Report shows IDF’s silence on fears ahead of Nova, failure to react as massacre unfolded
Army officials say they didn’t prioritize deploying forces to rave because police said area had been cleared out; soldiers only arrived in large numbers by middle of afternoon
On the eve of the Supernova music festival on October 7, the security professionals responsible for the event repeatedly asked for information about a potential terror threat from Gaza, and were rebuffed by senior IDF commanders, according to a television report on Sunday.
Deputy Superintendent Nivi Ohana of the nearby Ofakim police station, who oversaw security for the event, even asked the military explicitly about a potential terrorist infiltration, according to the Channel 12 report, and did not receive a response.
The 24-minute TV exposé included details from documents in the days leading up to the event showing expressions of concern from the festival’s security team, communications between police and the military during the massacre, and recently released footage of fighting during the invasion.
At least 364 partygoers were killed and more than 40 hostages were taken from the festival to Gaza. Many of them are still held in captivity.
Though the festival was originally scheduled to last from Thursday, October 5 through Saturday, October 7, only the first two days were initially approved, the report revealed.
“I see that the army isn’t approving October 7, and I turn to the senior officer in the Southern Command, and I ask him a very precise question: Is there some security consideration that I should be aware of?” recalled Eyal Azulai, the commander responsible for the festival, in the TV report.
“The answer I received was that the consideration wasn’t about security.”
In fact, the Southern Command was debating whether to approve the plans for Saturday due to concerns about Hamas activity along the border fence.
On Thursday, as the festival began, the army approved the original plans, to include the fateful Saturday. At the same time, however, senior officers were monitoring developments in Gaza with worry, and discussing the possibility of an attempted infiltration into Israel in the coming days.
“We asked whether it would be possible to receive some military presence, some armored vehicles here. The army notified us that their decision was to arrange what’s called ‘spatial security,’ not security by soldiers,” Azulai recalled.
On October 6, senior IDF officers even held several late-night meetings about the situation — as has previously been reported — but in none of the discussions did anyone bring up the Supernova party, according to Channel 12.
“Israel Police received no indication that anything was taking place. Maybe if we had been a part of [the discussions], we could at least have made a decision to shut down the party,” Azulai said.
The attack begins
The following morning, amid sudden rocket fire from Gaza, the festival was immediately closed, and partygoers were instructed to take shelter, and then to evacuate as soon as possible.
At 6:32 a.m., Southern District Commander Amir Cohen of the police called Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, of the IDF Southern Command, to ask whether anything had happened overnight in Gaza to explain the barrage.
“Nothing that we know of, we don’t know anything,” Finkelman responded, according to the report.
Around 7 a.m., as terrorists had begun to burst through the Gaza border fence, private security forces and police set up a checkpoint, positioning themselves at the gate to the Supernova site.
Hamas was not aware of the party, according to the report, and it took its invading forces about an hour and forty minutes to understand the situation, at which point many of the terror group’s elite Nukhba forces, who had been on their way to the city of Netivot, reversed course and circled back to the festival site.
For hours, private security forces and police officers, armed with handguns, worked to fight off the Hamas terrorists, who were armed with assault rifles, grenades, and other heavy weaponry.
Police Sgt. Maj. Aaron Arthur Markovich was shot but continued to fight until he ran out of ammunition, at which point he was killed.
Shortly thereafter, a tank arrived to assist in fighting off the Hamas assault, and the team inside managed to kill dozens of terrorists until being hit by an anti-tank missile.
The combat around the tank went on for hours. It was only after the sole surviving member of the tank crew managed to drive some half a kilometer away, to avoid being killed by a grenade as terrorists stormed the vehicle, that Hamas forces managed to break through the police barrier and invade the festival site itself.
Later on, two police officers and an officer in the Gaza Division managed to gather around the tank and to defend a group of 50 partygoers for hours before they were rescued.
At 11:45 a.m., IDF forces still had not arrived at the festival site, as terrorists finally broke through the improvised defenses.
Israel Police Sgt. Maj. Yulia Vakser, stationed at the festival, called the IDF’s Southern Command, alerting them that the remaining revelers were about to all be killed, the report said. The operations commander on the other end said that there were many active combat zones. Vakser was killed half an hour later.
Then-police commissioner Kobi Shabtai called IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi at 11:45 a.m., informing him that forces had not been able to reach the site of the festival.
“We know. We’ve increased our forces near Re’im,” Halevi replied, referring to the nearby kibbutz, though they would not arrive at the festival site until much later in the day.
Army officials told Channel 12 that police informed the military that the area of the rave had been cleared out, and therefore, the military did not prioritize deploying forces there.
Without anyone to stop them, Hamas terrorists established a command post on the grounds, where they began collecting bodies of those they had massacred and hostages to take to the Gaza Strip.
Newly published footage
With permission from families, footage was aired on Channel 12 showing the kidnapping of Almog Meir Jan, Evyatar David, and Guy Gilboa-Dalal. Jan was rescued in June in an operation by security forces, along with three other hostages taken from the rave.
Ilan, Gilboa-Dalal’s father, said the footage gave him hope that his son was in good condition.
“It encourages me because we saw how people were kidnapped from there. Injured, cut up, exhausted. He is walking. He looks completely ok. A little shocked, but physically completely healthy,” Ilan told Channel 12.
By midday, terrorists were freely looting, murdering, and raping at the site, according to the report.
Footage aired by the network showed terrorists dragging a woman from a white Toyota. A few minutes later, she reappears on screen, her hands held above her head, and she is shot.
It was only at 12:30 p.m. that a small force of soldiers arrived, and by 3 p.m., a larger force was deployed.
Locations of slaughter
Breaking down the locations of those killed, the report showed partygoers were killed throughout the Gaza border area.
One managed to flee to Sderot before being killed, another was killed at the Black Arrow Monument, 63 were killed in Kibbutz Mefalsim, 14 in Kibbutz Alumim, 8 in Kibbutz Be’eri, 1 in Kibbutz Re’im, 13 in open areas east of the party, 7 in the direction of the city of Netivot, 26 south of Re’im, 17 in a shelter at the Gama Junction, 12 along Route 232, 15 in a shelter outside Be’eri, 27 in a shelter east of Re’im, 15 in a shelter west of Be’eri, 10 at the police checkpoint at the entrance of the party, and 153 on the festival grounds.
The report provided the latest detailed example of the security establishment’s failure to anticipate and prevent the massacre of civilians on October 7.
With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly putting off the establishment of a state commission of inquiry to investigate the government’s failures that enabled the October 7 attacks, several groups representing survivors of the Hamas massacres and the families of those killed have set up an independent probe aimed at “reaching the truth and preventing the next disaster.”
Netanyahu has said state investigations must wait until after the fighting ends and has repeatedly avoided committing to forming a state commission, which is the inquiry body that enjoys the broadest powers under Israeli law. With the war now in its 12th month, pressure has been growing, including from his own defense minister, to begin investigating events.
The IDF has launched its own internal probes. In July, the military released conclusions of its probe of the slaughter at Kibbutz Be’eri, finding a disastrous failure in its ability to respond to the mass invasion of terrorists.
Overall, some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel on October 7, and 251 were taken hostage; 97 are still held, along with two Israeli civilians who entered the Gaza Strip in 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
