The bacchanal of death in the feast of joy
Israel's current war with Hamas, dubbed "Iron Swords," began on October 7, the day of the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah (The Joy of the Torah). The 1973 Arab-Israeli War, referred to in the Jewish State as the Yom Kippur War, and in Arab countries as the October War, took place from October 6 to October 25, 1973. Is it a simple coincidence?
On Saturday, October 7, 2023, Israelis woke up in another country. At 6.30 am, Hamas terrorists launched a massive rocket attack on cities and towns in the south and center of Israel. Sirens "Tseva adom" ("Red color"), warning of rocket attacks, turned on. The Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system has begun to operate. The breakthrough of the terrorists through the "Security Wall" built by the Israelis and separating the Jewish state from the Gaza Strip was completely unexpected.
Thousands of Hamas militants and residents of the enclave inspired by them turned out to be on Israeli territory. The terrorists rode jeeps, motorcycles and paragliders for the first time in the history of the confrontation. Several militant groups tried to land on the Israeli coast. But the Israeli Navy stopped these attempts.
Three days later, the number of casualties among the Israeli civilian population exceeded the death toll in the Yom Kippur War. During the war half a century ago, Israel lost about 3 thousand killed and about 10 thousand wounded. More than 300 Israeli soldiers were captured at that time. In the first six days of the current war, the Israelis lost 1,300 people killed and almost 3,000 wounded. Moreover, among the dead, only 160 were IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers, all the rest were civilians.
In the first hour of the Hamas ground attack, Sderot, a city with a population of 30 thousand people one kilometer from Gaza, was captured. To the question of why the Hamas attack caught the Israeli army and intelligence services by surprise, I will return below. I will also note here that in Sderot, the police and military, together with civilians, gave the attackers a battle that lasted several hours. But the forces were unequal and the local police department was captured by the attackers. All 20 policemen were killed.
After the capture of some areas of Sderot by Hamas and jihadists, the Israeli military called on citizens to close in their homes. But the appeal did not help everyone. Terrorists shot at windows, broke down doors and killed everyone who met on the way.
Approximately the same situation arose in the city of Ofakim, 18 km from Gaza, which the Hamas stormed on the same day. About 30 thousand residents also live in Ofakim, but there was a security unit of the headquarters of the Southern Military District. The guys of the guard, having made heroic resistance, fell down. The Hamas and jihadists in Ofakim began to kill everyone in a row. They broke into apartments and beat people to death. If people were hiding in shelters, they were pelted with grenades.
Rushing through the city streets, Hamas and jihadists left behind mountains of corpses and wounded. In the Ofakim district of Shapira, scum shot a young woman with a two-year-old child who came across them on the way. The bandits did not understand nationalities and confessions. In Ofakim, they killed an Arab girl, a university student. A prominent Soviet and Israeli theoretical physicist, 81-year-old Sergei Gredeskul and his 80-year-old wife Victoria, were also killed there by terrorists. After moving to Israel, Professor Gredeskul taught at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba.
In Kibbutz Kfar Aza, 4 km from the Gaza Strip, 70 militants captured about 200 residents. Men, women, old people, children. They killed everyone, including 40 babies. When they killed babies, they beheaded them.
Not every person's consciousness can withstand the pictures of such atrocities. The IDF press service assumed to camouflage the most horrific scenes in photos and video evidence. But in the end we decided to tell and demonstrate everything as it is. Let the world see who Israel is fighting.
Kibbutz Beeri, 2 km from Gaza, was captured by Hamas at 6.00. The attackers, disguised as Israeli policemen, killed the guards and went from house to house, shooting residents. People tried to hide in the bomb shelter, but the terrorists blew up its armored doors and threw grenades at the shelter. At least 200 of the 1,000 inhabitants of Beeri were killed. 12 hours after the capture of the kibbutz, Israeli soldiers liberated it.
Among the survivors was a repatriate from the United States, Thomas Hand. His daughter Emily spent the night with a classmate in a neighboring house and died at the hands of terrorists. Thomas' wife, Emily's mother, died a few years ago, the man raised his daughter alone. When this man, who is in the last stage of nervous exhaustion, was informed of his daughter's death, he even smiled: "If she had been among the hostages, she would have been tortured and killed anyway." But when Thomas Hand saw the decapitated bodies of his daughter and her girlfriend, he lost consciousness
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published photos of babies torn apart by Hamas on social networks. They are preceded by a warning: "Think about whether you want to see them."
Even when they found themselves in a desperate situation, the Israelis continued to fight. Spouses Adar and Itai Berdichevsky, former Israeli police officers, seeing that the militants were approaching their house, hid their two ten–month-old twins in the "mamada" (a room with a reinforced concrete door and shockproof glass - a shelter from rocket attacks), and themselves, armed with two pistols, engaged in battle. Killed eight terrorists and died themselves. The terrorists abused their corpses, but they did not find the children. Only 13 hours after the arrival of the Israeli soldiers, the children were discovered by their uncle and grandfather.
Almost 300 young people were killed by terrorists at a music festival. This youth festival gathered about 3 thousand fans of rave, a radical version of disco music. Police have banned ravers from bringing weapons and sharp objects to the festival. Therefore, on October 7, boys and girls turned out to be completely defenseless before the scoundrels who came to kill them.
The festival was held near Kibbutz Reim, 5 km from the border with Gaza. The number of people killed there exceeds even the number killed during the "Kristallnacht" by the German Nazis in November 1938. Then the Germans killed 90 Jews.
Few Ravers survived and returned home. Esther Borukhova, having managed to get into the car, pretended to be dead and waited for the Israeli soldiers. Tanya Roshal, a former Muscovite, explained her rescue by accident. She saw the terrorists, whooping and hooting, approaching them on jeeps and motorcycles. "I managed to escape into an open space, actually into the desert, and roll down a ditch," Tanya explains, sobbing. "I was wearing yellow clothes." She believes that it was the color of her clothes that made her unnoticed by the attackers. Tanya lay for at least three hours until the soldiers of the Israeli army came. The number of prisoners captured by terrorists at the festival is unknown. The scoundrels were able to transport all of them to Gaza.
WHY THE ARMY AND SPECIAL SERVICES OVERSLEPT THE ATTACK
First of all, they nod to exploration. The vaunted Israeli intelligence services really failed. How could it happen that the MOSSAD (Intelligence and Special Tasks Agency), Aman (military intelligence) and Shabak (general security service) did not warn about the upcoming attack?
By and large, the MOSSAD should be cleared of the charges of failure. The main tasks of this intelligence structure are related to the collection of information abroad. Such tasks include "preventing terrorist activities against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad; developing and maintaining special secret ties, political and other, abroad; preventing the development and acquisition of stocks of unconventional weapons by hostile countries; repatriation of Jews from countries from which official travel to Israel is impossible."
As for Shabak, this special service will surely be accused of failing to work with the agency. The last shameful failure of the Shabak is connected with the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995 in Tel Aviv. They didn't keep up.
To fully understand the failure of Israeli intelligence, a thorough investigation is necessary, which will take a lot of time. Nevertheless, it is already obvious that the main fault lies with Haman. It is the military that is obliged to warn the political leadership about the upcoming hostile actions and terrorist acts.
Hamas militants and Palestinian jihadists in the first stage of the current war, which they call the "Al-Aqsa Storm", beat the Israelis on all counts.
A Palestinian extinguishes a fire among the rubble of a house destroyed during an air raid. Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip. October 14, 2023. Photo by Reuters
First, a few months before the breakthrough of the border, Hamas intensified terrorist activities in Judea and Samaria (West Bank of the Jordan River). It turned out that it was a trap that the military intelligence of the Southern District fell for. The police structures in Ramallah (the administrative center of the Palestinian National Authority) could not cope with the influx of militants from Gaza. Israel came to the rescue, having transported several IDF battalions to the West Bank. The Hamas ploy worked: the southern flank was militarily weakened.
Secondly, the Israelis did not take seriously the intensification of Hamas attacks at the security fence built on the border with Gaza. Even the construction of a training mock-up of an Israeli settlement in Gaza, which was viewed from Israeli territory, Haman did not take into account.
Thirdly, the massive rocket attack from Gaza, launched on October 7, turned out to be only a veil for a ground invasion. Fourth, the Israeli leadership bought into the demand of the Gaza authorities to increase the number of work permits in Israel for residents of the sector. For Hamas, this demand was a "shadow" that they skillfully "brought to the fence."
The Izz al-Din al–Qassam brigades, a Hamas combat unit, number a little more than 40 thousand fighters, distributed in 30 battalions and about a hundred companies. The Hamas people (unlike the Lebanese Hezbollah, which threatens Jews from the north) do not have tanks, but even the simplest armored vehicles.
Captured Israeli armored vehicles are defiantly burned by Hamas militants. Terrorists use passenger cars, including jeeps with heavy machine guns, to transport their fighters and fire support. Such cars are called "shahidmobiles". Motorcycles are used as light transport.
A year before the attack on October 7, the number of Nuhba, the elite Hamas special forces, increased. Haman also did not pay attention to this fact. The Nukhbits were the first to break through the border and invaded Israeli kibbutzim.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad has about 10 thousand terrorists. And in the "Storm of al-Aqsa" they distinguished themselves with the same crimes against humanity as the Hamas.
Why did Hamas carry out an unprecedented attack on Jews right now? In principle, it fits into the logic of the perception of Israel by Islamist terrorists – not as a state, but as a kind of "entity" in the heart of the Arab world.
The Gaza authorities also wanted to intimidate those Arab countries that develop interstate ties with Jews. In Gaza, they really did not want to establish diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
But Gaza itself did not expect such unpreparedness of the Israelis to break through the border. On the other hand, Hamas was shocked by the speed of mobilization of Israeli society.
Within a day and a half, the IDF increased its ranks by 360 thousand fighters, despite the fact that it was supposed to mobilize only 300 thousand. Reservists came without summonses. Reserve soldiers who found themselves abroad urgently flew home. Students of yeshivas (religious schools), who are usually not subject to conscription, besiege military enlistment offices.
Jerusalem resident Abdullah Salih, a 32-year-old doctor with experience in the IDF, came to the military enlistment office and said: "I am an ethnic Arab and a Muslim by religion, but first of all I am an Israeli, a representative of the community of the Israeli people. My civic duty is to protect my people from terrorists and bandits who have betrayed their faith."
THE HOSTAGES HAVE LITTLE CHANCE OF BEING RESCUED
Israel is preparing a ground offensive. Air attacks alone cannot destroy the fighting power of Hamas, which lies in hundreds of underground tunnels.
Civilians in the sector are suffering. Although Israel uses a system called "knocking on the roof." Before launching a missile or bomb attack on a building where terrorists equip firing positions under the cover of civilians, Israeli pilots "knock on the roof" with blanks dropped from an airplane or helicopter. At the same time, the population is warned by leaflets, phone calls, messages in social networks about when the air attack will begin.
Before the planned ground offensive, the IDF scattered leaflets in Gaza City demanding the civilian population to evacuate to the south of the sector. In the leaflet there is a map and even the names of the streets along which it is safest to evacuate.
For the first time in the history of Israel's confrontation with terrorists and bandits, the number of Israeli hostages is likely to exceed 200 people. Although there is no concrete data from Gaza.
Almost all the hostages are civilians, many of them are old men, women, and children. The terrorists were able to transport all the captured Israelis and foreign citizens to Gaza. It is the problem of hostages that is the most burning today.
Hamas threatens to shoot Israelis and foreigners caught in its hands if a ground offensive begins. According to some reports, the execution of hostages has already begun. Retired IDF Colonel Yaniv Rokhov, who worked at the General Staff for several years, told HBO: "Unfortunately, there are few chances to return the hostages home. The terrorists from Gaza use hostage-taking primarily as a deterrent... They are ready to die for the sake of the death of those whom they consider their enemies."
Of course, the Hamas leaders will demand the release of their accomplices from captivity. This was the case with the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who, after five years and four months of imprisonment, was exchanged in October 2011 for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, of whom more than 400 were imprisoned on charges of killing Israelis.
The Government of National unity currently created in Israel, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, will not accept such exchanges.
The goal of operation "War of Iron Swords" is the complete destruction of Hamas. Israeli society does not accept any other option.
Tel Aviv–Jerusalem
Zakhar Gelman
Zakhar Gelman is an independent journalist.
