IDF report slams failure to reinforce Nova festival despite intelligence warnings

Lt. Col. Haim Cohen did not even mention the rave during situational assessments in the hours prior to the Hamas invasion.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

An internal IDF report has slammed Gaza Division commanders for failing to reinforce the Nova music festival despite repeated intelligence warnings in the hours before the Hamas-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2023, Haaretz reported Tuesday.

The investigation singled out Northern Brigade commander Lt. Col. Haim Cohen, who had approved the event and its security plan earlier in the week and arrived at the site around 5:30 a.m., an hour before the attack.

He saw for himself the 4,000-strong crowd of ravers, performers and pop-up vendors, alongside a small protective force of only a few dozen police officers and private guards.

According to the investigation, Cohen “miscalculated when he did not assign a military force to the festival complex,” and the divisional assessment held the night of Oct. 6 “erred” in failing to discuss canceling or dispersing the event, the report noted.

Cohen had stopped at the site on his way from his home in Tiberias to the division’s southern base.

Although it was unclear what intelligence he had been privy to before he started out, Haaretz reported that Cohen “received updated assessments of the situation” from a 4 a.m. phone briefing led by then-chief of staff Herzi Halevi that included the head of the Southern Command.

It has already been determined that the top command ignored or played down multiple indications on and before Oct. 6 of a major Hamas attack.

“Cohen told military investigators he had no information suggesting that he should act differently or order the festival to be dispersed” when he visited the site, the daily said.

When he later reached division headquarters, he neither raised the festival in briefings nor ordered reinforcements.

He later told investigators one reason was that he had seen Yamam counterterrorism forces and another police vehicle on nearby Route 232, which “reassured him that the event was secure,” according to the report.

One result of this silence was that few forces on the ground even knew the festival existed or understood its fragile security situation when the invasion began.

Cohen also failed to rush to the site with troops once reports of the assault started coming in, and he did not enter the field at all that day — a decision criticized in an earlier IDF inquiry.

That review said, “The brigade commander should have positioned himself, as doctrine dictates in a surprise assault, in a location where he could influence the brigade-level battle from the field.”

Located barely a kilometer from the Gaza border, Nova was one of the first sites overrun by Hamas terrorists, who went on a raping, flame-throwing and shooting spree, massacring 378 people as the crowds tried to flee on foot or by car or hid in fields and roadside shelters.

That toll accounted for nearly a third of the 1,200 people murdered on Oct. 7.

In addition, 44 of the 251 hostages abducted that day were taken from the festival.

Cohen resigned his commission and retired from the IDF in March, citing responsibility for his brigade’s failure to protect residents of the Gaza envelope.