When the long-overdue commission of inquiry into the Israel-Hamas War begins asking the inevitable questions about preparedness, Karina Ariev, Liri Albag, Naama Levy, and Daniella Gilboa should be the star witnesses.
These girls may be among the lowest ranks in the IDF, but what they know should worry the brass and politicians up to the very top.
They saw the attack coming long before October 7, 2023, and sent warnings up the chain of command but were tragically ignored. Why? The best answer seems to be they were “just girls,” aged 19 and 20 years old.
They were then seized by Hamas and held hostage for 477 days, only released this week as part of a long-delayed prisoner swap. All the evidence suggests that the top brass, the intelligence geniuses, and the political echelon shrugged off their warnings.
After the horrific massacre and kidnapping, the Netanyahu government considered the hostages as low priority, focusing on destroying Hamas and Gaza in service of ultra-nationalists who wanted to clear out the local population and take the land for new settlements.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a plethora of excuses for avoiding a deal until facing intense pressure from President Donald Trump, which former president Joe Biden failed to apply. Fear can be a powerful motivator.
Now Netanyahu is threatening to resume the war – as demanded by his extreme right-wing partners – after the first phase of the ceasefire and before all hostages are freed. He may have second thoughts after he meets Trump at the White House next week.
He will gleefully endorse Trump’s suggestion to ship a million and a half more Palestinians to Jordan, Egypt, even Indonesia, or anywhere else that might take them.
On this week marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it is unconscionable for Jews to be talking about forcibly relocating an ethnic population – and shocking beyond belief for an American president to seemingly endorse ethnic cleansing.
Netanyahu invokes the Holocaust in response to any criticism of Israel but endorses what most of the world would regard as ethnic cleansing. Where the Israeli Right sees new settlements, Trump, the real estate mogul, and his mogul-wannabe son-in-law Jared Kushner see beachfront property where they can build luxury hotels, condos, and a golf course.
The Israeli leader will try to educate the president about why going through with the deal would be disastrous. What he means is disastrous for him – because his government might fall – not because of the fate of the hostages.
Israeli public opinion strongly prefers prioritizing returning the hostages; Netanyahu and his right-wing partners insist Hamas must be destroyed first, something more than a year of intense bombing and bulldozing has failed to do.
Bibi's priorities are wrong
A SURVEY by the Israeli Democracy Institute shows two-thirds of the country wants to see a State Commission of Inquiry, including a majority on the Right, but Netanyahu has the votes in Knesset to block it.
His priority is self-preservation.
The four young women were spotters (tatzpitaniyot) on the front lines – the eyes and ears of the IDF. They will have important stories to tell about what they saw and heard, who they warned, and the responses along the chain of command.
All were stationed at Nahal Oz, just half a mile from the Gaza line, unarmed, using hi-tech equipment to watch the border.
One of the soldiers told Haaretz that they saw Hamas training in plain sight, even identifying some by face and name, seeing extensive drone activity, and soldiers practicing capturing a mock-up of an Israeli observation post. However, their warnings were ignored and dismissed as “another training session.”
One, identified as “Ya’ara,” told Haaretz: “The IDF left us like sitting ducks… The fighters at least had weapons and were killed like heroes. The female surveillance soldiers were abandoned by the army and simply slaughtered without having any chance to defend themselves.”
Fifteen were killed at their base at Nahal Oz, while seven more were taken hostage. Many parents are convinced their daughters would be alive now if their warnings had been treated seriously.
Sexism is a universal problem. The spotters’ experience may awaken the IDF to the challenge, but it appears likely to get a lot worse in the United States with the new secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. He has been accused of sexual assault and has repeatedly challenged women’s place in the military, rejecting them for combat roles.
October 7 was a massive intelligence failure, the worst in Israel’s history, something top IDF and intelligence echelons take responsibility for, but not the prime minister.
The IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, announced last week that he would be resigning in March, taking “responsibility for this terrible failure.” The chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, also resigned and called for a state inquiry.
Similarly, the heads of Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the Mossad have taken responsibility for the failure but have not yet resigned. Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, head of the IDF’s elite intelligence Unit 8200, admitted in his resignation that his group relied too heavily on technology and ignored “traditional” sources like the spotters.
THE PROBLEM is deeper than sexism and goes right to the top. Netanyahu, like the IDF and Shin Bet, was convinced Hamas couldn’t mount a ground invasion but would stick to firing rockets into Israel. The terror group, the prime minister apparently was convinced, was more interested in governing than war.
His longtime strategy has been to drive a wedge between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to justify his opposition to Palestinian statehood. If they can’t get along with each other, the reasoning goes, how could they form a government, much less make peace with us?
So, he made concessions, like increasing the number of work permits for Gazans to help the enclave’s economy and turning a blind eye (if not actually encouraging) Qatari funding of Hamas on the theory they would rather govern than make war.
It was Netanyahu’s failed perception that allowed the brass to ignore the young spotters’ warning and let Hamas inflict the worst single day of death and destruction in Israel’s history.
Hamas is, of course, responsible for the attack and the atrocities that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead and thousands more wounded, but that it was “able to do so was a direct result of Israel’s government and its defense apparatus’s dereliction of duty,” writes American University Prof. Boaz Atzili.
Eternal vigilance may be the price of liberty, but it doesn’t work unless someone is listening to the vigilant.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and a former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.