Introduction
It has been more than 10 months since the murderous Oct. 7 attacks. We are still recovering as the country attempts to rebuild the lives and the communities that were destroyed that day. The trauma is also ever-present because over 100 hostages are still in captivity in Gaza, and the war to free them and defeat Hamas continues.
I went to the border with Gaza on Oct. 7 as the attacks unfolded. I’ve covered wars in Gaza for many years and believed it was important to be there to witness the battle firsthand. At the time, like everyone else in Israel, I had no idea of the extent or brutality of the attack that was taking place during those hours. Only later, as the days went by, did we all become aware of the horrors.
In the wake of Oct. 7, I began covering the war daily, meeting with soldiers and survivors – and watching communities being evacuated. Over time, I became a witness to the destruction Hamas had wreaked on the kibbutzim. I also witnessed people slowly returning, trying to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. Six months of this experience became a book, an excerpt from which appears here.
The book is intended to tell the story of the lead-up to the surprise attack on Oct. 7. It follows how the IDF changed its strategy and tactics, adopting cutting-edge technology, some of which failed to prevent the attack. It also tells the story of how Hamas grew from a small group in the 1990s to a murderous terrorist organization in Gaza.
At the heart of the narrative is an account of how Oct. 7 unfolded, the blow-by-blow of the soldiers and civilians on the front line. We now know how undermanned the IDF positions on the border were, and investigations will eventually provide important new details about some of the key battles, such as the fight to take back Kibbutz Be’eri.
This book was written to give the reader an account from the ground, weaving my own experiences with soldiers and Israeli civilians into the story. The excerpt is taken from the beginning of the book.
6:29 A.M.
It was getting dark in Jabalya. In a four-story house overlooking Gaza City, dozens of Israeli soldiers were preparing for the night ahead. They were members of a new Israeli unit called the Ghosts. Envisioned as a unique group that would use cutting-edge technology and be able to call in air support at a moment’s notice, the soldiers were now putting years of training into action. They were using drones to scan the area and keep an eye on threats in the neighborhood around them.
Before the war, this neighborhood would have been crowded, with numerous multi-story buildings housing families, providing cover for Hamas terrorists who operate below ground in tunnels. Eighty days into the war, when I arrived in Jabalya, it was empty. With the exception of the soldiers and the grumbling engines of two tanks and an armored personnel carrier, Gaza seemed deserted. This was the result of almost three months of war.
The men in the Ghost unit, like 300,000 Israelis called up after the Hamas attack on October 7, had been away from their families since the war began. They didn’t have access to their phones; information usually available to people with the touch of a button was not available in Gaza. In moments of levity, when there was a break from the fighting, the soldiers asked newcomers about sports scores. Teams that had been doing well before October 7 might now be at the bottom of their division. For those fighting an unprecedented and unexpected war, details of the home front could provide a tiny bit of normalcy in this abnormally deserted neighborhood of Gaza.
Almost three months before I came to Jabalya, I had gone to sleep in Jerusalem on Friday, October 6, hoping to wake up late the next day. It was Simchat Torah, and Shabbat in Jerusalem would be characterized by celebration of the holiday. The holiday marks the end and beginning of a new cycle of reading the Torah or Bible.
Across Israel people went to sleep expecting a quiet and relaxing Saturday. In Sderot, the Israeli city closest to Gaza, the Ivri Adanani family was hosting relatives for Shabbat. Their phones were off because they are religious. Sderot had once been a city under siege by Hamas rockets in the early 2000s. However, by 2023 much of the city of 30,000 people was bustling with new construction and neighborhoods. Large playgrounds, with slides and zip lines, new basketball courts and a shopping center at the entrance to the city, greeted all arrivals with a sense of economic prosperity and security. The Gaza border, a mile away, felt like an afterthought.
On the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel an officer from Israel’s Givati brigade named Amit was spending the holiday near the lake. It was October, the weather was still warm, just before the winter storms begin in northern Israel. Yarden, a soldier in one of Israel’s artillery units, was also spending Shabbat in the North at a Kibbutz. She had made aliyah to Israel and was drafted to the army in December 2022. She was expecting to complete a combat medic course and then rejoin her unit.
As Israeli civilians slept, the military brass began to be awakened, one by one, to threats of impending doom. Israeli military and intelligence community leaders began to see a trickle of information about suspicious activity in Gaza. Around midnight members of Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, the army, and military intelligence spoke on the phone. A bit after three in the morning Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi spoke with Shin Bet head Ronen Bar. Colonel Haim Cohen, the head of the Northern Gaza Brigade, was also awoken. A large music festival was taking place near the Gaza border, and his division was responsible for the area. Meanwhile, a helicopter and three drones were made ready to respond. There were two helicopters on station that morning, but they were in the North.
Around 4 a.m., the head of the Shin Bet Ronen Bar arrived at the security service headquarters. A Tequila Team of elite intelligence officers was sent to Nahal Oz on the Gaza border to monitor the possibility of a terrorist infiltration designed to take hostages. The concern was that there could be a small attack, and the hope was that one team could help to prevent it. On the border, members of an IDF observation unit were keeping watch on Gaza. Many soldiers were asleep in their rooms waiting for their shift to begin. A counterterror team near Latrun was put on alert. Avi Gil, the military secretary for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was updated. The prime minister would not be informed until 6:29 a.m.
On the border with Gaza, some members of Israel’s Golani infantry brigade had been warned at 5 a.m. not to drive close to the fence, due to concerns of a potential attack. Brigadier General Avi Rosenfeld, commander of the Gaza Division, also was in touch with Israel Navy Commander Eitan Paz, at the Ashdod naval base. He informed the naval commander to maintain vigilance. However, another directive also informed commanders not to make any unusual moves. While there was unprecedented activity on the Palestinian side, there was concern that an Israeli response might lead Hamas to think Israel was going to attack.
Major General Yaron Finkelman, head of IDF Southern Command, was on vacation in the North. It was a rarity for him, he had been at his command during the holidays when escalation seemed likely in September. At four in the morning, he woke up and decided to return to his command. Soldiers along the border saw signs that something unusual was happening, signs of an imminent attack.
Near the Gaza border, several thousand young people had gathered for the Tribe of Nova music festival. The Near the Gaza border, several thousand young people had gathered for the Tribe of Nova music festival. The party had begun in the evening of October 6 and gone all night, with music and dancing. There was a camping area and hundreds of cars parked along a road to the festival. The festival had been approved by the IDF. At 5:30 a.m. people were still dancing as the first light of dawn began to arrive, casting the area in a blue aura.
At Kibbutz Nir Oz, about ten miles south of the festival, Judith Weinstein and her husband, Gadi Haggai, were about to go for a morning walk. At Kibbutz Be’eri, north of the festival, Aya Maydan was setting out for a bike ride. Her friend Lior was supposed to join her on the trail. Ron Benjamin, a 52-year-old from the city of Rehovot, was also setting out for a ride from Be’eri.
At Kibbutz Holit, near the Egyptian border, Yousef Zyadna, an Israeli Bedouin farmer, was with his sons Hamza and Bilal and his daughter Aisha. Other members of the Bedouin community were also near the border. Several were minibus drivers for the Nova festival, and others were working in the kibbutzim. At Kibbutz Alumim near Be’eri, Bipin Joshi, a Nepalese agricultural student, was preparing for his weekend. In Sderot, Valeri Friedman was waiting for a bus that was taking elderly Israelis on a trip to the Dead Sea. The bus had already picked people up in Ofakim and Netivot.
The first rockets were fired from Gaza at 6:29 a.m. The sun was not even up; it wouldn’t rise for another eight minutes. The partygoers at Nova recorded the rockets intercepted overhead. The music stopped. All across Israel, those seconds would change history. A country that went to sleep on October 6 concerned with domestic political controversies woke up the next day to an unprecedented war. It was a war that shook the country to its core and left major questions about the future.
I remember how it began, seared into my memory as if it was still October 7, 2023. I was awoken by my eight-year-old son. Shaking me, he said there were sirens in Jerusalem. Sirens usually meant one thing, a warning of rocket fire. However, such sirens were rare in Jerusalem, even during previous wars between Israel and terrorists in Gaza. Surprised, in a half-sleep trance where you do everything by rote, I got out of bed and hauled myself to the balcony, which faces south toward Gaza, forty-five miles away. When I got to the balcony, squinting from the morning sunlight, the sirens were indeed wailing over the hills of Jerusalem. Within a few seconds, loud explosions overhead shook the house, sending my son running for his bedroom as rockets were intercepted at 8:15 a.m.
By the time we were awakened in Jerusalem, Israel had already been under attack for almost two hours by Hamas terrorists. Most people were expecting to enjoy a relaxing Saturday as I had expected to do. Many observant religious people had their phones off for Shabbat. The sirens were the first indication that something was amiss. I opened up Arabic-language websites online to see that Hamas called this the “Al Aqsa Flood Operation,” and it had announced a large assault on Israel. Thousands of rockets had been fired. Hamas called for an “uprising” in Israel and the West Bank, a regional war to destroy Israel.
I’ve covered conflicts and war in Gaza for many years. Back in 2005, as a student, I had even been to Gaza before Israeli communities there were dismantled during the Disengagement. In 2009, I was on the border as a volunteer when Hamas was targeting Sderot. I also covered the wars in 2012, 2014, and 2021, and most of the flare-ups with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The drive down to the Gaza border was routine. On October 7, I got ready to leave. From the balcony, I saw that soldiers were going to their cars, driving off to join their units as they were called up or as they sensed the unfolding disaster. I phoned my friend Dr. Eric Mandel, who happened to be staying in southern Israel. He was heading for Sderot. I said I’d meet him there.
By early afternoon I was on the way to the Gaza border. The massacre unfolding there was not known at the time. Radio programs were struggling to report the chaos. One man called into the Reshet Bet station saying his wife’s phone was now located in Khan Yunis and he couldn’t figure out how it had gotten there. The phenomenon of people finding out that their relatives were kidnapped via the location of their phone also happened to the Katz Asher family in Nir Oz. They found out that a relative was kidnapped because the phone was also located in Khan Yunis. Other people were calling in to the radio station trying to get in touch with loved ones who they said were hiding in their safe rooms in communities near Gaza.
As I neared the turnoff to Sderot there was a police cordon across the road. The police were turning back traffic. So I pressed on toward Ashkelon, hoping to reach the border. The roads were deserted. Rockets fired from Gaza flew overhead, toward Tel Aviv. I kept the radio on to check the location of the rocket fire in case I needed to take cover. I called Dr. Eric. He was in Sderot now and said he had seen corpses of civilians and terrorists in the street. Now it became clear how bad the situation was. Terrorists had never breached the Gaza border and entered Sderot before.
South of Ashkelon the road passes a gas station and a turnoff to Zikim Beach. I remembered this area from the 2014 war when the fields were filled with tanks prior to Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza. At the time, Israel was trying to dismantle Hamas tunnels. Today the fields were deserted; there was no presence of Israeli forces, except for a few Humvees filled with soldiers. In previous wars it was common to see IDF helicopters overhead in this area, keeping watch over northern Gaza, launching flares sometimes. But the skies were clear.
Eventually I came to a police checkpoint near Yad Mordechai, two miles from the border. There was no sound of gunfire or artillery. Even though a massive war was unfolding and thousands of people were now under siege by terrorists in southern Israel, there was a quiet unease about what was happening. I got out of my car and waited by the police barrier hastily put up on the road. I noticed now that a small blue car was damaged and stuck on the median of the four-lane road. It had bullet holes in it. Next to it was what looked like a large sack covered with a blanket. As I approached I realized the sack was a dead body. Amid the chaos, no one had bothered to move him. Indeed, there were now so many dead and wounded, that only the living were being taken to the hospital. The dead would have to wait until morning.
In the days after October 7, I went back and forth to the Gaza border as it was retaken from terrorists. I met with police commanders and soldiers. For four months, I covered the war every day. This book is a product of those months. It is an attempt to tell the story as it happened and provide the background of what led to this war.