’s leaders received warnings from intelligence sources in the days and hours before Egypt and Syria invaded in a coordinated attack but no alerts were issued to the border positions, which took horrific losses as they were outnumbered hundreds to one.

Media reports already came out last week stating that days before the attack, the top army brass, including IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, military intelligence head Aharon Haliva, and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, had discussed warnings that Hamas was planning some kind of attack but it was not considered serious enough to cancel leaves or send reinforcements.

The night before, a security meeting was held again with the top officers as well as the head of Southern Command and others to examine additional pieces of intelligence that had come in. The conclusion was that it would be another of Hamas’ intense live-fire exercises that the terror organization has run in the last year that simulates a broad attack on Israel.

Instead of raising the IDF’s readiness level at the border, only two elite units were ordered to the front, one from the Shabak and one from the Yamam, Israel’s national counter-terror unit. These troops took part in the battles the next morning.

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Israel has denied Egyptian claims that Cairo warned Jerusalem three days before the outbreak of hostilities.

“We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” the Egyptian official told AP.

However, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-TX) confirmed the Egyptian version and said, “There seems to have been a failure of intelligence. We’re not quite sure how we missed it. We’re not quite sure how Israel missed it,” he told reporters four days after the war began.”

The senior echelon of the IDF, including Halevi, Bar and Haliva, as well as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have admitted personal responsibility for the failure to prevent the worst one-day massacre in Israeli history.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the first time he heard of any security issues was the moment that Hamas commenced its attack.