Oct. 7 radio transmission by slain surveillance soldier Roni Eshel aired for first time
Eyal Eshel mourns what he says was his daughter’s needless death, says there was a six-hour window in which she could have been saved had she not been failed by senior commanders
A raw recording taken from the communication equipment used by an IDF surveillance soldier on the morning of October 7 was aired for the first time by Channel 12 on Wednesday evening, allowing a glimpse into the last hours of the surveillance soldiers on the Nahal Oz military base, who remained at their stations up until the end.
The recordings were taken from the radio of slain soldier Roni Eshel, whose parents allowed the audio to be released to the public after it was shared with them by the IDF.
“All stations receive, four people are running to the fence, confirm receipt,” Roni can be heard saying in the radio transmission, which went out to all soldiers in the area at 6:29 a.m. on October 7. “Two armed people are running at the fence, confirm receipt.”
Moments later, Roni transmitted another message, this time warning of armed terrorists crossing into the no man’s land that separates Israel from the Gaza Strip, using the IDF code for the threat, “Turkish horsemen.”
“One armed terrorist has crossed [the border], one armed terrorist, confirm receipt,” she can be heard saying, speaking fast but calmly. She continued broadcasting information about the terrorists she could see crossing the preliminary Gaza border fence as their numbers slowly swelled and they moved toward the reinforced barrier separating the Palestinian enclave from Israel.
“Two people are standing at the ‘Sand Timer’ fence,” she said, her voice signaling urgency. “They’re messing with the fence, confirm receipt.”
“The ‘Sand Timer’ fence has exploded. People have blown up the fence, confirm receipt,” she said a moment later. “Receive, there is a hole in the fence, two people blew up the fence with a bomb. They are standing next to the hole, they haven’t crossed through it yet.”
The 19-year-old surveillance soldier issued a final broadcast, “They have blown up the ‘Sand Timer’ fence. Three people are currently standing [inside Israel]. They are armed. Confirm receipt.”
Surveillance soldiers up and down the Gaza Strip were broadcasting similar urgent messages as the scene relayed by Roni repeated itself at dozens of locations. Minutes later, their cameras would be cut and the soldiers in the field would find themselves fighting blind.
“Roni was a hero who played her part perfectly. I’m very proud,” her father Eyal Eshel told Channel 12 after the recordings were aired.
“It’s creepy,” he said of the broadcasts. “These are one-sided tapes because we don’t know who she’s talking to and what’s being said back.”
He added: “It’s even more chilling that these girls could have been saved, all of them.”
Roni is believed to have lived for another six hours after her final broadcast. She was killed by infiltrating Hamas terrorists just after midday, along with more than a dozen of her fellow surveillance soldiers.
Lamenting what he said was the needless death of his daughter, Eshel explained that based on IDF findings and personal research, it would have been “possible to save these girls from 6:23 a.m., until minutes before noon, if someone in the IDF had been intelligent enough to understand that they needed to be loaded into a vehicle and evacuated from the base.”
Explaining that the families of the deceased surveillance soldiers pressed for the release of the recordings, Eyal said he hoped more would be released.
“They remained at their stations, they were the only soldiers who didn’t leave for the weekend and the holiday,” he said. “They stayed at their stations and they were the only soldiers who remained functional in this crazy rush. They were the only soldiers left to deliver reports in real-time.”
Roni was considered missing for more than a month, as her parents begged publicly and desperately for information. On November 9, the IDF finally confirmed that she had been killed during the initial attack.
She had been in the army for a year and two months and had warned her superiors numerous times that Hamas terrorists were studying the border in preparation for something unknown, her father has said in multiple interviews.
Fifteen surveillance soldiers were killed on the Nahal Oz base on October 7, and six were taken hostage. One of the abducted soldiers, Cpl. Ori Megidish, was rescued by the IDF in late October, but the other five remain in captivity, their condition unknown.
“Five hostages, such precious and wonderful girls, are there right now,” Eyal told Channel 12 of his late daughter’s fellow soldiers and the country’s failure to protect them. “The time has come to make changes in the chain of command.”
Eyal said he wished he didn’t have to issue that kind of criticism, but that it was unavoidable. “It hurts, it really hurts.”