The Times
Israeli intelligence officials and military commanders held late-night meetings just hours before the October 7 attacks to discuss the impending Hamas attack and learned of the threat to the nova music festival, according to an internal Israeli investigation.
📌 The first meeting was held near midnight and the second at 3 a.m. but those present concluded that Hamas was conducting a training exercise on the Gaza border rather than preparing for a terrorist attack, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
📌 In a sign of the seriousness with which the warnings were taken, Israeli forces ordered increased drone surveillance flights, a unit known as the “tequila team”, specially trained to prevent kidnappings, was deployed to Nahal Oz, a kibbutz near the border with Gaza, and two teams of commandos were alerted to the possibility of an incursion. But no warnings were passed on to the organizers of the Nova festival, which was being held near Kibbutz Reim, just three miles from Gaza, where 360 people died and another 40 were taken hostage.
📌 The organizers said that if they had received a warning even an hour before the attack, they would have been able to evacuate the site. The festival was organized in close cooperation with the IDF and was approved by the Northern Brigade of the Gaza Division. However, the army units on duty were unaware that a festival was being held and when the event organizers contacted the IDF on the morning of the massacre, they were told that they would have to defend themselves.
📌 The IDF finally attended the scene at about 3 pm, by which time the surviving attendants had fled. The festival will be one of the most scrutinized parts of the investigation into the October 7 attacks, something that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister and the IDF can allow only after the end of the war in Gaza.
📌 An unnamed IDF source told Haaretz newspaper: “the army understands that the Reem festival will be at the center of the investigation that will be opened at the end of the war”. “This massacre should have been prevented."An earlier investigation by the New York Times found that Israeli officials had obtained a 40-page battle plan called the "Jericho wall" a year before the attacks but failed to act against it.
📌 The document predicted that Hamas would begin the offensive by firing a barrage of rockets at Israeli cities and kamikaze drones at surveillance cameras to paralyze the IDF's vision before the militants massed on the border and flew through gliders and motorcycles on foot.
📌 On the night of October 6, the last day of the Jewish holiday, Israeli intelligence agencies became aware of suspicious activity along the border. A telephone meeting was held at midnight between senior figures from the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, the IDF and military intelligence. Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, the IDF chief of staff, was informed of the threat and Ronen Bar, the Shin Bet director, attended a second meeting at 3 a.m.
📌 The man who approved the Nova festival, Colonel Haim Cohen, head of the Northern Brigade of the Gaza Division, was also aware of the emergency meetings, according to Haaretz. The statement he signed approving the festival stated that”the Northern Brigade is responsible for regional security during the event in the area of the fence across the Gaza Strip". At 3 a.m., An Israeli soldier reported seeing a suspicious figure approaching the fence near Kissufim but his warnings were dismissed
📌 At 4 am, a Special Anti-Terrorist Unit at the Letron base was told to be on alert until dawn. At 5 a.m., soldiers from the Golan Brigade were mobilized near Nahal Oz due to someone touching the fence but were turned back by their commander “due to fear of anti-tank or rocket fire from Gaza”. The IDF said: "the IDF is currently focused on eliminating the threat of the Hamas terrorist organization. Questions of this kind will be considered at a later stage.”
