Israel Had ‘No Defense Plan’ for a Hamas Surprise Attack Prior to Oct. 7: Report

As thousands of heavily-armed Hamas terrorists flooded into and fanned across Israel on Oct. 7, they capitalized on the Israel Defense Force’s belief that such an assault was “impossible,” leaving the IDF outmanned, outgunned and outmaneuvered, a report said Saturday.

The surprise attack — carried out on the Sabbath and the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah — saw some 1,200 people killed and another 240 abducted back to Gaza while Israeli troops scrambled to meet the multi-pronged offensive, the New York Times reported, citing interviews with dozens of personnel and witnesses, as well as documents and videos.

The seeds of the disorganized response were sown years before Hamas ever launched its offensive, when Israeli leaders downplayed warning signs that the terror group was plotting something big, and opted against even training for the possibility of a full-scale invasion.

“There was no defense plan for a surprise attack such as the kind we have seen on Oct. 7,” Amir Avivi, a brigadier general in Israel’s reserves and former deputy commander of the division tasked with guarding the Gaza border, told the Times.

Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general and former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed.

“As far as I recall, there was no such plan,” he told the paper. “The army does not prepare itself for things it thinks are impossible.”

The supposedly “impossible” happened in the early morning hours of Oct. 7, at a time when about half of the 1,500 Israeli troops near Gaza were off-duty for the holiday, and two commando companies totaling over 100 soldiers had recently been shifted to the West Bank, the report said.

Among Hamas militants’ first targets was the Re’im military base, the headquarters of the Gaza Division and nerve center governing all operations in the region, according to the Times.

It too was understaffed for the holiday. Though some top staff were summoned back as the earliest reports of the attack came in, many soldiers were reportedly allowed to keep sleeping.

Several were killed in their bunks as Hamas fighters burst in.

“When your division is under fire, you’re focused on clearing it from terrorists,” said Brig. Gen. Hisham Ibrahim, the commander of Israel’s armored corps, which is based nearby. “It distracts from management of the fighting more broadly.”

While Hamas was at their doorstep, brass at Re’im struggled to make sense of and direct a response to the larger assault, leaving many troops on the ground to improvise with minimal guidance.

With limited direction — “just take a gun” — Israel’s elite Maglan commando unit, based about 25 minutes from Gaza, deployed based on real-time intel from a local civilian watching Hamas social media videos and fielding calls for help on WhatsApp, according to the Times.

One crew aboard a helicopter was advised to spot targets based on Telegram channels and news reports.

As the chaos unfolded, Hamas also set up ambushes along key highways, creating strategic logjams to slow the Israeli ground response.

They killed passing motorists and torched their cars, creating roadway blockades where they waylaid troops.

While many soldiers were pinned down in firefights along the roads, Hamas preyed upon nearly defenseless communities cut off from help.

Kitat Konnenut, a ragtag civilian guard tasked with serving as the first line of defense in border towns, had warned for years that they lacked sufficient training and arms, two Israeli military officials told the Times on condition of anonymity.

What training Israeli reserves had received for a defensive battle was based on the assumption that they would have at least a day to deploy.

“The procedure states that we have the battalion ready for combat in 24 hours,” Davidi Ben Zion, a major in the reserves, told the Times. “There’s a checklist to authorize the distribution of everything. We practiced this for many years.”

And even top IDF soldiers found themselves woefully underprepared, hastily deploying with pistols and rifles, only to meet Hamas fighters with heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, according to the paper.

Echoing a sentiment voiced by Netanyahu, the IDF declined to immediately address questions about what went wrong on Oct. 7, saying that its priority was the ongoing war in Gaza.

“The IDF is currently focused on eliminating the threat from the terrorist organization Hamas,” the force told the Times in a statement. “Questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage.”