Daniel Meir, security coordinator of Kibbutz Nirim, stood last week at the site of the Nova music festival in Re'im, addressing a group of people. He recounted in vivid detail the battles he and his few comrades waged against Hamas terrorists who infiltrated the southern kibbutz on Oct. 7, 2023. As with all such testimonies – and we've heard dozens, if not hundreds – we're left with more questions than answers. No one fully comprehends what unfolded in the communities near Gaza, why it happened, or how. This holds true even for those who were there and fought valiantly, now providing firsthand accounts of that awful day.
Like everyone else, Meir doesn't have all the answers. In the battle he fought in Nirim alongside two colleagues, aided by a combat helicopter that arrived by sheer luck, he managed to drive away the terrorists. Before that, they had already wreaked havoc, murdering five people and burning houses and property. Five kibbutz residents were kidnapped; three were returned alive, and two in coffins. In Nirim, they decided to demolish the young neighborhood where the pogrom took place and rebuild it. Today, there's hardly any trace of the events, except for the graffiti near the concrete shelter where Col Asaf Hamami was killed. It's still unclear how he ended up in Kibbutz Nirim at 6:30 a.m., fighting terrorists against all odds.
The most challenging question relates to Nirim's defense system. During Operation Protective Edge, the kibbutz suffered heavy losses, with two of its finest sons killed. The members altered their internal security arrangements but relied on the military and believed they were protected from the outside as well. "For ten years, we lived in a fantasy," Meir said. "The army convinced us they had built a system worth billions. They endlessly explained why this system was impenetrable. Ultimately, we depend on the army and trust them. The problem is that the army believed its own lie."
That's the crux of the matter: the army believed its own lie. But this statement demands an explanation, which hasn't been provided to us. How does a country invest billions in a fence that doesn't withstand thousands of terrorists, who cross it almost effortlessly along its entire length? Why, for instance, didn't they build a massive security wall similar to the separation barrier constructed between Jerusalem and some neighborhoods that were transferred to the Palestinian Authority, as well as along many miles in the West Bank?
It's mind-boggling. On Sunday, a touching ceremony was held in Moshav Netiv HaAsara, marking one year since the massacre. Twenty members of the moshav were murdered on Oct. 7. The ceremony also inaugurated the beautiful garden established in their memory. Behind the garden stands a massive wall stretching for dozens of yards, resembling the separation barrier in the West Bank. I have no idea why they placed the wall at the edge of the moshav and not along the border. I asked my friend Itamar Revivo, head of the Ashkelon Regional Council, which includes Netiv HaAsara. Revivo said the wall was built years ago to prevent anti-tank missile fire into the moshav.
Revivo agreed that the fence built along the Gaza border was the biggest failure that preceded the Oct. 7 massacre. "The fence was primarily designed to combat underground threats, to block tunnels," Revivo said. "In areas where they perceived a threat from anti-tank missiles, they built the wall higher. They could have erected such a wall on the border. The military didn't envision a scenario that would necessitate this. An infiltration on the scale we saw in Simchat Torah [Oct. 7] wasn't considered a threat by the army, and they weren't prepared for an event of this magnitude."
A state commission of inquiry should be established solely to investigate the construction of this fence. The commission should thoroughly examine the fence-building process, the tenders, preliminary checks, the engineering, wasted billions, and misguided considerations.
Those responsible for building this neglectful fence should be held accountable. This investigation could take years, another appendix to the enormous task awaiting the state commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 catastrophe. We can't afford to wait a year or two to begin this investigation. By then, its findings may no longer have any practical value.
What's even more serious than the fact that the army believed its own lie is that the army also believed Hamas' deceptions. If you ask Cabinet ministers or military leaders, they'll equate this situation one-to-one with the Yom Kippur War disaster, exactly 51 years ago. The Egyptians then carried out repeated attack drills across the Suez Canal but didn't go to war. Israel prepared to face the threat several times, but nothing happened. In the end, we decided we wouldn't dance to the Egyptian tune anymore, until the iconic surprise fell upon us on Oct. 6, 1973. It cost us thousands of casualties and wounded, and hundreds of officers and soldiers taken hostage.
The difference between then and now was in the reality and the political implications. Elections were supposed to take place in late October 1973 but were postponed due to the circumstances until late December of that year. Those elections foreshadowed the historic political upheaval: the Alignment (Labor) won, although it dropped from 56 to 51 seats. However, the Likud increased its power by 50 percent, rising from 26 to 39 seats. This was the expected political outcome of the anger and great protest against the failure and loss of personal security in Israel at the time.
Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned four months later, in April 1974, after the interim report of the state commission of inquiry headed by Judge Shimon Agranat. The commission exonerated Golda and placed the blame on military leaders, but she didn't use the findings as a shield and left political life. Golda didn't point a finger at the army, despite some suggesting she do so. She even ensured a worthy successor, Yitzhak Rabin, the Six-Day War Chief of Staff, who took over leadership after her. As we recall, in 1977, the transition was completed, and the entire government of failure that remained from Yom Kippur left office.
