Parents of surveillance soldier killed Oct. 7: ‘All the girls said Hamas was planning something big’

The parents of Sgt. Roni Eshel, 19, an observation soldier who was killed during the Hamas onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, repeat their statement that the troops had tried to raise the alarm ahead of the attack, but were ignored.

The parents also claim the officers “ran away” and left the unarmed female soldiers alone

“All the girls told their parents that after Sukkot, Hamas is planning something big,” Sharon Eshel tells Channel 12.

“If an observer in the IDF was aware that something would happen after the holiday, that’s really explosive,” she says. The onslaught took place on the final day of the holiday.

“In the end, the ones who managed to escape the Emergency Operation Center were officers who left the girls behind. Since when do officers run away first? These are female soldiers without combat training and without weapons, and they ran away first and abandoned them. They were burned to death and it needs to be said.”

It is unclear if the officers did in fact run away, or left to try and defend the base.

Eshel, 19, had been in the army for a year and two months, working as one of the communication lookouts at an army base near Kibbutz Nahal Oz — part of the team of soldiers who watch the feeds from the cameras placed on the high-tech barrier that was breached by Hamas terrorists.

She was considered missing for more than a month, as her parents begged publicly and desperately for information, until on November 9 the IDF finally confirmed that she had been killed during the initial attack.

Her family has stated in many interviews that Roni had told the family that Hamas was studying the border.

According to reports, senior commanders refused to heed the warnings of the young female surveillance soldiers, and the soldiers believe sexism was a factor in their being ignored.