Report reveals dramatic new information about Oct. 7 failures leading to Nova party massacre
Israel’s Channel 12 News over the weekend published new information about the Nova party massacre on Oct. 7, indicating that the police didn’t receive intelligence warnings from the army.
According to the findings, the southern district of the Israel Police had concerns over the party being held just several hundreds of meters from the border with Gaza, near Kibbutz Re'im.
The day before the party began, the responsible police commander for the event had asked the army for plans regarding a possible terrorist infiltration.
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Eyal Azoulai, commander of the Negev region on Oct. 7, said that the party at first wasn’t approved to continue until Saturday because of riots along the border fence at the time.
“I turn to a senior officer from Southern Command and ask him a precise question: Is there any security consideration that I should be aware of? The answer I get is that the consideration is not security,” Azulai told Channel 12.
“We wanted to understand if it is possible to have some kind of military force with an armored vehicle there,” Azulai said. “The army informed us that its decision is to provide regional security, not the security of soldiers.”
In addition, the report found that within the army, the information that a large-scale party was going on near the border was only passed down to the battalion commanders, meaning lower-level officers were not aware of the event when the Hamas invasion started.
Even in the high-level discussion by senior IDF commanders during the night, just several hours before the attack began, the party wasn’t mentioned. In addition, to protect intelligence sources, no warning was given to the police.
“The Israel Police did not receive any indication that anything was happening,” Azulai said. “It is possible that if we were part of this then we would at least make a decision to close the party.”
The Hamas invasion began with massive rocket fire, causing partygoers to start running away. Police officers directed them to take their vehicles and flee on road 232, either to the north or south.
Hundreds who left in the first minutes and continued without stopping, despite the rocket fire, were saved. The IDF Home Front Command usually instructs those traveling in a vehicle to exit and seek shelter or lie flat on the ground in the case of rocket alarms.
On the morning of Oct. 7, many of those who stopped to hide in shelters were later murdered there.
According to the findings of the report, the decision of the Police’s Southern District to stop the party in the first minutes of the invasion, lower the fences, open the escape routes, and disperse the participants saved uncountable lives.
A little before 7 a.m., Hamas terrorists took over Mefalsim Junction to the north of Re’im and started killing the revelers fleeing in this direction. The police quickly realized what was happening and blocked the road in this direction.
Police officers then instructed the partygoers to start walking on dirt roads toward the east, away from Gaza, and pulled many standing in traffic out of their vehicles, giving them the same instructions. This saved hundreds of lives, according to the report.
While the terrorists also had no prior information about the party, some hour and a half after the start of the invasion, they noticed the large event and began arriving from two directions.
A battle ensued at the entrance to the party grounds, with terrorists armed with rifles, grenades, and RPGs, overwhelming the few police officers and civilians who tried to hold them off.
When the barrier was breached after an hour-long battle, the Nova massacre began.
Despite the magnitude of the mass event, with thousands of attendees, its location wasn’t prioritized for immediate army backup.
Large forces only began arriving there around noon after Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai called IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi to tell him that there was no security response in the area at all.
Senior military officials later said that the police should have evacuated the party area, and that the army was, in fact, informed that the partygoers had been dispersed, making the area a lower priority amid the myriad of battlegrounds on that morning.
The IDF responded to the Channel 12 report by stating: “The findings presented do not constitute the IDF’s investigation into the party. The battle at the ‘Nova’ party is being investigated these days and is still ongoing. When it is concluded, it will be presented to the public transparently.”
This article was originally published by All Israel News.
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