This week, Channel 11’s journalist Ayala Hasson broadcast a two-part exposé on the Israel Defense Forces’ self-investigation of the massacre at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, which took place a kilometer from the Gaza Strip. Hasson’s reports reinforced the fact that the IDF and Shin Bet top brass are to blame for Hamas’s successful day of genocide.
A total of 364 people were brutally murdered at the Nova music festival and along avenues of escape. Thirty-nine were taken hostage. The rave opened on Oct. 5 with 3,800 revelers.
According to earlier investigative reports, the IDF intercepted Hamas’s invasion plans a year before Oct. 7. They received multiple, rapidly escalating warnings of the impending invasion from a variety of sources in the Southern Command in the months, weeks and days prior to that day. Intelligence head Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet director Ronen Bar did not share the warnings or Hamas’s intercepted invasion plans with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Instead, they repeatedly briefed him that Hamas was deterred, and Israel simply needed to provide it with more cash from Qatar and more work permits for Gazans in Israel to keep the terrorist regime fat, happy and deterred.
On Oct. 10, we learned that on the night between Oct. 6 and Oct. 7, Halevi, Bar, Southern Command Chief Maj. General Yaron Finkleman, Operations Directorate Chief Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk and Haliva’s assistant (Haliva was on vacation and not answering his phone), held two telephone consultations, at midnight and 4 a.m., when they discussed multiplying indications that Hamas was about to carry out its invasion, slaughter and kidnapping plan. They chose to do nothing, told no one and agreed to meet again at 8 a.m. Hamas invaded at 6:30.
Hasson’s reported excerpts from two-and-a-half hours of recordings of a conversation between Halevi’s representative Brig. Gen. Ido Mizrahi and police commanders in the Southern District. Halevi appointed Mizrahi to conduct the IDF’s inquiry into the slaughter at Nova.
The police were the heroes of the festival. By declaring that Israel was under invasion at 6:30, Southern District Commander Superintendent Amir Cohen precipitated the Ofakim police station commander’s order to disperse the concert-goers. That decision is credited with saving the lives of 90% of the party’s attendees. According to Mizrahi, about 200 people were at the party site when the Palestinian rape, murder and kidnapping gangs arrived a bit after 9 a.m.
Forty policemen and women died staving off the invading Palestinian terrorists from the Nova festival. IDF forces didn’t show up until after the massacre was over and the 39 hostages had been taken to Gaza. All the same, Mizrahi tried to shift the blame for the mass slaughter from the IDF onto the police, asking why there were still 200 people at the party site at 9.
Surprised, the police explained that they couldn’t enforce the order because they were busy fighting Hamas since the IDF didn’t arrive.
Mizrahi disclosed to Cohen and his officers for the first time that on nighttime telephone calls, Bar, Halevi and their associates discussed the Nova festival but opted to do nothing. The police officers noted that had they known this at 4 a.m., the slaughter would have been prevented.
Plugging the Leaks
Hasson’s reports were a grim reminder of the IDF General Staff and the Shin Bet director’s unforgivable and arguably criminal dereliction of duty in everything related to the events of Oct. 7. They were the only ones with knowledge of Hamas’s preparations to invade. They were the only ones who knew that Hamas was taking concrete steps to invade in the hours before the invasion. And they told no one and did nothing.
Since Oct. 7, Halevi and Bar—and their equally culpable subordinates—have tried to deflect the blame onto Netanyahu by insisting that the reason they were unprepared was because of the prime minister’s longstanding policy of containing Hamas. But this claim is nonsensical given that Netanyahu based his policies on false information they provided him.
Their efforts to avoid accepting responsibility for their cataclysmic failures—and to deflect the blame onto Netanyahu whom they kept in the dark—has brought us to Israel’s current state, where by the looks of things, Halevi, Bar, their comrades in the legal system (led by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara) and the justices of the Supreme Court are engaged in an all-out effort to oust Netanyahu from power as quickly as possible.
Their efforts have been ongoing since the start of the war. The generals have all but openly accused Netanyahu of blocking a hostage deal. This comes despite the fact that they have known all along that Hamas has never been willing to free the hostages, whom it rightly views as its life-insurance policy. Halevi, Bar and their subordinates are assumed to be behind nearly all of the leaks to the media related to Israel’s internal discussions regarding the hostage talks. Those leaks have repeatedly been used by Hamas to justify their consistent refusal to make a
