IDF Inquiry Faults Delays, Commends Armed Citizens in Be’eri Massacre

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released the results Thursday of its investigation into the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri by Hamas on October 7, finding that the military had failed to defend citizens and that armed civilians had stepped in.

Breitbart News was among the first outlets granted access to Kibbutz Be’eri in the days after the attack, and reported:

Buildings blown apart. Walls, homes, riddled with bullet-holes. Bloodstains, shattered glass. Spent bullet casings. Crushed bicycles. A kindergarten with a massive hole from a rocket-propelled grenade.

This is the scene at one of the communities hit hardest by Palestinian terrorists on October 7.

On this collective farm a few kilometers from the border with Gaza, 108 residents were brutally murdered, out of a population of about 1,100, meaning the kibbutz lost 10% of its residents.

…

Rami Gold, 70, a resident of the kibbutz, spoke about how he and about ten neighbors battled 120 Hamas terrorists for several hours, down to their last bullet, until finally Israel Defense Forces (IDF) resevists arrived to give them ammunition.

Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart News

The inquiry, conducted by independent IDF officers not involved in the operation, found that the military failed to defend Be’eri for a variety of reasons. One was that the IDF had trained for single infiltrations of terrorists, not a division-style invasion. Another was that Hamas took up positions along access roads, slaughtering soldiers who arrived on the scene to relieve the defenders of the kibbutz. Moreover, when soldiers finally did arrive at the kibbutz, they stayed outside to hours to await further orders, unaware of the scale of the massacre going on inside the gates.

However, there were many soldiers who ran toward the fire, as well as armed civilians who were part of the kibbutz security force. The IDF inquiry lauded the latter for their bravery.

IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said:

The inquiry’s conclusions are clear – October 7th was one of the hardest days Israel has known since its establishment. The IDF failed in its mission to protect the residents of Kibbutz Be’eri. It is painful and difficult for me to say this: the IDF was supposed to protect the residents of Kibbutz Be’eri, but unfortunately, we were not there for many hours of the fighting. For hours, the residents of Be’eri protected their families with their bodies, facing the terrorists alone.

The extraordinary heroism and resourcefulness of the kibbutz residents stabilized the defensive line in the first hours of the fighting, and prevented the expansion of the terrorists’ attack to other parts of the kibbutz. Alongside the rapid response team, the community emergency team also acted heroically, which guided the forces, formed an operational situational assessment, and assisted the residents.

The military found that in one controversial incident, where an Israeli tank shelled a house where Hamas terrorists were holding 14 hostages, the military acted professionally and only fired as a last resort. Only one hostage survived.

The IDF recommended that in future, the military be trained to act immediately to attack a terrorist threat rather than waiting for orders. In addition, it recommended that wounded civilians be evacuated ahead of wounded soldiers.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.