The report notes that “serious mistakes” were made in the army’s response when Hamas invaded the community. The army was poorly prepared, it claims, and did not always prioritize civilian lives. The report details how, in the afternoon, Israel Defense Forces units waited nearby even as residents were killed.
“Since the afternoon, forces were waiting outside the kibbutz while the massacre continued inside,” he said. “The IDF failed in its mission to defend the residents in the most serious way and failed in its mission.”
Military officials presented the findings to surviving members of the community in the Dead Sea resort they now call home. A total of 101 people were killed in Beeri — a tenth of its population — when Hamas fighters from Gaza breached Israel’s high-tech border fence and took military units by surprise.
Dozens more people were taken hostage, 11 of whom have not yet been released.
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Along the border, outgunned community guards and residents were forced to fight virtually alone.
“We have failed to protect the kibbutz,” IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari admitted in a conversation with residents, according to Israeli media reports. He noted that the IDF investigation stopped short of constituting a broader independent commission of inquiry, which he said “should be established.”
Nine months after the attack, public pressure is mounting for accountability for the historic security collapse that allowed Hamas-led militants to storm Israeli communities bordering the Gaza Strip. So far, only a few security officials have resigned, and the prospect of political establishments being held accountable seems even more remote.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the creation of an independent commission while Israel is at war. Internal investigations by the Israel Defense Forces are unlikely to help appease public demands.
“It’s taken with a grain of salt,” said Tamar Hermann, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, of the investigation. “People expect some kind of official investigative commission made up of people who were not involved in any way.”
While the Israel Defense Forces has managed to partially repair its reputation in the eyes of many Israelis during the Gaza war, anger still runs deep in Beeri, he said.
“We must point out that Kibbutz Beeri did not need the results of the investigation to feel the failure of the Israeli army every minute since 6:29 a.m. on that black Shabbat,” the kibbutz said in a written statement. “The failure of the army has been engraved in our bodies and hearts for nine months now.”
The report detailed the chaos on the day of the attack, when some 340 militants entered the kibbutz, including about 100 fighters from Hamas’ Nukhba special forces.
According to the report, smaller IDF units that arrived at the kibbutz in the morning were “attacked” and “left the community.” They positioned themselves at the gate and fought there while Hamas carried out kidnappings.
Meanwhile, members of the kibbutz’s security team resisted the attack.
“During the first seven hours of fighting, the residents of the kibbutz defended themselves; their actions and ingenuity prevented the enemy from expanding the attack to other neighborhoods,” the report said.
The investigation helped to understand the depth and complexity of the fighting in parts of Beeri, the kibbutz statement said, but added that the investigation did not provide satisfactory answers to “critical questions.”
These questions include why military forces gathered at the kibbutz gate for hours without entering, the root causes of the intelligence failure that allowed Hamas to invade, and whether the soldiers who arrived understood that their primary goal was to protect civilians.
Rami Gold, a 70-year-old member of Beeri’s security squad who tried to contain the militants that day, said the army’s investigation produced little new information.
“From my perspective,” he said, “what they said is, ‘We abandoned them.’”
Trust has been broken, said Gold, who is among the few residents who have returned to live in Beeri.
“The job of the military is to make us trust them,” he said. “Right now, that’s not the case. I trust us.”
One of the IDF’s most controversial decisions on October 7 was to attack the home of Pessi Cohen, where Hamas militants were hiding along with 14 hostages.
Despite the presence of Israelis inside the house, Brigadier General Barak Hiram, who had been assigned to lead the fighting in Beeri that afternoon, made the decision to attack the house.
The IDF concluded that the tank fire was carried out “in a professional manner” with a joint decision made by commanders after an assessment of the situation “with the intention of applying pressure to the terrorists and saving the civilians held hostage inside.”
The report did not specify whether Israel’s famous Hannibal directive, which orders troops to do everything in their power to prevent Israelis from being kidnapped, even if it puts their lives at risk, was in effect at the time.
The Haaretz newspaper reported this week that Hannibal’s directive was issued on Oct. 7, with an order transmitted to troops at 11:22 a.m. that “no vehicles may return to Gaza.” It was one of several orders to use the directive that day, according to the paper.
The IDF declined to say whether such an order was given. “Questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage,” the IDF said on Thursday.
The attack raised many wide-ranging questions — and deep concerns — among Israelis about the country’s intelligence and defense capabilities. It emerged in August that an attack was imminent, but warnings were dismissed, the Washington Post reported last year.
“You can’t just look at Beeri,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the IDF military intelligence agency’s research division. “You can’t separate that from everything else that happened that terrible day.”
A majority of Israelis — about 58 percent of Jews and 81 percent of Arab citizens — believe it is time for those responsible for the failures of October 7 to step down, according to a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute conducted in April.
But public sentiment is increasingly polarized. Left-wing and centrist Israelis are more likely to blame Netanyahu’s government, while right-wingers point the finger at the security services, said Hermann of the Israel Democracy Institute.
The scope of any investigation remains unclear, he said, nor is the body that would oversee it.
“There is no agreement on what should be done and as time goes by, more disagreements arise,” he said.
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An Israeli delegation returned home from Doha, Qatar, on Thursday. According to the prime minister’s office, the team will meet with the prime minister for further consultations after participating in the ceasefire talks. The team will head to Cairo in the afternoon to continue the talks. However, a statement issued by Hamas says it has not participated in the latest round.
An Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has condemned as “absolute madness” the Israeli army’s order for all Palestinians to evacuate Gaza City. He added that “the international community must demand that Israel immediately stop the war,” which he said has sown destruction and killed masses of people. The IDF’s general evacuation call was issued on Wednesday.
Gaza’s civil defense force said it has recovered 60 bodies from the rubble of Shejaiya in Gaza City. A spokesman said several civilians were killed in the neighbourhood, including women and children, after Israeli forces withdrew. Mahmoud Bassal described the area as “unfit for life” after an operation that lasted days.
At least 38,345 people have been killed and 88,295 injured in Gaza since the war began. The Gaza Health Ministry said it does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that some 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and says 325 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations in Gaza.
Lior Soroka and Hazem Balousha contributed to this report.
