The Israeli military will present the lion’s share of its probes into the October 7 massacre between February 25 and March 4, with IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi being replaced by incoming chief Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir on March 5.
Third, the probes will look at the intelligence and decisions specifically from the evening before the invasion as well as regarding the orders given in light of the evolving threat situation.
IDF's intel unit flagged unusual activity hours before attacks began
At some point overnight, the Shin Bet and IDF Unit 8200 flagged that a large number of Israeli cell phone SIM cards were being activated in Gaza.
Since such cards could only be used if these Gazans entered Israel, this immediately raised suspicions.
Around 3:00 a.m., two separate virtual meetings were held.
One was held by Finkleman along with his senior operations and intelligence staff, including “A”, including Gaza Division Chief Rosenfeld, an IDF colonel for the Air Force as a representative in the South, and multiple Shin Bet officials as representatives in the South (the full list of meeting attendees comes from a Yediot report, though the meeting and its content has been confirmed by the Post.)
At almost the same time, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar held an internal Shin Bet meeting, including various top relevant Shin Bet high command officials, including the Shin Bet Southern Commander.
Both meetings came to similar conclusions: that there was an increased threat level from Hamas which might suggest a small targeted penetration toward one Israeli village to try to grab a small number of hostages, while it was equally likely that all of what they were seeing was merely a military drill.
In fact, almost exactly one year before, on October 5, 2022, similar SIM card indications had occurred, and no action from Hamas followed. There were also later warnings of a possible Hamas penetration in April 2023 which did not pan out.
In addition, Finkleman and other IDF officials were very concerned that Hamas would realize the IDF penetration of their SIM card systems if the IDF acted too suddenly and drastically in responding to the SIM cards being activated.
Accordingly, all IDF officials issued instructions to keep physical changes on defense to a minimum so as not to alter Hamas that the IDF knew they had activated the SIM cards.
The main difference between the Shin Bet and the IDF meetings, were that Bar ordered a small team of around a dozen reinforcements to the Israel-Gaza border to be better prepared for the potential small scale Hamas penetration, whereas IDF Operations Command Chief Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk ordered only checking certain aerial defense and maritime defense (specifically regarding the natural gas rigs) readiness issues, but issued no reinforcement instructions.
Basiuk ordered his then top deputy Shlomi Binder to perform the checks.
Binder was later controversially promoted to major general and IDF intelligence chief in August 2024.
Halevi said that the probes of October 7 had cleared Binder of any connection to the major failures of October 7, and the probes seem to indicate that he was directed to focus on specific aerial and maritime defense issues.
Of course, one could ask why Binder did not press his superiors to take the Hamas threat more seriously in light of the SIM card activations, but on the other hand it appears he was not made aware of the Walls of Jericho plans, and his accepting the universal opinion that Hamas might also be doing another drill like the year before, was not unreasonable.
IDF chief Herzi Halevi's virtual meeting at 4 a.m.
Around 4:00 a.m., Halevi held a virtual meeting with Finkleman, Basiuk, and some other IDF officials, including from IDF intelligence.
Crucially, Halevi did not demand that Haliva be woken up from his vacation, nor did Haliva’s aides, who knew about the SIM cards, deem it necessary to wake him.
Also, Halevi did not demand that IDF Air Force Chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar participate in the meeting.
Further, Halevi did not see fit to wake up then defense minister Yoav Gallant or Netanyahu.
Both Gallant and Netanyahu have said that had they been woken up, they might have advised some additional defensive measures.
Halevi was also focused on not taking too many visible physical actions so as not to tip off Hamas regarding the IDF’s penetration of their SIM cards.
He did order additional drone intelligence collections of any suspicious movements in the Gaza area, an order which was not unexplainably not executed.
But this meeting is what sealed Halevi’s fate regarding the October 7 failure.
Despite all of the reasons to doubt a major invasion was in play, he was the top defense official who could have decided to take some extra precautions on defense, just to be ready for all scenarios, and he decided against.
The Israeli Air Force and its chief, Tomer Bar
If earlier in the war the Air Force claimed that Bar did not know anything about the 4:00 a.m. Halevi virtual meeting, on January 29, Walla reported and the Post independently confirmed that Binder passed on certain warnings to a top aide to Air Force Chief Bar in the hours before the Hamas invasion. Also, as noted the Air Force representative in the Southern Command was in the loop.
Further it was revealed that Halevi spoke to Bar directly at 6:36 a.m., 7 minutes after the Hamas attack started at 6:29 a.m., about the sudden Hamas attack.
Moreover, Walla reported and the Post independently confirmed that a top aide to Halevi sent out a text message to the top aides of all of the IDF high command, including the Air Force, at 7:05 a.m., that a war had started.
All of these details combine with a report in Yediot Ahronot from earlier in January that the Air Force had certain intelligence signs of a large potential rocket attack in the hours before Hamas launched around 3,000 rockets.
The Post has confirmed that the Air Force passed these details on to some portions of IDF intelligence.
IDF intelligence has not explained why they did not immediately pass these details on to the rest of the military, including Halevi, nor has the Air Force explained why it did not call an emergency meeting of the IDF high command in light of the findings.
These latest revelations combined together paint a different picture which seems to indicate that Bar and the Air Force knew far more than they had let on to date, even if Bar was not on the call with Halevi in the middle of the night of October 7.
In other words, Bar had special Air Force intelligence about Hamas’s rocket units in the middle of the night, was updated by a senior aide about the critical pre-war call in the hours before the invasion and was given two significant warnings about the war within the first 30 minutes or so of the invasion.
Despite these warnings, the Air Force did not send all of its F-35, F-16, F-15, and other aircraft to the border in the 6:30-7:30 a.m. range, an act which might have been able to stop portions of Hamas’s second and third waves of the invasion.
Rather, the Air Force sent mainly drones and helicopters to assist with the defense of the border.
Sources noted to the Post that the Air Force did send three drones to the border immediately which were already in the air nearby.
Further, sources said that within two hours, there were dozens of Air Force platforms.
However, it has also previously been reported that the Air Force’s top aircraft, some of which got into the air fairly quickly, were assigned to stay in the air near critical infrastructure areas, or were kept near the northern border lest Hezbollah stage a second invasion, and not to help with the defense of the southern border.
This meant there was no capability to drop large bombs on scores of invading Hamas fighters as they crossed into Israel, before the point where they entered Israeli villages and would be hard to strike without killing Israeli civilians.
They also rejected any new narrative placing more blame on the Air Force, saying none of the new revelations are significant.
Rather, they say that if Halevi or the IDF Operations Command believed a major war was at hand, they would have issued orders to Bar to mobilize the Air Force for war.
The short call from Halevi did not raise significant information and was a moment of confusion for both Halevi and Bar and the text message from Halevi’s top aide is not viewed as carrying the actual weight of a major war, said sources.
In any event, officials like Netanyahu would like the heaviest focus to be on the night of discussion, and to be less about the conceptual strategic framework for understanding Hamas dn the threats from Gaza, since Netanyahu was deeply involved in developing those frameworks.
Why did the Israeli Air Force react slowly on morning of October 7?
Besides the fact that lots of the Air Force’s serious power was sent northward or to guard critical infrastructure sites, the Air Force probe is also expected to show that its plans for reinforcing border areas downplayed Gaza and had its aircraft stationed too far away.
Some Air Force assets, including helicopters, were stationed at the Ramat David base near Nazareth in the North, while others were stationed near the Ramon base near Eilat. It took many of these aerial assets around an hour to get to the Gaza border, which was already somewhat too late.
Even once they arrived, the Air Force probe will say that they over-centralized the rules of engagement for their pilots, denying them the option of firing into Israeli villages for fear of hitting civilians.
There were a few cases where aerial assets targeted Hamas fighters as they crossed the border which made some difference, but often by this time most of the Hamas fighters were already in Israeli villages.
In addition, the Air Force probe will say that generally pilots receive highly specific information of where and what to attack and that most Air Force officers were not in the South due to vacations, those that were had a similar lack of full understanding of the constantly evolving situation, and the IDF Southern Command was similarly “blind” to how multi-pronged the invasion was.
In one case where the Air Force tried to take the initiative based on pre-war intelligence and to attack without concrete real-time updated intelligence, it attacked a tunnel which officers thought Hamas might use to send fighters into Nativ Haasara, according to Yediot Ahronot. It turned out later that no Hamas fighters had been there.
Yet another reason for the Air Force sluggish reaction to assisting in the South were that the Air Force plans had a dozen aircraft ready at any time, but did not expect such a sudden surprise and were only able to move to full war-footing, including shifting all of the fuel and other technological resources needed, in about six hours, by around 1:00 p.m.
Next, Hamas’s 3,700 rocket attack in a short period of time exhausted the Iron Dome supplies in the South, leading to only around 50% protection, which in turn meant that many southern runways were hit and required repairs.